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

c c beb_cc at yahoo.com
Mon Jul 4 20:09:52 UTC 2005


Mike, this is such a comprehensive answer it took
99.9% of the strut out of me. Almost nothing left to
say. I grew up in the early '70s, becoming interested
in libertarianism gradually throughout that decade, in
a remore philosophical sense, it was one of the many
fads floating around at that time. There was
periodically someone passing out flyers at a mall with
the headline, "do as thou will" or somesuch. After
reading this post the only wind in my sails concerning
libertarianism is that is a creation of intellectuals,
and we intellectuals are many things-- including
tricksters. So libertarianism itself is to be taken
seriously yet not too seriously. The actual practicing
of freedom is something else.

>Mike Lorrey wrote:
> 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.
 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 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
> 
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> 
=== message truncated ===



		
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