Carronade The Yankee Sailor Carronade

The Sea is a choosy mistress. She takes the men that come to her and weighs them and measures them. The ones she adores, she keeps; the ones she hates, she destroys. The rest she casts back to land. I count myself among the adored, for I am Her willing Captive.

FLASH TRAFFIC:
I've relocated to a new Yankee Sailor.

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Air Force Overreacts to Academy Scandal, Navy Declines

The Air Force is set to revise its policy on religious speech by banning any sort of religious speech at officially sanctioned events. Presumably this would even bar an invocation and benediction at individuals' retirement ceremonies. The Navy, however, continues to resist outside pressure to act in a similar manner.

I don't have a problem with government restricting aggressive proselytizing. My issue with the Air Force's decision is the "one size fits all" nature of their decision. In the Navy we've come to call it "intrusive leadership", and basically what it sometimes boils down to is punishing the innocent for the acts of the guilty.

Take hazing, for example. Every once in a while a handful of idiots will decide to play some games with the "new guy" and will cross a line. Inevitably when the complaint is lodged and the investigation is done, one of the idiots will assert that he was never told it was improper to strip a shipmate down to his underwear and duct tape him to a stanchion. What really amazes me is that we as the leadership of the Navy give this kind of answer any credibility at all, and ultimately force an entire ship, or fleet even, to receive training on why it isn't okay to play these stupid games, and have thousands of Sailors acknowledge in writing that they were told what the policy is.

I recognize that I've been living in something of a closed society for most of my adult life, but is the rest of society so screwed up that they can't make common sense decisions about right and wrong?