Invididual vs. Corporate Ethics

I just got back from a trip down to South Carolina for a graduation at Parris Island. My younger brother James is now officially a Marine. I must say that I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, before joining he was making money just to spend it on computer games, which he would spend most of his free time playing. Now, he's putting aside his own desires and freedom for what he sees to be the greater good, and has willingly put himself through three months of hell in order to do this. On the other hand, if I have not been fully persuaded of pacifism, I'm at least getting pretty close to it; I would only count WWII as a legitimate war within US history, and I'm not even sure that we entered it for just reasons (I'm sure that we often did not do just acts during it). Even besides this, there was an aura of patriotism at the base which without exaggeration came close to religious. I'm all for my ability to speak my voice in public, but to say that the flag is watching over me wherever I go? To cultivate feelings of, more or less, ultimate concern for my nation?

What is best to do in such a circumstance? What happens when the growth of virtue in an individual (or in individuals) conflicts with the overall good of society and the spread of peace, especially when any other likely choice from the individual would likely have continued the old habits? Tied to this is the epistemological problem: am I ever sure enough of my position to denounce that of another, when the position in question would lead to at least some moral improvement?

After this comes the relation between the roles of intellectual and of prophet. As an intellectual, I consider the cases concerning the way in which our faith should work in our lives, in our churches, in our nations, more than the average person. I have the practice and the leisure time to do so. I can spend more time pondering the ways in which the worldviews of many are formed by contingent historical factors taken to be immutable moral laws. It would seem from this that I have the responsibility to share these thoughts with the community, since I have the provisions to partake in intellectual exercise. However, in academia I am cut off from the life of the average person. My daily life simply is not that of the common member of the church, and my solutions are indicative of my own preoccupations rather than the concerns of Joe Steelmiller. It is similar to the problem in economic politics, where the poor know their concerns, but not how to fix them, while the rich would have a better idea of how to fix them but don't have the same concerns (indeed, they have interests which lie in the direction of not listening to the poor).

So, what does one do when one sees a truth, but too dimly to be quite sure of it? What does one do when the proclamation of this truth will hurt many? How does one proclaim the message in a way in which it would be heard (after all, telling my mother and brother that the American church is often idolatrously patriotic, or at least ties its own end far too much to that of the nation would be an exercise in futility), or should one really care about this?