Posted on 04/21/2014 9:57:37 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
It may come as an unwelcome surprise to conservatives, but America’s military has one of the only working models of collective living and social welfare the country has ever known.
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.
In an era defined by 13 years of continuous war, most Americans still seem to regard the U.S. military as a mysterious and remote way of life. Then a tragedy involving a soldier or veteran happens, and reliably experts come forward to explain the strange customs of the folkloric troop in its native habitat. Shame that so many of the experts seem to have barely a clue what the military is really like. They’ve studied it from a distance without getting a real feel for the customs and characteristics of the culture they’re eager to explain.
It probably comes as a surprise to many, but the army may have more in common with Norway than Sparta....
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
wetphoenix to stanne
What about ladies getting pregnant the moment there is a deployment abroad?
Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies
Here is the entirety of your nasty, accusatory, stereotyping, generalizing sexist comment.
We are done
I would like to see military that funds itself
Until the social experimenting began, the strength of the military was the allegiance sworn to was flag and country, not to any current occupant of the White House. Where did my military of old go?
The author is a moron. Even if the military seems like a successful socialist enterprise, the military is very, very expensive. It doesn’t produce anything, it has no market, and it could not possibly exist as an independent entity. It only survives on $ billions taken from working Americans. That’s not to say it doesn’t provide an essential service. It does, and it’s one of the few federal agencies that is constitutionally enumerated.
Military are generally not socialist when it comes to their benefits, because what you call benefits aren’t handouts, aka welfare. The military works for its compensation, including retirement benefits. The country also promised that pay and those benefits in return for service, and it’s morally wrong to try to renege on the terms of that agreement AFTER military members have done their part.
You probably wouldn’t tolerate it if someone tried to change a contract with you after the fact. What makes you think the military should bend over and take simply because some now apparently think the military benefits are too generous? Those people could have served if they thought the deal was that good. Ah. But that might have involved sacrifice.
He sounds like a veteran of a filing cabinet.
Thanks 2ndDivisionVet.
A self funding military is the ugliest.
Like most socialist states, it’s completely dependent on people outside of it.
The premise of a working socialist model is ignorant. The military is funded elsewhere.
The military has always been a closed society.
All of what is done is ultimately war-based combat multiplying.
I’ll make it simple so even these folks can understood: If Johnny goes off to war, Johnny doesn’t need his mind on his family back on the home front. It needs to be on the war at hand.
And participation is voluntary and it is supported by a capitalist economy.
Amazing how many service-avoiders pretending to be conservatives show up when there are articles about military service.
Nothing conservative at all about folks who let other people take all the risks to preserve their safety and freedom - then complain about it from afar.
Somebody hasn’t seen the differences between E-3 and O-6 housing, pay, graduated costs... And when active duty are medically unfit, this “socialized medicine” system kicks them out because they lost their jobs...
A more accurate depiction of socialism in America is Native American health and housing programs. And what is endemic to the reservations? Drinking, unemployment, loss of meaning in life because barely surviving on the government system is addictive and deadly.
Military members give up their democratic rights.
Hell, the military system has a blatant discrimination system in place to socially separate the “low life” enlisted from the “superior” officer class.
I spent 4 years in the Air Force (1966-1970) and could not wait until I could re-enter civilization as I knew it before becoming a slave of the government for 4 years.
For you who did not live during the days of the draft, you were actually enslaved by the government by the draft.
I still contend that this country was never intended to have a large standing military — and this article has a lot of good reasons why this was the case.
goldstategop wrote:
“Military people are socialist when it comes to their benefits. When they were cut earlier this year, a frightened Congress hurriedly voted to restore them.”
First, I can tell that “goldstategop” is born AFTER The Fall of The Berlin Wall, to have regurgitated the leftist dribble that he/she/it accepted in the public school system.
Second, I am a military veteran, of both the Vietnam and The Cold War. My ‘benefits’ have been well-earned, by doing something I do not think you could bring yourself to, namely, putting your own mortality on the line for the country that bore you, as I did.
Every Democrat that I have noted, after Lyndon Baines Johnson, has always attempted to denigrate the U.S. military; to deny military veterans their rightful benefits from war-time injuries and illnesses; to include this current queer-in-charge, who as as an Illinois State Senator, called the U.S. military personnel engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, “babykillers”.
Please elaborate. I can think of several points you might be making ... not sure what you had in mind.
Thanks.
That is a very wrong and twisted spin on the military and the benefits they have earned.
Notice that congress didn't try to cut benefits for themselves, other elected officials and federal employees.
Correct. I always laugh when the 'military is socialism' argument is used to justify that socialism for the entirety would 'work' too.
It works because free peoples through their government 'choose' to fund it for their common protection. It works because it is funded to the level needed to maintain that (at least in other administrations). And, this 'group' funding works because the size (population) is a small subset of the total.
When you try this on a national level, there are no other sugar daddies out there to fund what else is needed. It just does NOT work - history has shown that over and over and over again.
I don’t even recall seeing any woman at any base I was on except at the Hospital. I think I knew maybe a dozen guys that were married that were below E5
When I was in what amazed me was the rapid increase in single parenting, using the military as another form of “welfare” to provide for families without a baby daddy....
Yes, they go to work but with daycare centers, easy medical access, lower commissary prices, etc., “single moms” have plenty of resources at their disposal...a trend I noticed while serving.
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