Chapter XXV: Of Discipline In Democratic Armies 11-10-2010

 From worrying about military coups to a remedy for the worst enemy to democracy.

A democratic people must despair of ever obtaining from soldiers that blind, minute, submissive, and invariable obedience which an aristocratic people may impose on them without difficulty. The state of society does not prepare them for it, and the nation might be in danger of losing its natural advantages if it sought artificially to acquire advantages of this particular kind. Amongst democratic communities, military discipline ought not to attempt to annihilate the free spring of the faculties; all that can be done by discipline is to direct it; the obedience thus inculcated is less exact, but it is more eager and more intelligent. It has its root in the will of him who obeys: it rests not only on his instinct, but on his reason; and consequently it will often spontaneously become more strict as danger requires it. The discipline of an aristocratic army is apt to be relaxed in war, because that discipline is founded upon habits, and war disturbs those habits. The discipline of a democratic army on the contrary is strengthened in sight of the enemy, because every soldier then clearly perceives that he must be silent and obedient in order to conquer.

Chapter XXV: Of Discipline In Democratic Armies

We saw that kind of discipline in The Sands of Iwo Jima, The Fighting 69th, Hamburger Hill, and The Boys in Company C. I see its opposite in Henry Fonda's character in Fort Apache and in The Caine Mutiny. What else was Louis Gosset, Jr trying to give Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman? 

We should fear anyone and everything who desires substituting discipline with blind obedience. I have not seen Born on the /fourth of July in years, but I recall thinking about how JFK's “Do not ask what your country can do for you, etc.” as a call for blind obedience. Maybe Older Stone did not intend this — his political thinking is not the clearest — but if so, then the more I think of it the more I think Stone is wrong. Then, too, I have survived eight years of George W. Bush.

During the George W. Bush years, I came close to believing we had accepted the fuhrerprinzip as American. Fuhrerprinzip means the leader is always right. It was a German idea. If you do not know why it did not work, just ask yourself who won World War Two… The President serves to execute the laws passed by Congress, and act as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. The President is not the commander of anyone not in the military. The conservatives amaze me with their hypocrisy about the inviolability of the Constitution while giving to the President what would amount to absolute power. We should be terrified that the president's advisors made this proposal. (Check out Tag: John Yoo)

You will still be cleaning up the messes created by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney while I am incarcerated. Perhaps, as a future inmate of the federal Bureau of Prisons, I am crazy to be shooting off my mouth like this. So be it. I started all this writing to let out what I had dammed up in my heart and brain. Not speaking, contributed my mental health issues that got me into prison. Not to speak honestly about what I see and think is not something I want to repeat.

sch

[A more current example of the superiority of democratic armies — the collapse of the Russian armies in the face of Ukrainian resistance. sch 11/814/2023.]