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Here in the Ozarks, like over there in Kentucky, our students join the Armed Forces -- did and even now some of them still do -- because what else is there? It used to be we had the factories, where a kid from the hill farms could sometimes make a living. Those jobs have gone or are going to Mexico.

So kids joined up, and the Army paid for your university -- well, it was a good enough deal, if a war didn't get you. You took your chances.

All over Fort Smith -- all over the country, after Iraq began, I kept hearing, they knew they were taking that chance when they signed up. Did they think they were getting that college for free?

I kept trying to think how to argue with that, which seemed to me such an obscene thing to say -- that a kid should have to buy his future with his life, or hers, that one kid should, because he happened to be born to poor parents, while another, a block away, because his parents are rich, why, he gets a trip to Yale, and a BMW Hummer, of course he gets his college for free, what do you think this is, socialism? -- I kept thinking, this ain't right.

Well, this ain't right.