perception...you said:
Quote:Something else that causes great pride in our militay but yet astonishes me is how we find and retain the very high calibre of very bright young people who are willing to fight for their country even in the face of all the criticism seen and heard on college campuses, on forums, in the media, and else where. Most noticeably form Holllywood superstars who allow themselves to be used by the enemy which in turn allows the enemy to feel that they have support within this country. I know it has always been so but it still disturbs and saddens me.
I saw Jeneane (sp) Garofalo on a news show the other day. She expressed her view ('too quick to war'), then asked the interviewer "Why do you have me here? Why don't you have Ritter?" In other words, she was taking the news producers to task for using ratings-happy Hollywood types instead of someone more knowledgable. It was a valid and admirable complaint.
But when he (ironically, given they'd invited her) asked her "Why should anyone listen to a Hollywood star, she responded "A person's job is irrelevant. I'm a citizen"
And that is the key point I'd make in arguing with you here. Which is more admirable, even necessary, in a free country...to follow one's leaders or to follow one's convictions. If one disallows a citizen to speak an opinion, gained as honestly as yours or mine, which happens to disagree with state policy (thus agreeing with an 'enemy'), then freedom is critically curtailed. Free speech seems to me to be most important on such topics, and in such times of deadly serious plans and pronouncements.
Internal conflict IS the curse and the blessing of democracy. Enforced unity of thought is the curse and the blessing of dictatorship.
There are, in my experience here in Canada, many intelligent people who move into the armed forces because we need them. For every professor I had who might think a military career objectionable, there would easily be at least one match who thought differently.
I'll try to make this point to you. It is no coincidence that dictatorial regimes, in taking or consolidating power, commonly head right quickly to the universities and start killing. They recognize that trouble will come from that corner because there, people are encouraged to question and to think for themselves and to not automatically accept authority.
And artists are not dissimilar. Plato, in his Republic, thought artists problematic to the functioning of his imagined state. And he's right. Hitler thought this too, of course. And for a similar reason...artists commonly don't comply with the status quo...they push it out, look beyond it, imagine other possibilities.
Where you are correct, and I don't argue this, is that in certain times and certain situations, times of severe and immediate emergency such as, say, a flood...then artists and scholars can get in the way. But they represent also an important part of what it is we try to save when we go to war or patch a dyke.
