Summer Soldier, Sunshine Patriot: Liberalism and the Crisis of Military Service in the United States
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Author
Brett, Lee Samuel
Subject
Washington and Lee University -- Honors in Politics
Armed Forces -- United States
Citizenship -- United States
Civil-military relations
Liberalism
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This paper is not about politics or military strategy. It is not about international relations or just war theory. This is a paper about America on the sidelines. This is a paper about a nation at the mall, even as a tiny percentage of America stands post in the far-flung outposts of hellish foreign lands. I will begin by describing historical changes in the idea of military service as a moral obligation of American citizenship. Through the lens of history and civil-military relations, I will describe the erosion of this concept and ultimately attribute it to deterioration in the philosophical foundations of citizenship. Specifically, I will argue that the intellectual tradition of liberalism has produced modern tendencies towards extreme individualism, even as another intellectual tradition -- classical republicanism -- has withered and further diminished the concept of citizenship in wartime. I will do so by criticizing two modern liberal theorists, John Rawls and Michael Walzer, and by tracing the history of classical republican ideas in the United States. Finally, I will argue for a restoration and rejuvenation of republican virtues as a means of addressing the current crisis in our civil-military relations. [From Introduction]