I’m making a bit of a blanket statement, but it’s an observation I’ve noticed particularly in the last 2 years. Can someone explain how conservatives reconcile their apparent distrust of government with their unflagging reverence for the military? I would think that the former would necessitate a re-evaluation of the latter.
Maybe some of the more extreme of the group believe that when the revolution comes the Real Americans in the military will throw off the shackles of their civilian masters and join The Cause.
It’s not necessarily something that anyone would feel they had to “reconcile” - people tend to hold the beliefs they do (conservative, liberal, whatever) irrespective of any logical contradiction you care to hold those beliefs up to.
So I suspect a lot of conservatives tend to hold these seemingly contradictory positions, well, just because they do. They don’t really mistrust the government, it’s just a turn of phrase to justify opposition to some government programs. IT’s no different from people on Medicare who opposed universal health care because they didn’t want the government involved in health care.
If you wanted to be just a little bit more cynical, then it’s worth noting that the military, for the most part, is a part of the government where the effects are felt entirely by foreigners. The U.S. Air Force has a long history of blowing up brown and yellow people, not Americans.
But my guess is that there’s no reconciliation. Most people, no matter their political persuasion, do not arrive at their political beliefs through logic.
I showed up to say just what RickJay said. If they want to keep the government’s hands off of Medicare, why not keep the government’s hands off of the military as well? After all, the Weekly Standard has printed numerous cover stories about the deficit in the past couple years, yet also one in August accusing Obama of “squeezing” the military by only increasing its budget slightly.
That said, a few of the smarter ones may reconcile the two things through the belief that the military has a type of culture based on discipline and personal responsibility, which is lacking from other government departments.
I’m not sure “distrust of government” is a good generalization for conservatives. Maybe distrust of popular government. I think they believe that a hierarchical system, with those of proven ability in the lead, is the best system and the military has been quite successful with such a system.
I know a few life-time military men who get their housing and medical care paid 100% by the government and they just can’t fathom the idea of Uncle Sam paying even a penny for such extravagance for civilians. I think they feel like they have earned the reward (or payment really, since it is part of their compensation) and others would be getting for free what they worked for.
My brand of conservatism is all about limiting the powers of the State to only those granted by the Constitution. Said Constitution explicitly authorizes the military to exist. If we are going to have a military, we may as well have the biggest and best in the world.
I also think it’s easy to make a distinction between the political side of the government and the military. Not to mention the fact that the military is an external force. No military guy is going to make rules you have to follow unless you’re in the military. The political side of government is all about making rules for us to follow.
-
Distrust of the government is a purely conservative trait?
-
All conservatives are libertarians?
-
All conservatives have unflagging reverence for the military?
More importantly, no amount of “gotchas” will teach someone with entrenched beliefs to “see the light” despite the innumerable SDMB threads started in this vein.
This is a good topic.
I frequent a republican message board in which a lot of the members, though not all, tend to fit the stereotypical redneck, guns and the bible mentality.
Many of the members were outspoken against Manning and by extension wikileaks, calling Manning a traitor and wished him dead because he caused damaged to the government, state, and welfare of its people.
I asked them, that corporations do the same thing when they outsource jobs even when it has been shown said corporate profits were in the green by a large margin.
They don’t act in the best interest of the nation state nor its people, but how fast they can fill their pockets. Not only that, through their power via money, they have a greater influence on steering our government toward their agenda which the common person does not have.
I guess as has been pointed out, logic has no play in it.
I just wanted to add also, that you would think they would be in full support of someone like Manning, exposing minor government secrets, but the military mindset kicks in.
Being former military, the mindset may be one of discipline and responsibility, when in reality, it is full of hypocracy and wastefulness. I remember on many occasions when we would buy $100 dollar hammers in order to bridge a budget gap, in order to keep our funding.
They don’t mind excessive and wasteful spending when it comes to the military, but only when it comes to helping out your fellow country men.
I think you mean profits were in the black.
Nevertheless… Most economists disagree with your position on outsourcing. Maybe the “rednecks” know something you don’t.
There was a thread about “Was Tarp a good idea”, in which a poster said that it is a conspiracy theory (him calling it that), that Goldman Sachs paid back their debts with worthless mortgage securites, when many websites and wall street pro’s said this was indeed the case. I could point him to many websites, not conspiracy sites, by Wall Street Savvy investors that point out the American Public has been robbed in broad daylight.
I could also point you to many economists and people in political positions that would disagree with your assessment.
In the past 30 years, wages have stagnated while the top 1% income has skyrocketed.
Productivity has gone up, but not wages for the working class.
Credit cards in the past 30 years was a way to bridge the income disparity and stagnate wages, but that has run out to the point where people cannot pay it back. We talk about responsibility for those that can’t now pay it back while the banks were making a fortune in the past on the interest rates. Wherein do their responsibilities lie to the American Public. None. Only as much as they can stuff their pockets with other peoples money.
Meanwhile, jobs were being outsourced, but mostly on the lower scale (manufacturing) and was not as big an issue then, and did not pose as great a risk to the system…yet.
Also, while the US may still have a large manufacturing sector, we have lost a huge number of manufacturing jobs due to automation. We now employ less people in manufacturing than we did in 1941. The population has also doubled since that time frame so keep that in mind as well, before taking into account the higher skilled workers.
Outsourcing and off sourcing though continued on into higher degreed skills and started to take a bigger hit into the American Economy from the 1990’s into today.
What happens to people working for the government (I don’t work in the government) that get pay raises every year to keep up with inflation, while the outsourcing and unpatriotic and treasonous actions of wall street and big corporations rob the private sector? We hear cry’s now that the government workers and unions are being overpaid, when in reality, their wages have been climbing with the cost of living.
Why is healthcare, education, and housing so expensive but a gameboy or cell phone made in China so cheap?
Globalizaton baby. Normalization of wages throughout all private sectors due to cheaper products, except those resident programs untouchable by the free market guru’s.
Then came the inflated housing bubble with Wall Street slicing and dicing prime mortgage securities with junk rated bonds, yet rating them fraudulently as prime AAA and selling them off to unwary investors.
People were able to keep the game going through continued credit from their cards and housing equity, to make up for the difference in lost wages for the most important necessities in life until, the market imbalances could take no more and have burst at the seams. Everyone was in debt up to their eyeballs. Its not my responsibility says Wall Street and the big Corporations, you should have lived within your means, while they raked in the huge bonuses and profits.
Again, what is Wall Street and the big Corporations responsibilities to America?
To stuff their pockets and to hell with everyone else. They should love a person like Manning since it also said to hell with the government, state, and its people.
But wait, oh Ben decided to keep the party going for the banksters, via the Bailouts, whom were forced by the gun to loan money to the “poor and downtrodden” yet, are not loaning out money, even though the government gave them warnings to do so. Must not be a big enough gun this time right? Could not be anything to do with no profit in it? Nope
Well, Ben says, since there is no more money to take from the pleebs, we’ll just inflate the hell out of the currency and lower the value of the dollar and take what we please via the QE games.
So no indictments on Wall Street, no accountability by big corporations or mega banks to the people of America, so why should any citizen in this country give any support to a failed state such as that of America?
Nothing has changed prior to 2008 that put us into this situation
When trust and confidence is lost in the system it effects everything and more people are feeling that everyday.
I guess we will just have to agree to disagree in the long run, but thats what I see and read many others that have the same opinions.
This seems to be the logical conclusion of such biases, if one tries to find a way to reconcile right-wing rhetoric within a single philosophical unity, as many rightie ideologues try to do. It’s certainly possible that such an attitude was common among the wealthy pro-Falangist class that birthed Wm. F. Buckley, Jr., & his early National Review allies, the founders of the modern American Right.
So perhaps Buckley (or whomever we blame) wanted a government that served wealthy interests abroad & did not serve the plebs at home, & chose those groups that he stitched into the Movement according to that objective. Perhaps.
Ronald Reagan, the Right’s greatest propagandist, was apparently not quite so anti-government as all that, nor so committed to funding fascist revolutions around the world. But Buckley had the partisan press for decades, & his vision is pervasive.
Said Constitution does not authorize a standing army policing the entire planet for the sake of American interests anymore than it authorizes single-payer health care. And I’m given to understand that the stereotypical “conservative” opinion as recently as 1940 was that the USA should most assuredly not have a vast military, that that was too much power in the hands of an imperial Wilsonian or Rooseveltian federal government & president. Anti-“big-government” rhetoric could be partly a holdover from that era, reinforced by the desire to sell the party to the individualist survivalists & hippies of the Baby Boom generation.
I think the “need” to shut down “communists” (read: nationalists who were not US) & their ability to engage in protectionist policies, for the sake of Western trade, informed the globalist nouveau conservatism that’s appeared since 1950.
Nonetheless, the consensus among the vast majority of economists (and I’m talking in the 90% rage) is that free tread between countries is a good thing, and that includes the ability to “outsource”. That is not to say that it doesn’t have ill effects on certain individuals, but the overall effect on the county as a whole is good.
There certainly are millions of people who think as you do, just as there are millions of people who think the earth was created 6k years ago. Neither of those two beliefs is based on what science tells us.
Agreed - as Heinlein said, “a second best military is the most expensive luxury on earth”.
The Constitution authorizes the military, and it also clearly subordinates it to civilian authority. The President, a civilian and not a member of the military, is Commander-in-Chief, not the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And we don’t have military coups in our history, even attempted ones, so there is no embedded history that would make us suspicious.
Added to that, the military is more elite and meritocratic than elected officials. You have to achieve things to get into and stay in the military, and to get promoted. Not a perfect system, but true nonetheless. All you have to do to participate in an election is show up, be a citizen, and not have any felonies. (And if you are recruited by ACORN, not even that :D).
The short answer is that the military does not usurp its Constitutional functions. The civiliian government does, or tries to, all the time.
Regards,
Shodan
There are two reasons, one philosophical and one historical.
The philosphical is one that is not shared by libertarians, only conservatives. Conservatives do not believe in no government, but limited government. The purpose of government is to provide collective protection against those enemies who would harm its citizens. These enemies include other citizens, which is why we have police, and citizens of other countries, which is why we have the military. These functions are inherently govermental because private organizations have poor incentives to provide these public goods which are crucial for society to exist. When governments try to pursue functions outside these narrow roles, they inevitably fail because of incentive alignment problems. Government can be useful, but it is not omnicompentent. If I have an axe that is great at chopping down trees but do not want my doctor using it to perform open heart surgery, is there a contradiction that needs to be reconciled?
The historical reason is that from WW2 to 1990 the US was engaged in a cold war with a global communist foe. Part of that struggle was maintaining a large enough military to deter communist aggression around the world and to defeat it whenever a shooting war actually broke out. Conservatives were at the forefront of the fight to keep our military strong enough to defeat communism. Conservatives feel justly proud of having won that fight and for ridding the planet of the red menace. Groups tend to want to continually reenact past victories regardless of whether they are circumstantially appropriate. This is the same reason why the left continues to promote antiwar marches despite none of them having any impact.
The most obvious answer is that the military, while a government agency, does not govern (except in foreign occupied territory). In some countries the military establishment is an independent political force to which civil government had better listen pretty damned hard about non-military public-policy matters. In some countries, the military even rules its own country’s people directly, and there are soldiers patrolling the streets as police. Neither has ever been the case in the United States (except during Reconstruction). The United States Army is strictly an external weapon, like the Navy. The military is a huge government expense, but you can easily understand how many RWs would not see it as a threat to Americans’ “liberty” in the sense that the Department of Education is a threat to “liberty.”
Usurp does not mean what you appear to think it means.
The only power the Constitution grants the military is to exist. In fact, it doesn’t even do that - it authorizes Congress to raise armies and a navy. No Air Force and no Coast Guard.