"The Military Scares Me"

Glenn Reynolds links to a story today about A BIG MARCH IN KNOXVILLE. 

Up to 20,000 people turned out Saturday for a parade to welcome home the National Guard's 278th Regimental Combat Team, providing a big-city atmosphere powered by small-town values.

As pleased as I was to see such support for our troops upon their return from Iraq, I was more struck by a significant discontinuity that is too rarely emphasized but that lies at the core of many of our current cultural conflicts.

First, allow me to set the scene.  Last week, my Oldest Son came home on leave after finally finishing his training as an Air Force linguist.  He volunteered to help do some recruiting in the area for the military and on Tuesday met with the local recruiter, who told him that, to no one's surprise, this is a particularly difficult area in which to recruit.  He told Oldest Son that most high schools are overtly hostile to military recruiters and it requires significant intestinal fortitude to walk into some of the schools in uniform.

As if to confirm this contention, this morning, on NPR, I heard a report that a group of High School students from the area has gone to court to prevent the military from having access to their high school records, especially test scores, GPA, and other salient data.  I have not yet found a link to the story, however.

Westchester County is a wealthy suburb to the north of New York City, with many excellent schools and students who aspire to our nation's finest colleges.  Most of Westchester shares New York City's liberal tendencies and, while it is not unusual for liberal Republicans to be elected in local contests, Hillary Clinton (who lives in the upscale community of Chappaqua) and Chuck Schumer have nothing to worry about in Westchester.  Throughout the county there are pockets of less wealthy communities and some impoverished areas, but that is the exception. 

Oldest Son thought that there might be many high school students who would be intrigued by the thought of entering the military, learning a foreign language, and doing important work that they wouldn't be able to talk about.  Middle Son spoke about this to his friends, who all know that Oldest Son has joined the Air Force, and reported a curious reaction from one of his closest friends. 

Justin is a bright and talented young man who will be a classmate of Middle Son in college next fall.  In part through the influence of Middle Son, Justin is less reflexively liberal politically than many of their classmates, yet when Middle Son suggested he might want to speak tot he recruiter, Justin demurred and said, "The military scares me."

I find this response, which was perhaps partially meant to be facetious, particularly troubling.  The overt hostility from the left toward the military has been part of the background noise of our politics since the 1960's, another metastasis from the cancer of Vietnam.   Yet when a young man in the area refuses to speak to an Air Force recruiter because he is scared, there is something more going on.  There is an estrangement between the population of our area and the military that is extremely troubling and potentially quite dangerous.  Young people in large parts of Blue State America seem to be inculcated with the idea that those whose job it is to defend our freedoms are more frightening than those who would try to take our freedoms away.  Can it be that these young people truly believe we do not have to defend ourselves?  That the world has become a place where innocents are protected by virtue of the magical "love" emanating from the Age of Aquarius?  Can they truly believe that disarming ourselves will somehow make us safer? 

The left has always been anti-American, by definition; they oppose capitalism, free markets, and inequality of outcomes.  Their opposition and demonization of the military is conscious and by design.  However, I do not think that there has been any overt, conscious, campaign to delegitimize the military among those who think of themselves as liberals.  In fact, I suspect that the military has simply been ignored by most people in my area.  When children are taught about our history, our wars are treated as if there was minimal fighting.  World War II is taught as if the primary issue was the internment of Japanese Americans.  The Korean War is glided past as if it was one large MASH episode, with all violence being equally distasteful.  The current coverage of the War in Iraq conveys the message that our soldiers are helpless and passive IED fodder; few Americans know the names of any American heroes who have saved lives and done great things in Iraq.

The estrangement from the military in my Bluest of Blue States, just north of one of our Bluest of Blue cities, has dangerous implications for our country.  We have already seen a deterioration in our political argumentation brought about by those who do not believe that we have shared interests that trump our disagreements.  Sadly, things are likely to worsen before they improve.