Oh, of course it’s more conservative, for many reasons. Like sailorspook mentioned, military recruiting is often more fruitful in the South, for several reasons, but that means that Red states tend to have greater representation. As I said before, many liberals are brought up to believe – or just instinctively believe – that there’s something wrong with the military. (An attitude which I do not think is integral to being liberal, since many notable liberals have distinguished themselves in the service.)
But I do not believe that the reason that the military is more conservative is that liberals are, in some way, not welcome.
Oh, and on the number of recruiting stations: you might want to note that North Carolina, in addition to being more populous, is also considerably larger than Massachusetts. That’s another pretty common sense reason to have more recruiting stations.
Right, “not welcome” would be an overstatement. These days the military is so hard up they’ll take who they can get. But I think it’s definitely true that the military is less welcoming to liberals, spends less effort recruiting them, and is less likely to promote soldiers and officers who make no secret of their liberal views. I’d be interested to see some evidence that the military itself agrees with Mr. Moto’s thesis that there are too few liberals in uniform.
I perused recruiting boards for months before enlisting, and yes, there’s a discernable conservative slant. (military.com’s navy section, www.afforums.com, and some other site run for military women - I forget.) And as a disclaimer, being a female with an ex-Navy JAG father, I was not subject to recruiting tactics of any sort. It was, “So, what can we do for you?” However. . .
The general recruiting media and tactics that I saw as a civilian did not strike me as political at all. What the services seem to sell is a sort of aggressive ideal of masculinity that recruits can test themselves against. The potential sailor is invited to imagine himself as a SEAL, or launching planes from a flight deck, or diving out of helicopters as a rescue swimmer. In short, doing important work involving strength, involving complicated equipment. I can see how this would be intensely attractive in a world where most of us do work that is not earthshakingly important. But I can admit that the idea of an absolute idea of manhood is passe to my fellow liberals. Maybe even a little boorish.
As to professional advancement, ask an officer. I have a concrete rubric for advancement that has concrete variables like fitness test scores, uniform appearance, job aptitude, and time in paygrade. I’m due for promotion in Feb. of '07 even through I voted for Nader twice.
The Army’s figures are similar (Demographics - Army G-1 Human Resources)
excepting females, who skew heavily minority. In my purely anecdotal experience, soldiers tend to be more conservative. I draw no conclusions on the figures because I work in a field that’s lilly-white, and at the top end of the ASVAB scale.
Maybe that invalidates my right to talk about an “average” sailor - I don’t know.
I just disagree with the notion that liberals are necessarily anti-military service. I’m a liberal, yet I’ve got no problem with the idea of serving in the military. IIRC, three or four of my ideal career matches from the preference testing they gave us in junior high school were in the military.
I think if your definition of liberal includes pacifist or non-conformist or what have you, you’ll probably be able to argue that they would be less likely to join the military, but you’ve made a nice tight circle, so what’s the point?
I’m also still not sure what the point of talking about “liberals” really is? We don’t have a definition of the term, we don’t know what proportion is or is not serving in the military, and we don’t know why it would be better for either liberals or the military to have them serve.
Mr. Moto has also not answered my question as to why a personality trait should be represented to any particular degree among service members. Shouldn’t its criteria be whatever gets the job done? I don’t want the military to be “liberal” (nor “conservative”).
Furthermore, I wouldn’t want the opinions of a portion of the service members to guide military policy anyway. Whether there are gays in the military or whether we keep a certain troop level in Korea or whether we make statements committing ourselves to the defense of Taiwan - these things must be decided by elected officials and military leaders. This is true whether every single everloving man and woman is a tree-hugging Birkenstock wearing peacenik or a mouthbreathing biblethumping tax avoiding NASCAR fan.
I believe, then as now, that it is not necessary for an individual to have served in the military to be a good decision maker or leader. History bears me out on this one.
Our candidates bring diverse experiences with them to their races, and they ought to be judged by these and by their positions. Military experience is but one set of experiences a person can have.
However, that isn’t what is being discussed here. What I’m talking about is the danger that the liberal movement might run short of people with military experience. And while it might be relatively immaterial in presidential races, I don’t consider it immaterial at all should Democrats or liberals both start running out of veterans in their congressional committees, their think tanks, or their staffers.
There already is some evidence that Democrats feel vulnerable come election time on national security matters. They might be more so if this keeps up. I don’t consider this healthy at all, especially considering that Democrats once had the considerable faith of the electorate when it came to national security.
Would Bill Clinton ever have considered a Republican to be his SecDef, if this weren’t a consideration?
I don’t want it to be so either. But the evidence shows that it is indeed becoming conservative, and this is happening in large part because liberals simply aren’t around.
Further, there are lots of good reasons to bring in diverse viewpoints. But the bissest one would be the fact that while the officer corps is becoming nearly all Republican, the enlisted ranks are divided much more evenly. This runs the risk of alienating the officers from the enlisted, and vice versa. Anything that could potentially breaks up unit cohesion like this I see as a danger.
You’ve given no evidence that danger exists. The recent veteran Democrats are not particularly liberal as far as I know, but there aren’t that many liberal vets in national office right now. I don’t see this making a difference.
I feel like this comment was written three years ago. Republicans had a lock on national security from 2001-2003 (or 2004), but with Iraq and the recent controversies over domestic surveillance, that’s clearly not the case anymore.
Your own cite said that the military is evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, so what is your reason for saying “it is indeed becoming conservative?” The officer numbers alone? There’s no evidence that “liberals simply aren’t around.” They may be around in lesser numbers; I don’t think that would surprise anyone. But that statement is a big reach and you need more facts to support it.
I reject the premise. I am a retired Army officer, and although I found most soldiers patriotic, and pro-military I do not think liberals are unpatriotic or anti-military. I think most soldiers are fairly liberal.
The military has fairly well squashed all the racism out of itself. (It has not done so well with sexism or homophobia however.) If you wish to call conservatives redneck racists, then they need not apply for a military career.
The military offers free medical car, subsidized child care, subsidized higher education and a slew of other ‘liberal’ programs. As a practical matter, the American military might be one of the most liberal parts of society.
Soldiers themselves are liberal (or at least Libertarian) in a sort of non-doctrinal sort of way. At work they ‘follow the leader’ with little complaint. In their own lives they tend to adopt the live and let live motto of the Cowboy Way.
One often-posed idea from pundits of the military is that of the military as a “sub culture” becoming too divergent from the general society. Concern about the emergence of a Warrior Caste mentality, specially if there is a “pedestal” attitude among the populace (which is no way a certainty in the historic long run).
But you can’t really “force” the force to be a representative sampler of the society, unless you go for Universal Service (e.g. the WW2 experience – different from the “selective” draft of later years).
And really, this even cuts in the Con direction, as glee hints: it’s extremely unlikely that the Fortunate Sons from the Right side of the tracks will look upon West Point and an infantry command as an equivalent starting point to achieve what they want from life as Wharton and a Fortune 500. They’re as likely as their Lib peers to think the military really doesn’t offer them what they want.
It seems to me that more conservatives join the military for the simple reason that conservative culture venerates the military, and within conservative circles joining the military is considered to be a worthwhile and honorable thing to do.
Patriotism in general is more highly valued in conservative cultures.
Liberal culture disdains the military. Liberal families often want something ‘better’ for their kids than joining the military. Liberal colleges are openly hostile to military recruitment, and military culture itself is looked on with disdain. So it’s no wonder that kids who grow up in that culture choose not to serve.
I straddled that line myself - growing up within a close extended family that was a mix of conservatives and liberals. I had friends who were liberal, and friends who were conservative. When I thought about joining the military (I was turned down for medical reasons), the liberal side of the family almost universally gave comments like, “What? Why would you want to do that? You should go to college and be a doctor or something!” On the conservative side, the preponderance of comments were along the lines of, “Wow! Way to go! I really admire that. I wish I had served when I was younger” (Or, for those who did serve, “It was the best thing I ever did”).
As my daughter grows up, she will be taught that having a military is what keeps us free and that serving in the military is highly honorable and should she choose to do so she will have our full support. I have liberal friends who would be absolutely aghast if their children decided to join the military. Which kid do you think is more likely to wind up choosing to join?
Why? “Liberalism,” if I can say without painting with too broad a brush, has a tendency to embrace new ideas, new ways of thinking, over “Conservatism.” This can lead to a flexible mindset which allows military leaders to come up with innovative tactical doctrines and policies which enhance the effectiveness of the military.
By the same token, without some mental discipline (some grounding in practical reality), “Liberalism” as a mindset can become paralyzing as one is confronted with too many choices, too many possible responses to a situation, for the military thinker to effectively critically analyze in a short period of time, under extreme emotional distress (like, when they’re getting shot at).
On the flip side, “Conservatism” doesn’t try to fix what isn’t perceived to be broken. It tends to accept the status quo. This has the effect of promoting unit cohesiveness and discipline, of instilling a sense of “living history” and esprit de corps.
It also has the tendency of instituting entrenched thinking, of dogmatism, leading to stale and outdated tactical doctrines which can prove catastrophic on a battlefield. Or of adhering to policies which no longer promote the overall well-being of the military in these “modern” times.
Neither is good or bad for the military, under the right circumstances (i.e., the right person). Like any good thing, too much of either is poison.
The military takes a lot away from you. Chances are while you serve you are not going to be all that active in the arts. You will not be able to start a business. You can’t travel the world without a lot of additional baggage. You can’t date much. You can’t have a regular social life with years old friends. You can’t decide to go back to grad school. You can’t buy a lot of stuff. You have to get used to moving often and you can’t even decide where to live. There is just so much you can’t take with you.
But you can take your family with you. And the nuclear family is a pretty important part of military life. If your hoping for the “fullnesss” of your life to be being a rock star, the military isn’t a good choice. But if what you want is a nice, comfortable, middle class family, you can have that.
More conservatives than liberals are dreaming about a suburban house with a green yard (even if it is base housing) and cheap prices at the PX. More conservatives than liberals would be happy settling. More conservatives are going to be able to find women who are willing to contour their careers to military life.
I think you’re overstating this. A colleague of mine retired as a colonel a few years back and had managed to make himself a very nice nest egg by speculating in real estate in the various locations where he had been posted. The man also has more art in his home than anyone I know. Not bad for an artilleryman!
As far as dating, the Marines down in the Barracks here in DC seem to do very well for themselves.
My brother in law enlisted out of high school, decided to go back to college, the Army helped him do it, and now, as an officer, is making plans for grad school. I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of general officers have a graduate degree. And I’m told one of the great joys of being an officer in the Navy is having the opportunity to spend a year playing golf at the Naval Postgraduate School in lovely Monterey, California.
And the military pays a hell of a lot of money to move personal and household possessions along with its servicemembers, so I reject the notion that servicemembers are living a spartan lifestyle with minimal possessions.
Why single out the Democrats for that problem, when the Republicans appear to be even further down that road? There are in fact *no * Republicans in primary decisionmaking positions now who’ve ever had their asses shot at. Isn’t the Iraq fiasco largely a result of basic ignorance on their part of what they were doing, and weren’t the “liberal” Democrats you’re worried about led by veterans who turned out right?
Sure. He had as much good political reason as any other President to appear to be a “uniter, not a divider”. Cohen was a pretty moderate, even liberal Republican, btw. Bush has a token Democrat in the Cabinet himself, Mineta.
No, ISTM the evidence is that the fantasists are in charge, in large part because the people with relevant experience and proven judgment are demonized and shunted aside, regardless of party.
Sure it does. But it would help a great deal if you could say why that is - why the bulk of the military’s membership, its enlisted ranks, does not show the problem you express, but the relatively-small officer corps does. Are the Democratic/“liberal” enlisteds who join in equal numbers (Sam’s non-factual claim to the contrary, broad-brush insults included, notwithstanding) discouraged for some reason from advancing into management?
Only about 10% of the officer corps is prior enlisted. The rest of them become officers through appointments to a service academy, ROTC programs, or direct commissioning.
A number of current or former servicemen would vigorously challenge the idea that a military career is any way to achieve the dream of “a comfortable, middle class family” lifestyle, unless that dream includes shuffling your family around the world, continuously getting them in and out of waiting-lists for limited housing, enduring prolonged separations, the wife unable to hold one long term job, etc. And the earlier mentioned inconvenience in being able to start a business would REALLY rankle the conservative spirit. Conservatives can value the finer things in life just as much as liberals do – just that people who tend to identify “conservative” also tend to be more accepting of the concept of sacrificing the “rock star” brand of self-fulfillment to be part of an activity that they feel is beneficial to their values.