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Big armies can also instill good values, teach useful skills, help pay for education, show you the world (parts of it anyway), and provide some pretty unique pe
by tdavis 17y ago
Big armies can also instill good values, teach useful skills, help pay for education, show you the world (parts of it anyway), and provide some pretty unique perspective on things (like war).
I pretty much feel that military service should be compulsory, in fact. I wouldn't make people sign up for the eight years I did (after four I'd had enough... and still have two left), but I think a year of service would do a lot of good for the majority of people.
- ojbyrne 17y agoI rather intensely disagree. Big armies need to be used, and the social dislocation of war vastly outweighs the often meager benefits. Massive amounts of propaganda hide the problems, and there's a huge consumption of resources that could be put to better use. Teaching people to suspend their natural inclination to kill and getting them to do it on command is something that's easily converted to organized crime. Gwynne Dyer is a good read - his basic thesis is that militarism is essentially the root of organized crime, and has been since Roman times: http://www.gwynnedyer.com/ http://www.gwynnedyer.com/