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These father and son authors were the speakers on a C-SPAN / Book-TV program over the past weekend. Excellent show and the son was wearing his dress blues and looked SHARP.

While I like the all-volunteer military greatly, this article illustrates one of the losses from the old military draft days. It was a social class mixer that gave an entire age group a mutual experience. In the barracks and the showers, all wore khaki and skin, not ghetto rags on one and Bill Blass Blazers on another. Any number of Hollywood movies dwelt on the cameradrie built between the Brooklyn argot and the Texas Twang.

This article well illustrates the void that the absent draft left. Now these prosperous liberals see interior America as fly-over country and ghetto blacks see white oppression [carefully taught]. This is not only classism rising but also self segregation into insular mind-sets. A familiar complaint about 'limousine liberals' is that they talk only to other such liberals and that only reinforces their biases and blinders.

Frankly, I would much rather have people who have volunteered to be in the military than some of the 'protestors' subverting the process from the inside. Let them roam the streets with their assinine slogans.....

You hit the nail on the head with this.

I think universal service to the nation is one of the great common bonds between classes, regions, etc. And it was recognized at the time.

Here's a great Christy poster from WWI:

There's also a Bill Mauldin cartoon that I can't find a copy of on the web . . . a bunch of WWII combat soldiers in a bull session somewhere a short distance behind the front. One soldier is telling the rest in expansive tones, "America couldn't have won this war without allies like Ireland and Texas!" It caused a slight flap at the time it was published, but Mauldin was used to that. He is absolutely one of my favorite cartoonists, my dad served with him and says that his cartoons are so close to the truth as makes no difference.