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Show John Reed 2 B R 2009 That's risky and kind of dangerous and you're not going to get me to do it. I didn t n go to airborne school. So there's this weird kind of faux military service thing that' creeping into the culture and young guys are grabbing it. Whenever I go down to the local gun store to check out what's cheap, there's some weird little weasel-dick guy handling some sort of M4 carbine knockoff. I feel like just grabbing him and saying, "Hey, how old are you? You're twenty-nine? Join the Army. They'll hand you a M4 for nothing. And they'll have even cooler stuff on it than this one does." So I really do feel that the big thing I've taken home from my war, and I think the Afghan conflict is even more along this line, is that military service is a necessary component of a man's life. If you don't have it, you need to know why you didn't have it. You're not doing yourself a favor if you just drift through life and not ask yourself the question until it's too late. The obvious smartass liberal question is, "Well, how about women?" Well, it isn't inherently, I don't think, an experience that is feminine because, if somebody's going to enbrace violence, it's going to be men. Men are wired, or socialized, or both for violence. Women are not, at least not now. Therefore, the women that are busting the truck tires in 110 degree heat or are MPs on the checkpoints, they' re there because they choose to be there, they want to be there, they feel also patriotic, whatever. But it isn't part of their essence. Although academically it's very, very hip now in most disciplines to argue that there are no essences, that nobody has an essence, that everything is changeable, I don't think that's true. I think that the willingness to commit violence or to risk death in the service of something larger than your own immediate interest, is really beautiful. I read that old Oliver Wendell Holmes speech he gave when he was like ninety, about how beautiful it is that somebody would throw their life away for something they barely understand. It's 41 |
