Letters to the Editor
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The US military could do with being a touch more elitist.
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/most-awful/government-waste-1.php
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/most-awful/worst-government-waste.php
Someone with a working knowledge of financial management might just be called for in the US military.
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That's some marvelous concern trolling
The number of strawmen and mischaracterizations in this piece is astounding. It's a recitation of conservative cliches wrapped in a pompous lecture.
Progressives hate the troops. They make poor arguments about the military without understanding it. Academia is elitist and all Democrats. Society is feminized. Blah blah blah...
It should send up red flags for anyone that the author fingers broad swaths of the population without any backing data or citations. The only actual data he uses is that Brown University English Profs are Democrats - the definition of cherry-picked and tangential to boot.
For the most part the piece is an attack on people that exist mainly in the author's imagination. "Miltiary = bad" is a charicature of a position, not an actual position.
Most progressives grasp the appeal of the military just fine. What world is this guy living in?
"It's not enough simply to rail against the military or militarism, however enlightened it makes you feel."
Who is the "you" here? I'm curious. Jane Fonda?
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Let's not get too carried away
William Astore's article is an insightful examination of prejudices against the military among American liberals and in particular regarding the nature of masculine identity (about which it would have been interesting to read more). Before we get too carried away in beating ourselves up over the question of diversity and patriotic volunteerism, though, it's worth taking a step back and re-examining some of the unexplored terrain of Astore's argument.
Above all else, the US military is all-volunteer because the US military wants it that way, not because of some aversion to national service within the lily-livered pauncy academic class. The modern American military doesn't want intellectuals, and it definitely doesn't want draftees.
And with good reason. The last time the armed services were plagued with an actual representational population (minus the Cheneys and Kristols and other draft-dodgers who now largely reside within the warmongering wing of American political life) , the process led to greater public accountability, lese majeste toward the glorious tradition of American arms, and persistent intra-service activism — none of which the military establishment likes one bit and for which they would sacrifice much to avoid ever seeing again.
For one thing, it turns out that a truly democratic military doesn't like getting shipped off to the middle of nowhere to bleed and die for an old man's pride, and the last time we as a nation tried it there arose a hearty "Hell no" from among the rank and file. Democracy indeed!
So no way will the armed services ever want to touch the general population, at least while the generation that still remembers Vietnam are among the top brass. Carefully targetted recruiting, yes. Raise the bonuses if honorable obedience to the latest dishonorable fuckwit is proving unappealing, absolutely. But never, ever, resort to actually bringing in an undifferentiated swath of Americans.
Is that diversity?
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The difference between conservative and liberal
plays into this.
Conservatives believe that government is there to impose its authority.
Hence, government is, to a conservative, at best a neccessary evil to be run to its minimum effeciency.
Liberals believe government is a tool, there to do certain tasks which can be best achieved via a centralised authority.
Hence, government, to a liberal, is useful and thus to be run to its maximum effeciency.
The fact is that liberals believe in hiring competent people to do things, and that is a form of elitism that may include believing silly things like "People with degrees might just know more about the subject that they have a degree in, than people who don't have degrees in that subject."
Now, how does this impact the military?
With conservatives, the military is a form of government exerting authority, and thus serves government's prime function. They see it as being one of the more legitimate avenues of spending government can use, and thus will spend on the military before almost anything else.
Now the thing is, conservatives like most people, still resent authority, and hence while conservatives fund the military quite happily, they also at the very same time run it about as effeciently as they run everything else - basically it is a wonder you haven't lost any nukes to AQ yet.
Liberals on the other hand, believe in effecient use of resources, hence they look at the military say, sending billions of 100 dollar notes to war torn Iraq and then losing them, and then figure "Lets not do that." This translates into less spending, but more through eliminating wastage, not through eliminating the military.
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The piece is not even internally consistent.
On one hand joining the military is challenging taboos. On the other the military is "a cultural setting they perceive as patriotic, meritocratic, and sanctioned by the trust and respect of friends, family, and community." What?
On one hand our increasing nanny state and gender-bending ways (whatever that means) create a "romantic yearning among young men for the very hardness" of military life. On the other hand, the author grudgingly admits that the military can not meet recruiting goals even after raising benefits and lowering standards. Huh?
On one hand the military is very diverse. On the other hand it has few women, and "Our Ivy League schools, our white-shoe law firms, Boston's Beacon Hill, New York's Upper West Side have little presence in it." He says that it is reflective only of the poor and blue collar workers from "small-town and rural America." (Not many old people either, he didn't mention that) By what calculus is a group of working-class young men from rural states diverse? He even admits that it isn't diverse ideologically. Other than diversity of skin-tone it sounds like one of the *least* diverse organizations in existence.
The "world of academia" that he frowns upon includes people of all ages, all nationalities, both sexes and all income brackets save the dirt-poor. (And even a few of them) If you restrict the "world of academia" to the English Department at Brown then yes, he might have a point, but that's a completely artificial restriction.