Republican presidential candidate John McCain's family background as the
son and grandson of admirals has given him a worldview shaped by the military,
"and he has a hard time thinking beyond that," Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., said
Friday.
"I think he's trapped in that," Harkin said in a conference call with
Iowa reporters. "Everything is looked at from his life experiences, from always
having been in the military, and I think that can be pretty dangerous."
Harkin said that "it's one thing to have been drafted and served, but
another thing when you come from generations of military people and that's just
how you're steeped, how you've learned, how you've grown up."
Hinderaker notes that this comment functions to exclude any military volunteer--much like all of our currently serving soldiers--from political discourse. Fair. But there's a bigger point to be made here about how Leftists think, what their philosophy is.
I once had a friend tell me that I wouldn't oppose government social spending if I was poor. This argument always takes me aback, a bit, but that's because it doesn't adhere well to rules of logic. (It's a sort of ad hominem fallacy.) But the entire Leftist philosophy is based on ad hominem fallacies that come down from such thinkers as Karl Marx. Socialism, Feminism, and Critical Race Theory all depend on a sort of identity politics: You can't understand racism, sexism, or class exploitation unless you're an oppressed person. You're an oppressed person by belonging to a certain group. Not in that group? Don't think oppression exists? Well, you just can't see or understand it because of who you are. It's easy to see the epistemological problem here; is the Emperor really wearing clothes?
One of the favorite oppressed underclasses of Democrats is military draftees who oppose(d) the war they participated in. American war heroes are in precisely the opposite camp. The only truly legitimate voices, to the modern liberal, are those of select "oppressed" groups--oh, and the modern liberal himself, since he/she is their protector and spokesman. It should never be a surprise that a war hero is denigrated for being a war hero.
To the modern liberal, the United States is often symbolic of imperialistic, racist, sexist, and capitalist hubris--bear with my caricature--and in a similarly symbolic way, those who fight us are the heroes. Thus Che Guevara--now-famously honored with a poster in a Houston campaign center for Barack Obama--and Alger Hiss are idealized and romanticized, while true heroes like John McCain and Oliver North are despised.
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