printThe excerpt is from my new WND.COM column, “‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ For Hets and Homos”:
“Sodomy and oral sex: these will be the topics the nation’s military brass will be studying—not-too-closely, we hope—between now and December.
The priapic preoccupation of some very senior soldiers is part of a new Pentagon study aimed at reviewing the 17-year-old military legal code related to ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ including rules on buggery and related practices. …
The trouble with the military, however—besides its imperial reach and bloated size—is not gays. It is, rather, that the ranks these days are either rutting furiously, or supporting the right to rut, and now, scrutinizing the mating habits of grunts.
The military is soaked in sex. The presence of women has helped this state of affairs. Throw together young men and willing women — and you’ve created an undisciplined, sexually charged atmosphere. Coupled with enabling laws, this combustible admixture is bound to yield bumper crops of unmarried moms and (poor) baby bastards. ” …
Read “‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ For Hets and Homos” for my answer to the facile DADT debate.
And do read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.
The Second Edition features bonus material. Get your copy (or copies) now!
Update (March 5): The Honorable Judge Reavis: As you well know, even though a classical liberal, I’m not really a “you types” kind of a thinker. So what does this classical liberal fear most?
An inversion of morality and rationality is what I fear and dread; a world where the bad, the banal, and the stupid are rewarded and lauded, sought and celebrated; a world where those with the gift of truth and reason are hounded and shunned; where men of (so-called) integrity huddle in atrophying intellectual attics enforcing party lines and other consensus, instead of being courageous. That world, in my experience, is upon us and has come to pass.
The afterlife? G-d ? I’m probably too shallow or practical or both to bother about those.
Everyone knows that the military is much like the culture at large: a big whorehouse.
I can so attest. It is also an alcohol culture, which doesn’t exactly help the problem.
When I arrived at my first unit following training (Jan ’03), the word was that we would be deploying soon. There were approx. 90 soldiers in the battery, 80 male and 10 female. One of the female soldiers was pregnant (due, as she later told me, to a drunken rendezvous with a male soldier at a house party) and as a result she got to sit out the deployment. Marriage wasn’t even a consideration for her. When we returned another female soldier quickly became pregnant, this time by a (married) NCO with whom she’d been having an affair during the deployment. Another female was transferred to us because she’d been carrying on an affair in her old battery with a man 10 years and 3 ranks her senior.
In the barracks (where the single soldiers must live) females are situated two to a room, but not on different floors or in different parts of the building. Virtually no effort is made to separate males from females. It was not uncommon for a “Barracks Queen” to start at one end of the barracks and work her way to the other end. I later heard (from the girl herself) that one of these creatures came for me in a drunken stupor one night (and I’m not what you would call a good-looking guy), but luckily I was on a 4-day pass out of town. And on and on and on…
For my part, the state of our military no longer bothers me because I believe we are swiftly entering a post-United States America. At this point, young men should simply be dissuaded from enlisting or serving in any way.
And before I forget, your column was absolutely brilliant.
[This real-life aspect is indispensable. Thanks for sharing.]
The military has never been very forward thinking or open minded. This is sometimes a fault and sometimes not. The slavish devotion to PC thinking,(Women in the ranks, multiculturalism, gay rights just to name a few) has eroded much of the effectiveness of our military. We should let the military stick to business, demand results based on military performance and use logic and judgement in developing an efficient armed forces. This business of wearing them down with panty-waiste rules of engagement, promoting officers who excell in timidity and betraying the soldiers in the field when the enemy complains of harsh treatment is a minifestation of our female and weenie male society. Where’s Lee Ermey when we need him?
Amen to your essay. Privacy should be private – sexuality should neither be proselytized, advertised, nor investigated. Most women do not belong anywhere near combat. And that goes triple for single mothers!
Some other personnel reforms (non-sexual but related) that I would propose:
(a) Non-combat or combat-support jobs should be civilian jobs
(b) “Retirement” Pensions should be replaced with 401 k’s, generously funded
(c) Withdraw most personnel from overseas deployment (Italy, Japan …)
(d) Downsize the military to legitimate defensive roles
(e) No military “humanitarian” missions other than rescuing Americans
(f) State militia should be limited to their constitutional role and only be in
national service to repel invasion or suppress rebellion
(g) No enduring combat operations without a declaration of War
I am not optimistic of any of the right things being done. As you say, our oversexed military reflects our power-crazed politics and our CORRUPT CULTURE. I do have one question: is the Amazon.com edition of your book the same as the shop.1asecure.com edition?
[Sorry, Myron; I missed the question. I believe the second edition is the one that is being supplied to Amazon, unless you buy old, used copies. The understandable confusion is because the publisher of the 2nd edition has not yet updated the old amazon page.–IM]
As an extension of your line of thinking here, I would also remove all heterosexual men from the ranks and only sign up the Alpha male homosexuals to go with the Amazons. This would result in an all Alpha homosexual military. No official sexual preference policy would be required, no more bastard children spawned by soldiers and sailors, and our military would be very proficient at “killing people and breaking things”.
Wow, talk about one fearless woman.Nothing quite like the gathering noise of the hets in the hen-house on this one. You are one brave woman, Ilana, which is why I can’t help but take a peak each week on what you are going to say next. The fearless truthfulness of your columns is becoming redundant, which is a great thing for your readers today and a bad thing for writers. No wonder you are ignored by mass media types, you are way too honest for their public. Thanks for the good column.
[I must be a kamikaze writer, b/c it never occurred to me that this was anything but logical. Maybe reason is courage these days?! Thanks for the plug at Chronicles.]
Ilana,
I blipped your weekly column over at Chronicles in comment #15 under Christopher Check’s column, Personal Moral Values. http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/index.php/2010/03/03/3886/
I will be interested to see if any one comments on your observations which are true, good (and being somewhat partial to you as the writer) quite courageous given the times. Anything else?
“Maybe reason is courage these days?!”
The Greeks suggested that part of courage is knowing what to fear and what not to fear. You classical liberal types never tell us what it is you fear or don’t fear — G-d ? man? slavery to bad habits? ignorance? ugliness? But we can debate this some other time. There is too much I like about you and I have too many beams in my own eye…Plus it is always hard to have the last word with any woman –especially you!!!!
I think the military needs to look at sodomy and oral sex as closely as possible. Neither has a place in an effective military whether it’s male-female, male-male, or any other combination. Same thing for drug use except for moderate enjoyment of alcohol – no Libertine stoners should be tolerated in the military. Let’s honestly go further and say that there is really no rational justification for females (real or otherwise) in the military. It’s “Live Free OR Die” not “Live Free AND Die”
Lot’s of fans named Robert I see.
You mentioned the pregnant Latina who was gunned down at Fort Hood.
You forget to mention that women will soon serve on submarines.
What will a “boat” commander do with a pregnant officer when he’s 300 meters below the Arctic ice cap?
Surface at Murmansk when she breaks her water?
The radical egalitarianism that infects every part of our culture must be eliminated.
Myron: My copy of Broad-sides provides printing information that it comes from the same publishing source. I bought my copy through Amazon because I knew the shipping price up front and am satisfied.
I’m curious, some other countries have had the openly gay military policy for years but I have never found any reports as to how an open gay soldier policy has worked out. I expect they also have females in their service and wonder how their brass handles it. I mean we aren’t pioneers here, maybe someone else’s army has developed a method of integration that actually works (or not) We could check other military with experience to see what does or doesn’t work. I realize that the US has adopted the ‘Ready-Fire-Aim’ attributed to the French; but if we, our leaders I mean, really tried…
Ilana,
You know I have been a long time reader of your blog and small contributor and as such certainly do ” well know, even though a classical liberal, you are not really a “types” kind of a thinker.” Boy do I ever!!! As Merlin instructed the young King Arthur, “Sometimes we should simply admire.” You know that I do admire you and while it is not necessary to refer to me by my inflated title, let me tell your readers I think you are a gem of a writer and honorable person as well. Keep up the excellent work. You have freshened my stuffy intellectual attics a plenty. I hope I have occassionaly offered some fresh air to your good blog as well.
(f) State militia should be limited to their constitutional role and only be in
national service to repel invasion or suppress rebellion
The National Guard system is an excellent example of central government’s innate appetite for power. Although the NG traces its lineage to the original Massachusetts Bay militia, the modern NG, while ostensibly state-run (Guardsmen swear their oaths to the governor), is in reality wholly wedded to the federal apparatus. The National Guard has fought alongside regulars in every foreign war since 1917. When “activated” by the President, the various state Guards morph seamlessly into the National Guard of the United States.
Give the fed the most minuscule amount of authority over a state-run system, and that system will inevitably become federal over time.
Ideally, the NG should be completely disbanded and each state raise it’s own militia with zero federal oversight. Should the country be invaded the militiamen from each state can cast a vote to muster and fight or not.
Can’t fault your comments about what there is to fear in our world, and the endlessly multiplying banalities that seem to dominate it.
I would like to just add
This is exactly what is wrong with creationism, as Mencken well noted. His dispatches on the Scopes trial still stand.
[But we’re not taking this conversational thread there, okay?]