This kind of speaks to same theme as the PJTV dick measuring theme brought up here.
Get a load of Ann Coulter's response...
Since MSNBC host Chris Hayes is “uncomfortable” labeling fallen soldiers as “heroes,” The Twitterverse wondered: How does one define #HayesHeroism?
Twitchy collected some of the best to help us clarify. Here’s just a few:
And then there’s Ann Coulter being… well, Ann Coulter:
Ann Coulter @AnnCoulter Chris Hayes 'Uncomfortable' Calling Fallen Military 'Heroes' – Marines respond by protecting his right to menstruate.
Ann Coulter @AnnCoulter
Chris Hayes 'Uncomfortable' Calling Fallen Military 'Heroes' – Marines respond by protecting his right to menstruate.
[continued...]
They even have trouble getting medals that are more or less owed to them by the government they fought on behalf of:
Malachi:the best way to get an individual award is still to do exactly as you are told and make sure all blame is directed below your echelon, and all praise is directed above. At least in my experience. I got a few awards but I can tell you that every single one was awarded, ultimately, for showing up to work on a particular day or series of days and nothing else.
Were you ever in live combat?
Personally, I think people like Irwin Schiff are heroes.
If only he were recognized as such.
You sound like Jake Gyllenhaal
Allow me to say just one things. All these vociferous supporters of the military are probably the worst enemies the military can have.
For all their flag waving and saber rattling their "support for the troops" seldom goes beyond bumper stickers or insults on he Internet. None of them is enrolling and I think they have hammered in their children's heads signing up is "not cool": you have to go to Harvard, go to Yale, start a career... no time for playing soldiers. None of them is taking any time to go visit the military hospital or to go beyond a tweet to provide comfort to a soldier. None of them is buying "comfort packages" and shipping them to the troops. Worst of all they are constantly clamoring for more needless bloodbaths. They are not asking their soldiers to defend Seattle from the Soviets or Anchorage from the Chinese. They are asking to send them over to some God-forsaken valley in Central Asia which has nothing the US wants and whose people pose no threat to the US. At least the French could console themselves that, by feeding troops into the meatgrinder of Verdun, they were defending their own soil.
Surely they are not caring for the veterans coming back home. Sure, many of them will go on to lead perfectly normal lives but what about the ones turned into dangerous sociopaths or those with no arms and legs? Recently I noticed the news are only reporting fatalities among NATO troops in Afghanistan. The wounded rarely makes into the news, yet for every soldier killed three or four are grievously wounded, to the point CASEVAC helicopters have been stripped of all fabric so they can be hosed down once they land to wash the blood. This reinforces the belief war is a neat thing: the dead arrive home in a sealed casket, they have a nice funeral and then it's over. As Fred Reed said the people supporting this at home should be tied to an HUMVEE bumper and be taken for a stroll in a war zone or, even better, be forced to take a tour of the militar hospital at Bethesda to see the young men who will spend the rest of what cannot be called life be turned from side to side to avoid sores.
After decorating a soldier blinded by splinters, Marshall Joffre turned to his staff and said "You must never put me through this again, otherwise I will never be able to order another attack". Despite being often painted as a man of limited intelligence and being a career military, he understood it. The best cure for armchair militarism is witnessing war firsthand.
Well said Kakugo.
Heroism is just a word that describes a concept. One of the main reasons I admire our troops is because I know they're going through something I am too scared to go through myself. They're heroes to me precisely because they've faced hell. Regardless of how they come out or if they come out at all, they've still got my eternal respect and gratitude for being a part of what they've been a part of and doing the things they've done with the kind of courage I find lacking in myself.
It's precisely because I've led my comfortable silver spoon type of life that I admire our servicemen as much as I do. They make my comfy life possible through their efforts and sacrifices. So when I see some armchair warrior/pundit talking trash about our troops I find myself overcome with disgust because my moral intuition tells me that they have no right whatsoever to make those comments even if some servicemen might agree with them. It's not their place. Fuck Chris Hayes.
When I look up the word heroism in the dictionary I find synonyms like: intrepidity (fearlessness), valor (boldness or determination in the face of great danger), prowess (skill or expertise in the field), gallantry (courageous behavior especially in battle), bravery (the ability to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty or intimidation), courage, daring, fortitude. These are just words. But to me they help to conceptualize why I hold our soldiers in the highest respect. They represent traits that I aspire to but I don't find in myself. That's what makes them heroes to me.
Agreed. Chincy sentimentalism, vapid maximalisms, empty "tough guy" routines, and outright hypocrisy is one of the bigger faults of conservativism's loss of any significance. Bad as it may be, you can only blame leftist subversion and their "will to idiocy" for so many things.
What's wrong with just keeping your mouth shut with such professions? There is no need to nationally politicize such people and things, it's maddness in either direction.
"As in a kaleidoscope, the constellation of forces operating in the system as a whole is ever changing." - Ludwig Lachmann
"When A Man Dies A World Goes Out of Existence" - GLS Shackle
bloomj31:It's precisely because I've led my comfortable silver spoon type of life that I admire our servicemen as much as I do. They make my comfy life possible through their efforts and sacrifices. So when I see some armchair warrior/pundit talking trash about our troops I find myself overcome with disgust because my moral intuition tells me that they have no right whatsoever to make those comments even if some servicemen might agree with them. It's not their place. Fuck Chris Hayes.
I find myself overcome with disgust because of what you just said. So on behalf of Chris Hayes, fuck you.
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
Autolykos: I find myself overcome with disgust because of what you just said. So on behalf of Chris Hayes, fuck you.
Lol k.
That's right. Of course, I could laugh off your statements just as easily too.
Bloomj31 wrote one of the most neocon-ish posts I've ever seen here.
Indeed.
Clayton -
Clayton: It's rather silly to suggest that most people in the military are there because of some kind of unusual bravery or courage
How do you personally measure someone's bravery and courage?
What do you use as a reference point or benchmark for identifying these qualities in yourself and others?
bloomj31: Clayton: It's rather silly to suggest that most people in the military are there because of some kind of unusual bravery or courage How do you personally measure someone's bravery and courage? What do you use as a reference point or benchmark for identifying these qualities in yourself and others?
Well for one thing, I certainly wouldn't use signing a contract after being bombarded with cultural propaganda about what it means to "be a man", and promises of adventure and learning awesome skills and paid-for university education, because the person had no real direction in their life and very few options — as a benchmark, that's for sure.
Second, I don't exactly see how simply following orders even if it means you are putting your health at risk, automatically makes one "brave" or "courageous"...let alone a "hero". It could just as easily mean one is an idiot.
For me "hero" always implied a degree of ethical and moralistic integrity...doing something of high moral regard in the face of great adversity and possibly to great cost to oneself. Obviously soldiers make a sacrifice, but you will have a hard time convincing a lot of people that what they are doing (possibly a majority of the time) is moral or ethical.
I mean, you could say it takes courage to walk into a shooting range exhibition and open fire on random people (would you not be scared to do that?)...but that doesn't make such a person a hero in my eyes. According to the definition you've given, such a person would be. Essentially as long as someone does something you're afraid to do, they're a "hero" to you.
I guess different people just have different standards.
I agree with what Chomsky has to say about, "Support our troops":
"[...] the point of public relations slogans like "Support Our Troops" is that they don't mean anything [...] that's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody is going to be against and I suppose everybody will be for, because nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. But its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something, do you support our policy? And that's the one you're not allowed to talk about."
I'd be interested to hear other examples of popular propaganda slogans.
@JJ,
I think here you have distinguished between what one might call "physical courage" and what one might call "moral courage."
Physical courage is something more immediate and tangible than moral courage. It's acting in the face of fear. Now I don't have incident reports sitting right here in front of me so I don't really know what the causes for death were for every single man or woman killed in action. I don't know if every single one of them died while acting in spite of their fears. But I can imagine myself in a situation like Afghanistan or Iraq and I can only imagine that I would be afraid for my life most of the time. It would take great courage for me to just to live there. So I'm willing to bet those men and women killed in action were facing their fears on a daily basis. I admire them for that.
As for moral courage it's impossible for me to know whether or not every single man and woman lost in battle believed that their cause was just and right. I don't really think it's my place though to pass judgment on the morality of a war or the soldiers who served in it. I feel like the armed forces fight to protect me and my wonderfully luxurious lifestyle and the country I love so really I feel like it's not my place to question their actions from a moral standpoint. So basically it's good enough for me.
Perhaps one man's hero is another man's villain. Maybe it's all about perspective. Valuing actions requires context and careful evaluation of the facts.
Courage is just one synonym for heroism anyways. In my mind it's a much broader concept than mere courage that involves many different qualities that I admire.
It's hard to explain exactly what it is about Chris Hayes that just rubs me the wrong way or exactly why I found his comments so disgusting but he does rub me the wrong way and I do find him disgusting. Perhaps it's just in my nature to find weak looking men like him repulsive. Perhaps it's his astounding presumption because the guy has never served but thinks it's his place to comment on the service of others. Maybe it's because in reading his "apology" I don't get the feeling that he's sorry or that he understands why people found his comments so offensive. Whatever it is I can't stand the guy and I can't find it in me to entertain his viewpoint even for a second.
bloomj31:I think here you have distinguished between what one might call "physical courage" and what one might call "moral courage." Physical courage is something more immediate and tangible than moral courage. It's acting in the face of fear. Now I don't have incident reports sitting right here in front of me so I don't really know what the causes for death were for every single man or woman killed in action. I don't know if every single one of them died while acting in spite of their fears. But I can imagine myself in a situation like Afghanistan or Iraq and I can only imagine that I would be afraid for my life most of the time. It would take great courage for me to just to live there. So I'm willing to bet those men and women killed in action were facing their fears on a daily basis. I admire them for that. As for moral courage it's impossible for me to know whether or not every single man and woman lost in battle believed that their cause was just and right. I don't really think it's my place though to pass judgment on the morality of a war or the soldiers who served in it. I feel like the armed forces fight to protect me and my wonderfully luxurious lifestyle and the country I love so really I feel like it's not my place to question their actions from a moral standpoint. So basically it's good enough for me.
...So basically, it's exactly like I said. As long as someone physically does something that you are scared to do, that basically makes them a "hero" in your eyes. Or at least goes a long way to putting them there.
I find it interesting you would make it a point to say how you can't know whether the dead soldier believed that their cause was just and right. In my view, I don't think it really makes a difference. Again, someone could very easily walk up to an infant and slam it on the ground, and very well think it was the just, right, and moral thing to do. In my view, that doesn't make it so. But then again, I'm not a moral relativist, as you apparently are. Someone could easily walk up and blow your head off in a crowded area. And it seems that you're saying that as long as they were personally facing fear when they did it, and held a personal belief that it was moral, then the person is a hero.
I guess it's just a good thing that most people don't think and believe like you do.
I found this 2009 NG ad the creepiest I've seen yet:
I was relieved to hear people laughing at the commercial after it ran. Of course, the soundtrack is a cheap knockoff of Orff's O Fortuna, one of the most recognizable tunes ever written, thanks to Hollywood:
It was written in Germany slightly before Hitler's rise to power which makes it extra-creepy and this is probably part of the NG's decision to make a knockoff rather than use the original - but it's obvious they wanted to use the original.
I clicked to watch the first video on the youtube site before reading the rest of your post. I actually noticed that right away, and then came back to see you mentioned it.
Also, maybe I'm sexist, but I kind of get an urge to laugh everytime I see a female in combat gear.
@JJ: Well, they're coming for our daughters next. I saw on CNN the other day that some feminist pressure group is trying to get the Pentagon to change its policy on women in combat, saying it unfarily deprives them of experience and promotions. They actually have a point, as did gays living under DADT. Note that it's the government which is dead last among employers to acknowledge basic human rights.
In any case, this would be of no note except that Congress has been batting around the idea of registering women for selective service. Now, once your society has reached the point where you are drafting women into combat roles, you are less than a generation from complete collapse. The reason has nothing to do with morality or good and evil and everything to do with the fact that your women are the only vehicle for sustaining your population. Males are fairly expendable as far as Nature is concerned, one man can do the honors for many women as well as he can for one woman, but the reverse is not the case. But culling the females through a draft and combat duty is literally social suicide.
I literally cringe every time I walk past a television showing cable news nowadays. It's non-stop bad news for individual liberty and prosperity, 24x7.
*sigh
Clayton:it unfarily deprives them of experience and promotions. They actually have a point, as did gays living under DADT.
How did DADT deprive military personnel of experience and promotions?
Note that it's the government which is dead last among employers to acknowledge basic human rights.
Human rights? I'm not sure what you're talking about. How is it a "basic human right" to be employed in whatever position you want to be employed in? Lee Doren is like 5'6" and wants to be a linebacker for the Buffalo Bills. Is it is basic human right to have that job/experience/promotion?
Well, there's some good news every now and then...
John James: As long as someone physically does something that you are scared to do, that basically makes them a "hero" in your eyes. Or at least goes a long way to putting them there.
Well I think physical courage is one part of the recipe. I think it's important to note that I feel particularly fond of the American military because they're part of my national defense. I might not be so fond of an invading army though undoubtedly back home they'd be heroes to some of their people.
John James: Again, someone could very easily walk up to an infant and slam it on the ground, and very well think it was the just, right, and moral thing to do.
I could not determine, just by examining that action alone, whether or not it was the right or wrong thing to do. I can imagine that it would probably be widely viewed as wrong but maybe that's just because most people's moral circle seems to encompass most infants. Those same people might not care as much about some random Arab though.
John James: Someone could easily walk up and blow your head off in a crowded area. And it seems that you're saying that as long as they were personally facing fear when they did it, and held a personal belief that it was moral, then the person is a hero.
I'd say they acted with some form of physical courage, I don't know if they'd be considered a hero. They might be a hero to themselves or to whomever wanted me dead but a villain to me. Perspective is key.
John James: I guess it's just a good thing that most people don't think and believe like you do.
I'm not sure that my natural moral intuitions are fundamentally any different from anyone else's. In fact, if I am to believe Pinker, they're probably quite common.
@JJ: I worded that poorly - the feminists have a point; gay rights activists also had a point about DADT being discriminatory (different point, but they had one).
By referencing "human rights", I'm criticizing them on their own grounds. It's the statists who have been pushing the multi-cultural, egalitarian agenda onto the private sector for decades. But they themselves (the military is a branch of the government) are dead last to implement the very policies they've been shoving down everyone else's throats. It's like the story (not sure if it's true) that Capitol Hill was exempted from compliance to ADA regulations because Congress determined it would be "too costly". Go figure.
natural moral intuitions
You need to read Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters. In the Introduction they talk about the Naturalistic and "Moralistic" fallacy - the naturalistic fallacy is the assumption that because something is natural that, tehrefore, it is moral and the moralistic fallacy is the reverse - believing that just because something is moral that therefore it is natural (or immoral and unnatural).
EP is a value-free science. It tells us nothing about the worthiness of our natural moral inclinations, it only tells us why some of them are what they are. Because we can think and we can alter our own moral perceptions through psychological self-training, it is not the case that we are at the mercy of our innate intuitions. This is where I think ethics gets really complicated and fuzzy because there is a "back-and-forth" between social norms as they exist "out there" and our own internalization and subjective criticism of those social norms.
I think there is a strong analogy between the nature of morality and language. A word (e.g. "bike") is what it is and means what it means in an objective sense. Nevertheless, your participation in that meaning depends on your own internalization of the usage. Your style dictates how elevated your use of the language is.
Social norms are very similar in this regard. A social norm simply exists in some objective sense (e.g. "don't steal") - it is what it is. Your participation in that morality depends on your own internalization of it, that is, you must construct your own internal "image" of the social norms in order to be able to sense your own conformance or non-conformance to them. Others will make their own assessments independent of yours but your internal assessment constitutes your "moral sense". Finally, your character or way of living will determine how refined your behavior is. None of this has anything to do with "thou shalt nots" or even outcomes/consequences except insomuch as the outcome is the action (foreseeable consequences) and, therefore, inseparable from it.
bloomj31: John James: Again, someone could very easily walk up to an infant and slam it on the ground, and very well think it was the just, right, and moral thing to do. I could not determine, just by examining that action alone, whether or not it was the right or wrong thing to do. I can imagine that it would probably be widely viewed as wrong but maybe that's just because most people's moral circle seems to encompass most infants. Those same people might not care as much about some random Arab though.
I really doubt you'd find many people who could witness someone walking up to an infant (even an Arab infant) and slamming it on the ground...and not have a problem with it.
clayton: You need to read Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters.
I've actually ordered it already. Should be here soon. I also want to read Expanding the Circle by Peter Singer, I'm interested to learn more about "moral circles."
clayton: EP is a value-free science. It tells us nothing about the worthiness of our natural moral inclinations, it only tells us why some of them are what they are.
Right and I wasn't saying that my moral intuitions are necessarily correct I was just saying that they might not actually be uncommon. As Pinker points out in Blank Slate, in-group out-group thinking is something we come by naturally.
John James: I really doubt you'd find many people who could witness someone walking up to an infant (even an Arab infant) and slamming it on the ground...and not have a problem with it.
EDITED: I didn't mean to imply an Arab infant. I meant like a grown man. But you're probably right. I really have no data on this so I don't know for sure but I'll buy it. Either way that natural moral instinct that tells people "hurting infants is wrong" comes from somewhere in the brain. But so does the moral instinct that says "killing enemy combatants" or "fighting for one's country" is right. So a person could hold the values "hurting infants is wrong" and also "killing enemy combatants is right" at the same time. Some people's moral circles may encompass both infants and enemy combatants but mine is far narrower.
@Clayton:
That all makes more sense.
And you're right about the ADA thing. I can't believe I can't find the program where (I believe) Stossel mentions it, but it's just like you said. Here it says: "Congress remains exempt, although it must abide by certain internal requirements"...so in other words, they don't have to abide by the rules they set for everyone else...just the rules they set for themselves.
In fact, hilarious/sad as it may be, there is actually a government webpage listing the laws that actually do apply to Congress. No, you didn't read that wrong. The number of laws that don't apply to Congress is so large, they just made a page listing the ones that do apply.
those vietnam vets are heroes to me. And unless I get drafted and sent to north korea I dont think I will get into a shooting war with communists so I will just anger all of my fellow war on terror vets by recognizing the saltiness of the vietnam vets. I am like a troll general. Troll assassin. The ayatollah of trollatollyah
Of course it was only a matter of time before PJTV weighed in with it's right-wing opinion...
(Notice at 4:20 Whittle's wink back to his dick measuring party.)
I find the Messianic narrative underpinning war death to be cynical in the extreme - they died "that we might be free." Sounds an awful lot like Jesus, doesn't it?:
Christ died for us when we were unable to help ourselves. We were living against God, but at just the right time Christ died for us. Very few people will die to save the life of someone else, even if it is for a good person. Someone might be willing to die for an especially good person. But Christ died for us while we were still sinners, and by this God showed how much he loves us. We have been made right with God by the blood sacrifice of Christ. So through Christ we will surely be saved from God’s anger. Romans 5:6-9 (Easy-to-read version for those not versed in biblical jargon)
Romans 5:6-9 (Easy-to-read version for those not versed in biblical jargon)
Ugh.
Heroes are likelier to be found among the people fighting the American troops. Unlike the Americans, OPFOR people are facing an enemy that has all the advantages in equipment, training, airsupport, supplies, medical facilities... They are doing something that you could not ask of anyone to be doing as it is so hazardous, jet they do it anyway. Another thing is fighting off the occupation is honorable (and a libertarian act) while lending your services to an occupation as American troops do is dishonorable. Obviously getting killed requires no special heroism, it requires performing no action that is as per the pathetic military lingo "beyond the call of duty". Also even such actions beyond what the military feels it can ask for as are performed are performed in the context of and for the benefit of maintaining an occupation. So we can not call American occupying troops who do something that would be heroic if done by an OPFOR fighter "heroes". They are "heroes for the occupation", but that is not a positive adjective. You wouldn't call an SS trooper who exposed himself to great danger in order to get a chance to kill 50 Jews more than he would have otherwise a "hero", would you now? In what way is an American soldier who exposes himself to added danger in order to kill more people fighting the occupation of their nation different? Heroes such as exist among occupying troops are those who go against the occupation. During the Bengal Famine of 1943 many British troops defied orders by the military not to pass their food onto starving Indians — in as much as they faced severe and likely consequences for doing so (though most did not) they may be thought of as "heroes", ie "heroes for their fellow man".
Physical courage is something more immediate and tangible than moral courage. It's acting in the face of fear. Now I don't have incident reports sitting right here in front of me so I don't really know what the causes for death were for every single man or woman killed in action. I don't know if every single one of them died while acting in spite of their fears. But I can imagine myself in a situation like Afghanistan or Iraq and I can only imagine that I would be afraid for my life most of the time. It would take great courage for me to just to live there. So I'm willing to bet those men and women killed in action were facing their fears on a daily basis. I admire them for that. That's idiotic. So as long as you fear doing something, but do it anyway you are a hero, regardless of what danger doing this action actually puts you in. So if I really fear pouring myself some juice, but do it anyways I am big a hero. So actually a huge coward who fears doing anything at all, even completely safe and routine stuff, is the biggest hero as long as he remains functional despite. It's clear to me you need to get off your Oprah touchy-feely shit. It's making you dumb.