YOU MAY REMEMBER, a short time ago, the testimony of retired General John Sheehan before Congress about "Don't Ask, Don't Tell".
Sheehan began by arguing that allowing gays would weaken the military, but ended on a more general note: it was not just gays, it was the overall "liberalization" of the military.
His position is both ironic, and a perfect example of how confused the categories of the right are.
First, the category confusion:
What, exactly, does "liberalization" mean, when used as a negative term?
It appears to mean moving in the general direction of:
- socialism
- gay rights
- dictatorship
- everybody working for the government
- lack of personal responsibility because the government supplies your needs
- not supporting the military
- bureaucracy
- civil rights
- a tendency to drink lattes
- public education
- intellectualism (in a bad way)
- government supplied and run medicine
- inefficiency
- communism (government runs everything, feeds everyone, little or no personal property)
On the face of it, there is no reason at all to believe that everything in that list goes together, or that it all even moves in the same direction.
I can't see, for example, any inherent connection between gay rights and inefficiency.
I would be willing to bet that a higher percentage of private school graduates drink lattes than of public school graduates.
And I would expect that there is more rather than less support for the military in a dictatorship.
Which, in a convoluted sort of way, brings me to the irony in the retired General's remarks.
Some years ago a career military man pointed out a fascinating fact to me.
He noted that the most blindly pro-military people in this country tended, also, to be the most against socialism.
And that, he said, was ironic, because the military was the closest thing to a purely socialist institution in the world.
- It's a complete dictatorship, run from the top down.
- Everybody in the military works for the government.
- All their needs are supplied by the government.
- The entire enterprise is one big bureaucracy.
- The government supplies and runs all of the medical services, for free.
- There is very little freedom: you can be ordered to move across the country on a moments notice, you can have your job changed whenever it's convenient to the bureaucrats, and if you refuse you face court-martial.
In other words, according to conservative categories, the military is a communist organization.
Ironic, isn't it, that the anti-socialist right is so pro-military in general, and that this particular General is so afraid that the military might become—shudder!—liberal.
At least, that's what I think today.
