A commencement address we would like George W. Bush to give

Congratulations seniors on completing the milestone of graduating from one of the world's greatest universities and congratulations on your membership in one of the world's greatest experiments, the United States of America.

The United States may not seem like much of an experiment — two hundred some years in the running. But experiment it is — it began as such, an experiment in whether free men, and now women, could overcome the obstacles to working shoulder to shoulder and govern themselves, with nothing but laws mutually decided upon to bind them. And it is an experiment still, because that question, that willingness to engage together to create a country, is as fragile as each individual's will. This is our paradox. We are a great country, but a fragile one.

We are great because we dared once and dare still to act on the long-odds belief that as disparate and disagreeable as we are, we can still come together to be one. We are fragile because if enough of us repudiate or disregard our role in the country, it will simply cease to be.

I ask you to pause a moment before you storm the gates of fame and fortune, to consider what this country has given you, and what you can give back.

"Every man sent out from a University should be a man of his Nation," said President Woodrow Wilson, also president of Princeton and a member of the Class of 1879. In other words, it is your obligation as an American to uphold this experiment by participating. It is your special obligation as a person of talent and training, said President John F. Kennedy, to give even more. As he urged, invoking the biblical adage: From those to whom much is given, much is required.

"It is not the critic who counts," said Theodore Roosevelt, "not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions."

So how do I ask you to serve the country? If you have a scientific bent, research renewable energy, and help free us from dependence on oil. If you have a persuasive tongue, become a campaign worker, or write or canvass for a cause that speaks to the common good. And if you have physical abilities, a leadership bent and moral strength, serve your country in the armed forces.

Yes, I suggest you, Princeton graduates, wear the colors. Too few of you here are leaving to serve in the military. Perhaps it is time you reconsider the chosen path of privilege. Perhaps it is time for a few of you to do something your parents, certainly some members of the faculty of this school and many of your peers will find outlandish. But since when has living up to other people's expectations always the right answer?

Once our great universities were the soul of the officer corps in America, and provided many fine recruits as well, who took their training and insight and later became leaders in the larger society. Not long ago our universities took their role in providing our services with the citizen-soldiers envisioned by this country's founders as a sacred trust. In the 1950s, more half of the graduates Princeton would serve, and not because they were drafted. Our schools believed that their best and brightest would bring the spirit of free America to the field, and the lessons of the field home to inform the next generation of policy makers.

Schools such as this one founded the ROTC — Harvard University itself pioneered ROTC, the same school which bars it from its ranks now. The Ivies now send less than one percent of their alums to serve. Our country's founders would boggle at the idea that our most privileged young people, those who have benefited most from what this country has to offer, would consider military service unfit work for them. The Congress of 1917 would be shocked — they argued for a draft out of fear that the volunteer ranks would be too full of the children of the privileged, who would rush to the glory of service to their country. But in many ways the blindness many of you have toward military service is not surprising. I suspect no one has ever asked you to consider serving in the military. I regret that.

The job of the military is complex — it requires peacekeeping, war fighting, humanitarian aid, security and stabilization, interdicting weapons of mass destruction. It has tremendous consequence in the world, and it's a place where one can make a difference. In the military you will not only serve your country in the work you do, but you will help close the loop between the military and your Ivy League friends, those who are influential in opinion-making and decision-making. That will help our country to be more democratic, it will strengthen the feedback loop between those on the front line of policy and those back home.

I am not asking all of you to join the military — just those whose talents and inclinations make them appropriate candidates — those who like to stick up for the underdog, who read history, perhaps particularly the classics, and can imagine themselves standing up when it counts. Yes, the military is dangerous, it involves risk. That fact should not close your mind to it. Our society is sometimes too risk averse. But service requires risk. It also requires a sense of solidarity with all Americans of every class, religion and race. You have had a privileged education. Put that to good use for a time serving your country. And do this side-by-side with other Americans and by doing so make this a fairer country with a more level playing field for all, one where some of those to whom the most has been given express love of country and gratitude in a unique way.

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And regardless of your talents and inclinations, for the military or civilian service, you can bring honor to yourself and America by joining the experiment. I hope you do. Kathy Roth-Douquet GS '91 and Frank Schaeffer are the authors of "AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service — And How It Hurts Our Country" (Collins Books/HarperCollins, 2006). Roth-Douquet is former Clinton White House staffer, now married to a military officer. Schaeffer is a novelist whose son enlisted in the Marine Corps. They can be reached at krd@roth-douquet.com.