With the exception of those who become military officers, pastors, and ministers, what US workers like the most about the military and organized religion probably isn't their authoritarian aspects.
Many US workers like the military because it is the most meritocratic, socialistic, and racially integrated institution open to the working class -- certainly incomparably more meritocratic, socialistic, and racially integrated than corporations. The military provides health care, educational assistance, old-age pension, housing benefit, disability insurance, life insurance, etc. -- which corporation gives workers without college degrees all these benefits?
<blockquote>Every resident of a US military base has come to expect high-quality schools, a plenitude of commons -- including parks, recreations centers, gymnasiums, stadiums, swimming pools, cinemas, craft shops, hiking trails, community centers, and nature preserves -- a three-tiered universal health care system, counseling centers, and safe, well-designed residential neighborhoods where housing, maintenance, and utilities are provided free. The disparity between the highest and lowest pay in the military is less than 13 to 1, compared to an average of 458 to 1 in the civil sector.
The majority who remain in the military remain there for these reasons. It never occurs to them that what they like about the military is socialist. They frequently hate the deployments, the occasional violence, the bureaucratic backbiting, and the ubiquitous incompetence. They put up with all these negatives because they and their families enjoy some modicum of security and well-being. Soldiers know some of the concrete possibilities of socialism better than the rest of us. They've lived them. (Stan Goff, "The Left and the Military: Leaping the Chasm," <http://freedomroad.org/content/view/187/56/>, November 12, 2002)</blockquote>
The place of worship, too, is one of the few places where workers can experience a modicum of mutual aid and self-governance -- an experience completely absent from most workplaces as most of them aren't unionized. Unlike the military, however, places of warship -- with the exception of mosques -- are generally racially segregated.
The police and workers, in contrast, are routinely at odds with each other in everyday life, notwithstanding what workers might say in general opinion surveys that ask questions about various institutions in the abstract. Surveys on opinions about concrete workings of the criminal justice system, however, show that US workers recognize how it's used against them and are more sympathetic to defendants than the US elite are.
<blockquote>A comprehensive survey involving 579 participants revealed that income correlates more strongly than race, gender, age, or occupation with certain opinions that are particularly important to jury deliberations. n294 The survey revealed that persons with low income were more likely than any other people surveyed to agree with the following statements: "District Attorneys sometimes conceal evidence from a grand jury in order to get an indictment" and "Too often, the government brings people to trial who are not really guilty." n295 Among the respondents who had previously served on petit juries, low income people were the most likely to agree with the opinion statements listed above and several others, including: "It is better to let some guilty people go free rather than risk sending innocent people to jail." n296 Among the survey participants who had previously served on a grand jury, income was the characteristic that correlated most strongly with views on nearly half of the opinion statements. n297
Multiple regression analysis revealed that income correlated more strongly with juror opinions about criminal justice than did any other characteristic except age. n298 In other words, income was a more important determinant of juror opinion than race, gender, or occupation. Thus, exclusion of the poor from jury selection may eliminate valuable perspectives about the criminal justice system from deliberations. Such a loss undercuts the ability of juries to express accurately the judgment of the community, which is essential to the protection of litigants in the criminal justice system.
n294. [Donald H. ] Zeigler [Young Adults As a Cognizable Group in Jury Selection, 76 Mich. L. Rev. 1045, 1049-57 (1978) (detailing the judicial history of the fair cross-section doctrine)], supra note 3, at 1077-78, 1088-90.
n295. Id. at 1077-78 n.189, 1088-89.
n296. Id.
n297. Id. at 1090.
n298. Id. at 1091-95.
(Mitchell S. Zuklie, "Rethinking the Fair Cross-Section Requirement," 84 Calif. L. Rev. 101, January 1996)</blockquote> -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>