TSO sends a link to the Daily Beast written by Jacob Siegal, a veteran, he says, of OEF/OIF. He also says that the military is a socialist paradise;
Every day before dawn, brave men and women of different races and backgrounds rise as one, united by a common cause. They march together in formation, kept in step by their voices joined in song. These workers leave their communal housing arrangements and go toil together “in the field.” While they are out doing their day’s labor, their young are cared for in subsidized childcare programs. If they hurt themselves on the job, they can count on universal health care. Right under your nose, on the fenced-in bases you drive past on your way to work or see on the TV news, a successful experiment in collectivization has been going on for years.
While I’ll admit that there have been social “experiments” inside the military, I’d point out to young Jacob that everything he described as proof of “collectivization” has been going on since 1775, more or less. Maybe the Revolutionary soldiers didn’t have child care, but the rest did exist. Yes, I know the lock-step marching and counting cadence elicits a vision of The New Soviet Man videos, but, you know it started at Valley Forge when General Pulaski Steuben began drilling the troops for battle formations. I’m pretty sure they had single payer healthcare there, too.
The U.S. military is a socialist paradise. Imagine a testing ground where every signature liberal program of the past century has been applied, from racial integration to single-payer health care—then add personal honor, strict hierarchy, and more guns. Like all socialist paradises, the military has been responsible for its share of bloodshed, but it has developed one of the only working models of collective living and social welfare that this country has ever known.
Like I said, it’s been the test bed for social programs, but, no it’s not mindless socialism. Every soldier is encouraged to think for himself when attacking the countless problems that lay before him, either as a cook, a clerk or an infantryman. Their officers come from the liberal arts schools, not from rigid military academies. They’re educated in public and private schools around the country, again not strictly in military secondary schools. They revel in their individuality, especially when their duties are done for the day.
The folks who leave the military are more distrustful of the government because they’ve seen bureaucracy at it’s worst and at it’s best and there’s not much difference between the two. In fact, they know that they win wars despite the bureaucracy not because of the bureaucracy.
The military is an enormous jobs program. There are more than 2 million active duty and reserve members of the armed forces spread out between bases in more than 150 countries.
Yeah, a jobs program that only accepts the best and brightest, many are turned away before the selection process and many more during and after. So it’s really more than just a jobs program. There are a lot of opportunities, but only for the most qualified. It’s more than just a place to employ mindless drones.
And there are, of course, innumerable and essential ways in which the military isn’t socialist at all. It’s a volunteer force that works as well as it does because the organization fulfills its obligations to the people who sign up. Most people sign up because they’re looking to better themselves and get more opportunities than they had back home. They stay if they believe that the rules are applied fairly and they can get ahead on their merits.
Of course. Then, why did you even mention it, Jake? Then you admit that it’s not really socialist all? So what was your point exactly?
