Quite a while ago, I fisked the same sort of academic who was upset over the fact that the US no longer conscripts its troops. (I note for the record that we never actually did hear back from that professor.)
Any way, the writer of this article, one Danielle Allen (who has some sort of post at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton) manages to observe this:
Military institutions across nations and throughout time have always been important creators of culture. They strive to develop unbreakable bonds of solidarity among their members based on shared values, experiences and outlooks.
and this:
I spotted the link between military service and regional partisan divisions when I was researching not military history but Internet political communication. After spending time on political Web sites of the right and left, I noticed that posts on right-leaning sites often employed military lingo -- habits of developing monikers and jingles and of using the vocabulary of military tactics and strategy. Left-leaning sites, in contrast, mostly lacked any easily recognizable features of military language.
This is one sign that our public sphere already suffers from a division between military and non-military cultures. The division is not trivial, and without institutional change it is likely to be durable.
And finally this:
It is time to think seriously about a structure for national service -- both military and non-military -- that could successfully integrate young people from different regions of the country so that they will come, at least, to understand each other. We need to weave a fabric of shared citizenship anew.
As I said then, (and I don't really think I can say it any better now):
A universal duty to service is already there. It exists whether or not there is a draft law. To fufill that duty, all it takes is to walk into a recruiting station and say, “I wish to join.” The professor could have done that at anytime in his life. He appears to have chosen not to. In short, the professor himself is at the heart of the professor’s argument that there is a disconnect between the citizenry and the military. Enough of the professor’s generation decided that a draft was unnecessary and made its feelings known quite loudly that the draft was abolished. And now the professor is complaining because there isn’t a draft?
She manages to make the connection between military culture and "the" culture at large, (I wonder if she read Martin van Creveld's "The Culture of War", he talks alot about the military and culture in that book), notices the distinct lack of military jargon on left-tard sites, and can only come up with the idea that we'd better draft people so that they 'weave a fabric of shared citizenship anew'. Oh, and its supposed to be both 'military and non-military' too.
BUT SHE JUST DOESN'T GET IT.
All those people on left-tard sites could have joined up. but they didn't. They. Did. Not. Of their own free will. 40 years of academia, movies, books, radio, rock and roll etc, etc, etc, running down the military will do that, you know. And now she wants to change it? Good luck with that.
The duty is there whether it performed or not. All you have to is Do. Your. Duty.
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