[lbo-talk] The Military, the Church, and the Police

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Fri Feb 25 08:41:48 PST 2005



>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>>If the military paid little to nothing and gave little to no
>>benefits, few Americans would love it, and fewer still would join
>>it voluntarily.
>
>Joining it is one thing; admiring military culture is another.
>Yoshie, you live in Columbus, Ohio, a city known among marketers as
>an almost-perfect experimental cross-section of the U.S. population.
>How can you miss these things?
>
>Doug

Where is any evidence that most Americans admire "military culture"? Is there any poll that asked if respondents admire or despise "military culture"? I've seen polls that ask if Americans trust or distrust significant institutions including the military, but that's a different question than if they admire "military culture."

Here is a comparative poll that asked Americans and Europeans about their trust and distrust in various institutions, and it turns out Americans are no different than Europeans with regard to their trust in the military and the police: "Large majorities of between 3-to-1 and 2-to-1 trusted the police and the military in both the United States and in Europe" (The Harris Poll® #4, "Fewer Americans Than Europeans Have Trust in the Media - Press, Radio and TV," <http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=534>, January 13, 2005). To be precise, 63% of Americans and Europeans "tend to trust" the military (note that the proportion of trust is exactly the same), and 23% of Americans and 26% of Europeans "tend not to trust" it (the difference in distrust is minuscule) (The Harris Poll® #4, "Fewer Americans Than Europeans Have Trust in the Media - Press, Radio and TV," <http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=534>, January 13, 2005). See Table 3 for details. -- 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/>



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