"You don't like the way this country is run VOTE..."

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Excellent idea!  I had no idea the solution was so simple.  Oh, but what happens if you get to the polls and they turn you away because you're Black, or Poor, or (gasp) a Democrat(!)?

What if the party in control doesn't like the outcome of the election and they convenietly find a whole bunch of paper ballots at the last minute that put their candidate over the top, or the electronic voting results mysteriously and suddenly change, or the Supreme Court steps in and declares their guy the winner?

Not that such crazy things could ever happen in a free country like ours...just a "What If..."

"There's no doubt that advice to enlist most often carries weight by offered by one who actually served in the military (tho' those of a certain turn of mind might dismiss this as the advice of a militarist), but the validity of the advice doesn't depend on the messenger.  "

As I pointed out, I don't think it necessarily does.

But when Miller uses it as part of a moral rebuke of the protesters the way he does, he does claim a certain moral authority from which to give that advice. And that's my point. He's saying "You're a bunch of whiners, the Military would make real men out of you". While clearly identifying himself as having the qualities military service would give them. Yet he never served.

If he had said "You're a bunch of pathetic whiners. Enlist. The military will straigthen you out. You don't want to be in your fifties and still be a pathetic whiner. Like me. Do you?" then at least he would have lamented his own failure to serve, rather than give the (false)  impression that he spoke from the experience of having served.

It is not the fact that he adviced them to enlist that I quibble about, it's how he did it.

We all know that on various issues there are arguments that can be fairly subjective and emotional, not necessarily objectively relevant, but still emotionally relevant to the speaker. Arguments like "you don't have kids, so you don't understand", "this didn't happen to you, so you don't understand". And arguments like "You should enlist, it would knock some sense into you" and "kids today have it easy" fall into that camp. There is implicit in these arguments the claim of authority on an issue based on personal experience.

And while they may not strictly be relevant to a discussion, they are nevertheless (emotionally) powerful arguments that cannot be argued against because they are purely subjective. And while we may not base our decisions entirely on them, they are accepted as having some validity based on that personal experience. Often it shuts down counter-arguments as well, since it is impossible to argue against without slighting the importance of that personal experience, which would open a whole can of worms.

A lot of people love using these arguments for that very reason. Even people who have never had the personal experiences in question.

And that's what I don't like about Chickenhawks. They speak of military service with a personal authority reserved for those who actually served. And by doing that, they create the false impression that they served.

Seriously, any man who says "The military will make a real man out of you" without also saying "look at me, I didn't enlist, and I'm not a real man" is claiming to be a real man, and to be so so courtesy of the military.

I'm not saying you have to enlist to be a real man , by the way.