Better to be feared or loved? Hegseth is choosing the wrong one. | Opinion

One of the all-time great questions asks whether it is better for a leader to be feared or to be loved. Secretary of Defense (or is it War?) Pete Hegseth’s recent decision to summon our military’s senior leaders to a scolding at Marine Base Quantico brings this question front and center

I first visited Quantico as an ROTC cadet at a nearby university at a time when American life was about to change dramatically, and the role of gender and race with it. As a green second lieutenant I left the U.S. in 1965 and would be absent for three years, during which the birth control pill altered lives and leaders such as Marin Luther King, Jr. and many others reshaped racial relations in this country.

At the beginning of the sixties, I was attending one of the oldest colleges in the country, and there was little sign that the U.S. was about to be transformed. The faculty and students at the institution I attended, as best I could tell, included no Black faces and the restored Colonial Williamsburg, unlike today, gave the impression that the eighteenth-century settlers were all whites.

Indeed, while today most of our contemporary attitudes have shifted dramatically, strangely, in his Sept. 30 address to the military leadership, Secretary of Defense Hegseth seemed unaware of the progressive pronouncements of Presidents Roosevelt and Truman back in the 1940s, when they decreed that the U.S. forces should be integrated, a feat which was accomplished long before Hegseth was born.

I served in the Army from 1965 to 1969, most of the time in an Armored Cavalry Squadron, and the troops (many of them draftees) were a clear cross-section of the nation they defended. I served alongside individuals who attended Yale and individuals who were barely literate. Today, of course, the draft is not in use and military service is all-volunteer, with the result that those in uniform are less likely to resemble those that they protect.

Secretary Hegseth’s latest battle is with the press, a move that is surprising since he was the editor of a conservative publication during his days at Princeton. As one who wrote for the Flathat at the College of William & Mary, I well remember that the views of the students were often not those of the administration. Thomas Jefferson, who attended William & Mary much earlier, is well-remembered for his words “Were it left to me to decide whether to have a government without a newspaper or a newspaper without a government, I would not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

Jefferson’s sentiments resound in an era where the administration is deploying troops in America’s cities. Oh, where oh where is the Fourth Estate?

One thing that Hegseth is getting right is his concern over the lack of fitness by the troops. If anything, he needs to expand this criticism to Americans as a whole. It would not be inappropriate to ask the military to set an example, especially in terms of strength of character.

As I noted earlier, long before he founded the University of Virginia, Jefferson attended the College of William & Mary, where the Honor Code originated in 1736. Honor is a beautiful term for integrity, and more than anything else, this nation needs to turn back to the moral backbone of generations past, starting at the very highest levels.

Leaders have long faced the question “Is it better to be feared or loved?” Fear may motivate people to stop smoking or to consume more vegetables, but my experience says that other emotions, those in the realm of love, compassion and understanding, are closer to the mark.

Those gray-haired generals should explain to Hegseth that “love makes us one.” My son-in-law, who serves in the Marine Corps, would very likely declare: “Sempre Fidelis!”

Larry Fennelly can be reached at larney_f@hotmail.com.