I really like William Lind, and I like his “I am your grandfather’s Republican” sort of conservativism. But occasionally I think he puts his ideological cart so far in front of his reality horse that he wind up riding way around the bend.

His latest mad dash (Hyah! Mule!) “Obama First Test” is half partly right and half completely wrong.

President Obama’s first test in the national security arena is likely to come not from al Qaeda or Iran or the Taliban but from within his own Democratic Party. Powerful constituencies in that party, the Feminists and the gays, will demand that he open the ground combat arms to women and allow acknowledged homosexuals to serve in the U.S. armed forces. If he agrees to either of these demands, or both, he will begin his Presidency by doing immense damage to the fighting ability of the America military.

First and foremost, I simply can’t fathom anyone forcing the Army and Marines to open the “ground-pounding grunt” fields to women. There are good reasons to keep women out of infantry, engineers artillary and a few other professions. Simply put, any standard fitness routine will crank out stronger men than women. There are plenty of arguments to be made about agility, flexibility, dexterity, whatever, but when it comes to hauling a M-240B, with tripod and ammo, in addition to food clothing and whatever else a woman is never going to have the raw strength of a man. Ditto pounding pickets, loading Paladin rounds, doing a fireman’s carry, etc. The best metaphor I’ve ever heard is that when two guys are goofing around and wrestling their primary concern is winning (within bounds), when a guy is wrestling with his girlfriend his primary concern is not hurting her.

But Lind really heads out on a shaky limb when he speaks of “the gays” as unfit for duty for any of the same reasons as women.

Barring indisputable sissies, of which there are a fair few gay, straight and other, there is no reasonable explanation for why a gay man should not be allowed to volunteer to defend his nation. He tries to conjur up the usual imagery of two dudes doing it in the shower or of young Pvt. Billy getting raped in his foxhole by the evil predatory gay man and ends up conjuring nothing more than a ridiculous idea that no one with any sense would accept.

First, militaries must represent the society they spring from. There were grim forecast of death and destruction when the services were integrated, and there were unpleasantries. The result was a better, stronger, military. The modern U.S. military must represent the U.S., and our nation increasingly is ambivalent about homosexuality. This is, despite protestations to the contrary, a promotion of the Founder’s dream of creating a nation where “all men are created equal,” (which isn’t to say we haven’t fudged other parts of the Founder’s dream.)

Second, to assume a gay man’s future service would be lessened because of his sexuality is also to declare that all past service by homosexuals is lessened. You’d have to be stupid to assume that none of them men killed at Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, Verdun or the Ardennes Forest were gay. You’d have to be insane to think none of the names inscribed on the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial are names of gay men. Should those names be chisled away?

And you’d have to be way adrift on moron sea to think none of the volunteers in our current military are gay.

Bottom line, there are gays serving in our military, openly. They are deploying with regularity. And the only ones that seem to care are the pogues in charge of the linguists program who are merrily booting Arab linguists (good thing we don’t need any of those right now.) Even when I was in, way back yonder from 99-03, there were guys that didn’t leave much question. They neither flaunted it nor hid it and behaved almost like you’d expect adults to behave. Other than a few oafs that remained perpetual privates, no one cared, and I never heard of anyone getting an unwilling rogering in the foxhole, either.

So, with all due respect to Mr. Lind, this column was a stinker. History is full of gay men serving in and even, ahem, leading militaries, and the nation most famous for turning out a true turd booting military culture was notorious for everyone shagging just about everyone else.

I’ll give a nod to Lind for being an idealist, there’s nothing wrong with that, and he’s a brilliant military thinker. But he also is an ivy league educated, Washington worker. He’d be about as comfortable slamming Bud Light with grimy Army Privates as he would be on a bed of nails. So when he writes things like,

One of the most basic human factors is that men fight to prove they are real men. They join fighting organizations, whether the U.S. Army or U.S. Marine Corps or MS-13, because those organizations are made up of fighting men. Their membership is a badge of honor that says, “We’re not sissies or pansies. We are men who fight, serving alongside other men who fight.” That tells others and themselves they are real men.

If ideologically-driven policies deprive fighting organizations of their ability to convey that message, men who want to prove they are real men will not join. Instead of men who want to fight and will fight, they will end up recruiting men who join for good pay, or education benefits, or because they can’t get a civilian job. Armies like that may fight when they have no other choice, but if they come up against opponents who want to fight, they will be in trouble.

I feel like he needs to be sat down for a good talking to. Bill, history is full of people who join up for pay, for the benefits and because they’re too aggressive, too undisciplined and too uneducated to do anything else. I’ve served with them, starved, roasted, froze, marched, suffered and at the end of the day gotten plowed like a champ.

Try feeding a Marine lance corporal or a young airman with a 19-year old pregant wife all that ideological stuff and be prepared for some weird looks. People serve for all sorts of reasons, and if a man wants to raise that right right and spend 3,4 or 20 years pounding pickets or hauling mortars we shouldn’t be in the business of stopping them.