US Marine Maj Lonnie Christian wrote a guest article on Tom Ricks’ Foreign Policy blog entitled “Morality and leadership: Balance is required.” It was in response to Ricks’ own piece entitled “Against morality equaling leadership,” in which Ricks argued against the concept “that a good leader must be personally moral.”

Christian’s short response, in which he argues that “personal conduct matters,” is worth the read.

Undermining the entire argument, of course, is the root question Who gets to define “moral”? While the US Air Force Academy has an entire department devoted to character development, and the US Air Force recently installed a full week of character development in its Basic Training, the definition of “good character” seems to be a malleable concept in the modern social era.

After all, it wasn’t that long ago that homosexuality was considered immoral, even without respect to religion.

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