Adult learning is more than alternative education, self-help, self-study, or training. Self-directed inquiry can free you from the cultural traps of today’s postmodern world. When you think for yourself, you take control of your life. Intellectual ability and critical thinking soon become substitutes for paper credentials. Simply stated aggressive learning is the most practical guide to a passionately rewarding life.

Saturday, March 7, 2015

Whether intended or not, one
of the most successful war movies in decades very subtly makes the case that
America is increasingly undemocratic. American
Sniper brings this message home. I’ve both seen the movie and read the
book, and as is often the case, I have mixed feelings about how the two
compare.

First, a little
background may be helpful. I’m an ex-Marine and an ex-cop. After four years of
service, I was honorably discharged from the Marines in February of 1964. Six
months after I got out, enlistments were automatically extended because of
increased military involvement in Vietnam.

During the Tet Offensive
in 1968, I felt so guilty for not being in the war that I submitted a letter of
resignation to the Dallas police department and began the process of
reenlistment in the Corps. As a homeowner, however, I determined that financial
realities would prohibit me from following through because selling wasn’t an
option and my mortgage cost more than military pay would accommodate. So I wound
up staying with the police department.

Needless to say, I was a
hawk during the Vietnam War, but today I view that war as a colossal mistake. The
political assumption during the Cold War was that if we didn’t stop Communism,
there would be a domino effect as country after country would follow suit. It
didn’t happen. Instead, Americans today are eager to do business in Vietnam.

The American Sniper story is disturbing for a multitude of reasons,
some of which are deeply contradictory. Chris Kyle’s book, written with the
assistance of ghostwriters, has an adolescent feel that is morally too black
and white. He gives the impression that killing is fun and expresses a
sports-like enthusiasm for always being on the lookout for some payback. But Kyle is no longer here to
defend himself, so those of us who are tempted to criticize him personally
might want to pause and offer him the benefit of the doubt, acknowledging what
it means to have been awarded two Silver Stars and five Bronze Stars.

The movie shows how hard
combat is on service members and their families. Seldom do we acknowledge in
this country how so many men and women sacrifice so much for so little
acknowledgment or reward. The monetary compensation for many members of the
armed forces is so meager as to make some of them eligible for food stamps.
Moreover, those who are seriously wounded in combat with lasting consequences
are virtually guaranteed to be afforded the economic status of second-class
citizens.

That the number of
suicides among service members has climbed higher in recent years than the
losses of life in combat should get our attention. Wounded Warrior commercials make me furious at times, not because
they aren’t a good thing but because they are needed at all, after the
sacrifices made by members of our armed services. Wounded veterans shouldn’t
have to depend on charity to get what they need, period. The fact that they must
ask for additional assistance is, in my view, a national disgrace.

My point in this piece is
not to add to the numerous reviews both positive and negative about American Sniper as a book or a movie. Plenty
of divergent opinions worth reading are already available. My aim is to focus
on the real culprits: the American public at large, who salute the flag and
sometimes vote but otherwise tendtorely on under-rewarded volunteers to carry
out the rest of their patriotic duty.

Being patriotic involves
helping to share the load of obligations and decisions in matters as important
as war, and every able citizen in a democracy should accept this responsibility
in some form or other. Democracy
requires common ground, which literally means having something in common. And
yet, we have echelons of social and economic classes in America who don’t have
enough shared experience in common to engage in five minutes worth of viable conversation,
let alone share the same political and economic concerns.

A country with nothing
more worthwhile to do than to go shopping when they send their troops off to
war is democratically dysfunctional at best. A voluntary army means that the
general public has no skin in the game, so to speak, which allows our military
to be abused and used as a political tool without public consensus or protest.

In a capitalistic society
with an all-volunteer military, a declining economy is an incentive for poor
people to enlist in military service as a matter of survival. If those with real
economic power have no obligation to serve, whatsoever, then decisions about
sending troops in harm’s way are likely to occur without truly democratic
concern among the general populace.

An all-volunteer military
results in a fiendishly disingenuous exhibition of phony appreciation that appears
to celebrate a class of self-sacrificing individuals as especially patriotic,
except when it comes to actual economic compensation for their service and sacrifice.
In the meantime, we have a virtual army in the numbers of executives in publicly
owned companies who make more in an hour or a day than what our service members
earn in a year, a situation that owes more to the system rigging of crony capitalists
than laissez faire economics.

In his free to choose economic ethos, the late
Milton Friedman often made a compelling case for the dynamics of capitalism,
but he compared a military draft with slavery. He was wrong, egregiously wrong.

Serving one’s country as
a matter of routine obligation, whether in the military or another kind of
public service, is a means of living up to the inherent responsibility required
of citizenship in a democratic society. Accepting low wages initially, for a
short period of time, in service dedicated to a country that defends opportunity
and upward mobility is something that ought to be seen as a rite of passage for
everyone. Universal conscription would
democratize concern for the safety of everyone while creating a common ground
of experience and of personal accountability.

For decades, men and
women in the lower economic rungs of society have shouldered most of the
responsibility for American military objectives worldwide, while the vast
majority of our citizens remain disinterested if not downright indifferent.
That we do not have enough of a sense of duty in this country to demand the
sacrifices necessary to sustain ourselves democratically with a universal contribution
is appalling. Worse still is that, save a global catastrophe, this is not
likely to change.

A country whose
politicians never seem to miss an opportunity to refer to ours as the greatest
nation on the earth should cringe with shame and embarrassment that any members
of our military require food stamps to get by. We should heed the words of
George Washington who said, “When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside
the Citizen.” Sadly,it seems that this
is precisely what we have done. We have allowed the ethos of our economic
system to erode the character of citizenship, and we need to make it right,
beginning with reinstating the draft, making service mandatory without
exception.