Comments on: Clean Jim, Dirty Harry, and Barry the Beer-Drinker

By: TJF

TJF — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:11:58 +0000

I've known Bill for years and he usually writes well as an essayist. He is, however, a little skimpy on research and has no firsthand knowledge of hte military. There many actual scholars who have written well on this subject, including my former boss Alan Carlson, who was talking about this 20 years ago.

By: S.L. Toddard

S.L. Toddard — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:59:56 +0000

I seem to recall that posting links to other sites being frowned upon here, but Bill Kauffman (who I believe used to write for Chronicles) has an excellent piece on the devastating effect the military has on the American family (divorce rates, infidelity, absent fathers etc), saying "the single greatest cause of rootlessness--the great undiagnosed sickness afflicting America--has been our standing army". It's in a piece titled "An Empire of Widows and Orphans" and I recommend it (as I recommend all of his works).

By: Robert II

Robert II — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:31:11 +0000

"the socialization of vast numbers of young men and women whose traditional loyalties and morality are undermined and then replaced with an ethic of obedience to the revolution." This is the immediate task. It is so obvious a task for traditionalists and conservatives as to be obscure, neglected and ignored. Obama awarded honorary degrees at Notre Dame, Heather Mac Donald celebrates Feast of the Assumption with anti-christian, bilge, appeal to the "Secular Right", "Conservative" Republican, Arlen Specter joins Democratic Party, Southern Poverty Law Center Banks Millions, Chronicles lives on a shoestring, kids takeover National Review, Patriots while having sons die in Iraq and are labeled unpatriotic for opposing idiots, the list is so long and the results so astonishing, that a blind man could read them with total comprehension. Traditionalists are in full retreat while the enemy is teaching their children and mistaking the very etymology of the word ,Tradere, they continue to advocate working with republicans to oppose current legislation? FOR HEAVENS SAKE!!!!!!

By: Thomas Fleming

Thomas Fleming — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:50:51 +0000

I completely agree that we have a bloated military establishment that is used to support two wicked projects. The more obvious project is world-domination on behalf of the economic elite of the US and its allies, but the second is just as bad, namely, the socialization of vast numbers of young men and women whose traditional loyalties and morality are undermined and then replaced with an ethic of obedience to the revolution. Nonetheless, we cannot at this point back off too far without exposing our people to retaliation, no matter how much of it be richly deserved

By: Kirt Higdon

Kirt Higdon — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 23:59:30 +0000

Any military which is powerful enough to dominate most of the globe and threaten the remainder with complete annihilation is way too powerful. The US has something like 11 super carrier battle groups and many squadrons of stealth aircraft. No other nation has ever built even one super carrier or stealth aircraft. The US also dominates near earth space with its surveillance and communications satellites and these are what enable the war machine to work with such deadly precision. As for the US needing all of this to last more than a day, I really don't understand that at all. As much as the US has made itself hated throughout the world with its arrogance and bullying, I don't think there is any country which would want to destroy us completely or even conquer us. This vast machinery of death and destruction needs to be radically down-sized before the next generation of weapons, the killer robots, are tested and deployed. It's true that the generals themselves do not pick the wars, although some of them like Powell and Petraes, have been influential. The wars are picked by the Clintons, the Bushes, the Obamas, etc. and we certainly cannot trust them to make moral decisions.

By: S.L. Toddard

S.L. Toddard — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 22:17:49 +0000

Also, do you, Dr. Fleming, not believe we could drastically reduce the size of our military - say, to whatever size is necessary to maintain and operate our nuclear arsenal, plus an additional body of soldiers sufficient to guard our borders and conduct whatever small scale operations might need to be conducted short of total war, in the unlikely event of which we could re-institute the draft?

By: S.L. Toddard

S.L. Toddard — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 22:03:53 +0000

Thank you Dr. Fleming. I am currently reading The Morality of Everyday Life, by the way, and find it immensely enjoyable and rewarding. I recommend it highly to anyone here who is disenchanted with modern American life and wondering whether there is (or ever was) a better, brighter way.

Thank you for the work you do.

By: Thomas Fleming

Thomas Fleming — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 21:11:34 +0000

I do not at all know that it is the military that is responsible for America's wars, and I do not imagine that any sane person thinks that the USA would last a day if not defended by a large military. When I read some of the comments sent into this website by people in their 20's and 30's, whose contempt for fact, truth, and logic would astonish even the guys I went to school with, I can hardly bring myself to pass a harsh judgment on the 18 year old dummies who are products of the American system, whether they are ghetto rats from Chicago or Ivy League graduates. But, the truth is, human beings only rarely amount to very much and only a tiny proportion of them are capable of thinking independently. Without strong moral and cultural pressures, most of us lapse into the moronic self-seeking that characterizes almost the entire American people today. So, cheer up and have kinder thoughts about dumb teens who are as hopeless as they are clueless, just like their parents and probably their grandparents. In America stupidity is like an Aeschylean curse that replicates itself across the generations in an unending downward spiral of mental and moral imbecility.

By: S.L. Toddard

S.L. Toddard — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 14:14:40 +0000

"it is unrealistic to assume that an 18 year old American has a clue as to what is going on in Iraq or the Balkans."

Perhaps, and it is also probably unrealistic to assume that an 18 year old American has a firm grasp on 20th century American history, but doesn't an 18 year old American have an *obligation* to learn about the history of the military he's going to join? And if that military has a history of engaging in unprovoked, undeclared, unjust wars, is he not in any way responsible for either pledging his service to a military with such a record or for failing to acquaint himself with that record?

By: Sempronius

Sempronius — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:24:32 +0000

@55

You forgot to mention one other thing.Although not talked about much,our military is badly fractured along racial/ethnic lines.There are all kinds of "red neck," black,and latino gangs snarling at each other within the armed forces.Inter-ethnic violence is not unheard of.I have it on good authority that black and latino veterans are effecting "technology transfers" with their co-ethnics in the nation's great conurbations;urban guerrilla warfare techniques and how to defend against their counter-measures are spreading amongst the proletariat.

I leave it to you gentlemen to assess the import of these tidings.