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View Poll Results: Do you feel guilty for never having fought in a war? | |||
Yes | 10 | 33.33% | |
No | 19 | 63.33% | |
N/A; I did. | 1 | 3.33% | |
Voters: 30. You may not vote on this poll |
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09-25-2007, 01:51 AM | #41 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: The Bluth Home
Posts: 3,877
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It has never been otherwise.
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The Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. -Galileo |
09-25-2007, 02:04 AM | #42 |
Board Pinhead
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: In the basement of my house, Murray, Utah.
Posts: 15,941
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I considered joining the military, but was rejected for a silly medical reason. I registered for selective service like I was supposed to do and never got drafted.
I don't feel guilty at all.
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"The beauty of baseball is not having to explain it." - Chuck Shriver "This is now the joke that stupid people laugh at." - Christopher Hitchens on IQ jokes about GWB. |
09-25-2007, 03:19 AM | #43 |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Seattle, WA
Posts: 10,665
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Not so. Ever heard of noblesse oblige? It used to be that if you were blessed with higher birth, breeding, and/or resources you were expected to fight. That idea extended into the 20th century. Bush Sr. and JFK volunteered. A lot of well-off, educated folks fought in the Civil War, the two World Wars, etc. Nobility were expected to put their lives on the line. War and Peace is all about that. It was that way for thousands of years. Here is a famous passage from the Iliad (Butler's translation on the Internet) that expresses this principle:
Then Sarpedon said to Glaucus son of Hippolochus, "Glaucus, why in Lycia do we receive especial honour as regards our place at table? Why are the choicest portions served us and our cups kept brimming, and why do men look up to us as though we were gods? Moreover we hold a large estate by the banks of the river Xanthus, fair with orchard lawns and wheat-growing land; it becomes us, therefore, to take our stand at the head of all the Lycians and bear the brunt of the fight, that one may say to another, 'Our princes in Lycia eat the fat of the land and drink best of wine, but they are fine fellows; they fight well and are ever at the front in battle.' My good friend, if, when we were once out of this fight, we could escape old age and death thenceforward and forever, I should neither press forward myself nor bid you do so, but death in ten thousand shapes hangs ever over our heads, and no man can elude him; therefore let us go forward and either win glory for ourselves, or yield it to another."
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Interrupt all you like. We're involved in a complicated story here, and not everything is quite what it seems to be. —Paul Auster Last edited by SeattleUte; 09-25-2007 at 12:59 PM. |
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