Pat Tillman would be regarded as a fool by many Americans. Give up a pro football career and pro football salary to join the Army? Is he an idiot? Pat Tillman would be regarded as another dumb American in much of Europe, where people believe that life's purpose is largely to make love, not war.
Pat Tillman would be regarded as an immoral man by the growing number of pacifists within the religious and secular Left. He volunteered to kill people. What a lowlife.
Thank God that much of America is talking about and revering the name Pat Tillman. That means we still have hope. A society's moral temperature can be measured in part by whom it celebrates. And for much of my lifetime, the greatest adoration has been showered on the narcissistic and the shallow -- from Britney Spears to Barry Bonds to Norman Mailer.
Most people who are concerned with good and evil are preoccupied with understanding those who do evil. This is easily confirmed by any perusal of a library or bookstore's shelves. The ratio of books attempting to explain evil to books attempting to explain good is probably a thousand to one. Why? Because of our naive belief that goodness is normal, and that it is the abnormal evil ones who need to be explained.
This is nonsense.
The fact is that the truly good are abnormal. It is the Pat Tillmans, not the fanatical Muslims who killed him, who need to be studied. For if we do not figure out how to make more Pat Tillmans here in America and throughout the world, we and the world will self-destruct. There are only 36 of them.