Bryan Anderson, U.S. Army veteran and triple amputee, talks with members from the 18th Security Forces Squadron on Kadena Air Base, Japan, June 17, 2013. Anderson was a military policeman in the Army and was able to see how U.S. Air Force security forces members conduct their mission within the different sections of their squadron. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Malia Jenkins/Released)
Unified Patriots by Vassar Bushmills
(This is a set-up piece, a prelude, as to why we need a corps of veterans out there teaching young kids about America. Like any military exercise, we have to 1) know the objective and 2) and know the size and power of the obstacles out there laying out there to keep us from reaching it.)
Recently we published a piece calling for national service, suggesting that every high school graduate be required to attend a boot camp of sorts, where, among other things, they would be taught to make their bed, learn to say “Yessir!” “No Ma’am” and “Thank you” in the appropriate manner, and to develop an appreciation of sweat equity, rubbing elbows, with people they would never have spoken to or sat with in the lunch room at high school.
Yeah, I’ll bet you thought every kid already knew that.
Well, they don’t, and how many of them are in this condition are many more than you know.
WHY they are in this condition, and HOW they came to be in this condition is what I will discuss here, for the military, military service to be more specific, played a major role in how American youths have been shaped over the past 50 years.
In short, the idea of a mandatory system was impractical even before I put it to paper. If such a law actually could get through Congress, fully 40% of America’s parents and/or their children would likely refuse to comply, thus setting off a resistance movement larger and more violent then any we’ve seen in the past.
The situation we’re in today all started with the Vietnam War draft, for the social explosion it caused was all based on a great lie.
The great lie of the Vietnam War draft
A little history of the draft in America, by the numbers.
In the Civil War, the draft pulled in only 40,000 inductees, of a total of 2.5 million who served in the Union armies. That’s 1.6%. Another 120,000 bought their way out of the draft by paying others to take their place, another 4.8%. (This ability to buy yourself or your son out of military service was available only to those who could afford it, namely the upper classes…So take note of this.) True, many from the upper classes did serve anyway, but as officers.
Bottom line, the Union Army was made up almost entirely of volunteers, 2.3 million of them, 94%. And over 400,000 of them never came home.
That’s why we call our group the 15:13 No Greater Love Foundation.
You see, although officially the Civil War was fought to keep the Union intact, most of those 2.3 million volunteers enlisted to end slavery, because, all their lives they had been preached to on Sunday morning about how great a sin and great stain slavery was on the United States. Young men then were about as unaware of the larger purposes of America as young people are today.
Their sacrifice is still the Gold Standard for justifying America’s wars, a high moral purpose at both ends of the military spectrum.
This incorporates one of the many “First Principles” we will use in our curricula for vets who will teach young people, for it distinguishes America from the rest of the world. It’s a real attention-getter, for once you start out a classroom lecture with that, you’ve told them something they don’t know, and as a vet, have the street cred to say it with authority. I know this works because I gave several American Government classes to welfare moms in a small college in Cincinnati.
I began every opening lecture with this small fact: Throughout history no nation has ever given up its sons in battle to go rescue other people, people they did not know, of another color even, and not even known to be Christian, except the United States.
After that, the sledding was all downhill. Teaching American History and Government to 21-22 year olds was easy once you made it clear to the students that they were part of something unique and exceptional[…]
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[cross-posted on Veterans’ Tales.org]
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