Posted on 12/16/2008 8:16:22 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
In Hopewell Township, N.J., the veterans of American Legion Post 339 have put their building up for sale. "Today's vets don't come out," 82-year old Jim Hall told The Times of Trenton last month. The post is down from 425 paying members in the 1960s and '70s to 202 this year; only about a dozen regularly attend.
But it's America that has changed, not vets.
Since 1970, the population of the United States has grown by about 50 percent, from roughly 200 million to 300 million. Over the same period, the number of active-duty armed forces has fallen approximately 50 percent, from 3 million to 1.4 million. A far smaller percentage of the citizenry now serves in the military.
Whereas in 1969 13 percent of Americans were veterans, in 2007 only 8 percent of us were.
Even more important than these general demographic shifts is the change wrought by the end of the draft in 1973. Until then, military service was distributed pretty evenly across regions. But that is no longer true. The residential patterns for current veterans and the patterns of state-level contributions of new recruits to the all-volunteer military have a distinct geographic tilt. And tellingly, the map of military service since 1973 aligns closely with electoral maps distinguishing red from blue states.
In 1969, the 10 states with the highest percentage of veterans were, in order: Wyoming, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, California, Oregon, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio, Connecticut and Illinois.
In 2007, the 10 states with the highest percentage of post-Vietnam-era veterans were, in order: Alaska, Virginia, Hawaii, Washington, Wyoming, Maine, South Carolina, Montana, Maryland and Georgia.
Over the past four decades, which states have disappeared from the top 10? California, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Illinois, all big_blue states that have voted Democratic in the past five_presidential elections.
(Excerpt) Read more at sltrib.com ...
Can you say "Target Rich Environment"?
I knew you could.
BLOAT
That’s why they are so good. They are people who get things done. Liberals whine, Conservatives DO.
Some look at just the opposite. In the early days of the Republic, and before, the Militia was not voluntary. But it was local, and made up of a cross section of the people, including those who were not even eligible to vote.
A volunteer, professional army is, it was thought, to be more likely to be able to be used as a tool of oppression.
That said, if the draft is to be reinstated, it should be into something like the reserve or national guard. Then the regulars can recruit from that trained pool.
Works for the Swiss, the Swedes and the Israelis.
Don’t forget, either, that because of local leftist leanings, Jr. ROTC is banned in most high schools in the ‘blue’ states. What would have been an early recruiting/training base is closed off to the military.
Serving in the military is looked down on by the intelligensia and professional class that populate much of the Northeast. It’s ok for your kid or mine, just not theirs. They want to be protected, but not at the risk their own kids’ lives. They create a cacoon that must be protected by others. By now that mindset is so ingrained that, frankly, the kids never even think to join the military.
A few years ago a man wrote a book about his upper middle class kid’s decision to join the USMC. (Can’t remember names now, but they were featured several times on FNS) How could a kid from that environment think to join the service? He spoke of the rection from friends, colleagues, neighbors ... as if it were the strangest decision a kid had ever made. Not like it was experimenting with pot or anything socially acceptable.
“The Special Forces Resister.”
I remember the Resister, I would love to hear some discussion about that period from our Special Forces guys, especially that served in Haiti during the time of the Resister.
Recall the courtroom monologue by Jack Nicholson's character in "A Few Good Men"? I'm sure that the screenwriters were simply seeking to charactarize a professional military officer as a political troglodyte, but if you look at that fictional Marine colonel's speech in a vacuum, it perfectly encapsulates America's schizophrenic attitude toward the military profession.
It would only be for mop up.
I've already told a few democRat acquaintances and colleagues exactly that ... at least once in response to their remarks about the "Palin" stickers (still) on my vehicles. They react with horror, of course ... so I tell 'em "payback is a bitch".
I cut my political teeth heaping disrespect on Jimmy Carter ... Barry Hussein is a much bigger target.
Lookup (Marine) Lt. Nathan Ficke. Lt. Ficke attended Columbia University before enlisting in the Marines. He was featured in HBO's "Generation Kill", a miniseries about the 2nd Marine Recon's experience in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Ficke is a bit of a cult-hero in leftwing Blogs because: 1) he's 1 of them by virtue of education, and (2) he became skeptical about the War in Iraq (which the Left interprets as oppostion to the War).
To be clear, I'm not commenting on Lt. Ficke, just the Left's affection for him.
First the Pretender is going to have to prove he knows how to wipe his own ass. Ever see one of these affirmative action types try to function outside of their bullcrap contexts? I'll give it to you that he'll further bollocks up the civil service and probably lose a war or two. Other than that, I'll have to see for mysef.
That is our one hope. He’s more incompetent than he is socialist. I’m going out on a limb there, but I think time will prove that statement correct.
This *is* a WaPost article, and journalists are notoriously innumerate and, increasingly, historically ignorant.
LOL, that’s going to be the shortest war in history.
I've got an old Montana homestead that's probably never had a human set foot in some places.
Molon labe, mutha. LOL
That's because it was the enlisted oath, the officer's oath has not changed since 1868, and is the same oath that everyone but the President takes, including the VP, the cabinet officers and all federal public officials. The POTUS oath is specified by the Constitution. That oath says nothing about obeying orders.
The confusion may have arisen, because most officers enlist first, if only in the reserves, in the case of ROTC cadets, and thus that that oath, before their commissioning oath. National Guard officers take a similar but slightly different oath.
However neither the 1950 or the 1962 revisions to the oath of enlistment speak of *lawful* orders. But their was some emphasis on that aspect in some training I vagley remember taking, or maybe conducting, when I was an Air Guardsman, in the mid 1980s.
I tried not to disrespect the Office of the Presidency. I didn’t like our spending, immigration non-policy AND from day one, no challenge to the RATS! I didn’t sound off against the President though.
However, the RATS called candidate Bush a chimp since the day he dared to run against algore. Now, as you put it, payback is a bitch. Hence, obama is a monkey, an ape and a Chicago thug.
He may gut the military, but he can’t take their training and experience away with a DD214. They will become the core cadre for the opposition force (if it comes to that).
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