Marines are A-Okay!
I don’t frequently say this, but something has come up that made me change my views just a little bit concerning our military.
I usually think of our military with a slight distaste, and let me tell you why. Most people seem to think of being in the military with a high amount of honor and respect. I usually think of it as a burden that is a necessary evil. The entire project of the armed forces is to kill people and destroy what the hands of man have wrought. It would be fantastic if we lived in a world where the military wasn’t necessary, but unfortunately, that simply isn’t the world we live in.
Because of the duplicity and barbarism of mankind, having a military is necessary to preserve our own lives. It isn’t a good thing to have a military, rather, it is simply the lesser of two evils. It is, after all, precisely because it is a bad thing to be in the armed forces that we can call it patriotic to join and help shoulder your share of the burden. If it was a mark of high honor and respect, we could expect people to do it just for that privilege and there wouldn’t be any sacrifice involved in their decision.
On top of its nature as a necessary evil in an evil world, the military is home to a vast array of degenerates. Stop the judgment that is already in your head and think through what I’m saying first. I’m not suggesting that everyone in the military is an idiot. That is not the case. The military is home to some of the finest minds and most considerate people in the country. However, alongside those upstanding people are a higher-than-average number of jocks from high school who weren’t interested in college and really liked the idea of blowing stuff up.
The truth of this view seems obvious to me whenever I see ‘home videos’ taken on the battlefield. Online, I watched a video of some guys on a tank in a city (it looked like in Iraq, but who knows whether from this war or from the wars in the 90’s). They pointed out a sniper on top of the roof of a distant building. Then, hooting and laughing, they aimed the tanks barrel and blew up the top of the building, surely killing the sniper. To kill another human being, even one who is trying to kill you, is a solemn occasion. Life - precious and unique life – has been snuffed out, never to return. Instead of solemnity, the soldiers in the video cheered and hooted as if they were playing a game.
As if the culture of death that pervades the military isn’t enough, it has long been a bastion of religious discrimination and establishment. The First Amendment to the Constitution states that Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion. Religion and the government are not supposed to intermingle. The government isn’t supposed to help or hinder religion in its goals to convert or save mankind. This is done both for the good of government, but also for the good of religion.
Despite this, government officials in the military routinely have been shown to engage in coercion to get younger soldiers to attend religious instruction or convert to a particular brand of religion. My tax-dollars go to support not only their blatantly illegal practices, but also to do something even more galling. My taxes pay the salaries of ministers and preachers. I’m flat-out boggled as to how this practice can survive in a country that professes to take no stance on religiosity.
However, today, there was a thin ray of hope that penetrated my gloom regarding our national defense forces. Toys for Tots, a charitable organization run by the Marines, rejected a whole shipment of toys from a company that manufactures toys for religious instruction. The toys were Jesus dolls that spoke verses from the Bible. It’s about time that someone realized that a government disentangled from religion means that the government notion of Christmas is not a religious holiday. It can’t be. Secular recognition of Christmas is not about the Christ figure, but about family, joy, togetherness, and celebration of those ideals. Toys that are useful only for religious instruction in a particular brand of religion are so sorely out of place as to be laughable. But finally somebody figured it out.
So my hat’s off to the Toys for Tots program. They’ve shown me that there are at least pockets where the good, hardworking, decent, and intelligent people in the military still have a majority over the rest. Keep up the good work, gang!
I usually think of our military with a slight distaste, and let me tell you why. Most people seem to think of being in the military with a high amount of honor and respect. I usually think of it as a burden that is a necessary evil. The entire project of the armed forces is to kill people and destroy what the hands of man have wrought. It would be fantastic if we lived in a world where the military wasn’t necessary, but unfortunately, that simply isn’t the world we live in.
Because of the duplicity and barbarism of mankind, having a military is necessary to preserve our own lives. It isn’t a good thing to have a military, rather, it is simply the lesser of two evils. It is, after all, precisely because it is a bad thing to be in the armed forces that we can call it patriotic to join and help shoulder your share of the burden. If it was a mark of high honor and respect, we could expect people to do it just for that privilege and there wouldn’t be any sacrifice involved in their decision.
On top of its nature as a necessary evil in an evil world, the military is home to a vast array of degenerates. Stop the judgment that is already in your head and think through what I’m saying first. I’m not suggesting that everyone in the military is an idiot. That is not the case. The military is home to some of the finest minds and most considerate people in the country. However, alongside those upstanding people are a higher-than-average number of jocks from high school who weren’t interested in college and really liked the idea of blowing stuff up.
The truth of this view seems obvious to me whenever I see ‘home videos’ taken on the battlefield. Online, I watched a video of some guys on a tank in a city (it looked like in Iraq, but who knows whether from this war or from the wars in the 90’s). They pointed out a sniper on top of the roof of a distant building. Then, hooting and laughing, they aimed the tanks barrel and blew up the top of the building, surely killing the sniper. To kill another human being, even one who is trying to kill you, is a solemn occasion. Life - precious and unique life – has been snuffed out, never to return. Instead of solemnity, the soldiers in the video cheered and hooted as if they were playing a game.
As if the culture of death that pervades the military isn’t enough, it has long been a bastion of religious discrimination and establishment. The First Amendment to the Constitution states that Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion. Religion and the government are not supposed to intermingle. The government isn’t supposed to help or hinder religion in its goals to convert or save mankind. This is done both for the good of government, but also for the good of religion.
Despite this, government officials in the military routinely have been shown to engage in coercion to get younger soldiers to attend religious instruction or convert to a particular brand of religion. My tax-dollars go to support not only their blatantly illegal practices, but also to do something even more galling. My taxes pay the salaries of ministers and preachers. I’m flat-out boggled as to how this practice can survive in a country that professes to take no stance on religiosity.
However, today, there was a thin ray of hope that penetrated my gloom regarding our national defense forces. Toys for Tots, a charitable organization run by the Marines, rejected a whole shipment of toys from a company that manufactures toys for religious instruction. The toys were Jesus dolls that spoke verses from the Bible. It’s about time that someone realized that a government disentangled from religion means that the government notion of Christmas is not a religious holiday. It can’t be. Secular recognition of Christmas is not about the Christ figure, but about family, joy, togetherness, and celebration of those ideals. Toys that are useful only for religious instruction in a particular brand of religion are so sorely out of place as to be laughable. But finally somebody figured it out.
So my hat’s off to the Toys for Tots program. They’ve shown me that there are at least pockets where the good, hardworking, decent, and intelligent people in the military still have a majority over the rest. Keep up the good work, gang!
posted by The Academian | 11:39 AM
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