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Opening Arguments

Uniform ignorance

Today, only about 1 percent of the nation's population is in uniform either on active duty or in the reserves, and the number will dwindle as things such as budget cuts and the drawdown in Iraq take effect.

During World War II, about 12 percent of the population was in uniform. True, it was a different time and a different war. But, an entire generation comprising millions of citizens had some personal experience with the duties, sacrifices, opportunities and pride that came with military service. That shaped citizens' outlook on everything from how they voted to what they considered the proper role of the United States in the world. This gap is particularly large among young people. In November, a Pew Charitable Trust poll indicated that while more than two-thirds of Americans over 50 have a family member who served in uniform, only one in three under 30 has. My own experience as a teacher bears this out in even more drastic terms: Out of the more 190 high school students I currently teach, only five have family members in the military. Perhaps a dozen have parents who are veterans.

Interesting article.

Our disconnect with the military not only affects our view of the country's role in the world. It makes our place in the world more dangerous, because it gives the president as commander in chief tacit approval to engage in military adventures that an uninterested public won't pay attention to until it's too late.

 

Comments

traurlaspessy
Wed, 01/25/2012 - 5:19am

I was just looking for this information for some time. After six hours of continuous Googleing, finally I got it in your site. I wonder what's the Google's problem that does not rank this type of informative websites closer to the top. Usually the top web sites are full of garbage.

Harl Delos
Wed, 01/25/2012 - 11:02am

The question mark in the URL tells Google that you're passing information to the website and expect to get a custom-generated result.  Google and other search engines don't follow such URLs, because they don't know what the user will get.

Drupal has a "clean URLs" option available that's simply a matter of clicking a checkbox, but some newspapers think that makes it easy for people to get their content.  They want locals to struggle with the site, pay a  subscription fee, and to heck with non-locals. 

That's certainly a policy that local TV and radio stations appreciate.  They think that they can do well giving away content and surviving only on advertising, since it's worked so well for them for so many decades.

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