You have chosen to risk your lives for the defense of this country. I will not insult you by saying that you are dedicated to selfless service–it is not a virtue in my morality. In my morality, the defense of one’s country means that a man is personally unwilling to live as the conquered slave of any enemy, foreign or domestic. This is an enormous virtue…
…The army of a free country has a great responsibility: the right to use force, but not as an instrument of compulsion and brute conquest–as the armies of other countries have done in their histories–only as an instrument of a free nation’s self-defense, which means: the defense of a man’s individual rights. The principle of using force only in retaliation against those who initiate its use, is the principle of subordinating might to right.— philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand speaking at the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1974