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wombat_sochoWow, two posts on military sociology in the same day. That doesn't happen here too often!
First, a series of posts by Mystery Pollster keying off this Peggy Noonan column, which claimed there weren't a lot of social conservatives in the ranks of the career military. The first post talks about the lack of polling data, the second one makes use of information helpfully provided by readers to show that Noonan is off base when she talks about officers, and finally this post talks about enlisted attitudes in the Army and refers to a study by West Point instructor Jason Dempsey, who adds his comments to the post. This last article includes a link to an interesting New Yorker article about Dempsey and Why We Fight director Eugene Jarecki.
The bottom line, for those of you too hurried/lazy to actually follow the links, is that the studies confirm my experience: the Army officers tend to be more politically conservative in the sense that they attend church more often, are more supportive of conservative social policies such as retaining the death penalty, RKBA, prayer in schools, and outlawing abortion. Dempsey's analysis is well worth reading - he draws a very important distinction between short-timers and career soldiers, a distinction which any veteran will tell you is critical when it comes to these sorts of things.
Via Instapundit, who links to the last post in the series.
First, a series of posts by Mystery Pollster keying off this Peggy Noonan column, which claimed there weren't a lot of social conservatives in the ranks of the career military. The first post talks about the lack of polling data, the second one makes use of information helpfully provided by readers to show that Noonan is off base when she talks about officers, and finally this post talks about enlisted attitudes in the Army and refers to a study by West Point instructor Jason Dempsey, who adds his comments to the post. This last article includes a link to an interesting New Yorker article about Dempsey and Why We Fight director Eugene Jarecki.
The bottom line, for those of you too hurried/lazy to actually follow the links, is that the studies confirm my experience: the Army officers tend to be more politically conservative in the sense that they attend church more often, are more supportive of conservative social policies such as retaining the death penalty, RKBA, prayer in schools, and outlawing abortion. Dempsey's analysis is well worth reading - he draws a very important distinction between short-timers and career soldiers, a distinction which any veteran will tell you is critical when it comes to these sorts of things.
Via Instapundit, who links to the last post in the series.
