This came in today; again I’ve emailed the author, haven’t heard back, and want to get it out there so I have redacted his name.
Let me hereby state the offical Armed Liberal mail policy that I just made up: All emails that I get from non-bloggers are fair game for posting without attribution – I will withold your name and email. If you don’t want it published, tell me. If you want your name or email or url on it, tell me. If you are a fellow blogger, I’ll assume it is for attribution and give you recognition and a link. Seem fair?
Read this, it’s great:

You wrote:
I know several people who are either highly skilled martial artists or highly skilled firearms trainers, and in both groups there is an interesting correlation between competence (hence dangerousness) and a kind of calm civility – the opposite of the “armed brute” image that some would attempt to use to portray a dangerous man or woman.
This one grabbed me. I served in both the Army and the Navy. My father was a career Navy officer and was away from home much of my young life – serving in, among other places, Vietnam. Even after leaving the Navy I took work with the Department of the Navy as a civilian, one of those few who worked overseas (southeast Asia, Persian Gulf, and other interesting spots) and had to maintain weapons qualifications.
Finally I left that job because I wanted to live a “more normal” life, in a more fixed location, in my own house on my own property. I took another government job, this time with the US Courts in Seattle (maybe the most politically correct and leftist city in America). For the first time in my life I was among people who had never served, many of whom never even knew anyone who had served. Many of my new coworkers were distinctly uncomfortable around me. Reasonably so, from their perspective – I was a creature of violence, one of the hard men Orwell wrote about who do rough things to protect our freedom, and who were satirized by Jack Nicholson’s thuggish Colonel Jessop in A Few Good Men. “You want me on that wall, you NEED me on that wall!” and “The Truth? You can’t handle the truth!”
Most of the excessively “liberal” (it appears your definition of that word differs somewhat from theirs) people I worked with never said anything overt, but they were definitely concerned at having such a brutal goon working alongside them. Many of them, I think, doubted that I was fitted for such a delicate position amongst such genteel people. Finally, one coworker asked me what was the most important thing I learned in my military training.
“Self control” I replied.
He was astonished and thought I was kidding. His perplexed statement was a treat – obviously my answer was far outside anything he expected. He asked me to elaborate, and I said that when the military teaches you to use deadly force, they spend almost as much time on the ethics of using it. They teach that it’s just as important to know when to kill as how to do it, and that an out of control killing machine was as dangerous to your own side as to the enemy. The military does not want mindless automatons, but reasonable, thinking people who use judgement as well as skill.
I don’t think he believed me at first, but over the next few days he seemed to be absorbing what I had said. Eventually it seemed to me that he treated me with a bit more respect and a lot less uncertainty.
[name witheld]

I’m glad they asked, impressed (but not surprised) with what you answered, and incidentally, please know that I’m grateful to you for your service.