pax
ONE love, blood, life
First of all, the article is two years old.
Second of all, even the two-year-old stats say that only seven of 535 lawmakers had children who either were already fighting or could be called up.
And what do you make of these quotes?
The article itself is pretty brief and sketchy anyway, but there's no evidence that it's factually incorrect. However, I don't think it qualifies as overwhelmingly good evidence that the folks behind this war politically are actually willing to put their money where their mouths are.
Second of all, even the two-year-old stats say that only seven of 535 lawmakers had children who either were already fighting or could be called up.
And what do you make of these quotes?
The number of federal lawmakers with children in the military has steadily declined since the Vietnam era, and some say that's too bad.
If more members of Congress had children in the military, they'd be less likely to vote for war, said Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y. He said that "the sons and daughters of the most privileged Americans are underrepresented or absent" from the military.
In January, Rangel introduced a bill to reinstate the draft, which was halted 30 years ago. His bill would require military or civilian service for all citizens ages 18 to 26.
Charles Moskos, a sociology professor at Northwestern University who specializes in the military, said that a decline in military service for lawmakers' kids has occurred at a similar rate. As an illustration, he noted that all the Kennedy brothers served while none of their children did.
Moskos said that around the late 1960s the upper classes got more deferments from the draft, and after the draft ended in 1973, that elite group generally continued to forgo military service.
"If we had a war in which there was really heavy casualties, and the elite children weren't serving, we'd be very disillusioned with that war," he said.
The article itself is pretty brief and sketchy anyway, but there's no evidence that it's factually incorrect. However, I don't think it qualifies as overwhelmingly good evidence that the folks behind this war politically are actually willing to put their money where their mouths are.