<Those men in the truck will sink back into obscurity, and labor until their bodies break, and heaven only knows if there will be any pension or medical assistance to help them in their later years.

Only an idiot incapable of abstract thought would believe that a man's actual worth is dictated by how much he is paid. A short look at Hollywood would confirm this.

In a free market society, what you are paid is dictated only by what someone is willing to pay for what you do, no matter what it is. This is why Marilyn Manson gets millions for hollering at an audience, while firemen who risk their lives live on Beefaroni. A paycheck is not a moral judgment, and never has been.

The bitter justice of the free market does not make moral judgments, but operates on supply and demand. The fireman gets paid a certain amount because there are thousands of people willing to be firemen (thank God). Marilyn Manson gets paid millions because there is only one of him (also thank God). Supply and demand. That simple. The fact that your grandfather was probably worth six dozen Marilyn Mansons from a moral standpoint, and ethical standpoint, and about five other standpoints doesn't change that.

I am hoping that at the very least, this makes us appreciate the "grunts" a bit more. Not just the ones who risk their lives, like policemen and firemen, but the ones who keep things going for the rest of us. The cleaners. The garbagemen. The road workers. The fast-food clerks. All the lubricators of the engine of civilization. It's good to live in a society where people like these at least have the chance to be the millionaires of tomorrow. It's a fact that most of our wealthy people in this country came from such backgrounds.

...Those who manage to succeed and still maintain the kind of respect for and civility to their customers that we associate with Norman Rockwell paintings have actually, in my opinion, been the bulwark of the capitalist ideal. It's not just the money.

The corporations and businesses where the customer still comes first are still the most successful. The ones that sit back on their laurels and forget where they came from are overtaken by the competition, and that's exactly the way it should be.

The real grunts... what can I say?



As long as I'm being personal here, I'll admit to being a few months shy of 15 when Woodstock was in full swing, old enough to want to go but young enough so my parents could refuse to let me and make it stick. And I lived close enough to make it a day trip. >sigh<

I was old enough to form an opinion, that I thought the war was well-intentioned but had gone wrong, so I was against it. But against the soldiers? How could I be? I knew some of those guys. They were very young, like me, and I even dated a couple of soldiers, though my parents didn't know about that. (I wasn't supposed to be dating grown men, but they didn't seem all that grown to me. ;) Beware, Dad.) They made their decisions and enlisted, or sighed bitterly when their numbers came up in the lottery -- and God help me, I thought of the Shirley Jackson short story every time that word "lottery" came up -- but they did their duty as they saw it, just as I do mine now. I admired them. I also admired the ones who went to jail rather than serve, because that, too, was a principled stand. I admired conscientious objectors who would nevertheless serve in the medical corps and get shot at without shooting back.



No one can legitimately hold against you opinions you had at 15. ;)

I have always been, and am still, against any form of government conscription, which alienates me from some of the more "normal" conservatives. I lucked out with a high lottery number.

Those COs that went to war to serve in the medical corps were indeed to be admired. I posted a while back concerning pacifists who went into war zones unarmed to perform humanitarian work, to make the point that there are many pacifists who are not cowards.