Pat Roth­fuss recently wrote a beau­tiful blog post on love. Go read it, then come back here. I’ll wait.

The thing I like so much about that piece is Pat’s expan­sive def­i­n­i­tion of what con­sti­tutes love. The problem with cul­ture is that it is in the busi­ness of sketching clan bound­aries. Tribes, states, clubs and even genres define them­selves by neg­a­tive space. They are who they are largely because of who they are not. I’ve never liked that, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t buy into it. I’m an SF/F dork. I’m a writer. I’m an Amer­ican. I’m a mil­i­tary officer. All of those things have fairly strict tribal bound­aries. There are things that people wearing those labels aren’t sup­posed to do.

And they all tell us how to love. In fact, dic­tating what does (and more impor­tantly, what does not) con­sti­tute love is a huge pri­ority of every clan iden­tity I’ve ever encoun­tered. It bugs the hell out of me, because I firmly believe that the more love the world has, the better it is. I want that def­i­n­i­tion as expan­sive as pos­sible. And Pat believes that. And I love him for it.

This makes me think about the mil­i­tary, of course. Writers, doc­u­men­tary film makers, jour­nal­ists, hordes of folks spec­u­late at great length on why we do what we do. I hear theory after theory. Some posit that people join the mil­i­tary because they have no other socio-economic option, or because of family legacy, or to exor­cise demons arising from chaotic pasts, or to feed the fires of a killer instinct. Some ascribe noble virtues, the pro­tean con­cept of patri­o­tism, or to posi­tion one­self for career ambi­tions, future politi­cians or civilian gov­ern­ment officials.

Nobody talks about love.

I’m only sup­posed to speak for myself, of course. But I know plenty of men and women who gladly risk their lives every day out of love. The truth is this: flawed as it is, the United States is a nation free enough and pros­perous enough to give birth to a unique cul­tural fer­ment. There are folks who con­sider them­selves cit­i­zens of the world, who eschew the idea of nation­alism. More power to them. I love this country, and when I say “this country,” I mean the people whose glo­rious striving makes up its ever-shifting iden­tity. I love them with a deep, mad love. They have given me every­thing. I am a writer because of them, I am an officer because of them, the slightest con­cept of decency is due to them. There are legions of doc­tors, teachers, fire­fighters, police offi­cers, artists, polit­ical activists, vol­un­teers and par­ents who have car­ried me, inch by inch, across the years. They have made me the person I am. Without them I would be nothing. Without them I am nothing.

Wil­fred Owen called it “the old lie,” Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. It has never been a lie to me. I love my coun­trymen in their aggre­gate mil­lions. I love them enough to fight for them. I love them enough to die for them.

One of the greatest gifts Iraq gave me was crossing that Bud­dhist line and finally com­pre­hending my own insignif­i­cance. There was a moment in my 3^rd tour when I finally accepted the pos­si­bility of my own death, came to terms with it. In that moment, I gave up fear, angled toward meaning. If I was to die, I would do it in a manner that flared briefly with the pat­tern of the person I so des­per­ately want to be. I would go down loving.

I mean no mar­tyrdom or melo­drama in this. I would die to save any of you. No matter who you are, no matter what you believe. I would do it without hes­i­ta­tion. I am not such a fool to think that what­ever I’ve achieved in life makes my long-winded old age more valu­able than yours, that somehow I need more years than anyone else. I am not worth­less, but nei­ther am I some scin­til­lating human jewel, except to the extent that we all are, in our own way. And this, more than any­thing: I would die for you because I can, because I have the training and the ability to make that death mean some­thing, because I can do it effec­tively. I am no weak­ling sui­cide, but rather striving to exist in a state of readi­ness, enjoying a life as I simul­ta­ne­ously accept the flat reality of its end point, my blood singing with the motto of the Air Force Parares­cueman, the Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer: So Others Might Live.

I am not unique in this. I work with men and women every day who qui­etly go about their busi­ness, ready to give up all that they are in heart­beat because, to quote Pat, “this too is love.”

George Orwell is gen­er­ally attrib­uted with the quote “We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit vio­lence on those who would do us harm.”

Look around you, at your police offi­cers, your ser­vice men and women. We are the “rough men.”

And we love you.