Quote Originally Posted by marct View Post
North American culture has been shifted significantly from a somewhat balanced point of individual freedoms and responsibilities to one where individual "rights" dominate. Second, and again obver the same period (roughly 1910 to the present if we go back to the Taylorite model), we have seen an increasing acquiescence to the power of "experts" to define how things should be run. Third, we have seen a systematic stripping away of many of the "traditional" systems of meaning (often religious, but also nationalistic) and their replacement with commercialized versions (i.e. and individual gets meaning not from acting within a transcendent system but from buying things and "constructing" their "own" identities).

I think that this trend has had an effect on the Army and, probably more on the USMC, since they still operate with an "older" form of "meaning" and identity construction. As a result, I think that you see the military attracting people who have a more "conservative" (please not the small "c") attitude towards rights and responsibilities, and this is where I see the disjuncture between the military and the rest of civil society showing up.
Marc,
I suspect you may be right about the shift in the systems that provide "meaning" to individuals' lives. But, I think it is more of a pendulum swing than a move to a new system.
If you remember your Locke, you jnow that he identified our fundamental rights as life, liberty, and property. We seem to have gone back to the Lockean notion of property as a defining characteristic of our place in the world. This is far from a new thing. What is somewhat new is what now counts as property. Where once it was what one actually produced with the sweat of one's brow (the original definition of property from Locke), it is now the number and type of possessions that our buying power allows us to acquire--necessities versus luxuries if you will. Those who are more concerned with the necessities are those who fit into what you described as "small c" conservatives, IMO.

To put this a little more poetically, Rousseau noted "Man is born free yet is everywhere in chains." Today, more of us than ever before are "chained" by our "need" to acquire the latest and greatest consumer goods instead of the basic essentials of life (like food and shelter). As a result, we have less time/desire to be "chained" by such things as national service, unless they can satisify our consumerism needs.

Those who are chained to the more fundamental needs are more likely to be attracted to the radical appeal. They see it as a means to break free from those chains so they can be shackled to the "higher pleasure."