The Reactionary Utopian
                     August 30, 2007


LOOSE CANNONS WITH NUKES
by Joe Sobran

     This Kelly Flinn business is making my head spin. It 
also sends chills down my spine. Possibly it's the cause 
of these fainting spells I've been having. I can't take 
much more.

     First of all, I've always had reservations about the 
sexual integration of the armed forces. People can get 
over racial and religious differences, but sexual 
differences are different from other differences.

     For one thing, they are more durable than other 
differences. And more desirable. Some would even say they 
are more necessary.

     They are also harder to screen out of close personal 
contacts like the rough intimacy of military life. We no 
longer have restroom doors saying "White" and "Colored." 
It wouldn't make much sense for them to say "Catholic," 
"Methodist," and "Presbyterian," either. But "Men" and 
"Women" are here to stay. I hope.

     If having women in the military were a great idea 
from a military point of view, it would probably have 
occurred to Julius Caesar or Napoleon, or Rommel or 
Patton, before it occurred to Patsy Schroeder.

     Just one man's opinion, you understand. But if we 
need women in our defense forces, we must not need much 
defense.

     First feminists argued that women have the "right" 
to serve in the armed forces on the same terms as men. 
Now they complain that women's rights are being violated 
by the normal (that is, rough) treatment of recruits in 
boot camp. And they demand that these women who are 
supposed to be protecting the rest of us be protected 
from their male comrades and officers in the service.

     If you can't take the heat ... The proverb is, as 
Hamlet says, "something musty." The idea of basic 
training is not to nurture your most exquisite individual 
qualities. It's to get rid of them. It's to coarsen you 
to the point where you will be capable of killing on 
command. We seem to be losing the elusive distinction 
between boot camp and sensitivity training. A society may 
need a certain number of men who can do bloody things 
without qualms, but not because it's their "right" to do 
them.

     But this being 1997, it looks as if we're headed for 
an all-victim defense force. Miss Flinn herself feels 
victimized by her treatment: "I've lost my innocence, and 
I've lost my ability to trust people in general and 
anyone and anything," says the woman who took another 
woman's husband and lied about it under oath -- acts she 
calls "mistakes."

     As for losing her innocence, it recalls the retort 
of the cynical Thomas Cromwell in A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS: 
"You lost that some time ago. Have you only just 
noticed?"

     Miss Flinn's lost innocence has already brought her 
a flood of book and movie offers, and no doubt a chance 
to pose in PLAYBOY. Who knows? She could be the first to 
do both an interview and a centerfold in the same issue.

     Whatever course she chooses, at least she won't be 
carrying a nuclear payload anymore. I hope we can all 
agree that nuclear weapons and loose cannons don't mix. 
If you think disgruntled postal workers are trouble, wait 
'til you see a disgruntled B-52 pilot.

     Our huge armed forces far exceed any rational 
defense needs; at this point, we should speak not of 
"defense" but of our "foreign legions." All governments 
call their military forces "defenses"; no country has a 
"Department of Aggression"; yet for some reason, wars 
just keep on happening. Maybe it's because big 
nation-states feel as victimized as Miss Flinn does. No 
doubt their feelings are easily hurt.

     If you're an outright pacifist, I suppose you should 
rejoice at what has happened to the U.S. armed services 
lately. Old soldiers are quitting in disgust, and younger 
men of soldierly temperament -- who put honor, courage, 
and duty above their "rights" -- find the private 
militias more congenial.

     But if you're going to have armed forces at all, it 
makes no sense to staff them on the basis of the criteria 
appropriate to liberal civilian institutions. To amend 
Nelson Algren's famous advice: Never eat at a place 
called Mom's, never play poker with a guy named Doc, and 
never take survival tips from liberals.

[This column was originally published by Universal Press 
Syndicate May 27, 1997.]

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