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Uniting Americans by accommodation, not acculturation
Michael L. Hays
In a recent column, Michael Swickard encourages young people to consider military service as a career. I do not disagree with him in principle or in practice. For I do not discourage anyone from considering a career with redeeming social value, and I recognize the need for a professional military of volunteers. However, I do not want to perpetuate an all-volunteer military.
An all-volunteer military separates those who make sacrifices to serve the country or the public – I include all members of police and fire departments, and most educational, medical, social service and pastoral professionals – from those who make few or no such sacrifices. I believe that all residents have an obligation to serve this country because their service benefits them, their communities, and this country. So I want not only a restoration of the draft, but also the establishment of a national service for those not drafted.
Arguments for national service are invariably complex and unavoidably controversial because they involve many economic, political and social issues. At least for now, I want to address only some of the social issues, mainly the fraying of the bonds which have united us as Americans, and the role which national service can play in reweaving them.
A society of enclaves
If we ever were a cohesive society – we never were – we now are not one. Increasingly, we are a society of social and cultural enclaves, and affinity or interest groups, in an ever more diverse populace. Most people admit not only divisiveness in Washington between Democrats and Republicans, the latter aided and abetted by tea partiers; but also rancor everywhere between the political parties; between haves and have-nots; between whites and non-whites; between straights and GLBTs; at Muslims in New York, Tennessee, and Florida; and at Hispanics mainly in the Southeast and Southwest.
In this societally corrosive context, many people yearn for reconciliation and amalgamation of some sort.
Myths die hard, and the myth of the melting pot also dies hard. The various minority movements in the second half of the twentieth century made it obvious that previous efforts to acculturate others into a white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant ethos had failed. But the myth, with its presumption of hegemony and entitlement, lives on as a cultural relic, at least in some backwaters, in the code words “real Americans.” Demographic realities demand, not a reactionary effort to revive a moribund myth of cultural homogeneity, but a liberating effort to replace it with a vibrant myth of accommodation of cultural diversity.
We need the myth of the frying pan. Instead of the smooth, bland uniformity of the soufflé, we need the lumpy, spicy variety of the omelet.
Schools and the military
We have two institutions that enabled the myth of the melting pot in the past and can enable the myth of the frying pan in the future. We must recognize the need to redefine their purposes from acculturation to accommodation.
The first melting pot was the public schools on the Eastern seaboard. As large numbers of immigrants arrived in the last three decades of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century, educators developed a curriculum aiming to acculturate them to American life and the dominant ideal of an American identity. (For example, young boys were taught baseball to discourage them from playing soccer.)
However, shortly after mid-century, educators recognized the changing realities of the country’s demographics. They realized the impossibility and inaptness of a WASP-centric curriculum, diluted or displaced it, and supplemented it with, or substituted, a smorgasbord of culturally diverse materials. These efforts at multiculturalism fell from fashion and were discredited and demoted with the decline in education.
The new fashion abandons focus on the humanities, which can unite people, and augments focus on mere literacy and numeracy, which cannot. But the aims of multiculturalism, in accord with the myth of the frying pan, were the right ones. If we could and would repair, develop and deliver a proper, robust and diverse curriculum in the humanities – in particular, restoring history, literature, civics or government, and the arts, and adding economics – public schools could become agents of accommodation.
The second melting pot was the military services that blended professionals and conscripts for the Second World, Korean, and Vietnam Wars. The story of military service by men and women of all races and religions, from all economic and social backgrounds, and from all places is one of America’s great narratives. But we forgot both the story and its moral.
We did so in ending the draft in response to middle-class resistance to the Vietnam War. But we did so for the wrong reason. We decided that the draft was wrong only after we decided that the war was wrong and did not want middle-class whites to die in it. By turning to an all-volunteer military, we enlisted young men and women from long-time military families mainly in the South or encouraged disadvantaged young men and women from anywhere and everywhere to serve. So, according to the myth of the frying pan, the military achieves diversity – at long last, gays and lesbians will soon be able to serve openly – and achieves its benefits on a small scale.
Unfortunate consequences
But an all-volunteer military has had unforeseen but unfortunate consequences.
First, the separation of a professional military from the civilian populace has enabled elected officials, especially presidents, to commit troops to hostilities costly in lives and resources without securing the consent and commitment of the people. As such, wars have become unpopular, officials have deflected criticism by invoking support for the troops on the fallacious logic that, if people do not support the war, they do not support the troops. The ability to use an all-volunteer military without accountability has, willy-nilly, made it a hidden cause of political division, not social cohesion.
Second, an all-volunteer military diminishes the concept of citizenship and segregates the commitment to the country’s survival and welfare. Support for the troops comes easy to people eager to say thanks to those who spare them the dirty work of sacrifice for their country. The hypocrisy and selfishness of these parasites of patriots – not to mince words – appear in the persistently inadequate support given to returning service personnel and their families who, in many cases, suffer grievously for their patriotism.
Third, an all-volunteer military drawn largely from lower-middle and lower classes partly explains why many federal and state politicians as well as most corporate moguls have lost touch with ordinary people. Unlike past elites raised to accept public service as a duty, especially during wartime, today’s rich and powerful serve themselves, not their country, in part because they have no sense of country.
They know mostly privilege, pampering and protection in up-scale neighborhoods, gated communities, private schools, expensive colleges, second homes, country clubs, overseas vacations and corporate suites; and come to believe themselves entitled to them. They avoid military service; lack contact with people of different kinds, backgrounds, and experiences; and then misunderstand or ignore the interests of the people whose lives they affect. (A few still act out of a social conscience in, say, The Peace Corps and Teach for America.)
The solution
To recover the benefits of social cohesion on a national scale means two things. One, a return to a draft. All would be eligible: men and women, whole and handicapped, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, legal and illegal residents – any who permanently live in, benefit from, or owe taxes to America. Only some would be inducted.
Two, for the rest, a program of national service. Dropouts, high school and college graduates, green-card residents, immigrants – all, depending on their competence, would become “national interns” in schools, hospitals, government agencies, companies doing public-sector contract work, among other possibilities. For young adults especially, such internships could provide the rewards of broadened social and vocational experience, including on-the-job learning and career networking, and encourage further education.
These two options, either military or national service, would enable residents to develop or fulfill an obligation to serve this country; encourage all residents to build a better country; and help unite Americans, however diverse we are and however more diverse we shall become.
Michael L. Hays (Ph.D., English) is a retired consultant in defense, energy and environment; former high school and college teacher; and continuing civic activist. His bi-monthly Saturday column appears in the Las Cruces Sun-News; his bi-monthly blog, First Impressions & Second Thoughts, appears on the intervening Saturdays at firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com.
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Now, now, Mr. Molitor, don’t be bitter; just because I’ve pointed out that you’re damaging this site’s credibility with easily-debunked conspiracy theories, historical revisionism, and mathematical falsehoods…
That being said, do you really want to attack my credibility during a discussion in which you and I are, for all intents and purposes, on the same side?
Thomas Molitor, your ethics, like your economics, are corrupt. Why am I responsible for what IP does? Why am I affected by what he does? Why can you not do better than find new ways to make ad hominem arguments? Why do you run from answering questions about your economic and environmental views, and thereby take no responsibility for what you do on this site. Thus, your making assertions and then fleeing from their defense when they are challenged are self-inflicted reductions in your standing.
I think that every time IP comes to your rescue it diminishes your stature just a little bit more. With friends like IP, Michael, you certainly needn’t enemies.
Thomas Molitor responds: “All I say is that conscription is slavery. Pure and simple.Nothing more.”
I hope that everyone repetition is as good a response as my good friend can make it.
Meanwhile, I am waiting for answers to my questions on your economics of oil and gas shale development. You need to repeat yourself to persuade me.
Actually, Mr. Molitor, you said rather more than that, trying to place business regulations and any number of other reasonable things into the same category, but, more importantly, while I may disagree with Dr. Hays’ overall premise, he did a rather good job of refuting your point. Repeating the same piece of conspiracy-laced hysterical hyperbole a second time hardly negates its semantic inaccuracy.
All I say is that conscription is slavery. Pure and simple.Nothing more.
Dr4. J, I am embarrassed to respond by noting that you have misread my column. First, I do not call for military service for everyone. I specifically make everyone liable to the draft and make those not drafted obligated to another form of national service. Second, the comparison to Israel concerns the obligation that everyone has to serve country.
Dr. Hays says: “Someone explain how an increasingly stratified society is supposed to remain democratic if its elected leaders only pretend to be a good fellows with whom one can have a beer, but have no clue about the electors and their lives. We shall soon be their “they.” Then all hell will break loose.” Indeed Dr., indeed. They are and we are their “they” and have been for quite some time. The comparison of Israel and forced military service to America is ludicrous. We are not under daily attack from terrorists and armies that surround us and continually kill our people for no reason and want to destroy our country and its’ right to exist. America has very little in common with Israel, thus no need for forcing all our citizens into military service.
Quick reply to Thomas Molitor: everything which you dislike is not a form of “slavery.” The word means uncompensated work by one person for another. If you had spoken of “indentured servants,” you would have been closer. They accepted a limited term of work and some benefits (room and board, some pay) in return for the benefits of transport to this country, freedom after a fixed period, and sometimes training for future employment. I have no problem with “indentured servitude” of all for two years. However, if you want to speak a private language as part of your predictable rants, do not expect people to make much sense of them or take them seriously.
Most of the rest of you endorse the very unfettered and asocial, if not anti-social, individualism which is becoming our undoing. Israel is regarded as an outpost of freedom in the MIddle East and has, I believe, mandatory service for all; Israelis do not think of it as slavery (except, perhaps, metaphorically). In my examples, the US conscripted civilians into the military services in the US wars mentioned; no one equated conscription to slavery In a literal sense.
Someone explain how an increasingly stratified society is supposed to remain democratic if its elected leaders only pretend to be a good fellows with whom one can have a beer, but have no clue about the electors and their lives. We shall soon be their “they.” Then all hell will break loose.
“So I want not only a restoration of the draft, but also the establishment of a national service for those not drafted.”
Conscription, my friend, is slavery. The draft, confiscatory taxation, laws and mandates against home schooling, speech controls, or any number of impositions of life and property, and regulations designed to control our social and business associations. There is a sense in which these can call be considered forms of slavery.
Well said IP, although I was merely offering everyday roles most would consider service to the society rather than having the government (or Dr. Hays) mandate them for us. It is good we can find common ground, given our diverse life experiences and world views.
I am reminded of a quarter of a century in a public school classroom where students were compelled to recite the pledge of allegiance every morning, most recently in two languages. They did it mostly against their will and when it was all said and done thousands of times, their bond with their flag and America, was no greater than it was the first time they recited from rote, words that have no inherent meaning to them.
While the idea of compulsive service is worth batting around for a few good reasons, the expectation that it would somehow change the way people “feel” about being an American, is I think, overly optimistic.
A liberal is someone like the greek or the writer of this piece…El grique writes that no one but he among the commenters knows what he’s talking about…..Probably right…..Libs are smarter and more righteous than us ordinary mortals. I think they are tendentious and engage in too much mentation.
Well, Mr. Hays, you were right; I do disagree, though not to the degree either of us expected I’m certain; I find no fault in your analysis, merely your conclusions.
What I find entirely unremarkable, of course, is the predictable responses you’ve garnered; gm makes a knee-jerk decision to blame liberals for all the ills of the world, in the process making it clear he doesn’t know what a “liberal” is, Mr. Cummins in three words further proves his need for a dictionary, and Mr. Hawkes posts the exact same irrelevant screed he’s posted several times on articles to which it also didn’t relate. While Dr. J objects to what he calls “artificial roles” you have created, this certainly doesn’t prevent the same poster from substituting different artificial roles in replacement. However, I can’t help but agree with the sentiment that mandatory service is hardly a uniting force, at least not a positive one.
I find mandatory service in peacetime (a term I obviously use loosely) to set a potentially dangerous precedent. Requiring payment of taxes or obedience to public laws and regulations is one thing; theses are actions that rational citizens consider necessary for the good of a free society. Requiring service to society, however, steps beyond the bounds of what it means to be a free society and essentially mandates subservience. This is to say nothing of the rather ridiculous notion of training almost our entire society to kill. Martial societies have never been peaceful societies, either internally or externally; History has shown that the desire for empire is just too great a call to a militarized country, particularly one with as much pre-existing and entrenched power and influence as we already possess.
People voted for Obama in 2008 because they wanted the opposite of Bush. Obama has in turn been more Bush than Bush. With both parties now having betrayed the interests of the people, the establishment needs a new party to blame. Enter the T party -a republican operation run by Dick Armey and http://www.freedomworks.org/. Every T party candidate has the risk of having the rug pulled out from under them at any moment; and I expect it will be. The people’s interests have not changed; their government no longer represents their interests. What happens following the third betrayal?
http://sites.google.com/site/erikhawkes/Home/the-third-betrayal
Very interesting opinions Dr. Hays. I would disagree with most all of them (except that we are a polarized, politically divisive society), but especially an “obligation” to “serve” this country by “sacrifice”. I think citizens have an obligation to make this country better, and contribute to society in positive ways. This obligation can be fulfilled in numerous ways; we used to call being a good citizen. It might be building a large corporation from scratch (something abhorrent today among the political types who demonize business and big business in particular), or volunteering for community service when the need arises, or philanthropy (we are the most generous society in the world, and most of that in “conservative” states), or being a good parent and sibling, or a myriad of ways to help our society improve and progress. I think using artificial roles that require “sacrifice” and are mandated by government is ridiculous and contrary to American values of freedom on which this country was founded and has made us the best country in the world, bar none. To think that the government mandating national service and a draft will magically unite us as a people is both ridiculous and naïve.
socialistic/fascism rubbish
……”an all-volunteer military drawn largely from lower-middle and lower classes explains”…..Thanks a lot Hays
…..”today’s rich and powerful serve themselves, not their country, in part because they have no sense of country.”…..Is there a study that supports this?.Your own personal view? And u ask for unity?
Forced national service will serve to unite us? Take away a fundamental freedom and that would make us better?
What might go a long way toward less rancor if not unity is if liberals would reject the notion that there is only one single correct answer to a question and they have it…….There is only one correct position on an issue and they have it….
Gonna order a bumper sticker: “Unite and Promote Diversity”