PositiveCommentaryIn Sacred Duty: A Soldier’s Tour at Arlington National Cemetery, the junior senator from Arkansas has written an encomium to the martial virtues as embodied by his former unit, the storied 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment—the Old Guard. In the process, Cotton echoes Plato’s view that the ritual of honoring those who make the ultimate sacrifice has as much to do with advising the living as it does with praising the dead ... His intimate study conveys an appropriately awed appreciation for those who have borne the sting of battle and the burden of its aftermath ... Cotton also offers a wealth of interesting historical and procedural detail ... To read Sacred Duty is to be struck by the chasm that has opened between the military and the political class ... Cotton’s account of the noble regiment established at the dawn of our nation and still standing sentry over those who gave \'the last, full measure of devotion\' to the republic is a welcome reminder that those virtues still exist somewhere in America.
