Castrating the Military
25th February 2011
John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia, lets loose.
Our nation’s actual military is ahead of VMI in these matters. They are aiming for an organization that exists not to fight wars, still less—heaven forbid!—to win them, but to celebrate diversity.
Most Americans first heard news of this development on November 8, 2009, when General George Casey, reacting to the Fort Hood shooting, told a TV interviewer: “As horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.” We were further enlightened shortly afterward on learning that Fort Hood, like most US military bases, is a gun-free zone.
Turning military bases into gun-free zones is merely a rest stop along the road to making them testosterone-free zones. That in turn appears to be part of a scheme to fold the military into our culture of grievance, complaint, “rights,” and teeming swarms of lawyers stripping all the sense and virtue from the populace like locusts on wheat. A correspondent who knows the territory tells me: “Guys who served a single tour will get out and join the post office where veterans get very preferential treatment. Then they retire from the post office and head over to the VA claiming service-related handicaps.”
Hey, military men have government jobs, too.