"Hawke" wrote in message
...

Morris, you can save yourself a lot of time by ignoring anything that
Gunner cuts and pastes here. It's usually from an unidentified source
that he picks up in the right-wing nutbag blogs and websites, often
from
a "military officer just returned from Iraq," or, in this case, a
"Vietnam vet who refused a promotion to general." The Special Forces
angle is a nice twist. d8-)

That was my conclusion, too. On the off chance that he might actually
have
metalworking expertise (I have precious little), I won't ignore his
posts - but I won't necessarily keep quiet if my BS detector goes off.

He doesn't bull**** about machining, and he knows quite a bit about
machine
tools and their installation. He's a self-taught machinist, like many of
us
here, and he's frank about the state of his knowledge.

However, if the subject turns to politics, click on to the next message.
g


I don't particularly mind revealing the identity of the ex-military
type
on whose judgment /I/ most depend:

http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/Misc/DogTags.jpg

nor the fact that I, also, wore these:

http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/Misc/Wings.jpg

but I have never been under the illusion that either made my judgment
any
better than anyone else's.

A sensible man. There are plenty of them here; you'll enjoy the company.

--
Ed Huntress


Regarding military service being an advantage in other areas like
politics,
I ran into something interesting the other day. I'm in the middle of
reading
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and I came across a line about a
certain Roman general that was about to take over the job of Emperor of
the
empire. It said that the military experience of a general was useless when
it came to administering an empire. In other words military experience
didn't translate to being a politician or administrator. I find it
interesting that even though they knew this hundreds of years ago an awful
lot of people nowadays don't know that fact and seem to think that being a
good general means you'll be good at everything else. In fact, good
generals
rarely make good civilian leaders.

Hawke

Sure. They're different sets of skills and radically different modes of
working with others. An individual may be gifted with the ability to do
either job well, but there's no necessary connection between the two.

I think there's a common tendency, though, for people to desire a strongman
type of executive and a military command structure of government when a
society faces serious threats, whether they're military, economic, or
social. This is as true in liberal democracies as in monarchies. We've faced
one kind of anxiety or another for most of the period since 1929, so it
should be no surprise that sizeable portions of the electorate have favored
experienced military men for president throughout most of that period.

In general, it's a bad tendency for a liberal democracy. It tends to
encourage the manufacturing of crises and anxieties, and it encourages
totalitarian thinking on the part of the executive branch of government. A
bunker mentality and military metaphors of government are not good for the
long-term health of a democratic republic.

--
Ed Huntress