Activist Editor Sponsorship of Military Diversion Program is Over The Line

The Pasadena Pundit ^ | February 21, 2007 | Wayne Lusvardi

[WayneLusvardi]

Activist Editor Sponsorship of Military Diversion Program is Over The Line

"Marxists are people whose insides are torn up day after day because they want to rule the world and no one will publish their letter to the editor" (except if they are the editor) - Mark Helprin

The Pasadena Pundit - Feb. 21, 2007

The editor of the local newspaper is out with a column advocating and organizing the active discouragement of military recruiting, especially of working class young people, for a war he considers "disastrous." The right to free speech is one thing. But the editor is using the bully-pulpit of the newspaper to organize a forum "What Families Need to Know About Military Recruitment" at PCC to divert young people from the military. See here: http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_5268772. I have no objection to the editor's anti-war activism nor his anti-war editorial position, even if I may disagree with him. But I do not think he ought to use the venue of his own newspaper to organize and promote such activism. Hasn't the editor crossed a line here?

This same newspaper editor can't resist seeing the world through Marxist social class glasses; whether its affordable housing, global warming, the highly contentious war, or other issues.

First, "what families need to know about military recruitment" is that the military is the most classless sector in our society, especially so in wartime. See here: http://usmilitary.about.com/od/joiningthemilitary/a/demographics.htm David R. Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organizations at the University of Maryland has reported, that contrary to conventional wisdom, both the poorest and the wealthiest people are underrepresented at the bottom of the military ranks. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/19/AR2005081900815_pf.html Robert Cushing, a retired professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, tracked those who died in Iraq by geography and found that whites from small, mostly poor, rural areas made up a disproportionately large percentage of the casualties in Iraq. http://www.coba.unt.edu/itds/faculty/evangelopoulos/Stats/AAS%20-%20IraqWarSmallTowns.htm

Interestingly, two liberals, Kathy Roth-Duquet and Robert Schaeffer, in their book AWOL:The Unexcused Absense of the Upper Class from Miltary Service and How It Hurts Our Country, call for greater recruitment from the upper class, and even greater class integration of the military. http://www.amazon.com/AWOL-Unexcused-Absence-Americas-Military/dp/0060888598

And America's social class system ought to be celebrated not denigrated. As sociologist Peter L. Berger has written:

By contrast, a class system, while it does not do away with the advantages or disadvantages of birth, leaves enormously more room for achievement. An Untouchable had no chance of becoming a Brahmin, and a member of the lower feudal orders had few opportunities to make it into the aristocracy, but the poor in a class society have at least a reasonable chance of making it into the middle class and some middle- class individuals do make it into the ranks of the rich. Of all the empirically available stratification systems, class allows for the highest degree of social mobility (upward as well as downward). It is a relatively open system. This openness is not unrelated to what people, in ordinary parlance, mean by freedom.

The ideal of equality, even if it were desirable (which I, for one, am not at all sure of), is empirically unattainable. The options are between different systems of inequality. The most violent project of creating an egalitarian society, the Communist one, managed to create a grossly inegalitarian society that curiously resembled feudalism, with the party elite playing the role of the old aristocracy. By comparison both with it and with other possibilities of social hierarchy, class appears relatively benign. Its harshnesses can be softened by political means. Its openness goes well with economic development and with democratic politics. Three cheers for class? Hardly. But, in an imperfect world, two cheers would seem to be in order. http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9606/opinion/berger.html

As columnist Ruben Navarrette writes in today's San Diego Union about income inequality:

But for others, there is an emotion that always seems to get in the way. It's class envy -- the sense that it's simply not fair that there are those who earn in an hour what it takes others to earn in a month. It doesn't help that there are plenty of politicians, commentators and pundits who shamelessly try to cultivate that resentment and use it for their own purposes. They won't succeed if you don't play along. Being envious of the rich is a waste of time and energy. Better to direct those passions toward building a life for yourself that others will envy. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/02/americans_shouldnt_feel_bad_ab.html

It was the clamor and activism of anti-war protestors during the Vietnam War that made the U.S. abandon the draft. Paradoxically, when President George H.W. Bush, Sr., decided to invade Iraq in Gulf War I, there was virtually no opposition to the war because conscripts were no longer in the ranks of the military to form a base of families opposed to going to war.

Interestingly, this same newspaper editor teaches a course in Journalism School about ethics and lying (see here: http://www.polytechnic.org/faculty/gfeldmeth/journal.html.). It should be noted that the local Chief of Police recently caught this same editor in trying to entrap his staff in a "public records act" sting which backfired: http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/article.php?id=4260&IssueNum=56. The editor had conspired with a group called Cal Aware, allowing his newspaper reporter to (unethically?) be under the apparent employ of both organizations at the same time in covering this story.

Mark Helprin once wrote that "Marxists are people whose insides are torn up day after day because they want to rule the world and no one will publish their letter to the editor." I might add, except if they are the editor.

I may be a lone voice and may be missing something here, but it may be time to call for a rebuke to such editorial activism. Advocating and instituting a military service diversion program is over the line as far as I'm concerned. The Media News Group which owns the local newspaper can be contacted here: http://www.medianewsgroup.com/contactus/.

[armymarinemom]

I have begun to refer to people such as Helpirn Journavist.