Overseas, societies older than our own are appalled by our recent military controversies, and amused. The French, for example, are said to be perplexed by American preoccupation with adultery in the military. Ah, the French. While I will agree with any Frenchman that adultery is not the worst of human sins, I do not find the French on matters of morals to be in any position to teach America. Not after Petain and the Nazis.
Moral cowardice is a worse sin than adultery.
But in France the president dies and his mistress comes to the funeral, weeps alongside the president's wife. It is true that we Americans are more preoccupied by sexual sin than people in many other countries of the world. We are, after all, puritanical by heritage. But curiously, our Puritanism has been matched lately by a licentiousness. If we are obsessed by sexual sin, we are also obsessed by sexual pleasure.