What's in a name
Via Balloon Juice, we find this poll of the top bloggers by The Jawa Report's Rusty Shackleford. Goes to show you how much the chickenhawk meme really rankles. The right just doesn't have an effective countermeme for it and they never will because it's kind of irrefutable. Nonetheless they continue in a futile effort to buck the label.
Rusty gives it a good try with his poll and the results are interesting in a voyeuristic kind of way, but in the end, much as he tries to cook the books, all it really proves is the label fits.
To make it scientifically meaningful as measure of knowledge, one would need to include metrics such as age, whether or not there was a draft system at the time they were eligible, whether there was a tradition of military service in the family and so on. As it stands, the only thing the poll proves, is that left is not exaggerating when it says the biggest cheerleaders for sending other people off to fight a war, have never been in one.
Personally, I think the whole name calling thing is pretty damn adolescent but I think it's disingenous of the right to be bitching about it, after years of being called moonbat, liberal slime, clueless hippie and various other colorful names by the noise machine. The chickenhawk meme started relatively recently and I think it was in reponse to the right's having set the bar that low to begin with. People use chickenhawk because it takes too long to type "bloggers who cheerlead for sending other people off to war, but have no idea what they're asking these soldiers to do."
Former military service doesn't even matter as far as I can see. I think what really rankles the war bloggers is that there is no defense to pushing an agenda that asks other people to go out and risk their lives (and/or their sanity if they live through it), when you're not willing to risk yours for the "noble cause."
The military is calling up reservists as old as 60 and they're extending tours of duty beyond what these soldiers signed up for in the first place. They want to come home to their families but there's no one to replace them. If you're pushing the war because you believe in freedom and you're such good American patriots and you believe it's such a mighty and noble cause and you're physically able to enlist - then either get in there and do your patriotic duty and fight the damn thing or else stop complaining. Get over it and wear the name.
Or you could stop "supporting our troops" by pushing ill-conceived policies that ask them to stand around as targets for terrorist training exercises for the next five years and no one will call you a chickenhawk again. It's so easy.
Rusty gives it a good try with his poll and the results are interesting in a voyeuristic kind of way, but in the end, much as he tries to cook the books, all it really proves is the label fits.
To make it scientifically meaningful as measure of knowledge, one would need to include metrics such as age, whether or not there was a draft system at the time they were eligible, whether there was a tradition of military service in the family and so on. As it stands, the only thing the poll proves, is that left is not exaggerating when it says the biggest cheerleaders for sending other people off to fight a war, have never been in one.
Personally, I think the whole name calling thing is pretty damn adolescent but I think it's disingenous of the right to be bitching about it, after years of being called moonbat, liberal slime, clueless hippie and various other colorful names by the noise machine. The chickenhawk meme started relatively recently and I think it was in reponse to the right's having set the bar that low to begin with. People use chickenhawk because it takes too long to type "bloggers who cheerlead for sending other people off to war, but have no idea what they're asking these soldiers to do."
Former military service doesn't even matter as far as I can see. I think what really rankles the war bloggers is that there is no defense to pushing an agenda that asks other people to go out and risk their lives (and/or their sanity if they live through it), when you're not willing to risk yours for the "noble cause."
The military is calling up reservists as old as 60 and they're extending tours of duty beyond what these soldiers signed up for in the first place. They want to come home to their families but there's no one to replace them. If you're pushing the war because you believe in freedom and you're such good American patriots and you believe it's such a mighty and noble cause and you're physically able to enlist - then either get in there and do your patriotic duty and fight the damn thing or else stop complaining. Get over it and wear the name.
Or you could stop "supporting our troops" by pushing ill-conceived policies that ask them to stand around as targets for terrorist training exercises for the next five years and no one will call you a chickenhawk again. It's so easy.
posted by Libby Spencer at 9:14 PM
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