Stephen King, Renowned Author and Ignoramus
The renowned author, Stephen King, set forth his ideas about our US service people in an interview said this:
I don't want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV but the fact is that if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don't, then you got the army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that. It's not as bright. So that's my little commercial for that.
If Mr. King wants to promote reading he might better say something such as:
If you can't read you will not be able to pass the tests necessary for acceptance into the US military.
That would be closer to the truth. You see, in today's military you must, in nearly every case, have a high school diploma (although GEDs are sometimes accepted) and a meet a minimum level of intelligence as measured by various tests depending on the positions for which one applies. Every single one of those tests requires that you be able to read and read fairly well.
In some ways I find Mr. King's ignorant statement ironic in that his books are/were fairly popular with soldiers with whom I served.
This idea that US service men and women are somehow the dregs of society is a liberal/socialist idea which seems to be part and parcel of the socialist dogma imported from communists in Europe and the far East (i.e. China). It was indeed true, in those areas, that the common soldier was the among the lowest classes and often uneducated. In many instances it was either the army or starvation for the soldier but most of the time it was an excellent way for the the state (as in the nation/government) to control the trouble makers and use them to its own advantage.
The thing is that people like Mr. King and Senator John Kerry (who has said very nearly the same thing) never seem to expect better of the military when they are in power. We saw little effort to reverse this trend by politicians during the Carter or Clinton presidencies. All such initiatives came from either conservative political leadership or, mostly, within the military hierarchy.
The truth is that today a soldier/sailor/Marine/airman who can't read can't perform to expected standards. They can't use the equipment they are issued, can't complete the paperwork they must complete, can't complete the training they must take, can't train the soldiers they must train and so forth. It is also true that the military services today have the highest education levels of any military at any time in history. Perhaps it is Mr. King and Senator Kerry and their comrades who need an education...
Labels: Culture, Military
