Analysis of any State of the Union speech can be an almost-endless (and pointless) game of parsing, especially since so much of the annual address often consists of recycled material. One interesting hook in President Obama’s speech this week, though, involved his recommendation for how best to rally American society around his agenda. What began as routine exaltation of the U.S. military–the sort of fundamentally-decent-but-perhaps-grown-a-bit-shallow oblation every politician is required to perform–turned into something more:
[H]is remarks took a curious turn. He said: “Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example. [. . .] He cited “the courage, selflessness and teamwork of America’s armed forces. At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations. They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together.”
First, as William Kristol points out in a post at The Weekly Standard, whatever one thinks of this proposal, there’s the awkward fact that the culture of our military tends to clash with the goals of today’s liberalism rather frequently, whether the topic is more political, like the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” or more ethereal, like the military mindset of rigor and struggle as contrasted with the culture of soft politeness and safety-net expansionism held by many on the left.
Second, and perhaps more significantly, this conflation of “military” and “society” is worrying. The military isn’t a perfect analogy to our society, and nor should it be, for either group’s sake. Our military excels at its mission precisely because it has a circumscribed, specific role to play and can do so with relative freedom. “Society,” on the other hand, is almost always unmanageable to some extent, and in any event the burden of that Herculean task should not be allotted to our men and women in uniform. There is also the obvious point that a nation which holds itself out as a democratic, constitutional republic ought to be cool (though not unfairly or reflexively hostile) to any argument which gazes longingly on a unitary, command-based system of governance.
Perhaps most of all, though, Obama’s analogy betrays the decline, both internally and in terms of their cultural influence, afflicting American institutions. It’s hardly his fault—this slow breakdown has been occurring for the past several decades, at least—but the reality is that military is the only institution left standing in anything like respectable shape. It’s become the default (even preferred) metaphor for national unity and has remained universally acceptable in the face of cultural and political balkanization. We should certainly be thankful it’s holding out, but churches, schools, civic organizations, and families all might have also seemed natural points of comparison and analogy at one time in our nation’s history. They, in addition to the military, provided much of that shared national experience of sacrifice, ritual, and common reference that Obama yearns to rekindle.
January 27th, 2012 | 12:02 pm
I think a compelling case could be made that the divided and fractured nature of modern American culture can only be reversed by some sort of shared American experience, and the military (and compulsory military service) may be the only effective means of achieving relative re-unity.
It might also go a long ways toward battling a host of other societal ills, from skyrocketing obesity to financial irresponsibility associated with college and consumerism.
Seems to have worked fairly well for Korea and Israel…
January 27th, 2012 | 12:44 pm
Artaban:
Yeah…Prussia and later the Germany of the first half of the XX century are such role models of a united, free and pacific society! Virtue in all its splendor!
January 27th, 2012 | 1:25 pm
Never said there weren’t risks or drawbacks. Can say most of the ex or current members of the military I’ve met are better educated, more disciplined, and more charitable than the average citizen.
January 27th, 2012 | 3:09 pm
[...] PM Joseph Knippenberg Many–including Max Boot, Bill Kristol, Jonah Goldberg, and our own Matthew Cantorino–have remarked critically on the way that President Obama appealed to the manifest virtues of [...]
January 27th, 2012 | 6:24 pm
President Obama would have loved being Shogun in Japan during the Tokugawa period, when the entire society was effectively militarized, with no one able to leave their family line of work and group punishment for any infraction by a single member. It was the development of that mindset that the military governments of Japan exploited with emperor worship through State Shinto when they set Japan on a course of conquering Korea, Manchuria, Taiwan, the Philippines, and the rest of Asia. Turning an entire nation into a “command and control” economy is clearly Obama’s ideal situation.
One of my colleagues in the Air Force, a computer scientist, thought it was ironic that a society that was essentially socialist in its operation, with government owned houses, stores, schools, hospitals and churches, even newspapers, was so oriented ideologically against Communism. Speech about all sorts of topics was closed, including political speech. Criticizing the president to your subordinates is literally a crime under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The control that you give to the government by enlisting in the armed forces is a necessity for a body of people who must be ready to sacrifice their lives on a moment’s notice. But what makes it compatible with a free society is that it has permeable boundaries, especially for family members of the soldiers and sailors.
By the way, the monopoly on medical care within the military created (in my experience) a very spotty kind of level of care. Because the best care was offered in only a minority of places, it ended up being rationed, and to a certain extent based on your ability to persuade a senior officer to push for the care you needed. I would not wish that kind of system on American families as a whole. Again, the only thing that makes the regimentation of the military tolerable is the fact that it is escapable into a larger, freer society. But I can totally understand why Obama would love to draft us all into his Army.
January 28th, 2012 | 2:00 am
I think a compelling case could be made that the divided and fractured nature of modern American culture can only be reversed by some sort of shared American experience
Forcing people to be “united” is totalitarianism.
If you want genuine unity, you have to provide genuine vision, and persuade everyone to sign on.
Trying to dissolve cultural divisions through the use of governmental power is not much different from trying to end a war when you don’t actually have what it takes to gain a legitimate victory. There are only two options: either you persuade through political and diplomatic processes – or you commit atrocities.
January 28th, 2012 | 4:35 am
As Rousseau says, “AS soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the State is not far from its fall. When it is necessary to march out to war, they pay troops and stay at home: when it is necessary to meet in council, they name deputies and stay at home. By reason of idleness and money, they end by having soldiers to enslave their country and representatives to sell it.”
Under the ancien regime, the defence of the nation was seen as the rôle of the nobility and the sword was everywhere the badge of the gentleman. With the Revolution, universal conscription was the logical counterpart to universal suffrage.
January 28th, 2012 | 2:39 pm
Michel PS:
Excuse me, romanticizing and fantasies aside, conscription was the rule and not the exception during the middle ages. Peasants were forced to serve and form the feudal lord armies.
January 29th, 2012 | 5:35 am
Sergio Mendez
Peasants were only ever employed for strictly local defence and ward holding, which included military service accounted for only about one in twelve of all tenures. Townsmen guarded their own walls. South of the Loire, where the feudal system never existed, armies were wholly composed of “free companies.”
By the ancien régime, I meant the early modern period, between the end of the Wars of Religion and the Revolution, when Frederick the Great could say that the ordinary citizen should be unable to tell, if his country was at war or not. Jane Austen’s novels are a description of middle-class life, during the Napoleonic wars.
January 29th, 2012 | 6:36 pm
No one who holds office or wants to hold office is going to talk about compulsory military service for a very simple reason. He will not be holding office ever again.
It would make more sense to try to gain national unity by appointing a day for everyone to carry an umbrella to ward of meteors.
January 30th, 2012 | 3:36 pm
[...] speech. Max Boot wrote that the military is “not a model for the rest of society.” Matthew Cantirino found Obama’s “conflation of ‘military’ and ‘society’ [to be] worrying.” George Will [...]
January 31st, 2012 | 10:54 am
“Forcing people to be “united” is totalitarianism.
If you want genuine unity, you have to provide genuine vision, and persuade everyone to sign on.”
Nonsense. Of course there is a balance between persuasion and coercion, but make no mistake, those on this post that seem to be advocating absolutely against coercion are advocating for anarchy and against civilization.
The State quite legitimately uses coercion to keep people from murdering and raping others. No sane person would suggest we be limited merely to “persuading” people against those things.
When we look at the successful integration of immigrants in past US history, we see a few things…Yes, people were able to celebrate their cultural heritage (and that’s great!), but parents also expected their kids to learn the native language and undergo some degree of assimilation. They were expected to pay taxes and carry forms of Identification, and becoming a citizen was something in which to take pride.
Today, none of those things are expected.
I advocate mandatory civil or military service because if one wants the benefits of membership in a group (Nation, State, Civilization), one must contribute to that group, or it will soon cease to exist. There is nothing “totalitarian” or “coercive” about such a Social Contract–something the Founding Fathers and those from whom they drew inspiration well knew.
Some of you need to study your history more closely.
February 1st, 2012 | 7:18 am
parents also expected their kids to learn the native language and undergo some degree of assimilation.
Parents having expectations of their kids is very different from government having expectations of its citizens.
The idea that we should all serve in the military because you wish to foster unity by using the military as a tool of indoctrination is very problematic to me.
I do not view government as existing primarily to tell me what to think and feel and be. You can call that a “social contract” if you like, but that doesn’t make it a legitimate social contract, and it doesn’t change the fact that what you are proposing is an abusive use of force.
The military exists to defend the nation from external threat, not to enable high ranking government entities to control or manipulate the population. That sort of “unity” is not only unethical, but is the stuff of dystopia.
February 1st, 2012 | 12:10 pm
“The idea that we should all serve in the military because you wish to foster unity by using the military as a tool of indoctrination is very problematic to me.” –Blake
That’s not what I wish at all, and your statement says far more about what YOU believe concerning the military than about my beliefs. If you’ve spent any amount of time around folks who’ve served, you’d know that they are representative of the full spectrum of political beliefs. Furthermore, your alleged “indoctrination” has done very little to change such diversity (proof being the number of whistle-blowers, homosexuals, etc. we’ve seen in the past few years). Additionally, research suggests that most beliefs are firmly set by the age of military service, and thus would not be subject to great change.
Let’s suppose members of a volunteer military are predisposed to hold similar beliefs. A period of compulsory military service by all would ensure an even greater spectrum of opinions and attitudes than already exists. South Korean and Israeli politics and culture quite clearly show that compulsory military service doesn’t result in one dominant political ideology (just look at the great controversy in Israel over settlement of West Bank, etc.).
The fact remains, a shared experience (such as military service) is something that can increase tolerance, understanding, and unity without destroying diversity.
Finally, the nonsense that’s been blathered concerning Germany and Prussia fails to account for our modern freedom of discourse (Internet, etc.) and the fact that, unlike Hitler’s Germany, we don’t put children through military training. It is that last feature, militarization of children, that is the key feature of violent, totalitarian regimes, in Europe, Asia, and Africa.
February 3rd, 2012 | 2:30 pm
Between the Army and the Navy, I served twenty years in uniform. I wholheartedly agree that the military is not a model for a free society that respects the God-given dignity of the individual. I also shudder at the thought that our President cum nascent dictator would hold up the coercion of military necessity as what our nation needs to adopt in order to weather these times.
Washington was right, government (and the military most of all) is brute force and must be limited in its reach and scope.
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