[extropy-chat] give a small window into the military mind

[Mike Lorrey]

--- c c <beb_cc at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Mike,
> I'm not just trying to break your balls, I want a glimpse into the
> military mind-- an alien mind to an old queer such as myself. In
> legal and moral terms you have earned the government benefits you
> have now and those you will have as you age. But how do you justify
> those benefits on libertarian grounds? Though the funds you and all
> the other veterans receive are merely a small fraction of the
> government pie, they are given to you for past services, in a similar
> way to how an unemployment check is given to someone who has been
> laid off; and in a similar fashion to how disability benefits are
> received by someone who no longer works.

Veterans benefits are indeed for past services, which at the time were
very poorly paid for (without those benefits, the real hourly wage of
an E-1 through E-3 isn't much more than minimum wage). Earned benefits
don't need to be justified on libertarian grounds, any more than any
employee of any corporation needs to justify their benefits.

What needs to be justified on libertarian grounds is what services the
individual renders for the government. Is one a tax collector, or a
welfare administrator, or a bureaucrat who writes tax or welfare
regulations, or a BATF or DEA agent? 

I was an electrical/environmental/avionics tech on F-15 and F-111
aircraft. The closest I came to being even tangentially working in
support of government activities I thought questionable from a
libertarian standpoint was when Bush 41 modified posse comitatus to
have the military assist in the drug war. The F-15 unit I was in at the
time was already tasked as a fighter interceptor unit for NORAD and
intercepted every aircraft that didn't identify itself in the pacific
northwest, so there wasn't any real change in our operations and to my
knowledge we didn't splash any drug planes while I was there.

> No doubt most defense personnel risk their lives, nevertheless so do
> laborers who hold dangerous jobs in the private sector.

Private sector laborers generally don't risk getting arrested by
competitive companies and held in prisons and tortured for years. Nor
do most industrial or other workplace accidents maime the worker so
thoroughly that repair and rehabilitation is so difficult. Nor do they
get paid to intentionally put themselves in harms way (except for, say,
cops and firemen). Private employers generally want you to follow OSHA
rules at all times.

> I ask this, among other reasons, because it is my understanding that
> virtue is its own reward, a soldier sailor or airman takes greater
> than average risks and is compensated with all sorts of benefits--
> and I have looked into the benefits--  that most agree are deserved.
> However from a libertarian viewpoint couldn't it be said that when
> someone enlists in one of the branches of the Services he has signed
> a contract giving him certain rights however preeminently the right
> to serve? All the goodies a serviceman receives in the Service or
> afterwards are secondary or tertiary. Joining the Service is more
> than a career, or less than a career depending upon how you look at
> it. A man joins to serve or he joins for a reason or reasons not in
> line with the mission of the Service. A fellow may be enticed with
> benefits, but that's very obviously not at all what he is recruited
> for. Since in the service virtue is without question its own reward
> how, again, can you on libertarian terms justify
>  getting government benefits until death? Now, I'm sure there is a
> good explanation, so I'd like to get it from the horse's 'mouth'.

I have never heard that any service member 'gets' rights by enlisting.
If anything, the service member gives up rights, including agreeing to
be held to justice under the UCMJ rather than civilian law, and to
pretty much be told what to do with his or her life, which may include
being separated from spouse and kids for long periods of time.

About the only right we gain is the right to tell obnoxious
know-it-alls to go to hell when they start telling us we are baby
killers, mercenaries, or didn't earn our pay and/or benefits. In a
world where most civilians either don't own guns, don't believe in
guns, or the military, or the common militia, or in self-defense, the
risking and bleeding and dying that military members do enables such
self-deluded idiots to continue to live in their fantasy worlds of
poorly estimated risk. This includes a few individuals who claim to be
libertarians but interpret the zero agression principle as pacifism
with a shuck and jive, betting their bluff will never be called, rather
than responsible self-defense as it should be.

I know of few real libertarians (counting all libertarians and not just
absolutist anarchists living in their air castles in denial of reality)
who do not recognise that one of the few legitimate functions of the US
government under the US Constitution, or even the Articles of
Confederation, if you disbelieve in the validity of the Constitution,
is the military. While keeping a standing army is generally wrong in
libertarian eyes, a full time Navy and any other means of power
projection with large capital equipment (which IMHO includes air power,
space power, as well as ships), is legitimate.

If you still think otherwise, then fine, come and bitch at me once
you've gone and dismantled the 90% of the US government that ISN'T
constitutionally allowed. Until then, you've got a lot bigger fish to
fry than my veterans benefits. At the time I enlisted, I was a
republican. You could say the Air Force made me a libertarian, so in
that sense, the US military made the world a slightly better place by
one person (though some may dispute that).

I know of a number of other libertarians who went through similar
experiences, who enlisted. I believe the older ones who enlisted back
when there was a draft followed Heinlein's advice that the best place
to hide from a draft is in the military.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com

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