The True Definition of Privilege: Protestants and Jews Sharply Underrepresented in U.S. Military
As any fool knows, there is a "moral hazard" in our society's imbalance. When the elite make the big decisions, say to go to war, and are immunized from the second-heaviest duty of citizenship—getting the knock on the door that Cindy Sheehan got, and David Grossman—there's something very undemocratic about that, and wrong.
And because we know it's wrong, this issue is gnawing at our public life. In Fahrenheit 911, Michael Moore went after congressmen for not having kids at risk. Last night on Charlie Rose, the usually-equable Richard Holbrooke spat at the neocon militarist Bill Kristol, who wants us to take on Iran and Syria, that unlike Holbrooke, Kristol had never been shot at. In his latest column for the Israel Policy Forum, M.J. Rosenberg goes after neocon hawk Charles Krauthammer over Krauthammer's urging Israel to go even harder at Lebanon.
Krauthammer, who lives in Maryland, does not have to see the faces of the boys he is so cavalier about sending into battle against fanatical terrorists.
Readers of this blog know that I often look at the American power structure in religious and tribal terms: I think that the new establishment is basically affluent WASPs and affluent Jews, working happily together. (Just thumb through the Almanac of American Politics.) So: let's look at the composition of the American armed forces in religious terms.
Watch out, here come the statistics! Non-geeks are encouraged to jump over the next two paragraphs.
[According to CUNY's American Religious Identification Survey, Episcopalians make up 1.7 percent of the adult population (18 and over), Presbyterians make up 2.7 percent, Lutherans 4.6, Methodists 6.8 percent. That's my Protestant sample. Then there are Baptists (evangelical Protestants) at 16.3 percent, Mormons at 1.3 percent, and Catholics at 24.5 percent. Jews make up 1.3 percent of the adult population.[Now turn to the Armed Forces. This will be a little rough; (because the two bowls of statistics, the military's and CUNY's, don't quite line up, and I have therefore thrown out the Unknowns in the Defense Department's tables because they are not a category in CUNY's tables) but let's consider the universe of 1,254,000 people in uniform who say something about their religious preference, including the 20 percent or so who say None.]
You'd expect there to be 21,000 or so Episcopalians in uniform. There are only 9,600. You'd expect 33,000+ Presbyterians. There are 13,000. Lutherans, you'd expect 58,000. There are 35,000. Methodists? 83,000 expected. 44,000 in fact. Jews: 16,000 would be predicted by the CUNY percentage—there are 3,973 Jews in the military. Indeed, there are more Buddhists in the military, 4400, than there are Jews!
As I say, it's rough (and a little unfair to the Protestants; I haven't factored in the 53,000 Protestants the military calls nondemoninational) but that's my Establishment pool. Note that Episcopalians and Presbyterians (who I think of as the more affluent) are sharply underrepresented, showing up at about 40 percent of expected numbers; and Jews at about 25 percent.By the way, Muslims are also underrepresented, by about half. You'd expect 6270. The military says it has 3,459 in uniform.
Compare these numbers to Catholics, Baptists and Mormons. You'd expect 307,000 Catholics in uniform; there are 291,000. Underrepresented; but close. Baptists should weigh in at 204,000. There are 219,000 of them. (I imagine that other evangelicals and Pentecostals, whom I don't have the patience to even try and sort out in these conflicting tables, are even more overrepresented). And then there are Mormons. You'd expect 16,000. There are nearly 18,000.
What does this all add up to? Just what we knew: the privileged make out bigtime. What's the answer? What Charlie Rangel has always said: a draft. Then maybe our leadership might show a little more imagination about how to deal with the so-called clash of civilizations.
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The median age of all US adults is 43 years. For Jews its is 51, and for Muslims it is 28, for Buddhists it is 29. The Median age of the military is 23. (http://www.gc.cuny.edu/press_information/current_releases/october_2001_a...)
Jews and Muslims are more likely to not identify their religion, this alone could discredit this "research".
Your work is crap.
Bored with jews already.
I suppose that by looking at privilege in American society crystallizes the justification of the current or any middle-eastern conflict, because fundamentally, these military affairs are about the abuse of power. The incompatibility between the religious breakdown of American society and American military forces tempts accusations of sectarianism, and although true the statement is still sectarian and unhelpful. It just stokes a well fuelled fire (what?s that about lies, dammed lies and statistics).
( FYI, anon?s comment on median ages is a little naļ¶„, in that if there are differing median ages within American society , it just points at the ultimate privilege of a longer life enjoyed by some parts of the community ! ). So what about the oil? If you want to understand power and privilege, then take a moment with the oil. Peel away the layers to get at or near the core of this issue, the control of oil. Who stands to gain here?
Median age has much less to to do with longevity than it has to do with immigration trends.
There are 19 million ways to dice up the demographic of the US military- regional, socio-economic, racial, etc. Religion, which is secondary to these as a driving variable, is the one Weiss uses because of his prejudices.
You are 100 percent correct- it is all about oil. The Palestinian cause has been a tool for the oil-rich Middle East countries to deflect attention off their own oppressive, corrupt societies.
In 50 years, or so, when these countries run dry of oil- they will be broke, powerless and entirely irrelevant.
Hopefully, The Observer will replace Weiss with someone that has a clue what he is talking about. The Observer must, by now, have a clue of what they have on their hands- a liability.
I must say, I am getting a little bored with the quality of the discussion here. Phil unendingly posts items which, while not of academic calibre, constitute perfectly reasonable lay observations of the US-Israeli power nexus, and endless trolls emerge, or rather, fail to emerge from anonymity, calling for him to be sacked. It says little for the quality of American Jewish discourse, unless one regards Stalin style mass thought and expression control as a step in the direction of Jewish 'social justice'.
I don't think David Grossman really merits the term "peace activist", incidentally.
Any comment, if judgemental is un-helpful. Any written judgemental comment is exponentially so. So the forum i.e. the Observer is good for providing a conduit for the debate, but the debate lacks something. This isn't "easy", the Truth and Reconciliation process in SA continues as a difficult and painful event, in my own Ireland, we continue to emerge drenched in uncertainty making baby steps towards a solution. All is propaganda, unless it speaks to and talks about a readily acknowledged reality. We need to make up our minds about whether we believe or not, but the newspaper has permitted the debate and absolutely, this is good thing, no matter what is thought of Weiss or the blog commentary. I agree with anon's comment about the future irrelevancy of the middle-east, because we Westerners will have no interest there anymore, having drained it dry of oil. In the meantime, we Westerners continue to wreak havoc and subvert legitimate democratic processes. A good balance to this commentary might be Robert Fisk's articles in the English Independent (website). He has invested a huge amount of his life in giving an account on Middle and far eastern affairs. He has been repeatedly called "pro-Arab", I'm not sure, but would be interested in hearing other opinions. Finally, I found this forum last week and have no idea of past reports or prejudices, so start today. Anon's comment on median is real, although vague, do you means most of Jewish median group are immigrants i.e. ineligible for military service?
Your comments about the ruling elite may hold water at mid and higher levels of society but break down when discussing the military.
The true under/over representation is not about religion, its about color: Brown//Black/white. That's where the true difference lies.
even if the stats represent fuzzy thinking....the point still remains that the children of the elite are protected from sharing their military burden during this time of war.
I mean aren't we all Americans? Didn't 9/11 reaffirm the fact that regardless of our differences that we are all Americans in the fight together?
Because if it's not true -- I'm starting to think it's okay for the children of the poor, working and middle class to carry all the weight in the US fight against terrorism so someone else's child can grow up and ultimately appear at Charlie Rose's wonderful, sturdy, meaningful table and pontificate about protecting America's interests, by any means necessary.
As far as black and brown casualties in the war. A cursory look at the pictures of the dead shows that about 90% are white. They are over-represented because minorities are disqualified in the military ASQT? exam.
There are plenty of non-invidious explanations for the under-representation of Jews and Episcopalians ... they tend not to concentrate in the most patriotic (red) parts of the country.
Or, it can be family wealth alone making the military not seem like a relatively good career path.
These factors of 2 (Episcopalians) or 4 (Jews) are small compared to the factors of 30 or so for Jews and Asians in the Ivy League. If we are to allow any slack in any system we have to allow factors of 2-4 over or under representation of small groups before we take action.
On the other hand, a discrpancy of a factor of 3 in white Christian admission to elite schools seem to cry out for correction. The masses are not represented.
This just exposes Phil's ignorance of the military. Nearly everyone in the military with any sort of responsibility absolutely does not want a draft.
Never mind some concern with the privilege of the elite, consider the problems of a draft: fast turnover. Any serious draft, like Israel's, takes in everyone. No school exemptions, no parental exemptions, no fitness issues. Everyone serves in some way. This costs a ridiculous amount of money.
What we have now, a fairly high paid force of motivated, career oriented people where a substantial proportion of the force is long service and all of the force is on at least a 4 year hitch. This creates a motivated, skilled, and experienced force that knows what it is doing and wants to be there.
A real, egalitarian universal conscription or serious draft has a large number of people who simply don't want to be there. This creates discipline and motivation problems. A draft creates even more resentment at those lucky enough to avoid service or to get exemptions if offered (see Vietnam).
There are cultural problems with a professional military. Mainly we get an effete elite that disdains honor, service, valor, and country. If we could have mandatory universal service for 6 years or so it would be a great thing, as well as being deeply, deeply scary for the rest of the world. That would provide a military of about 12 million men, or 24 million people if you go with the Israeli true universal conscription model. We would need a serious defense budget, likely at least 20-25% of GDP, but we would eliminate most costs of prison, policing, welfare, etc. You remove the portion of the population that causes the most problems, have a serious manufacturing demand, and essentially eliminate youth unemployment and have a fully trained workforce.
With that kind of force, we can garrison the Middle East and South America as well as ensure Peace in Asia and Europe. America Imperator. I love it, though I imagine Weiss is horrified.
I am a Jew and I was in the Marine Corps. From day one when they asked the religion question, I responded with "no preference." The reason was it was clear from the start that there were guys in positions of authority in the Corps who had a prejudice against Jews. I attended services on holidays and all that, but officially I was "no preference." Lots of other Jews felt the same way. It seems to me you classified all of us who listed "no preference" as some form of Protestant. Besides, in terms of percentages, I don't think Jews are any less represented percentage wise than Episcopalians or a couple other Christians denominations according to your statistics when compared to the overall percentage of population in the US.
Can we agree that Anon is Jewish whose facts are deeply
flawed, has never served in the military and would flee screaming to Canada if drafted. His argument would be: he doesn't be believe in war or he could better serve the cause of freedom by peaceful demonstrations.
In twenty years of military service, I never saw a Jew in a fighting unit. I did see them in the medical, dental or JAG.
Wolfowitz, Perle, Woodward, Judith Miller, Feith never served but were certainly will to let other people fight and die.
I expect to be " Alan Dershowitzed " but facts are the facts.
The trouble with that is that this piece is hardly the beginning and end on the issue of elite (particularly Jewish) underrepresentation in the military. Google is your friend.
Jews are nothing if not self-aggrandizing. If they could refute the "charges" by now, they would have. They haven't because they can't, because it's true.
Jews were well-represented in the military the last time America fought a war in their interests. The numbers started to decline with Korea, and hit rock bottom after that.
The religious statistics, in addition to not taking into account age distributions, also fail to take into account different religious organizations procedures for removing someone from the church rolls. Some churches purge their membership rolls on a regular basis because the national leadership organization assesses "dues" of a sort that each church is supposed to come up with based on local church membership. At the other end of the spectrum would be the Mormons, who often drag their feet or otherwise fail to remove the names of those who no longer wish to be Mormon, even in some cases if the ex-Mormon has written a "letter of resignation" and mailed it to Salt Lake City. An enormous number of younger people have left the Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches and joined "evangelical" denominations or have dropped out of organized religion altogether. Yet there names will often appear on membership rolls in their old churches for decades.
You would have to do a LOT more statistical analysis to figure out which religious groups are underrepresented, and which are not. Social science statistics are always tricky.
I saw an article on the internet a year or so ago written by Jews complaining about Jews being underrepresented as Medal of Honor recipients (I'm not sure "recipient" is the correct terminology -- sorry if I have made a mistake.) I asked my uncle about it (Green Beret, served 3X in Vietnam) and he said more or less what Benjamin said in one of the above posts -- most Jews in the Army in his day were officers in non-combat jobs. I don't think Protestants are underreprented in the Green Berets.