Actually, truth be told, neither party is the party of veterans anymore. Veterans used to make up a large proportion of elected officials of both parties - now that number is dwindling, in both parties.
This is entirely attributable to military service being less of a shared experience. It was far more of a common experience for men from 1940-73 than since, which isn’t surprising, since there was a draft most of those years.
Not at all. I am just trying very hard not to confuse Democrats with liberals here. They aren’t the same thing at all.
My argument is that liberals ought to sign up more. Democrats who aren’t especially liberal (more moderate or apolitical ones) do serve in considerable numbers, and very well.
You’re the one who tried to use statistics about political affiliation to support a premise about political ideology, saying that “the facts don’t really seem to be in dispute.” So which is it? Does your citation support your claim? How? If your cite is about party affiliation, then where are the indisputed “facts”?
How do you know how many liberals do sign up to say that there ought to be more? What proportion of Amercian liberals serve in the military? How many should serve in the military? How do you know that liberals have largely passed on joining altogether?
If traits like “conservative” and “liberal” distinct from party affiliation are really what you are going after, what is the point? Aren’t these personality features? Would it make sense to say that more conservatives should go into the arts? Social services?
Conversely, hHow many libertarians sign up for military service? How many should? How many fiscal conservatives sign up for military service? How many should? How many anarchists sign up for military service? How many should?
You seem to be implying that liberals should sign up so that they could better effect their wishes for the way the military should function. Why do you think it would be good for the military to be guided by a more liberal philosophy? Shouldn’t the military be an apolitical organization whose purpose is to serve the interests of the country as determined by the elected officials of the day? Shouldn’t it be guided not by a particular personality trait, but by a measure of the effectiveness with which it achieves its purpose for existing?
My concern is that you really intended this to be some sort of condemnation of liberals for not serving in the military, and that you conflated “liberal” with “Democrat” via the citation you chose. However, since I am trying to pull back on my bias to assume base motivations on the part of others, I will allow that there may be other motivations for the way you have constructed your argument.
It really boils down to a thesis this simple - if liberals shun military service, it will hurt both liberalism as a movement and the military services.
This is a good point. I think it’s fair to say, without looking at any figures, that Protestants are overrepresented in the military, compared to the population at large. I’m also told that Mormons are hugely overrepresented, at least in the Air Force Officer corps. I’d speculate that there’s something about the strictness and regimentation of military life that appeals to those of conservative religious mentality.
I’m going with those who say liberals are just less attracted to the military lifestyle. What is the situation in other countries with an all-volunteer army? Is there a model we can follow that has a better track record of attracting “liberals”? What is the situation in Canada or Australia (two countries with similar cultures to the US)? Certainly a step in the right direction would be to allow gays to serve.
As for whether or not anything should be done… I dunno. Depends on what it would take. I’m strongly in favor of letting gays serve (openly), but maybe some of the other steps we’d have to take would weaken the military-- ie, changes in command structure, training, etc.
Why would it hurt liberalism as a movement? After all, liberalism offers itself as an alternative to militarism. And as to the military, I really doubt it wants more liberals inside.
Look at when people join the military. If people typically join the military just after high school or within a few years, then their experience in the military probably has a big influence in shaping their political views.
So maybe it’s not like there are so few liberals in the military because liberals aren’t joining. Maybe it’s more like there are so few liberals in the military because life in the military doesn’t typically cultivate a liberal point of view.
I self-identify as liberal, at least on social issues, and there’s been no president in my adult life that I feel can be trusted with the decision to risk my life.
I do not trust politiicians to only risk my life on a cause because it was necessary, and not just politically or even financially desireable. And yes, I mean Democrat politicians too.
I can’t say if this is a common opinion among other liberals, I can only say this is why I never considered a career in the military.
Lyndon Johnson was a Democrat and service-aged liberal-minded fellows weren’t terribly fond of his military policies, as you may recall. Having a Democrat at the helm isn’t sufficient in and of itself to redeem the military among liberals. It’s a policy area where the Democratic Party hasn’t exactly been pandering to its constituency.
Whatever moves Clinton made were toddling little baby steps. Meanwhile, I doubt that the military suddenly experienced a dearth of liberal volunteers for the first time during the Clinton Administration. If Clinton had stuck to his guns on gays in the military, if he had landed on the Rwandan genocide with both feet, his admin could have been the beginning of a trend that could have gradually caused liberals to view the military in a positive way.
I’ll stuck to my, umm, guns; I think my answer was a good one. Liberals would serve in the military if they felt good about what the military does. For 40 years it has mostly conjured up images of forcible protection of corporate interests (especially oil), the propping up of highly undemocratic regimes for crass strategic purposes, nuclear proliferation and a suicidal-looking arms race with the Soviet Union, domestic espionage, the “military-industrial complex”, might makes right, mindless obedience to superiors, yadda yadda yadda… all that has to be turned around, the military has to be perceived as some kind of Arm of Idealism, of freedom-loving Americans sticking up for their brothers and sisters against oppressive threats. Liberals need to perceive the military as being deployed on behalf of things they care about, not just pushing American strategic interests. Remember, to liberals, America Triumphant is only an improvement over America Defeated as long as America is actively about the business of being the Good Guys. With great power comes great responsibility and all that rot. So there’s a hell of a lot of act-cleaning-up, or at least image-making-over, to be done before the military’s going to look like the place a young liberal goes in order to help make the world a better place to live.
Right, because the military is full of conservatives! I’m putting that in my book as a strong candidate for tautology of the year.
I really am concerned that the US military is headed towards developing its own political culture. In somewhat the same way that conservatives lambast the State Department – and more recently, the CIA – as having an axe to grind with a conservative White House, I am even more worried about the military becoming a bastion of one particular political view. I think it is a looming danger to our form of government, potentially far more serious than the Peace Corps or PBS being bastions of liberal views.
Now, we’re still a long way from that danger being realized, of course. But it shouldn’t be dismissed as a concern.
In the final analysis, I don’t think the problem is with the military, it is with my fellow liberals. I am annoyed by the view that the various forms of public service are only noble if they conform to one’s own viewpoint: to many of my friends, the Peace Corps is always a noble undertaking, work as a diplomat is good work under Democratic administrations, and military service is only good if we’ve suffered another Pearl Harbor or for delivering rations to starving refugees – it is like if a gun is in any way involved in your job, then you are are somehow morally tainted as an oppressor, a tool of the Man, one of… Them.
I think it behooves more mainstream liberals who have the greatest respect for military service – who, I believe, are the majority of liberals and the Democratic Party – to speak out when our bretheren try to make distinctions between “good” public service and “bad” public service. Those who join the military should not be viewed as shocktroops for a political party or a certain philosophy: the proper service rendered is supposed to be to the Constitution and our country.
To be clear, I have no problem with folks who object to military service on moral or religious grounds. That’s an individual’s choice. But disparaging the idea of military service – or even worse, those who serve – just is not the same kettle of fish.
I wonder if Quakers are under-represented in the military…
One liberal man’s opinion: the military didn’t appeal to me during formative years because I didn’t cotton to strict authority without input, and because I didn’t want to die. I don’t want my son to join the military (and I’ve told him so), because I don’t want him to die.
Now, if somebody were to invade the United States, I would have enlisted (now too old, but would if I could), and would grudgingly allow my son to fight.
So a commitment to only fighting those who attack us would get this liberal pro-military.
All that said, I think there needs to be a draft again. That’d address the OP, and have other benefits.
I think our leadership would be more careful with the people who have promised to be in harm’s way when ordered, knowing they might well lay down their lives, if their sons and daughters were among them. And the electorate would only elect those who more judicious with our military as well.
Well, it’s more than that. I think the military thinks of liberalism as erosive to morale – see Kaplan’s quote cited by Mr. Moto’s OP.
I don’t dispute that there are liberals who disparage those who serve. Some of us, though, while not disparaging all who serve, also don’t want to fall into the trap of adulating all who serve. Whether your service is honorable or dishonorable can’t be separated from what you’re called on to do, and how you react to that call. I know this is a contention that has been the subject of controversy here recently, and I mention it only as an argument that some liberals – myself included – make when we talk about the military.
When my conservative friends decry the (purported) liberally-populated media, I always ask them why it’s liberals’ fault that more conservatives don’t become reporters, journalism professors or writers.
They respond with the chicken/egg defense – i.e., because there are no conservatives in the media, conservatives can’t break in to the media.
Which I think is just as valid a reason here.
Maybe even more so, because the collective viewpoint of the media is subject to market forces that the military’s makeup isn’t.
I had to dig for numbers, but the active duty military is about 40% evangelical Christian (higher than the U.S. average) and about 26% Catholic (a tiny bit higher than the U.S. average.) Mainline Protestantism, other branches of Christianity, other religions, and atheism and agnostism round out the mix here.
Again, though, this is a chicken-and-egg argument. The mix would be different if more liberal Democrats were there.
Nope, don’t buy it for a second, for the simple reason that libertine behavior is not the same thing as a liberal political viewpoint, and can be exhibited by people with impeccable Republican voting records.
May I ask just what the benefit would be if indeed liberals were in the military “enough”? Would this make liberals at large more likely to support unneeded wars? Torture? And why would the political demographic of the military be a concern to anyone? I’m not at all convinced that the premise is true or that the supposed improvement really is one.
That’s an interesting statement, considering that by my count, Republican veterans serving in the Congress outnumber Democratic veterans serving in the Congress. My count is that there are 18 Republican and 14 Democratic veterans in the Senate; there are 56 Republican and 39 Democratic veterans in the House.
So I guess if 22 of the 35 non-incumbent Dem veterans won their elections (which seems pretty doubtful), the Dems would actually have more representatives that are veterans. But it’s not really accurate to call them the party of veterans based on such a small, non-representative sample.
Do you have a cite for this?
I must be missing something. All I see is a quote that Christian fundamentalists helped bring order to an undisciplined military.
But I’m not an Atlantic subscriber, I can’t read the rest of the linked article, so I don’t know if there’s something in there about liberals eroding morale in the military. Is there something you read in the actual article that bears this out? Or are you simply assuming that “undisciplined military brought to order by fundamentalists” equals “the fundies drove all the rabble-rousing liberals out?”
I’m just not convinced that drinking too much, disobeying bosses, and being a general PITA is something that better describes liberals than conservatives.
It’s nice that *you * think so, but Sal’s point seemed to be that that caricature is generally accepted in the military, validly or not.
Also consider the effects of peer pressure, which has to be pretty damn strong there. If your boss, and the rest of the people in charge of deciding your future, generally have a particular bent, you’d better act like you share it, and act it pretty well, and even internalize it. That may well include how you answer polls about your political leanings, eh what?