Patriotism: A Treatise

I don't remember being particularly patriotic as a yout (what's a yout?).  I just didn't focus on it.  Nor did anyone else I knew.  It wasn't a part of our daily lives.  In fact, I did not develop any degree of patriotism at all until the U. S. Army and I joined forces.  

During a war.  

You should know that joining the Army during a war tends to focus the mind quite seriously, doncha' know.

No, my interests were far more locally focused.  Gotta' remember, we were all 18 or 19 or 20 year-olds back then.  Dumb as a bag of rocks, were we.  Only the events occurring in and around our home towns, good ol' Chillicothe, Missouri in my case, held my interest.  And who to call out for a drag race (I always had one of the town's faster cars!).  And where the next poker game would be held.  And who to hustle in the pool hall that day (I used to shoot a mean stick...that's where "the Chuckmeister" moniker came from!).  And which girl I thought might be available.  As in, available...

Doncha' know.

But the day I received "that" letter from the Draft Board is forever indelibly etched in my rapidly-fading memory.  I was invited (ahem!) to join the United States Army and go halfway around the world and shoot at little people who'd been hanging out in a tree, waiting to kill me.  For months. I was not looking forward to the whole experience.  Neither were those who elected to relocate to Canada.  But I survived it.  In fact, I GREW from it!  

In fact, every other soldier I knew at the time grew from it.  Doing otherwise was simply unimaginable.  Entering the armed services meant surrendering your individuality and donning the mantle of a "Team."  Whether you wanted to or not.  And pretty much none of us wanted to.  

Your name was taken from you, forcibly, and you were issued a number.  You were then reduced by true professionals to a whimpering, quivering mass of protoplasm.  And then rebuilt, one corpuscle at a time, into a trained, hardened killer.  Becoming a member of a group of men, all trained-up and ready to go break things and make noise and kill people, as a unit, was their goal.  We became a part of a whole.  We became hard as nails.  We lost our fear.  We gained the strength borne of many.  We surrendered our individuality.  We became men.  

We became soldiers.

And that "we" part was a cross-section of America's citizenry back then.  Young and older, Black and White, rich and poor, elite and commoner, smart and somewhat less than, we were cut down to size and then rebuilt into a fighting force to be reckoned with.  We were most often sent to far-flung lands, usually beset with the ravages of socialism, and poverty, and warfare.  And we were therefore able to look back on whence we'd come.  From a far-away land.  To be able to view one's homeland through an 8,000 mile-long aperture is a unique, scary and thrilling experience.  An opportunity reserved for a very few.  And when (or if) we survived, we went home smarter, tougher, wiser, better educated, highly-trained and ready to assume our rightful role as good husbands, good fathers, and most of all, good citizens.  

That scenario no longer exists, I'm afraid.  

Now?  Our military is made up entirely of volunteers.  Volunteers who are individually older, smarter, better educated and more capable than were we way back when.  Mucho better!  Today's soldier or sailor or Marine has at least two years of college, and more than 40% have college degrees.  Our Fighting Forces now have 1+ year more formal education than do their civilian counterparts lounging in their basements playing Donkey Kong (sorry).  

So what am I bitching about?  They are not drafted.  They enlist!  An important step toward making it a career!  And thus, they no longer represent a cross section of America.  Because a "cross-section of America" couldn't qualify.

Back when conscription was in effect we count on those who came back from military service to inform and shape public opinion around their spheres of influence (it's hard to hate the Army if your brother's in it, as an example).  But we no longer draft the under-educated Black yout from inner-city Philadelphia, for example.  In fact, that man could no longer qualify to become a soldier.  He's not smart enough.  And he's not educated enough.  And so he'll never be taken apart and put back together by the military, to his everlasting benefit, and America's everlasting detriment.  And he'll also never come home from the Army and be an influence on his family and his community.  

Nor will that influence be felt at the ballot box...

Everything changed back in 1976.  That was the year we stopped drafting our youth into military service.  However, you might be interested to know that Israel drafts every single one of its citizens upon attainment of the age of 18, and they must serve in the military for a minimum of 2 years.  The Netherlands does that as well.  So does Switzerland.  And Russia, and Brazil, and Ukraine, and another dozen countries around the Globe.  And both the Israelis and the Swiss, as an example, require that their returning soldiers take home fully-automatic, military "assault rifles", and to keep them loaded as a part of their national readiness.  They are even inspected without notice to insure they are maintaining their country's "ready reserve."  These countries make sure their future citizens are properly prepared for the task.  Properly trained to protect their homeland.  And properly trained to be good citizens.  

Unlike America has been since it stopped conscription.  

(Alert!  Alert!  Personal Opinion Coming!)  Face it, America:  With exception of our truly excellent military, far too many of us are a weak, flabby, overweight, under-motivated bunch of video game-playing, Red Bull-sucking losers.  We got to witness proof of that fact unfold last summer in 50 of our biggest cities.  And I maintain that ceasing the draft went a long way toward achieving our current reality.  Unfortunately.  It also kept our youth from having to forcibly interact on such a base level with other citizen soldiers from other parts of America.  And it therefore kept them from being enriched by that experience.  And then bringing that experience back home with them.  And perhaps most importantly, it's contributed immeasurably to the "tribalism" we're currently experiencing here in America. 

Point to Ponder:  One of the many friends I made in the Army was a Black guy from Detroit.  What are the odds a White kid from a farm town in Missouri would become best friends, to this day, with a Black guy from inner-city Detroit?   

Only about 1,300,000 Americans are serving in the United States military.  That might seem like a lot, but that's less than 0.5% of our entire population.  One-half of one percent of our population is keeping our Country safe.  Only.  To this we add a dramatic lessening in the overall level of patriotism of our citizenry due in part, I would offer, to the lack of "society-blending" the draft once forced.  And we have proof of that lessened level of patriotism.  To wit:

The Mayor of Washington, D.C and the Capitol Police has ordered our National Guard soldiers to sleep on the cold, hard concrete floor of a parking garage.  Thousands of them.  Every night.  Without a second thought.  So unbelievably ignorant, so indelibly foolish.  So completely without guile that such a slight as this will likely never, ever be removed.  Shame on her.  And if they had any shame at all, shame on them.  

And shame on all of us... 

Bring back the draft, America!  If some don't want to pick up arms and serve in our military, let them serve in some other capacity.  Let them join the Peace Corps.  Let them paint yellow stripes down the center of our highways, but make them serve!  Our kids have lost their sense of patriotism, because they've never had to serve a need greater than themselves.  

Our youth is our wealth.  Our only true wealth.  Stop squandering it...