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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (283314)	12/7/2008 7:30:38 PM
From: Maurice Winn	1 Recommendation Respond to of 793955

Lindy, I don't judge yesterday by today's standards and am well aware that the veneer of civilisation we enjoy is skin deep. Dig a bit deeper into our amygdala and limbic processes and we will find our chimpanzee natures charging to the fore. Even today, there are plenty of situations in our daily lives where we are still in the jungle. But as far as we are able to stay clear of those processes the better it is for us. One of the primary measures of progress away from that barbarism is private property, respect for individuals and paying the going rate for whatever it is we want to buy. Conscription does not fit in there in any way. The USA and many other countries have successfully moved away, more or less, to a greater or lesser extent, from those barbaric ways of life and that's a spectacularly wonderful thing, with plenty of room for further improvements. Conscription for wars of choice in the 1960s in the "free" world was not part of "yesterday". Maoris eating Maoris and Captain Cook in previous centuries was "yesterday" and at that time it was very much jungle rules and it would have been a shame to let good protein go to waste when food was not in large surplus. That's just how it was. It's not like that now. War in the modern world and being in the army is just another job. People get the jobs they can get. We evaluate the various aspects of the job offers and choose jobs to fit out personalities and abilities. You are denigrating military service by suggesting it's fit only for the poor. I consider such front line jobs as being among the noblest. The military people don't want low-life failures who can't do anything better. They want and need top-line people, and they need good quality people in the lowest ranks too. I wouldn't want to hire people who can't get any other job to be my front line troops. That's what the likes of Saddam and the Italians in WWII did. At the first hint of trouble and first opportunity, the troops ran for their lives and surrendered en masse [of course and sensibly]. Those whining "Bring back conscription so the poor don't do all the fighting" have got it wrong. They should say "Increase the pay rates, hire better people". Military people in the USA are managing and responsible for very large amounts of capital equipment and consequences. You don't put people who can't get a job making Subways in charge of tanks and killing people. Come on now, have some respect for military service. It's the front line against barbarism and lack of respect for individuals and their property in places like USSR/Russia, China, across Africa, in the Islamic Jihad world of forced submission to Mullahs, and various dictatorships hither and yon such as Burma, Cuba, North Korea. <What he explained was that mankind doesn't need a King.> When I was a child, we had a children's book, "Tweedles Be Brave" in which the monkey king was the boss but one day all the monkeys realized they didn't need a king at all and they all went off and played happily in the forest. The king was sad because he didn't have all and sundry paying him tribute for being nothing more than a king. I have checked cyberspace and it's available for sale as a collector's item - quite expensive or I'd buy one! Mqurice Hopefully, the current financial and economic crunch time is not a prelude to a reversion to the nasty, brutish old ways.