Our culture is an individualistic one in which willingness to sacrifice for the common good is increasingly rare. Yet, many sacrificed in the past, and some sacrifice today. Regardless of how we feel about our nation’s foreign policies, we must appreciate what such people do for us. Today, of all days, we should be thankful for people who risk their lives for our sake.
Providing public safety and security is a key function of government. Even the most libertarian advocates of minimal government agree it is unlikely spontaneous voluntary actions by individuals will provide fire and police protection or national defense at the levels we need.
People don’t want fires to burn out of control. They hope that if they are injured in an accident, rescue and treatment will be available to them. They want to be protected from being robbed, assaulted or killed. And they want the nation to be defended against attack by outsiders.
These critical tasks often involve work that is unpleasant or dangerous. While society wants safety and security, few people relish cleaning up gore after horrific accidents, going into burning houses, chasing thugs down dark alleys or driving down roads plagued by snipers or improvised explosive devices.
Thus, a minority of citizens ends up doing dirty and distasteful work that benefits society as a whole. The question of how society treats such people is a matter of honor and fairness.
There are, however, economic dimensions to this question. Do we compensate people so as to get as many such workers as society needs? Are those who serve equitably compensated for the relative risk and trauma? Does broad public esteem augment such compensation or public scorn diminish it?
Some argue that answering the first question answers the second. Only an individual can judge his or her own tolerance for peril and disgust. If we pay police, firefighters and those in the armed forces enough to get the number of volunteers we need, then we are also compensating them fairly.
It is no different, they argue, from finding workers for packing plants or sewage treatment plants. Those are necessary jobs, too, and ones few people relish doing. Yet, such places do get people who want the work. Few agonize over whether they are treated fairly. Should convincing young men and women to become soldiers and marines be any different?
I argue it is, largely because people of optimal age for such service may be badly equipped to judge the eventual costs and benefits of their choices. Moreover, unlike police officers or firefighters — or packinghouse and sewage workers, for that matter — they usually are not allowed to change their minds once they realize the full import of the choice they made.
Honesty demands some disclosure: My views are colored by personal experience. I enlisted in the army right out of high school. I served three adventurous years ending with a tour in Vietnam. I never was in great danger and suffered no direct trauma. But I was close enough to the pain, fear and trauma of friends that it changed my life in important ways.
There is much silly rhetoric about fighting. People do not “lay down their lives” for democracy or “the American way of life.” Life is wrenched from them — violently. They die fighting for themselves and their friends, not some abstract sentiment.
And yet, young people do make conscious choices that eventually place them in situations where they must fight and die. Why they do is an important question.
Why did so many men my age enlist or at least dutifully report for induction in 1967, even when 20 Americans died in Vietnam each day? Why did 800 of us volunteer for parachute training each week in the spring of 1968, when it only increased our chances of death or injury?
The reasons people join the military are complex, not unlike the reasons people marry. Some of us were trying to prove something — masculinity, courage, honor — to ourselves or to society. Some of us were working out complex, painful relationships with parents. Some sought adventure and danger in a teenage haze of adrenaline and testosterone. A few toyed with an end to a painful life.
Many went simply because of the legal penalties for not reporting or because of expectations of family and community. And, at some level, some of us went out of a sense of duty to country and responsibility to community. Most of us knew we ran a risk. For many, the eventual price was higher than they anticipated.
The nation is still divided on whether the war we went to was right or wrong. It is similarly divided on whether the war in Iraq is sound policy. Regardless of such disagreement, the willingness of millions of young people to serve the nation — however complicated their personal motivation — is a good thing. Many did not honor it 40 years ago, but we would do well to honor it now.
© 2005 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.