The Progressive Case for Military Service

It is controversial, and even uncomfortable, for many progressives to talk about individual responsibility for military service, particularly during an unpopular war, started with what many see as a dubious rationale. Many contend that because they neither voted for nor support George W. Bush, they have ample reason to be excused from military service. And their progressive values, they presume, support work for the Peace Corps or Teach for America, but not the uniformed services. Others, especially those from “good” families and schools, suppose that military service simply isn’t for people like them: Ivy League schools sent half their graduating classes for a tour of duty during periods of the Cold War, but today the percentages hover in the tenths of 1 percent. These people wouldn’t shoulder colors in a Clinton, Gore, or Kerry presidency, either.

There are two fundamental reasons for the present rift between progressives and the military. First is the emergence, during the twentieth century, of a rights-based philosophy on both the Left and the Right that sees government as a counterpoint and even a threat to the individual. Second is the Left’s re-action against the military after Vietnam, a reaction that was itself rooted in rights consciousness and, over time, solidified into a presumption that military values, and the members of the military themselves, are antithetical to progressive values. While some may charge that these characterizations are actually caricatures of the dreaded “liberal, ” these attitudes do persist. Indeed, just this year, a group of liberals, including famed activist Cindy Sheehan, published a collection of essays titled 10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military. At its core, the opposition to military service on the left fundamentally misconstrues the meaning of self-government and the role of the military in the United States today. It confuses military service with militarism, equating participation in the Armed Services with subscription to the fetish of military action as a policy tool (in fact, those with military experience are often the most cautious in supporting military action). As a result, military service is left to an increasingly narrow slice of the U.S. political and economic spectrum, drawing disproportionately from military families, Midwesterners and Southerners, Christians, Republicans, and the working and middle class. In doing so, we have disconnected one of the most important arenas of national action from true democratic decision-making.

Given the likely centrality of military operations to American foreign policy over the next decade, it is time for progressives to reconsider both their attitudes toward service and their aversion to the military as a culture and value system. Indeed, the military itself–and the act of serving in it–are quintessentially progressive.

Rights Liberals vs. Civic Progressives

Today, what unites many who consider themselves “progressive” or “liberal” is the belief that the social good can best be pursued by emphasizing and expanding on the rights of individuals. These “rights liberals” subscribe to the idea that if a given policy is more likely to allow an individual to vindicate their rights and preferences, it is good. If it is likely to hinder an individual’s realization of self, it is not. And when the rights of the individual are in conflict with the dictates of the state, the former trumps the latter.

While this focus on the individual is attractive–especially to those who re- member the repression and oppression of state and society against individuals based on their gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation–there is an inherent weakness in this sort of society. As Harvard’s Michael Sandel has noted, this procedural liberalism creates a society in which the state is neutral with regards to people’s individual preferences and in which the concept of the in- dividual, unencumbered by roles or responsibilities other than those they have freely and independently chosen, is paramount. As a result, such a society lacks the civic resources to sustain the institutions needed for self-government. What rights liberals ignore is another, older strain running through the left: civic progressivism. This concept holds that citizens do not stand in opposition to the state so much as they comprise it and are integral to its function. And not only because the operations of the state require people to operate them; an accountable, deliberatively democratic state requires its citizens to be engaged with it, understand it, and work within it to make it better. True democracy, then, requires civic engagement by citizens–not just debate, but participation. In this way, active self-government is actually a precondition of individual freedom and dignity.

In other words, to a civic progressive, a self-governing society makes demands on its citizens. To deliberate meaningfully about the common good requires more than the capacity to choose one’s ends and to respect others’ right to do the same. It requires both knowing something about public affairs and feeling a sense of belonging. Moreover, civic engagement requires action. The antidote to a consumer-rights- and preferences-directed society (where the individual is interchangeable with the consumer) is not merely one in which individuals only opine or even point and direct the institutions of our government. The antidote is a citizenry that actually rolls up its sleeves and laces up its boots.

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