Posted on 02/09/2002 6:50:42 PM PST by vannrox
Edited on 04/22/2004 12:32:30 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
This partial transcript from
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I'd say that anyone who does not at least attempt to join the armed services to fight to protect our country while our Armed Forces are waging war against an enemy that has attacked and slaughtered thousands of innocents in our own country is even lower than your "bad person" .... such a person is a coward. All the slick sophistry and self serving rationalizations don't amount to bupkas ....
There is nothing wrong with being afraid ..... most everyone I ever met who served will openly admit to being scared of what might happen to them in the service ..... and even more afraid of whether they'd have the guts to do what they had to if they ended up in combat. There is no shame in being afraid .... but there is great shame in making excuses and asking others to do your share.
You are at the age and in a time where you must decide to be a man ..... or a parasite who lives off others.
I'd suggest you choose carefully .....
The moving finger writes and having writ moves on .....
and all you piety nor wit can lure it back to cancel half a line .....
nor all your tears wash out a word of it.
Somehow I missed the above last night. FWIW, this ex US REMF absolutely agrees with you. In those days it was just a basic fact of life that if you were honorable, healthy and male and that sometime between your 18th and 26th birtday you would do your service. Most here don't even understand that the vast majority of RA's (voluteers) back when there was a draft traded an extra year for a promise of some choice in assignments .... promises that much too often expired while on the bus to basic.
Sometimes I think I'm getting a bit too crotchety .... but then I read the idiotic statements like ...
.... involuntary military service is one of the main reasons that America lost the Viet Nam war.
89 posted on 2/10/02 12:27 PM Pacific by hove....
Or
......... Draftees are cannon fodder, that's all they would be good for, a blanket of bodies for the real soldiers to walk over.....
I have less and less patience with the spoiled younsters and recent vets who never had the opportunity to serve with draftees.
Regards
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What's this!? Let somebody else pay my tab for me!! FREE LUNCH!!!
Forced labor at a fixed price. Communism.
If I steal(tax) a dollar from you to find the cure for cancer, or to shelter the homeless, or to feed the ducks, its still STEALING.
If I tax your income for ANYTHING that goes beyond the provision of national defence, police, courts and jails, it is stealing.
Meanwhile, forced labor at a fixed price is communism. Always.
The state doesn't own the people Roscoe, the people through the state provide the resouces neccessary to induce free men to do their bidding. If the state cannot do that, and cannot protect itself by the voluntary patriotic leanings of its members then it has died a natural and fair death.
Think of a state under attack from a superior power, and think of the point of surrender. What I am telling you is that a majority may not throw the lives of the minority in front of the bullet destined for them, or the state. Having only free men wage war provides that buffer.
Not to provide you with a free lunch at the expense of others? Bizarre.
The reason the original US militia system failed, or at least pretty darn poorly, was threefold. It was voluntary and alot of people didn't volunteer enough to become well regulated. The States didn't do their part, and Congress fell down on it's responsibility to provide for arming the militia.
The Swiss beat the first two by having it not voluntary, and by having it run by the federal government. The people will have to take care of Congress, and the people must support/cajole them, as the Swiss did and largely still do. Voluntary would be ideal of course, and maybe incentivised voluntarism would indeed work. IOW, such things as federal sholarships of any kind only available to volunteers, maybe even only voting priveledges for volunteers, which was sort of part of the Swiss system at one time also. Show up with your rifle or you don't get to vote.
There is more to being well regulated these days than knowing how to shoot and being armed with a rifle. Somebody has to load the bombs and fix the airplanes, not to mention flying them and do all those other things that need doing in much larger chunks when the guns begin to shoot. Civilian contractor support can only go so far in a large scale war. And many of those skills aren't required in the civilian world, although many are also, so you have to train people to do them.
Guard members would of course be able to voluntarily serve overseas, even entire units could do so, which is pretty much what happened during the civil war and to a lessor extent in WW-I, before the Guard was a much a federal institution as it became after WW-I.
Has it really failed? Its purpose is to defend the borders and the occupants thereof. One may give other reasons why we haven't been invaded, but among many reasons is the heavily armed citizens.
For deer season alone, we field more well armed & equipped citizens than the four largest militaries combined. A Japanese leader commented that Japan would never invade America "because there is a rifle behind every blade of grass." Don't underestimate the militia: we've got a gun for every citizen.
There is more to being well regulated these days than knowing how to shoot and being armed with a rifle.
If it wasn't for oppressive weapons laws, citizens would have a lot more heavy arms and the skill to use them. Maybe we wouldn't be a superpower...but we wouldn't be playing "global cop" and could certainly care for our own land well enough.
Yes, there's a place for a standing army. The problem is we've grown reliant on it, and have generally forbidden citizens from doing their part.
What free lunch? As I said, I'm perfectly willing to pay free men the wages neccessary for them to defend the country consentually.
You want to force them to accept wages you offer. You want to play Russian roulette, damning those who happen to be born at the wrong time.
It is those who are older, who have come into success under the freedoms of this nation who OWE something, not a bunch of young kids barely out of high school who may never return from a war to enjoy those freedoms, a war whose existence is due to the failed diplomacy of the elder generations.
You are really on the wrong side of this one Roscoe, and its because you see military service as a type of state worship, and you want to punish those who may not feel they owe the state such a debt when their lives have just begun.
I see the way we treat our vets, they deserve better than that. Even now our servicemen are on food stamps. The soldiers we call to war deserve better, their wives and children deserve better.
Its American blood we spill, I expect to pay for it dearly, and am proud to.
American citizenship is one of the most desired treasures on the planet and yet there are ingrates who demand it as a free lunch, with the tab to picked up by others.
I say what the hell, the world needs dich-diggers too!!
I am sickened by people like you. Since you put the value of my life to be lower than an animal. I consider you, yourself to be no more than an animal.
Knowing the US Army, they would probably make you a typist!!
All kidding aside "Rambo" is a fantasy of Hollywood, most soldiers, sailors and airmen are just regular guys who wore "The Boot" and went on to serve Honorably and Well!!
Afterall even the guy who bakes the bread 20 miles behind the lines is doing an inportant job!!
No service is useless!!!
My thought is run all the boys/men through "The Boot" and some will respond and some won't!
Unlike Israel, America doesn't need women to bolster the ranks and while some women might excel, let's face it when it comes to smashing and bashing and general mayhem... men are genetically suited to it and much, much better at it!!!
BS Alert
That is such an over generalization of the subject.
If the military raised their training standards (as they should do, including pay and benefits) most men and fewer women would make the grade, but this country would have higher quality of soldiers. And in this day in age of technology, quality is better than quanity.
Animals like you make me sick (see my previous post).
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