For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that,
an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of ’is country”
when the guns begin to shoot; …
—Rudyard Kipling, “Tommy” (1890)

We have been reminded of Kipling’s poem “Tommy” a good deal lately. Its most famous line—in which Kipling speaks of “makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep”—has a special relevance at a moment when anti-war animus is bubbling out of the universities and other protected redoubts of politically correct sentiment. Living in the aftermath of the 1960s and its culture of protest, most of us have long been inured to the spectacle of privileged adolescents attacking the institutions that guarantee their privileges. We have been inured as well to the spectacle of privileged men and women, middle-aged and older, beha ...

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