A column published in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday makes the case that colleges and universities undermine the values that American veterans risked their lives to defend.

U.S. Air Force Veteran Rob Henderson penned a column for the Wall Street Journal this week in which he made the case that veterans feel betrayed by colleges and universities that seek to undermine American values.

Henderson expressed concern that campus activists actively seek to destroy the American values that veterans have risked their lives to defend. Henderson noted that college students often boast about their opposition to basic American values, like the First and Second Amendments. Henderson describes a discussion he had with a fellow veteran about campus culture.

He said he was mystified, observing that the predominantly working- and middle-class people in the military swear an oath to defend with their lives the U.S. Constitution, including the First and Second amendments. Meanwhile, affluent college students regularly trash the First and seek to dismantle the Second. Are veterans being duped, he questioned, into believing they are upholding American values while the richest kids in the world—the ones being groomed for success and power—try to undermine them?

Henderson claims that many veterans feel that they are fighting for the right of student activists to fight against American values. He claims that many veterans feel like “suckers” for fighting for ungrateful students that seek to fundamentally transform America and its values.

He’s not the only one who feels that way. Many veterans I know who enter college are bewildered by what they see: students from the top income decile expressing derision for the values that service members signed up to defend. Perhaps they could be forgiven for feeling like suckers.

Henderson says that many veterans feel forced to remain silent on campus. He believes that campus leftists that seek to undermine American values may feel differently after they’ve matured.

Veterans who first serve in the military and then attend elite colleges learn to navigate both moral worlds. On campus we learn to blend in, even at the cost of feeling betrayed. We keep our love for America to ourselves. We don’t want to give veterans a bad reputation. We want to make friends. We try to understand campus protesters, to see where they’re coming from. Maybe their grievances are a bit overblown, but still, they’re young. They’re still maturing. Just like we were when we volunteered our lives for this country. Just like our friend was when he hanged himself after returning from his second deployment.

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