Many are the citizen-soldiers who serve in the new, modernized military system, a behemoth that incorporates a fighting force made up of active-duty personnel augmented by individuals and units of the reserves and the National Guard.  Our modern American military is a hybrid fighting force that draws upon all its available assets to best complete the mission.  Thus, the opportunities to serve our country militarily are limitless; one can enlist into the active forces, or, if that doesn’t fit into his lifestyle, there are many opportunities in the Reserves or the National Guard.

With all those multiple opportunities to do one’s duty and serve in some, even the smallest, capacity, in the forces that protect our country’s sovereignty and safety, it is hard to understand those who deliberately avoid this honorable way of paying for the good fortune and the blessings that accrue from being born into this great nation.  Yes, they’ve been given a ticket to ride, but with a certain few individuals, they want that ticket to all the freedoms, which hundreds of thousands of other Americans have died to preserve, for absolutely nothing.  They feel they are entitled by their birthright to bask in the freedoms and wealth of America without ever making even the simplest small sacrifice in their personal lives to guarantee that freedom for themselves and their fellow citizens.   

Such an individual is Mark Pryor, the sitting Democratic senator in Arkansas.  He’s a man of privilege by virtue of family wealth and political clout, who in his half-century on this earth has never felt that call to the flag that so many patriotic Americans serving in our military forces know all too well.

Like Tom Cotton.

Cotton is Pryor’s opponent in this crucial Senate race here in Arkansas, and he’s Pryor’s personal and political opposite – I mean a true 180-degree differential in their personas, their beliefs, and the conduct of their lives.  While Pryor has avoided any form of military service, Cotton not only willingly served, but refused the opportunity to take advantage of his law degree to serve as a JAG and instead volunteered for service in the Army infantry in an active combat zone, as his father had once done.

I’m an old Army NCO who has taken the measure of many officers under whom I served.  I can tell you, I would be proud to serve under Tom Cotton, a man who, faced with a hard decision, chooses the hard but honorable way.

Mark Pryor, the privileged political scion, has absolutely no clue what that hard way might entail, nor will he ever.  On TV, he’s plump, puffy, powdered, and pampered, radiating the glowing good health of wealth and privilege of the senatorial elite, an expected byproduct of those many $30,000-a-plate fundraising dinners in Hollywood conducted on his behalf.  He enjoys all those California comforts naturally accruing to one of the Left Coast’s favored Old South Liberals, a treasured down-the-line voter for Barack Obama and all the left’s socialist dreams.

Army company commander Captain Tom Cotton served as a front-line infantry officer when his country called.  He gave up the cushy Army lawyer job to be a front-line infantry officer, a very hazardous and difficult job that I know well from having been a radio operator for several infantry company commanders.  These are men who are tested to the extreme limits of their physical and mental capabilities.  I’ve seen them go more than two days without sleep, all the while staying in charge of their situation and their mission.  It’s not a job for chubby weak-sisters.  Relying on my assessment of all those company commanders I carried that damned old heavy radio for, I don’t think pudgy Pryor could cut it.

Mark, your problem is that you have no Pryor Service.