Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Incredibly Stupid Statement of the Day, 05/30/07

Today's winner (for a statement from yesterday) is Cao's Blog, with this little ditty:

The military's purpose is to defend our nation from enemies both foreign and domestic. We should not allow the cultural Marxist forces to further corrupt it in an attempt to carry out their counter-culture revolution.


I agree with Cao that the Clinton administration's tinkering with the "combat exclusion rule" was poorly done and that it "helped lower the standards on physical tests in order to accommodate women." But that's beside the point, because Cao & Co. aren't advocating higher general standards and objective individual assessments versus those standards. They're just demanding a return to the less "diverse" form of that old "cultural Marxism" that dominated the US military prior to the Clinton gloss: Complete exclusion of the "class enemy" (those possessed of vaginas) from combat jobs.

[S]tudies show that the average woman is a fraction of the size of a man, and her total body strength is 60% or so of that of a man ...


Yeah ... so? Using these studies as the basis for assignment of Military Occupational Specialties is pure collectivist bullshit. The woman seeking assignment to, say, Marine Corps MOS 0311 (basic infantry"man") isn't "the average woman." She's a real person with an actual, measurable size and an actual, measurable physical strength.

So: Set a standard based on the performance requirements of the MOS -- or make the most stringent MOS standard the standard for military service, period -- and measure the applicant against it already. If she measures up, she's in -- and if he doesn't, he's out. Simple, fair and based on individual ability rather than on political correctness of the left- or right-wing variety.

Speaking of which, let's make the other uniform standards -- hair length, work dress, whether or not you can pierce your ears, etc. -- um, uniform, too. If there's a reason for them, everyone should adhere to them. If there's not a reason for them, then nobody should be required to.

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