Your first indoctrination into the PME most likely took the form of learning a cadet code of conduct. All American cadet codes of conduct state in part that “a cadet will neither lie, cheat, nor steal.” You may know classmates who think its no big thing to cheat on a test, or to take a CD they want from the store at the mall, or to lie to avoid the consequences of being caught. You may have tried some of these things yourself, or at least thought about doing them at one time or another, when you were hard pressed for study time or cash, or felt pressured to go along with something your friends were doing. You may have made the usual excuses for yourself or your friends (everybody’s doing it, it’s not that big a deal, it doesn’t hurt anybody, you have to go along to get along, it would be disloyal to tell, and it’s not your business anyway). But, even as you were making these excuses you probably knew all along that what you were doing (or turning a blind eye to your friends doing) was wrong, and you probably weren’t too proud of yourself. After all, you’ve been told all your life - at home, in church, at school, in Scouts - that dishonorable behaviors like lying, cheating, and stealing are unacceptable; that’s in the Ten Commandments, it’s in the Scout Law. Now you’re being told that that goes double for cadets. Because even if all your peers really are cheating on tests and lying to their parents about where they go and what they do, cadets are expected not only to behave honorably themselves, but not to put up with dishonorable behavior from others.

“A cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal” is just the beginning of cadet codes of conduct. If you go to West Point or the Air Force Academy, the code you will be expected to live and work by will go on to say “nor tolerate those who do.” This second part of the cadet code is known as the nontoleration clause, and it puts an extra duty on cadets and military officers, a very heavy one that students and other professionals do not have to bear. And you’re not off the hook if you go to Annapolis or the Coast Guard Academy, where they have slightly broader honor concepts instead of a code. The one at the US Coast Guard Academy says “who lives here reveres honor, honors duty; we neither lie, cheat, steal, nor attempt to deceive,” which amounts to the same thing as the USMA and USAFA codes, and maybe a bit more.

But why isn’t it enough just to behave honorably yourself; why do cadets have the extra duty to report other cadets who cannot or will not live up to their honor concept or code? You would not, after all, be suspended from a public high school for not telling on the classmate you saw using a cheat sheet on your Spanish final, so why should minding your own business get you kicked out of an academy or ROTC program?

The answer is that there is a special relationship between the US military and the country it serves. That relationship is civilian control of the military. Under the Constitution, the American military may not act independently, but is responsible to the American people for the actions it takes in the course of serving them. When you raise your right hand on your commissioning day and take the oath of office as a 2/LT or Ensign, you will be making a solemn promise to your countrymen that they can trust you to use this country’s military might to serve and defend them.

That trust is a no small matter; it’s a very big deal. Because Americans must put “special trust and confidence” in every officer we commission to use firepower and information we would never trust in the hands of the ordinary citizen, we must have assurance that those officers are honorable people. Maybe you can be dishonorable and still be a great artist, famous basketball player, or successful businessman. But only an honorable person is acceptable as an American military officer. Only an honorable person will have the character to keep honest accounting of TDY expenses the American taxpayers will have to reimburse him for, give a truthful evaluation of a friend’s fitness for promotion to a leadership position in which he will be responsible for people’s lives, tell the truth about the flaws in the new fighter plane his boss has been a champion for before its crew is killed. Only an honorable person will have the strength to hold to the Laws of Land and Aerial Warfare when everything going on around him will be urging him to cheat, kill innocent women and children, do anything to get himself through the terror and confusion of combat alive and then lie about it afterwards to avoid being put on trial for war crimes. In this day of “television war,” anything dishonorable an American soldier, sailor, or airman does can be used by our enemies to get the American people to withdraw their support from their fighting men. If you don’t believe that public opinion can win (or lose) wars, ask your father or uncle about Vietnam. Only an honorable person will have the courage to put loyalty to his corps and his country above loyalty to a friend who has proved his own disloyalty by breaking the PME, even if that means being called a snitch. And it does take courage. But what’s your other choice? Really? As Abraham Lincoln, a man who told things as they were, once said, “to sin by silence when one should protest makes cowards out of men.”And cowards are unsuited to military service.

Since no one is born courageous or strong or honorable, how do you, as a cadet, go about becoming what the American people need you to be? A very wise old Greek philosopher named Aristotle once said that the way to be is to do. And that’s what cadet codes of conduct are for. Think of them as a form of ethical combat training. By living up to the standards they set for you day by day, you make yourself into all you can, and all your country needs you to be.