Convincing people with ideas
Bookworm on Oct 18 2008 at 8:35 pm | Filed under: Communism, Medicine
I carpooled to a soccer game today. The driver, who is someone I don’t know very well, is a very charming man who is quite obviously a potential Obama voter. He wasn’t quite sure about me and, since he was a very civil individual, he never came out and either insulted McCain or lauded Obama. He did say, though, that he thought it was the government’s responsibility to provide medical care. He also characterized Vietnam as a complete disaster. That gave me an interesting opportunity to explain to him a few historic facts he didn’t know — because very few people know them.
I started out by reminding him of something that most people forget: the Vietnam War was a Democratic War. Kennedy started it and Johnson expanded it. (Nixon, the Republican, ended it.) I didn’t say this in the spirit of accusation, because I wasn’t being partisan. I said it to give historical context to a larger discussion about freedom versus statism.
I noted that, in the 1930s — and, again, most people have forgotten this — the major battle in Europe was between two Leftist ideologies: Communism and Fascism. When he looked a little blank, I pointed out that the Nazis were a socialist party, a fact he readily conceded. I also reminded him that, in the 1930s, given that Stalin was killing millions of his countrymen, and that Hitler hadn’t yet started his killing spree, Fascism actually looked like the better deal. World War II demonstrated that both ideologies — both of which vested all power in the State — were equally murderous.
Men of the Kennedy/Johnson generation, I said, saw their role in WWII as freeing Europe from the Nazi version of socialism. When that job ended, they saw themselves in a continuing war to bring an end to the Communist version of socialism. Again, they were reacting to overwhelming statism.
Thus, to them, it was all a single battle with America upholding the banner, not of freedom, but of individualism. They knew that America couldn’t necessarily make people free or bring them a democratic form of government, but that it could try to protect people from an all-powerful state. That’s always been an integral part of American identity. He agreed with everything I said.
I then moved to the issue of socialized medicine, which I pointed out, again, gives the state all the power. The state, I said, has no conscience, and it will start doling out medical care based on its determining of which classes of individual are valuable, and which are less valuable, to the state. My friend didn’t know, for example, that Baroness Warnock of Britain, who is considered one of Britain’s leading moralists, announced that demented old people have a “duty to die” because they are a burden on the state.
A few more examples like that, and we agreed that the problem wasn’t too little government when it comes to medicine, but too much. Health insurer companies operating in California are constrained by something like 1,600 state and federal regulations. I suggested that, rather than give the government more control over the medical bureaucracy, we take most of it away. He conceded that this was probably a good idea.
Lastly, I reminded him what happens when government steps in as the <span style=”font-style: italic;”>pater familias</span>. He didn’t know that, up until Johnson’s Great Society, African-Americans were ever so slowly “making it.” As a result of the Civil Rights movement, opportunities were opening for Northern Blacks, and they — meaning the men — were beginning to make more money. The African-American family was nuclear and starting to thrive.
This upward economic trend collapsed in the mid-1960s, and its collapse coincided absolutely to the minute with government social workers fanning out to black communities and telling them that the government would henceforth provide. Since it seemed stupid to work when you could get paid not to work, black men stopped working. They also stopped caring about their families, or even getting married, since unmarried mothers did even better under welfare than intact families. In a few short years, not only did African-Americans as a group collapse economically, their family structure collapsed too. Men were redundant. The state would provide. Again, my friend nodded his head in agreement.
The ride ended at that point but, as he was dropping me off, my friend told me (and I think he was speaking from his heart), that it was an incredibly interesting ride. And I bet it was, because I gave him real food for thought in the form of facts and ideas that fall outside of the orthodoxy that characterizes our ultra-liberal community.
Cross-posted at Right Wing News and McCain-Palin 2008.
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Convincing people with ideas…
I carpooled to a soccer game today. The driver, who is someone I don’t know very well, is a very charming man who is quite obviously a potential Obama voter. He wasn’t quite sure about me and, since he was……
Bookworm –
I had just read this post and then noticed that your twitter note said something about being able to catch more flies with logic vs. vituperation.
I used to feel that way but I don’t anymore. I get the feeling during discussions with some people nowdays that logic and reasoning are things of the past. So often I have listened to someone illustrate something to the point that it is simply beyond dispute and yet the other person will not admit to the logic.
Logic always was straight forward to me but now, it seems that many people are governed by opinions and facts and logic is simply a pesky, inconsequential thing to ignore.
Deana
The sad thing is that your ride-partner had never heard what you had to say before. You might attribute that to what happens when one group (or State) gets control of the information medium.
I would have loved to be sitting in the back seat of that car.
Actually it was 1945. Here’s the article on this info.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=1381
Great stuff, BW!
One of my many personal irritations is the conventional wisdom that the US was losing the conflict in Viet Nam. Going back over the actual data kept by the Army(thank you, US Army C&GSC) and the records of the Viet Cong from the time, a reasonable person could conclude that the only battle the US “lost” was the propaganda one. The Tet Offensive got the commander of the other side shot for incompetence by his superiors. We lost because of the anti-war protests and the manipulation of the media.
This is not to say that the war was a good one or conducted properly; it was half-hearted and set a bad precedent for partial measures and political waffling. The men on the ground, however, did perform well – in some cases they defined heroism.
But “everyone” knows that Viet Nam was a lost war in which the military failed, quit, or committed atrocities. The truth is very different and while actions were taken that were questionable at best, there is considerable room to argue about the conduct of a war against a foe willing to disregard the Laws of Land Warfare and traditional military conduct. The other side broke all the rules that were in place to protect civilians; civilians died as a result. We don’t wear the funny green uniform to blend into the woods; it has that effect – but its primary purpose is to say “soldier” and “valid combatant”. It means the guy in the suit isn’t playing; when guys in suits start shooting, every guy in a suit becomes a threat. Some get shot; that is how life goes.
Anyhow, enough of my Viet Nam rant; off to make Cinnabon muffins for the wife and kids.
SSG Dave – “It is not that he is ignorant, it is that so much of what he knows is not true.” -Mark Twain
>>So often I have listened to someone illustrate something to the point that it is simply beyond dispute and yet the other person will not admit to the logic.>>
People have arrived at a position – to change that position is to admit that they were previously wrong, which means they “lose”. People don’t like to lose.
You can follow absolutely the rules of logic, but if you don’t start with the same basic assumptions, you may not arrive at the same conclusion – or anywhere near the same conclusion.
People frequently don’t have the expertise or knowledge – or don’t _think_ they have – to feel confident that they can either accept or counter someone else’s logic. They depend on someone to shape their conclusions. If you are not that person, then you need to convince the person they depend on for opinions, and that person not being present means that you can’t convince the person who _is_ present.
Sometimes people don’t admit to agreement, but then after thinking things over, they really are convinced. It may just take time for the logic to sink in.
Some people are idiots.
Does that about cover it???
Book,
If your arguments were reinforced by others’ similar arguments, I’d give your logic a chance. But this fellow is surrounded by a culture whose messages and memes in hundreds of ways undermines your message.
I’ll be interested if you get a chance to visit that fellow again in a month or two months’ time, and whether he even remembers your arguments, or has internalized them. I’m a pessimist.
It’s interesting to me that FDR has come under some critical review, but Woodrow Wilson has gotten the ultimate whitewash. His administration was deeply fascist, at a time when ALL the progressive elite were loudly singing and chanting the praises of fascism. (We in today’s era have absolutely no understanding of this, since we tie fascism to the Nazis, and it became impossible to praise fascism.)
You can start by investigating what Wilson’s administration did to the suffragettes. Then I recommend Jonah Goldberg’s ‘Liberal Fascism’, in fact I can’t recommend it strongly enough. Its early chapters on the rise of fascism in the early 20th century are horridly fascinating. From Mussolini to Lenin to Hitler to Wilson to FDR, these chapters are compelling, and the ties between fascism, progressivism, and the earlier Statist philosophical underpinnings of both are clearly made. These first four chapters are brilliant, I think.
And the whitewash that Wilson received is exposed clearly. The man probably deserves the title of the worst, and most monstrous, president of the 20th Century, and perhaps the worst of all of them.
The latter half of the book, covering 1950-present, seems far, far weaker to me, perhaps because I think the ties to fascism are much weaker. The ties to the late 18th-Century Statist movement (which preceded fascism) seem much more compelling. But then, “Liberal Statism” wouldn’t have made much of an interesting title for a book, would it?
Oh come on, Bookworm, “up until Johnson’s Great Society, African-Americans were ever so slowly “making it.” Good grief. I am shaking my head.
It’s interesting to me that FDR has come under some critical review, but Woodrow Wilson has gotten the ultimate whitewash. His administration was deeply fascist, at a time when ALL the progressive elite were loudly singing and chanting the praises of fascism. (We in today’s era have absolutely no understanding of this, since we tie fascism to the Nazis, and it became impossible to praise fascism.) – Mike
I agree with you about Wilson, Mike. But if you google, “Bush, Wilsonian,” you’ll find pages upon pages of articles likening Bush’s philosphy to Wilson’s.
From Haper’s
“. . . But the Woodrow Wilson of dramatic oration and lofty principles was also an intolerant demagogue whose repressive policies and personal ambition sullied his stated aspiration to save the world from war and corruption. Long before there was McCarthyism, there was Wilsonianism, with its own “red scare” tactics and assaults on civil liberties that may have made Joe McCarthy envious. Although he had always insisted he was trying to avoid war, as early as his December 7,1915, State of the Union Address to Congress, Wilson was hinting at the war-fevered crackdown to come. . .
In his October 3,2000, campaign debate with Vice President Al Gore, Bush portrayed himself as an anti-Wilsonian:
I don’t think we can be all things to all people in the world. I think we’ve got to be very careful when we commit our troops. The vice president and I have a disagreement about the use of troops. He believes in nation building. I would be very careful about using our troops as national builders. I believe the role of the military is to fight and win war and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place.
But, like Wilson, Bush quickly learned the uses of war for political gain. According to his fired campaign ghostwriter, Mickey Herskowitz, Bush was already thinking about the potential political benefits of war before he was elected. In an interview with the journalist Russ Baker published in October 2004, Herskowitz said:
It [Iraq] was on his mind. He said to me: “One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.” And he said, “My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.” He said, “If I have a chance to invade … if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.”
Whatever his learning curve, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Bush largely reinvented himself as the direct heir to Woodrow Wilson, minus some of the rhetoric about international cooperation. Like Wilson, Bush leaned heavily on the concept of “self-determination” to justify his “liberation” of the oppressed Iraqi people. Like Wilson, he seemed to be ignorant of the contradiction in his “vision.” As Joseph Schumpeter observed: “To try to force the people to embrace something that is believed to be good and glorious but which they do not actually want—even though they may be expected to like it when they experience its results—is the very hall mark of anti-democratic belief.” So complete has been the transformation of Bush from the parochial parody of a Texas “good ol’ boy” to “nation builder” and crusader for democracy that by 2007, historians like Godfrey Hodgson could assert that the current Bush Administration “is unmistakably Wilsonian,” that is, “the idea that it is the destiny of the United States to use its great power to spread American ideas of democracy and the American version of capitalism to the world.” Bush himself invoked Wilson in a November 2003 speech in London eight months after the invasion of Iraq. With Queen Elizabeth II and all of British officialdom in attendance, the new slayer of dragons and dictators made pointed reference to his newfound Wilsonian heritage when he declared,
The last President to stay at Buckingham Palace was an idealist, without question. At a dinner hosted by King George V, in 1918, Woodrow Wilson made a pledge; with typical American understatement, he vowed that right and justice would become the predominant and controlling force in the world…. At Wilson’s high point of idealism, however, Europe was one short generation from Munich and Auschwitz and the Blitz. Looking back, we see the reasons why. The League of Nations, lacking both credibility and will, collapsed at the first challenge of the dictators. Free nations failed to recognize, much less confront, the aggressive evil in plain sight. And so dictators went about their business.
Following Wilson, Bush has used his rhetoric of freedom to launch an aggressive assault on freedom in the United States—including the most important amendments in the Bill of Rights—in order to dampen dissent against the Iraq War as much as to fight terrorism.
Bush may not be systematically arresting opposition leftists and deporting them, or silencing filmmakers, but police in New York during the Republican Convention of 2004 did make mass arrests of antiwar demonstrators on largely fraudulent, and utterly unconstitutional, grounds. Instead of the Espionage Act and mass deportation under the Alien Act, we have the USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001), Homeland Security Act, secret prisons, and “rendition” of terrorist suspects to “third party” countries where they are interrogated without lawyers present and tortured. The “Bush Doctrine” justifies preemptive war–and it also evidently justifies preemption of the Constitution.
For More:
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/09/hbc-90003638
Don’t shake your head, Helen, just look up the data: Education and income were going up, decade by decade, just as poverty rates were going down. The data is out there, even if liberal newspapers never bother to review the books in which it is published. Just for starters, I suggest that you look at “Losing Ground” by Charles Murray and anything by Stephen and Abigail Thernstrom and by Thomas Sowell. I believe that City Journal has published an occasional article on this subject, as have various other journals.
Bookworm, you are doing the work of Angels. Like other Angels I fear you will find it somewhat frustrating. I assume that a soccer Dad from Marin County would be considered “educated”. Not encouraging. Just to sieze one point. I expect that in a random survey a very high percentage of Americans, and all Europeans, would characterize Vietnam as “Nixon’s War”. JFK’s role has been conveniently forgotten. But, as his apologists have always said, (sic). . . “he would have pulled out once it got difficult”. Or something like that. Very Obamaesque, I think.
An interesting follow-up. If I did not read the blogs, I would not have known of Baroness Warnock’s frightening ethical pronouncement. Never a word in the MSM after her startling revelation of the new “Socialist” ethic. However, there was interesting news on the government run health care front this week. Hawaii has abandoned their rather short term experiment in Universal Health Care for children. Didn’t work.
Wow Ozzie. Pretty strong indictment based on one article from Harper’s. Wasn’t it called Harper’s Bazaar (or was that bizarre?) at one time? I am impressed that you could expand that one article into eleven paragraph rant.
“…but Woodrow Wilson has gotten the ultimate whitewash.”
I agree, and I find it very interesting how that sordid tale has been “disappeared”.
“Bush may not…but police in New York during the Republican Convention of 2004 did make mass arrests of antiwar demonstrators…”
Last time I checked, New York was overwhelmingly Democrat, so it seems a little unfair to place the blame on Bush.
Furthermore, you might want to note that these “antiwar” demonstrators have tended to be more than a bit disruptive of civil peace, so I can fully understand how the New York Police would be inclined to take strong measures to control them.
“Bush has used his rhetoric of freedom to launch an aggressive assault on freedom…”
And yet “progressives” continue to criticize him with impunity, and even call for his assassination–on national radio no less. Perhaps his assault amounts to less than you think.
The Obama camp, on the other hand, has been very aggressive in trying to silence opposition voices, even threatening broadcasting stations with the loss of their licenses when they aired anti-Obama ads.
While Bush has described his political opponents as mistaken, mainstream liberals such as Al Gore, Ted Kennedy and many others have portrayed Bush as “evil”.
As for Herskowitz, how much value is the word of one bitter, fired employee? I’ve seen too many lies from Washington insiders to believe such stuff without serious confirmation.
I’m not crazy about the Patriot Act, but in fact my attitude is more one of “We already have enough laws that ought to be able to deal with terrorists, subversives and so on. After all, upon our entry into WWII we suppressed the Nazi Front organization the German-American Bund, jailing or deporting its leaders. We’re at war with islamo-fascists, so why do we, instead of expelling the ones we have, keep seeing universities hiring them and “peace” organizations giving them aid and comfort?” And the answer, of course, is “What do you expect of a culture so degraded that its intellectuals embrace and ally themselves with unrepentant sixties terrorists, afro-fascists, Maoists, Castroites, and so on?”
By the way, back in the 20′s and 30′s Harper’s Magazine was neck-deep in promoting fascism. Considering the state of contemporary progressivism I wonder sometimes how much things have really changed.
Somebody recently observed that “Compassionate Conservativism”, as a statist solution to social problems, comes in for its own fair share of criticism for drinking from the same poisoned well as the old progressives-fascists-etc of our parents’ generation. This is not going to be an easy malady to cure, not only because so many mice fixate on the cheese and never see the trap, but because so many intellectual mice actually like the trap as a useful tool to control the proles. (How did that old rocks song go, the one about Government Cheese?)
Wow Ozzie. Pretty strong indictment based on one article from Harper’s. Wasn’t it called Harper’s Bazaar (or was that bizarre?) at one time? I am impressed that you could expand that one article into eleven paragraph rant.- Old Flyter
There is a wealth of information out there.
If you don’t like Harpers, perhaps you’d prefer reading US Army Colonel Andrew J. Bacevich, who also makes the connection? A West Point graduate, Vietnam veteran, and soldier for 23 years, he’s hardly a “lefty,” but he’s respected by people across the political spectrum..
Jonah Goldberg and Michelle Malkin, on the other hand, are largely considered to be hacks.
Here, Bachevich echoes other historians I’ve read, that to “persist in following that path [of perpectual war] is to invite inevitable overextension, bankruptcy and ruin.”
“Bacevich’s political crisis involves more than just George W. Bush’s failed presidency, though “his policies have done untold damage.” Bacevich argues that the government the Founders envisaged no longer exists, replaced by an imperial presidency and a passive, incompetent Congress.
“No one today seriously believes that the actions of the legislative branch are informed by a collective determination to promote the common good,” he writes. “The chief … function of Congress is to ensure the re-election of its members.”
In Bacevich’s view, the modern American government is dominated by an “ideology of national security” that perverts the Constitution and common sense. It is based on presumptions about the universal appeal of democracy and America’s role as democracy’s great defender and promoter that just aren’t true.
And we ignore the ideology whenever it suits the government of the day, by supporting anti-democratic tyrants in important countries such as Pakistan and Egypt, for example. The ideology “imposes no specific obligations” nor “mandates action in support of the ideals it celebrates” but can be used by an American president “to legitimate the exercise of American power.”
Today politicians of all persuasions embrace this ideology. Bacevich quotes Sen. Barack Obama echoing “the Washington consensus” in a campaign speech that defined America’s purposes “in cosmic terms” by endorsing a U.S. commitment to “the security and well-being of those who live beyond our borders” regardless of the circumstances.
Bacevich describes the military crisis with an insider’s authority. He dissects an American military doctrine that wildly overstates the utility of armed force in politically delicate situations. He decries the mediocrity of America’s four-star generals, with particular scorn for Gen. Tommy Franks, original commander of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He calls the all-volunteer Army, isolated from the society it is supposed to protect, “an imperial constabulary” that “has become an extension of the imperial presidency.”
The heart of the matter, Bacevich argues, is that war can never be considered a useful political tool because wars invariably produce unintended consequences: “War’s essential nature is fixed, permanent, intractable and irrepressible. War’s constant companions are uncertainty and risk.”
New inventions cannot alter these facts, Bacevich writes. “Any notion that innovative techniques and new technologies will subject war to definitive human direction is simply whimsical,” he writes, quoting Churchill approvingly: “The statesman who yields to war fever is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.”
Yet the United States is today engaged in multiple wars that both exceed the capacity of the all-volunteer force and are highly unlikely to achieve their political aims, Bacevich argues. War is not the answer to the challenges we face, he says, and “to persist in following that path is to invite inevitable overextension, bankruptcy and ruin.”
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/books/reviews/5984073.html
Gee Ozzie you are getting better with every post. Never heard of him. But, nice that you were able to find him. Tell me, how many people across the political spectrum respect him? Two? Three?
Actually, I am sure you can find quite a few Vietnam veterans who are pretty well soured. That happens when you lose a war.
Let me address just one point. You quote or paraphrase him on the all-volunteer force. In a perfect world I would like to see a compulsive service, for a variety of reasons. Not the least, because it would expose my grandson, and so many like him, to the kind of discipline he desperately needs. However, in the real world I know that it is doesn’t make much sense for the good of the country, other than for situations of national mobilization.
Like your Colonel I was on active duty throughout the 60s and 70s. I envy the Officers of today. We have the most efficient, best trained, best disciplined, most highly motivated force in our history.
The Colonel. is in the mainstream in one respect of his class, however. Nearly all retired Colonels think that Generals are idiots; otherwise the Colonels would have been Generals. I am a retired Navy Captain. I know many of my contemporaries who made Admiral are idiots. Why didn’t the selection boards notice that I was infinitely more qualified?
Actually it is a little hard to take the Col. too seriously after you quote him as decrying “the ideology of national security which has perverted the constitution”. Me thinks the Col. is drinking a few too many martinis before he sits down to write his screeds.
Ozzie, you may want to review your reading list.
“Jonah Goldberg and Michelle Malkin, on the other hand, are largely considered to be hacks.”- Ozzie
Ozzie is sounding more like dg each day. I wonder if they work for the same organization.
They certainly are following the same script.
Oldflyer…
Ditto on the compulsory service. My husband and I discuss this occasionally…and he always terminates the conversation with the absolute fact: the military is not a social service. I can’t argue with that. We were in the Army during the same period you were in the Navy…and he had to deal with the problems brought on by drafting undisciplined young men who didn’t want to be where they were, doing what they were required to do, and easy availability of drugs nearly everywhere.
What bothers me about it is much the same point you also make – too many of our young people lack discipline, and there is an ever widening gap between the culture of the civilians of the country and the military. There wasn’t that much of a gap during the WWII years, but I think it started during the Korean War years, and has been increasing. It bodes ill, I fear.
I wonder what Oz considers a “hack”…someone who doesn’t find obscure and irrelevant tidbits to share?
I much prefer our volunteer military to a draft military. The professionalism and high standards that our military exhibits is directly tracable to its volunteer nature, I believe. You would see the professionalism and high standards plunge soon after the instituting of the draft.
For the vast part, our military is comprised of people who *already* have internalized those high standards of behavior and patriotism. Trying to use the military to inculcate those standards into young men and women who have none, would harm the military. I’d hate to see that happen.
Anticipating the objection in advance, Oz, let me say I’m well aware of Abu Ghraib and other various abuses. In any organization of hundreds of thousands – or millions – you’ll have bad apples no matter how high the standards across the board. I can put it this way: Suppose you live in the safest city in the world, with the lowest number of felonies. The instant any one felony then occurs, would you declare all the city citizens guilty and punish them all? Or blame them all?
Greetings:
Nice epistle, Bookworm, but I’m thinking he probably thought you’re one of those pistol-packing soccer moms, so he wasn’t going to make any quick intellectual moves.
Now, to Mike Devx-19:
I think that doing away with the military draft was one of the worst ideas of the political class in the whole of the 20th Century. When a society convinces itself that its menfolk don’t have an individual responsibility to protect it from its enemies, it has gone way off the tracks. The fact is that this is a hostile world and having young men understand and accept their responsibility in that regard is an important foundation for our long term survival.
While I can appreciate the professionalism and standards of our current volunteer forces, the forces themselves are insufficient. If it were not for the introduction of females, another really bad idea, the insufficiency would be larger still. (My understanding is that 10-15% of the major services are now female.)
Right now, we are seriously constrained by the limited actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Do you think that this has not been noticed by the other trouble-making states and non-state actors?
The military draft may not be for everyone but it’s not a sharp stick in the eye either. Some of the positives would be getting to know different parts of your country and the people that inhabit them, how to live rough and survive, how to use firearms effectively. In this age of subversive education, it give society and opportunity to kindle patriotism in the hearts of its youth. Longer term, it provides a base of trained people to help in future difficulties and disasters.
What we have now is a system that works to the advantage of sissies and subversives, two groups we now see more and more of in the political sphere.
I put this comment in the wrong thread. My bad.
Helen:
Oh come on, Bookworm, “up until Johnson’s Great Society, African-Americans were ever so slowly “making it.” Good grief. I am shaking my head.
Percentage of African Americans in poverty:
1959 55.1
1966 41.8
1969 32.2
1996 28.4
1966 would have been too early to have seen results from the Great Society, as legislation for that wasn’t passed until 1965. Progress from 1959-1966 was much better than from 1966-1996, Helen, do you still want to shake your head ?
Off the top of my head, I believe that the illegitimacy rate that the Moynihan Report cited for blacks in the mid-1960s was around 25 %. By the 1990s it was in the area of 65%-70%. Since then, it has leveled off and perhaps decreased a bit.
Great Society?
2008 Statistical Abstract of the US.
Table 689. Persons Below Poverty Level and Below 125 Percent of Poverty Level
by Race and Hispanic Origin: 1959 to 2005
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/income_expenditures_poverty_wealth/poverty.html
Gringo, to your point on the Statistical Abstracts, I believe they grossly underestimate because I believe that at one point during the Clinton Administration, income determining poverty rate was redefined to include sum-total of all welfare payments, including food stamps, WIC program supports, earned-income tax credits, etc.
So, you are right and Helen is right – “poverty” rates declined in the post-Johnson Great Society era only in that more money was put in the pockets of those that earned none. This is a purely materialistic definition of poverty. If you define poverty in terms of earning power, then poverty rates really haven’t improved nearly as much – at least up until the Republican supported and Clinton approved Welfare Reform Act, which put a lot of people back to work.
For Helen to challenge Thomas Sowell on his historical record of what the Great Society did to black families…well, maybe she should read what he has to say, first.
11B40
Are you now or were you ever in the military?
I ask because while I agree with you in your first “to Mike” paragraph, but I also know that a drafted military is a nightmare _for_ the military.
That is to say…theoretically you are absolutely right. Practically, I disagree with you.
For that reason, I’d just like to know what military experience you speak from.
I get the feeling during discussions with some people nowdays that logic and reasoning are things of the past.
It’s a bell curve, Deana. Only 20 to 40% of people have an open mind, and that is only open partially depending on life experiences. The other 60-80% are beholden far more to emotion than the search for truth.
Some of this is due to inherent traits such as curiosity and a need to become better than the competition. Those that have a strong competitive gene tends to search for all kinds of ways to get an edge. Since the truth naturally gives you an edge over those that don’t know it, such people tend to search out the truth. However, they don’t necessarily use it for the good. Some use it to deceive by using some of the truth and filling in the rest with lies and manipulation. Others use it to benefit only themselves while withholding it against others.
Most of humanity, however, prefer security and stability rather than the truth, competition, or risk. It has been genetically pro-survival for the human species to act in different ways towards an external stimuli. Some humans in response to a threat will hide and some humans will fight. This ensures that regardless of the odds some humans will survive. This is a statist rather than an individual system as you can see. It subordinates the welfare of the individual to the welfare of the state.
Just as human hierarchies have far less natural leaders than they have natural followers, the same applies to people who will fight over those who will submit. Translate this to the search for truth or the acceptance of dogma (with all the security and stability that implies) and you can see that the relationship is the same. However few people are around that believe in searching for the truth rather than settling with other people’s propaganda, there will always be far more individuals that prefer believing what others tell them over their own independent thoughts and analysis.
The fact is that this is a hostile world and having young men understand and accept their responsibility in that regard is an important foundation for our long term survival.
While I can appreciate the professionalism and standards of our current volunteer forces, the forces themselves are insufficient. If it were not for the introduction of females, another really bad idea, the insufficiency would be larger still.
The Islamic Jihad cannot be beaten in the modern world by adopting their attitudes towards women. Either their philosophy is wrong or their philosophy is right. This issue gets to be decided on the battlefield if people don’t want a peaceful relationship. It would help if the US didn’t implicitly accept the Arab sentiments about the potential of women when we are fighting to free human beings. As for the Diversity Bully policies of the Navy and Air Force, that will be increased a thousand fold and will spread to the Army and Marines with the draft. It’s not really a great solution to complain about women in the military and then talk about how the US military is the solution to America’s lack of intestinal fortitude.
What’s important for the long term survival of America is to ensure that the people of America are able to defend themselves. The military does not teach you to do your civic duty, the military teaches you how to kill the external enemies of America and in return it provides you with healthcare, bennies, and money. Yet America’s greatest enemies are in the highest places of government and in US jails: both immune to the US military. The people responsible for the final outcome of Vietnam and the numerous unnecessary deaths in Iraq before the surge will not be caught or killed by the US military, regardless of whether there is a draft or not.
It is totally asymmetric to frame the US military as the vehicle for solving the internal ills of America when the internal ills of America would like nothing better to infiltrate and destroy the United States military and its capability to enforce discipline on its own members and ensure the protection of the US Constitution from foreign and domestic enemies. Standards and discipline have already been lowered in the Navy and Air Force because Democrats lobbied for women to be introduced into the US military because they believed it would be good for America.
Course, that was before they thought the US military would ever go to war again.
But “everyone” knows that Viet Nam was a lost war in which the military failed, quit, or committed atrocities. The truth is very different and while actions were taken that were questionable at best, there is considerable room to argue about the conduct of a war against a foe willing to disregard the Laws of Land Warfare and traditional military conduct.
The Left likes to harp about how the victor writes the rules so that is why American history of the war against the native Indians were whitewashed.
Yet, the Left never uses that narrative to describe Vietnam or the Cold War.
When bad men combine, the good must associate; otherwise they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
—Edmund Burke
The Left de facto made Vietnam into a contemptible strugle because the Left won and we all know the victors write the history books.
One of the reasons why iraq became vital in 2004 was due to the fact that America could redeem part of the loss in Vietnam by winning in Iraq against the same kinds of people that were making war on the South Vietnamese.
Btw, Brian, I think you know by now that Oz has a closed mind. I have presented many arguments and have done my part in getting to the core of Oz’s beliefs. You know what she bases her beliefs on and you know that they cannot be questioned.
Those that do not allow the questioning of their fundamental assumptions in life do not have an interest in the truth, regardless of how many times they say otherwise.
“but I also know that a drafted military is a nightmare _for_ the military.”
Suek, would you feel better about a draft if we first got rolling on reinstituting ROTC on campus and doing other things to cultivate a culture in which kids will see military service as a good thing?
Back to conscripted service. There is no question it is a mixed bag.
I have posted before that when I entered flight training in 1955 (wow) the student population ranged from very smart ex-enlisted guys with not college (there was a waiver feature if they were good enough) to graudates of all of the Ivy League schools. My first Instructor was a Marine Yalie. (Oh what a great guy). By the way Donald Rumsfeld was an Instructor, but I didn’t encounter him.
I think the situation that prevailed was healthy in many respects. The services recieved an influx of the “best and brightest” so to speak; and the “best and the brightest” were exposed to people and influences they might never have encountered. I have to believe that helped their understanding of the “other” world. To a certain extent the situation prevailed also in the enlisted ranks. Plenty of young men entered the draft before college to get it over with and then get on with their life plans. Many young men were exposed to a level of discipline they had never experienced. On another level, all publicly financed Universities required two years of ROTC; and many of the elite private schools offered the option if were not in fact required.
Even in those days no one really liked the idea of the draft. It was disruptive. On the other hand, this generation had seen our fathers, older brothers and neighbors go off to WWII and Korea. The idea of a military obligation was engrained in the culture.
It was during Vietnam and the dawn of the drug culture, (interrelated?) that it started going sour.
The issues with re-instituting a draft are several. Today we simply are not going to maintain a military large enough to aborb the numbers that would result from compulsory conscription. Therefore any system would undoubtedly be rife with the opporunity for abuse–and resentment of perceived favoritism. From the point of view of efficiency, with the fantastic developent of technology, it simply is no longer cost effective to have a large number of people for only a couple of years. Training time is too long. Conscripts would be relegated to the more menial tasks. Morale and readiness would likely suffer.
I know that some parts of the services are over stressed now. Clearly, the Army and Marine Corps were not manned for commitments of the size and length that Iraq and Afghanistan presented. These commitments have demonstrated the need for a larger Army, Marine Corps and airlift capacity. But, we cannot sacrifice the professionalism attained by our military to bolster the numbers. The next Adminsitration needs to look closely at the size and balance of the force. Given the direction the campaign is headed, who am I kidding?
Has anyone read “Starship Troopers” by Robert Heinlein?
Before y’all start rolling your eyes, the primary theme of this book is not blasting bug-eyed monsters to atomic bits. It is about the fundamental changes that a boy undergoes as he volunteers for ‘federal service’ – he ends up as the future equivalent of a marine in a time of war.
The reason I raise this is the interesting nature of the governmental system described in the book. In that society, the franchise is limited to those who successfully complete at least a two-year term of voluntary ‘federal service’. This service is either military in nature (in one of a variety of services), or a civil service so unpleasant or dangerous enough to deter a large number from even considering enlisting. A completed term (two years is a minimum, but service may be extended at the discretion of either the volunteer or the government… gulp!) you are entitled to vote, and enjoy other benefits such as reserved jobs (police, some teaching positions).
The rationale for such a governmental system is that those with the franchise – really the ‘sovereigns’ of the state – had to prove through unpleasant and even life-threatening service that they were willing to place the welfare of the society above their own interest.
Any comments in light of the discussion of the draft?
SueK;
11B40 was military – the code he uses for his name is an Infantry Sergeant First Class. My MOS is 35M3L – it used to be 97E3L but they changed the numbering.
BobK;
Starship troopers is a wonderful book, one of my favorites. I have given away over a dozen copies to some of my young troops to help them grasp what their duty means.
All;
Conscription is an answer, but not one that I like. I’m a volunteer, have always been, and really don’t like what I see in conscript forces. That being said, there needs to be a press for service so that eyes can be opened. I’d prefer to limit government jobs/law enforcement to service members and former service members. At the minimum that would improve the basic entry levels for marksmanship and physical fitness (you should see some deputies in my county!). The biggest problem with conscription is its largest advantage. You get everybody in the service. Problems – pay, training, motivation, discipline, desire. Benefits – large pool of recruits, making the service accessable to all strata of society, mixing and training people that otherwise would remain insulated from the rest of the nation.
All in all, I’d rather have another volunteer on the gun in my truck than a squad of conscripts nearby. I’ve worked with conscript forces (in Iraq, Kosovo, and Panama) and they are often unreliable. Many don’t want to be there and you get the same quality of work that keeps the turnover rate high at McDonalds. 11B40 has a point; quantity has a quality all its own. I’m in too narrow and difficult a field for most – and I wouldn’t want conscripts doing the job. There are too many dangers, too many laws that are easy to break, and too much work that requires clearances and dedication. The days of easy conscription went away when the armed forces went high-tech. Even the 11B’s (infantrymen) need to know how to work with computers to update communications security, run mapping programs, and manage (really cool) high tech items to get their best results.
Anyhow, the people who most need to be exposed to the service (wealthy urban liberals) are the most likely to seek and get deferments using money and political favors. Conscription won’t get the sons of privilege into the service. Only requiring it for public service (not a bad idea!) could do that. And then they’d be combat photographers or look for REMF jobs to bide their time.
SSG Dave – “If you don’t know what REMF means, google it. It isn’t nice.”
Greetings:
Responding to “suek” at number 23
I was drafted in March ’68 and finished up in Jan 70.
I think my take on the draft is that it’s like democracy, not perfect but significantly better than the alternatives. Even back in WW II, when the overall population was highly positive about that war, there were problems resulting from the draft. But you have to exam what those problems are. Some draftees had problems acclimating to the military culture; their personalities just didn’t adjust well to the organizational demands. Some draftees had problems with the physical demands. Some had, as I was wont to say, “one foot in the bucket” before they were drafted. However, the military of my day had had a lot of experience (WW II, Korea) turning American civilian draftees into effective soldiers.
I think if you really exam our “volunteer” military, you will see that there are still problems; I’m sure the Army still has stockades (jails) and the Navy has its brigs.
A lot of the problem personnel, though, are identified early and separated “for the good of the service.” My skepticism is that so much of the information on the subject is politically skewed, by the generals trying to get their next star from Congress, and the lower ranks following the generals’ policy line.
But the bottom line is numbers matter. If you can’t muster enough troops to meet the nation’s needs (and we can’t), it doesn’t matter how professional or how happy they are. Things have a way of sorting themselves out in military matters. I was a rifleman in an infantry company. Our company had three rifle platoons and a mortar platoon. If you weren’t good enough as a rifleman, you would end up in the mortar platoon carrying mortar rounds. If you were really good as a rifleman, you would end up walking point and leading the way. If you refused to follow orders, you went to the stockade.
I think that there is a pollyanna-ish intellectual conceit to the “volunteer” military.
It embarrasses me greatly that a large majority of the menfolk of this country are being brought up to think that defending our land and our honor is not their responsibility.
>>“If you don’t know what REMF means, google it. It isn’t nice.”>>
Heh. Think I’ll take your word for it.
I can guess at part of it…I’ll cogitate on the rest. Google only if driven to it!
>>I think that there is a pollyanna-ish intellectual conceit to the “volunteer” military.>>
I’ll have to think about that. As I said, my husband dealt with draftees in Germany in the same time frame you mention. It was not a good experience that he’d care to repeat or wish upon our sons.
>>It embarrasses me greatly that a large majority of the menfolk of this country are being brought up to think that defending our land and our honor is not their responsibility.>>
Unfortunately, you have a very good point here. I can’t disagree with it.
11B40,
We still have the disciplinary barracks and the stockade, of course. And we do have our share of problems. The big thing we don’t have is the desertion problem that many conscript armies do. Most conscript armies lose 10-15% to desertion on a regular basis (Mexico dropped 23% in 2003) and we had AWOL rates in post WWII up around 8-10% (largely unprosecuted). The problem was compounded during Viet Nam. I agree that far too many men (and for that matter, women) in this nation do not think it is their responsibility to defend our country. I have worked my entire career alongside female soldiers – one symptom of the high requirements for intel weenies – and have found the same divisions of worthless to capable as in the male soldiers in the field. Some I’d even put on gun; they were capable and dedicated. We need to improve the benefits of military service (improved education opportunities – though they are much better than even when I joined in ’90) and better pay. My civilian counterparts earn five times as much as I do for less work and more security.
Anyhow, there is a lack of intestinal fortitude in the current crop of political movers and shakers. I don’t always like McCain for his stances, but at least I can respect the man. Palin’s son remaining in the Guard despite the upcoming deployment and his mother’s position (she could have put him on rear detachment – she’s the units commander in chief) says volumes about what she and her family believe. The saddest thing is the crop of politicians who were draft dodgers – i.e. Slick Willie and company – I will never forgive Carter for the amnesty. They should have gotten a commutation at best – leaving the felony conviction on their records and disbarring them from law and politics forever. Instead, you have these shining examples of (at best) civil disobedience (or at worst treason) setting policy for one of our parties. Any wonder the system is shaky?
Anyhow, enough grousing for now. Off to bed.
SSG Dave – “We would have used a firing squad, but the whole d@mn division would have volunteered.”
“Has anyone read Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein?”
Yes, a very good book. The leftists who bash it are usually liars who blatently misrepresent what it’s about. The rest are just clueless.
Greetings:
Response to “suek” at number 32.
By way of explanation, what I meant by “a pollyanna-ish intellectual conceit” is that the “volunteer” army allows the willing and willful abstainers to maintain the illusion that 1) hostiles will not come knocking someday; and 2) that they are too smart, too superior to have to deal personally with all the affronts of military service.
I wasn’t trying to badmouth Pollyanna. I was once deeply in love with Haley Mills.
Finally, after more than a year of lurking (ever since Blog Fest West) I finally have a comment…
That’s a really fascinating statement about the effect of the Great Society on blacks migrating to the north after WWII. I’ve long read about the breakup of the black family and the pernicious effects of welfare, but hadn’t read before that Lyndon Johnson had started the welfare program and that instituting welfare had initiated the breakup of the black family.
I’m going to link to this post from my site
By way of explanation, what I meant by “a pollyanna-ish intellectual conceit” is that the “volunteer” army allows the willing and willful abstainers to maintain the illusion that 1) hostiles will not come knocking someday
They had the same illusion maintained quite well during and after Vietnam, which had a draft. They can maintain this illusion, using the MSM, regardless of whether there is a draft or not. If there isn’t a draft, they’ll divide and conquer. If there is a draft, they will still divide and conquer.
Anyhow, the people who most need to be exposed to the service (wealthy urban liberals) are the most likely to seek and get deferments using money and political favors.
There’s also the fact that Democrats operate under both the patronage system (perfected by blue blood aristocrats in European absolute monarchy days) and the nepotism system.
If you force people into the military that have a certain idea of what the military is or should be (like Code Pink) then if they ever actually get up to a certain rank, they will be able to influence the actual training and force status of the US military if their family in political circles ever required it of them.
John Kerry went into the military in Vietnam and then got out ASAP for a political career. Horrible things would happen if ever there was an incentive for people like that to go career military.
A draft wouldn’t necessarily provide this incentive but it would make military recruitment and retention far more of a political matter than it currently is, even in the time of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The simplest argument I have for this is to look at how Corporations react when government starts getting more power to decide what private business can or cannot do. The corporations decide to use their profits to hire lawyers and manipulate the system. If a 5 million bribe to a Senator will decrease the taxes on the corporations by 50 million, then what’s to lose? Everybody gains and nobody loses, except the American tax payer. This same dynamic would exist if Democrats had succeeded in forcing a draft through. There are not enough active NCOs and combat officers in the US military to handle an influx of 100 million males or even 50 million males or even 5 million able bodied males. (and we’re not even talking about the females in support positions). All the daughters and sons of Democrat senators and powerful Congressmen would have a de facto interest in corrupting the US military’s chain of command to get the old DC favor game going. They would do so simply because 1. that is how they usually operate and 2. they would lose far more if they didn’t subvert commanders in the US military. If the price is getting their son sent off to a war that they didn’t agree to, you’d be surprised at what kind of strings such folks will be willing to pull.
Now, of course, most likely they will ensure that any draft law be done so as to favor people they like and disfavor people they don’t like. People like Joe the Plumber. Remember the Chicken Hawk meme the Left used as a way to get rid of iraq war supporters? It’d be great if they could write a draft law that would finally send such folks over to Iraq, on pain of jail, wouldn’t it? But that is not necessarily better than active interference in military affairs.
I’ve already seen what kind of thing happens when the military tries to bend over backwards for such progressive policies as integration of women by lowering training standards. When the politicians have a vested interest in controlling what goes on in the military because the draft threatens their loved ones, I believe you can bet that there will be a far greater division of politics inside the US military. Currently the US military is apolitical. Far more apolitical than in previous times, I believe. That can easily end if the politicians and patrician rich people ever felt threatened.
If you can’t muster enough troops to meet the nation’s needs (and we can’t), it doesn’t matter how professional or how happy they are.
The Romans had two solutions to that problem. 1. Decrease the requirement for Roman legionnaires (in those days it was ownership of property and citizenship). Or 2. Offer any one under Roman occupied territory citizenship for 20+ years served in the Roman legions.
Empire is always the solution to a nation suffering from manpower problems but not influence, political, security, or wealth problems.
Part of the reason why America can’t muster enough troops to meet the nation’s needs is because this “nation” covers the needs of a couple more billion people on Earth in addition to the 300 million inside America and the various other millions in North and South America. That’s one reason why America can’t muster enough troops, because America is trying to cover more territory than America actually politically controls. Add in logistical distances and you got an interesting little obstacle here.
Rome had the exact same problem once their influence extended to Spain and Gaul. The old Roman requirement for a legion to be a Roman citizen and own land could no longer produce enough manpower for Rome to occupy both Spain, Gaul, and the Italian peninsula. The Marius Reforms provided a truly professional army for Rome by providing the cost of arms to new soldiers recruited from Spain, Africa, and Gaul.
In modern times, America’s military is already professionalized. It’s been a long time since George Washington had to count partially on his soldiers bringing their own arms to the battlefield. However, there is something that American can provide to new soldiers that they can’t get anywhere else. English training and a benefits package better than all of the warlords of the world combined.
America already pays out bribes in the tune of billions to such nations as Egypt and Pakistan. And what do we get in the end? We get additional requirements on American manpower, that is what we get. We get to have missions that we can label “black ops” and send to our Special Forces so they can risk their necks all because we had paid for the privilege with American treasury for nations like Pakistan to ignore such things. This is entirely different from counter-insurgency which focuses on individual people and individual tribes, at the grassroots, and starts paying them in cash and security options.
I’m not in favor of draft. If people want more soldiers they already know where and how to get them. offer benefits packages. Things like permanent life tax cuts for veterans if they start businesses. This draws in entrepreneurs who already know how to take risks. These are the people that will perform well in a war. Drafting people will inevitably just hit the luck of the draw in terms of just how much do these people like taking risks as opposed to playing it safe. Take David Drake, for example. He loved his unit in Vietnam but he loved law school more than the military, because he was drafted. It wasn’t his performance that was the problem, it was the fact that the draft does not produce a career professional military composed of warrior leaders. They get in and they get out.
If all you need are people who you can train for a few years and use them in war for 2 or 3 more years, then you might as well hire Mexicans for far less money and stick them on contract for 10 years.
Greetings:
Response to “Ymarsakar” at number 39.
I understand both your point and your concern. The way I see it is that currently, a young man has only to register one time with the Selective Service. If he (or his family) had to use corrupt methods to secure a deferment or exemption, he would then have the burden of the knowledge of that malfeasance with which to contend.
That may, in fact, not amount to very much, but it is a lot more to bear than what is currently required. If you know any Viet Nam era non-veterans or evaders, I think you would be familiar with that kind of a “pea under the mattress.”
Wow Ozzie. Pretty strong indictment based on one article from Harper’s. Wasn’t it called Harper’s Bazaar (or was that bizarre?) at one time? I am impressed that you could expand that one article into eleven paragraph rant.
It’s still better than what Oz usually posts, which are just the link and a claim that says “it says this so it must be true”. If Oz provides a link, and a quote from it, and her own thoughts on the subject, then that is useful. Useful for analysis, that is.
The way I see it is that currently, a young man has only to register one time with the Selective Service. If he (or his family) had to use corrupt methods to secure a deferment or exemption, he would then have the burden of the knowledge of that malfeasance with which to contend.
I say “luck of the draw” because if the draft was a full war time draft of millions upon millions of Americans for a fullly mobilized additional 100 divisions, then that’d be one thing. Scatter them out around the world and get some real colonies going. That would produce a lot of good both for the people around this world and the people drafted.
However, if all we need are like a couple more divisions than the draft will have far too many deferments than the benefit you said it should have. If you wish to teach the men and women of the United States duty and honor once more, it will take more than a draft that only takes in a couple of thousand individuals compared to the millions of deferments and exemptions that will exist.
Concerning what you said about the “burden of knowledge”, after studying and watching Democrat policies and grassroots operations at hand and in the past, I just don’t see what that would do in the long run to reversing the Leftist indoctrination of American children to believe that honor is an anachronism and that the US is evil because the US wiped out the noble savages called Native Indians (amongst other things they teach).
(Nixon, the Republican, ended it.)
Nixon signed a peace treaty and made sure it could be enforced. Then he resigned and it all fell apart.
The interesting number of Executive disembowelments that occurred from JFK, to Johnson, to Nixon, to Nixon’s VP is an interesting collage of disasters that mirror what happened in Vietnam.
one of Heinlein’s bêtes noires: resistance to the draft, which he hated as much as he loved the bravery of the volunteer who would fight for his culture’s freedom or survival.
I think that Heinlein was opposed to the draft, but I could be wrong.
He avers in Expanded Universe, ‘Who Are The Heirs To Patrick Henry’ afterword that “The Founding Fathers never intended to extend the franchise to everyone; their debates and the early laws show it.” He struggled constantly with how to achieve an enlightened voting public, often writing of it with sarcastic wit.
From that same afterword:
step into the polling booth and find that the computer has generated a new quadratic equation just for you. Solve it, the computer unlocks the voting machine, you vote. But get a wrong answer and the voting machine fails to unlock, a loud bell sounds, a red light goes on over that booth – and you slink out, face red, you having just proved yourself too stupid and/or ignorant to take part in the decisions of the grownups. Better luck next time! No lower age limit in this system – smart 12-yr-old girls vote every election while some of their mothers – and fathers – decline to be humilitated twice.
or:
Perhaps we did not go far enough. Perhaps men are still corrupting government… so let’s try the next century and a half with males disenfranchised . (Fair is fair. My mother was past forty before she was permitted to vote.)
I guess in summary it would be a mistake to take any one of his books and try to claim it speaks for any of Heinlein’s various philosophies. He was famously critical of the libertarian society examined in “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress”, explaining that it would collapse soon afterwards due to its own internal inconsistencies, as his controlling timeline for his Future Universe indicates. Yet many people think he has written of that society as his perfect society, or that in ‘Starship Troopers’ he’s done the same.
“I think that Heinlein was opposed to the draft, but I could be wrong.”
You are indeed correct. In fact, he said that a society which could not muster enough volunteers to muster an effective military was a society so sick that it deserved to be conquered.
I certainly don’t want America to be conquered, but San Francisco and New York certainly would have it coming. The question is: Even in such a hypothetical Future History (hat tip to Heinlein who coined the term) would even a Che-style gulag or a Muslim Brotherhood-style tyranny teach these latte-sipping morons the error of their ways?
“it would be a mistake to take any one of his books and try to claim it speaks for any of Heinlein’s various philosophies”
Very true. Heinlein wrote stories to explore ideas, and if you read enough of him you will find all various stories advancing ideas which are incompatible with each other.
Interesting discussion. It says as much about the state of the nation as it does about much of anything else.
Look at the bright side. If we were to draft any large number of unwilling citizens – and I’m inclined to think that if we _did_ draft them, most would be unwilling – we’d end up training them in the handling and use of weapons, as well as a fair amount of other war game technicalities that they might find useful. As it is, 99% of them are ignorant of both, and wouldn’t pick up a weapon if their life depended on it. Or if they _did_ pick up a weapon, they’d be as likely to harm friends as enemies.
And that might be a good thing.
Yeah right!
There is a small possibility that he will start thinking for himself now.
Much more likely: You will have the conversation with him over and over again and he simply will not retain any of the previous arguments.
I’ve had plenty of lefties concede a point or be reflective about a set of facts that are off their radar, only to have them revert the next time.
If there was a “method” that worked, people would drink tap water in Marin.
Scott, your point is very funny, because I do drink tap water, making me something of a rarity in my community. I seem to be out of step at so many levels.
All excellent points, BW! I hope he learned from your words.