R. Cort Kirkwood has written a book titled Real Men: Ten Courageous Americans to Know and Admire. One of the heroes he profiles is Rocky Versace, an American POW in Communist Vietnam who responded to Viet Cong efforts to break him by, among other ways, singing “God Bless America” while being executed. In 2002 President Bush posthumously conferred the medal of honor on this indomitable Army officer.

Kirkwood writes that these heroes “embodied the traditional Christian conception of manhood defined in chivalry.” He describes them as “honorable and honest, generous to varying degrees to foes, and solicitous and protective of women, children and animals.” They also believed “that some things are worth dying for.”

Mal Kline praises Real Men, observing that it is because of brave figures such as Versace that “American freedoms have survived more than two and a half centuries of onslaughts.” And students need to learn about those – men and women – who have chivalrously defended our liberty, for example, as Kline notes, in the “men’s studies” programs cropping up on some campuses.

The gallantry portrayed in this book contrasts sharply with Senator John Kerry’s recent, distinctly uncourageous insult to our fighting men and women – his remark before students at a California community college that if they don’t work hard in college, they’ll “get stuck in Iraq.” Kerry’s inference was, according to Army Maj. John P. Maguire in a letter to the New York Post, a heroic rescuer of the 9/11 wounded now serving in Iraq, was “that U.S. troops are the bottom feeders of America, have no families, lack education and are society’s outcasts.” “[T]here are other people,” Maguire added, “who share this same view – the enemy…Saddam Hussein spread this lie while he was in power and the insurgents continue to promote it.”

Even if we accept Kerry’s later explanation – that he meant to take a swipe at President Bush and not our military – it is still the ignominious case, as stated in a Post editorial, “that he intended to undercut the president of the United States on a global stage in time of war” and that “his words were meant to undercut national support for troops in the field.” The consequence of this, whatever Kerry’s true intentions, “is to energize the enemy – to encourage them to kill more Americans.”

That Kerry chose to air his dastardly views at a junior college only underscores his astounding irresponsibility.

Not exactly the stuff of Real Men and Women. And hardly what students, steeped already on campuses in defeatism and the myth of soldier-as-lowlife terrorizer, need to hear.