Article Archives by Subject:  Military

02-12-2012

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National Service
Subject: In Orwell's Newspeak: "Isolation" Means Mandatory Military Service For All

The drumbeat to enslave us never let's up. A few years ago, in my essay, "National Service: A Vicious Concept — And Its Antidote," I wrote about the Obama administration's drive to impose mandatory national service on all Americans. One of the few good thing that you can say about the economic crisis is that it created so many new problems during the past four years that attention was temporarily diverted from this proposal — although it is alive and continues to grow in our government-run educational system.

However, the ideological cancer that it is, the call for service is never completely eradicated, and this meme continues to course through our culture, springing to the surface at unpredictable times as a malignant social tumor. In a recent article by New Republic writer Russ Hoyle entitled, "Crisis Ahead for the Volunteer Military", he adds his voice to the call, proposing conscription as the medicine to cure what ails us.
    As U.S. forces come home from Iraq after nine years at war, the nation is facing professional troops sufficiently bruised and isolated from American society that some defense experts whisper we may need major changes in military education and even a conscription-based national youth service program to reboot our fighting forces.

Who are these "defense experts" who remain unnamed and are too afraid to make their worries publically known, only wispering their concerns to true patriots like Hoyle in private? I guess we'll just have to take Hoyle's word for it that they exist and would certainly be worth quoting if they ever chose to come forward.

What is the problem needing to be addressed? Troop "bruises" and "isolation". Well, that's certainly clear. And the obvious solution to that "isolation" is the abandonment of a volunteer armed services and its replacement with enslavement of all, for surely there must be companionship, camaraderie and understanding that is fostered by one's shared experience of forced labor.
    The wartime shortcomings of the all-volunteer military are a legacy, in part, of the draft's end 40 years ago. There's been a growing disconnect between the American public and the U.S. armed forces.

    Outgoing joint chiefs chairman Adm. Mike Mullen declared last year that "America no longer knows its military, and the U.S. military no longer knows America."

    Waning public interest has allowed the military to operate in a kind of self-imposed moral isolation that has weakened the U.S. officer corps, the backbone of the volunteer force.

The volunteer military is a job that some people choose, just as others might decide to be a librarian, an inventor, a lawyer, or work in a factory. What exactly is it that is so special about military service that it results in some unprecedented inability for it to be fathomed? Yes, soldiers face issues that most of us do not fully comprehend, but then again, most people really don't understand the true complexity of an automotive assembly line, nor do they have much idea as to what an architect does in the course of designing a building. So what? That's the nature of a society base upon a division of labor. With so many options available, we end up focusing on certain areas relevant to our own lives at the expense of a deeper understanding of others. This is just a necessary consequence of living in a wonderfully expansive 21st century civilization.

If the military faces some sort of unspecified "moral crisis" (whatever that means?) with it's officers, how does this translate to a civilian problem? Instead, it more obviously indicates a defect within the chain of command leading back to the commander-in-chief, and that is where the difficulty must be identified and a solution found. But it turns out that that's not really the "problem" that Hoyle is concerned about.
    [Milton] Friedman's economic theory ended the unpopular draft. Forty years later, the American people's instinctive interest in their troops' welfare has inevitably atrophied.

Hmmm. Did you know that your concern about this county's war efforts and the welfare of our troops was "instinctive"? And were you aware that because you no longer face the draft you have become distracted from your duty to care, and have allowed those "instincts" to atrophy? How could you?! Well, if you are not going to take appropriate responsibility for yourself, there are always others ready and willing to step in.
    To reduce the military's isolation from civilian life, the Pentagon should begin by deeply cutting manpower and supporting renewed conscription in the form of a three-year mandatory national service program (including civilian energy, education, infrastructure, environmental and urban service options) for all Americans between 18 and 25, with special benefits for military service.

    A well-designed national service program is not a comprehensive prescription for what ails the U.S. military. It is not a return to the draft. But it would restore a needed sense of civic responsibility among young Americans. It would supply manpower demands during wartime and replace most private contractors with responsible enlisted troops."

Whoa Doggy! Did you see the magic happen? Well look again!

Hoyle opens his act by waving around "military isolation" in one hand. Then, like any good magician he engages in a lot of misdirection during the middle of the performance. Finally, with a daring feat of prestidigitation, the other hand pulls a "sense of civic responsibility" from out of nowhere for his magnificent conclusion. Bravo!

I wonder just how many in the audience noticed the old switcheroo? Hoyle is so sure that his magic is effective that he's even willing to state that a "national service program is not a comprehensive prescription for what ails the U.S. military" and not worry that his readers will catch on. He's already hooked them by their guilt, and all that's left is to reel them in and set them to work at the direction of their government masters.

It wasn't that long ago when Rahm Emanuel was saying:
    Everybody—somewhere between the ages 18 and 25—will serve three months of basic training and understanding in a kind of civil defense.

Now, here we are, a few short years later, calling for a "three-year mandatory national service program". Isn't it adorable how soon those little memes grow up! Also, don't miss the call to couple the forced military service with another new "special benefits" entitlement program that further ensures that a larger segment of the populace is even more dependent upon the federal government for their lives — thereby making them much more compliant in following government dictates once released from their slave labor.

The progressive's collectivistic mind-set is fully wedded to the total elimination of individualism from the culture. So long as they wield power they will never cease their attack on independence and self-responsibility. As Orwell, Huxley, Levin, Rand and other authors have prophesied, the goal is nothing less than totalitarian control over the thoughts and the actions of every human being. These people are our mortal enemies and it is important that we fight back now, or else we will suffer the disastrous consequences in the very near future!

12-10-2009

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Brad Harrington
Subject: A Patriot's Open Letter

This open letter, written by Bradley Harrington to our political representatives, is an excellent articulation of the most fundamental issue currently facing our country. We are in nothing less than a battle for the enlightenment ideals of individualism, unalienable human rights and liberty that is embodied in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
    A PATRIOT'S OPEN LETTER

    By Bradley Harrington

    "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." — Thomas Jefferson, Letter To Benjamin Rush, 1800 —


    An Open Letter To Our "Representatives" In The United States Government:


    As a patriot, and as a former military veteran, I need to tell you a few things. I know that you folks have a lot to do, and don't really want to take the time to listen to me. But I strongly suggest that you do; for that attitude, you see—of being to "busy" to listen to the people who populate this country—is part of the problem I need to discuss with you.

    For hundreds of years, people like me have kept this nation strong and free. Many of us are currently serving America in the Middle East; a lot of us still surviving served in Vietnam. Our fathers served in Korea; our grandfathers in World War II; our great-grandfathers in World War I.

    All the way back, we have fought, sweated, battled, bled and died to protect our nation from attack. Whenever you called upon us to serve, we were there. We didn't question your right to send us off to war; we assumed that you had our ideals at heart; we believed that you knew what you were doing, and we unhesitatingly took out whoever you named as our enemies. Hundreds of thousands of us were killed in that process—but, as long as we knew that we were defending liberty's torch, even the laying down of our lives was not too high a price to pay.

    In the Revolutionary War, we fought to separate ourselves from the tyranny of King George III and to establish this nation, "conceived in liberty," as a safe haven for individuals to peacefully live their lives and pursue their happiness. Those were, and are, our ideals, and we have always viewed America, her history and her institutions as mankind's last, best and greatest hope. And, for many decades, our efforts and achievements enabled our nation to shine as a magnificent beacon to the "poor and huddled masses" yearning to be free.

    "Patriotism," to us, you see, is not blindly following our leaders wherever they might lead: it is respect for, and admiration of, the principles of freedom that animated the creation of the United States. It is a profound passion we have, at the very core of our souls, in regard to man's unconquerable mind and the indomitability of the human spirit. Patriotism, to us, is not loyalty to a government, but loyalty to an idea, and it drives all of our thoughts and actions: the idea that men and women have a right to be free.

    Have you been doing your job as well as we have been doing ours? Have you been as true to the ideals our nation was founded upon as we have? Or have you used your power to "engage in a long train of abuses and usurpations?" (Declaration of Independence, 1776.)

    Today, we observe that you and your laws have reduced our economy to a shambles; have aided and abetted the destruction of our social order; hampered the processes of our courts; stifled our productive capacities; and ensnared the citizens of this nation in a web of offensive and arbitrary decrees that can be designed for one purpose only: to turn us into serfs. And, now, as you sit in your citadels of power in Washington, D.C., you tell us, when we protest, that you are "busy." Busy doing what? Taking away our liberties and turning this once-proud, once-free nation into a shoddy, second-class "welfare" state?

    I respectfully suggest that you'd better think again: for not all of us are mindless automatons to be led like sheep to the slaughter. Many of us know our history, and have read the Declaration, and are fully aware of the part that says: "That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it..."

    We military patriots haven't perished in one war after another so that you, our so-called "representatives," could destroy the ideals we have always combated to defend; we fought one revolution to protect those ideals in 1776. So, take notice: if you, in your colossally arrogant, controlling ignorance, continue to take us down this corridor of coercion, we might just decide that it is time to do it again.

    Bradley Harrington is a former United States Marine and a free-lance writer who lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
11-26-2009

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Joe Galloway
Subject: Thanksgiving: Learning How to Appreciate Your Rights

Joe Galloway is a combat journalist and author of the book "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young". On a recent book tour through Lubbock, TX, he offered his views on military conscription, as reported in this article from Texas Tech:
    "When I was growing up, there was a draft," he said. "We fought World War II, Korea, and Vietnam on the draft, and nobody liked it, but it reached out and pulled in Americans from all walks of life, and that wasn't a bad thing at all.

    "We are a nation of 300 million people and fewer than one percent of us wear the uniform and do all of the serving and sacrificing for all of the other 299 million, and they've been worked pretty hard these last eight years."

    The U.S. dropped the draft system after the Vietnam War, but Galloway said he believes the United States would benefit from some program that compelled young men and women into national service, creating more appreciation for the liberties they enjoy as Americans.

In a video interview attached to the article, Mr. Galloway states:
    "I don't think that's what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they set things up. They thought you had to earn your freedom and democracy"

This got me thinking about the issue of Americans appreciating or failing to appreciate certain aspects of their lives, and I am in agreement with Galloway that many people in the U.S. have no real understanding of the nature of their individual rights, including their liberty, and therefore fail to properly appreciate them. But I cannot agree with Galloway's solution — the same one being proposed by the Obama administration — which is to violate those very rights in an effort to teach people to treasure them!

The "right to life" identifies that each person's life is sacrosanct and may not be violated by another, while the "right to liberty" means that each individual may select their own goals and pursuits in accordance with their will, free from external compulsion. I am sure that it is true that if you conscript a person into national service for a few years against their will, command their every move during that period, and place them in combat situations where their very life is in grave danger, if they survive the experience and are once again freed, most people will come away with a deeper appreciation for their life and their liberty. Of course, the same thing can be said for a survivor of a Siberian Gulag, and, in principle, there is no real difference between these two situations, as both are violations of the rights of the individual.

I also disagree with Galloway's interpretation of the Founding Father's intentions with regards to our rights. The Declaration of Independence states that we possess:
    "certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

which means that these rights are absolute and an indivisible part of our human nature. Quoting from unalienable.com:
    The absolute rights of individuals may be resolved into the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right to acquire and enjoy property. These rights are declared to be natural, inherent, and unalienable.    [Atchison & N. R. Co. v. Baty, 6 Neb. 37, 40, 29 Am. Rep. 356.]

    By the "absolute rights" of individuals is meant those which are so in their primary and strictest sense, such as would belong to their persons merely in a state of nature, and which every man is entitled to enjoy, whether out of society or in it. The rights of personal security, of personal liberty, and private property do not depend upon the Constitution for their existence. They existed before the Constitution was made, or the government was organized. These are what are termed the "absolute rights" of individuals, which belong to them independently of all government, and which all governments which derive their power from the consent of the governed were instituted to protect.    [People v. Berberrich (N. Y.) 20 Barb. 224, 229; McCartee v. Orphan Asylum Soc. (N. Y.) 9 Cow. 437, 511, 513, 18 Am. Dec. 516; People v. Toynbee (N. Y.) 2 Parker, Cr. R. 329, 369, 370 (quoting 1 Bl. Comm. 123).]

Clearly, if our rights are inherent, unalienable and exist outside of the Constitution and any formation of government, then they are not something that need to be earned. As the Declaration of Independence clearly states, governments are not formed in order to dispense rights, but instead:
    "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed"

The original purpose of our government's formation was to protect and defend the individual rights of each citizen. It is some twisted form of Orwellian illogic that concludes that those fundamental rights are protected by their violation! And it is the cruelest perversion when this method is applied to young, developing minds as is currently being done in public school civic classes all across the nation. In the name of "service-learning", school children are forced to perform hours of "community service" work while any discussion of the nature of individual rights and the guarantees of those rights in the U.S. Constitution are buried. And this is after these same children have already been conscripted into forced education.

People's gaps in knowledge, resulting in a corresponding failure to grasp the true value of a thing, is certainly not limited to the abstract concepts of individual rights. If one believes that it is the government's function to determine what is of value for each of us, and that it is the government's further role to educate us to appreciate those values, even if force must be applied to achieve that goal, then, in the spirit of the Thanksgiving holiday, let's consider another program that might be implemented.

I suggest that every American be required to live in an isolated log cabin in northern Minnesota for a period of two years: heating their home with wood that must be cut, hauled and split; getting water from a stream which must then be purified by boiling; using candles or open pit fires for light; butchering their own meat; plowing, planting, growing and harvesting their own crops; and maintaining the structure as required, including building an optional outhouse if desired. Of course, everyone would be encouraged to explore sources of alternative energy, sustainable forestry, organic farming, low-impact waste management, and energy conservation in their spare time. I know with absolute certainty that anyone surviving this wonderful experience would have "earned" a much greater respect and honest appreciation for: the hot dog that they purchase at their grocery store; the gallon of gasoline that they pump into their automobile; the flush of a toilet; the flick of a switch that floods the room with light; the push of a button that raises the room temperature by a few degrees; the convenience of picking up the telephone and calling a roofer when a leak is discovered; the simple pleasure of a conversation with another person; and so much more!

If forced military, national or community-service are good ideas that are justified due to their beneficial effect upon the conscriptee, then I can see no argument against this proposal which would have considerably more beneficial impact. Impact being the operative word!

Of course, I'm kidding. I would never suggest that a program like this was in any way justified in being imposed upon citizens of a free country. I was just making a point about individual rights and why conscription is wrong in principle. However, if someone were to suggest that we make this a requirement for anyone running for political office, then you would have my attention!

Happy Thanksgiving!
11-12-2009

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Michelle Obama
Subject: Make Your Entire Life a Tour of Duty

The following excerpts are from an article by Christine Simmons of the Associated Press, titled, "Mrs. Obama says veterans' skills can help at home".

Earlier today, in a Veterans' Day speech, Michelle Obama focused on how veterans could continue to serve their community and nation in ways that:
    "make their entire life a tour of duty."

    "For many of these folks, service is the air they breathe. They don't just want to serve for a certain number of years of deployment."

On a day that is set aside to honor our veterans who have engaged in the difficult and often dangerous task of protecting and defending this country, instead of simply recognizing their work and offering an unqualified statement of thanks, the First Lady leads off with statements designed to cajole those honorable veterans into committing to an entire life of service to their country. Although we have had over a year to witness the President and First Lady in action, it is still breathtaking to see the level of inhumanity exhibited by these two, as they pursue their social agenda for this country, with total disregard for the existence of, or impact upon actual human beings.

Here are additional passages from the article showing that the focus was on promoting the idea of national service, and not in honoring the veterans:
    "She told service groups, students and veterans at George Washington University that what servicemembers learn abroad is very useful for communities trying to overcome challenges at home."

    "Communities need veterans' knowledge in technical skills such as engineering, logistics and public safety, she said."

    "'Whether it's running a rural health clinic or rescuing a community struck by a natural disaster, our veterans have what it takes for success,' she said."

    "President Barack Obama signed into law earlier this year national service legislation that includes a Veterans Corps, designed to engage veterans in service."

And then we finally get to the entire point of this exercise:
    "The first lady appeared with Vice President Joe Biden's wife, Jill, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell's wife, Alma, at the event that promoted an initiative for uniting civilian and military service. The first lady encouraged the public to reach out to veterans and honor them by doing service of their own."

The march towards universal conscription in this country continues. And don't think that its going to be a three-month stint either. As you can see from this speech, the plan is really for life-long servitude.
10-03-2009

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Subject: The Oath Keepers

In response to the John Galt Pledge at this site, a reader brought to my attention a very interesting organization called Oath Keepers. They describe themselves as follows:
    "Oath Keepers is a non-partisan association of currently serving military, reserves, National Guard, veterans, Peace Officers, and Fire Fighters who will fulfill the Oath we swore, with the support of like minded citizens who take an Oath to stand with us, to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, so help us God. Our Oath is to the Constitution."

The site then proceeds to outline the following action:
    Below is our declaration of orders we will NOT obey because we will consider them unconstitutional (and thus unlawful) and immoral violations of the natural rights of the people. Such orders would be acts of war against the American people by their own government, and thus acts of treason. We will not make war against our own people. We will not commit treason. We will defend the Republic.

    1. We will NOT obey any order to disarm the American people.

    2. We will NOT obey any order to conduct warrantless searches of the American people, their homes, vehicles, papers, or effects -- such as warrantless house-to house searches for weapons or persons.

    3. We will NOT obey any order to detain American citizens as "unlawful enemy combatants" or to subject them to trial by military tribunal.

    4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a "state of emergency" on a state, or to enter with force into a state, without the express consent and invitation of that state's legislature and governor.

    5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty and declares the national government to be in violation of the compact by which that state entered the Union.

    6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.

    7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.

    8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to "keep the peace" or to "maintain control" during any emergency, or under any other pretext. We will consider such use of foreign troops against our people to be an invasion and an act of war.

    9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies, under any emergency pretext whatsoever.

    10. We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

WOW!   What is so shocking here is not the words themselves, which for the most part, merely reflects language currently in the U.S. Constitution, — what is shocking is that a pledge like this was considered necessary by people in our military organizations at all! This shows to what depths concerns run regarding the possible actions of the current administration.