[2ndDivisionVet]

Explains a lot.

[JamesP81]

All-volunteer military has created a red-state Army in the U.S.

Why do you think Obama needs his "Civilian National Security Force". The volunteer military will probably simply refuse to fire on civilians that refuse to follow the government's illegal dictats should it come to that.

[x_plus_one]

This is the unspoken reason why the dems will re-instate the draft. They want to make sure they have political control over the military when they deploy units in red states and throughout the less-populated areas.

Red state troops are less reliable when it comes to strong arming the public into giving up their guns and religion....

[DCBryan1]

THIS is probably why Obama wants a "Citizen Miliary Group" as powerful and as well funded as the DoD.

Just think of it...an internal army of young, brain-dead, minority, hyphenated, indoctrinated, secularist, "youts", who will do whatever the Messiah says.

Methinks Obama is gonna shove Communism down our throats and is going to need an army of zombies around him IOT stay in office to accomplish his destruction of America.

[mjp]

And tellingly, the map of military service since 1973 aligns closely with electoral maps distinguishing red from blue states.

Conservatives are the defenders of freedom, rights, capitalism which liberals hate.

[patriciaruth]

It’s Catch 22.

If you have a war and reinstate the draft, then the draftees and those afraid of the draft will make sure you end the war and lose the war.

If you have a war and don’t draft, then you don’t have enough soldiers to fight the war, and winning it becomes a difficult, gritty affair for the soldiers and a cause for loss of popularity for the President who insists on toughing it out to victory.

If you try to nip potential world wars in the bud, you face the situation above but end up with far fewer casualties.

If you wait till we’re attacked and people get behind fighting the enemy, you end up with 10 or 50 times the casualties, but the President goes down in history as a great man.

[SFC Chromey]

In reality it is truly a BLUE STATE army.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=82973

This headline makes it sound like the Commies have the guns.

[Tallguy]

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.

Some random thoughts on this: 1. How much does the organized harassment of recruiters & disruption of recruiting efforts in "Blue States" play into this uneven distribution of servicemen? 2. I've noticed an increasing trend of veterans to 'retire' or seek civilian employment near one of their duty stations. Most of the remaining military bases are in the South.

[El Laton Caliente]

From what I’ve read a while back, the division is even greater when it comes to actual combat troops vs. support units.

[JDoutrider]

Soooo...

The coming CW2 could result in a "Red State" Military v.s. The "Pinko" army... Can't wait to see the Zero's new uniforms!

[Falcon4.0]

look how they’re dividing us now!

[Malesherbes]

Aside from the military, the best armed general population is in the “Red” states.

The best armed civilians in the “Blue” states are concentrated in the inner city street gangs. These would be the cadres for Obama’s “Civilian Defense Force,”

[steve-b]

ONOZ! Also, the NBA should be 86% white!

[eclecticEel]

Whereas in 1969 13 percent of Americans were veterans, in 2007 only 8 percent of us were.

The reasons for that should be patently obvious, WW2 vets don't live forever.

[Alberta's Child]

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.

I'm not sure if this really means anything. I don't think it's also a coincidence that most (if not all) of these are all very EXPENSIVE places to live . . . which means: (1) young people in their immediate post-military careers simply can't afford to move there, and (2) retirees can't afford to stay there.

I would also point out that at least two of these four (Massachusetts and New Jersey) have been particularly hard-hit by base closings. These places will tend to have fewer military veterans simply because they now have fewer active military bases.

[Crapgame]

Sounds like a good time to secede again. This time the South and West make a go of it. Since those areas supply the manpower, we ought to have more say in how we are governed.

[steve-b]

Over the past four decades, which states have disappeared from the top 10? California, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Illinois

Well, duh. The states that are greying have a smaller percentage of military-age people.

[villagerjoel]

Conclusion: there has never been a better time to suceed from the Union.

[Citizen Blade]

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.

Statistics like this are a little too complex to easily boil down to red state versus blue state. For example, Virginia, Hawaii and South Carolina all have large military bases, so it's not surprising that a lot of of veterans end up settling, post-service, in those areas. Also, there are a lot of veterans living in Northern Virginia and Maryland because there are a lot of vets working for the government.

Better statistics to look at would be what States the recruits come from, rather than where they end up settling down post-service.

[TChris]

Nice to see Wyoming on both lists. We have been pretty consistent in our support for the military over the years.

[Tzimisce]

In other words, we want a draft.