Lieutenant General Russel Honore' weighs in: For lessons in Obama's joke of a so-called "shared sacrifice," send Congress to boot camp.

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This idea has a great deal of appeal to me for clowns like Obama and our own Ridgefield Barbie, Jaime Herrera.

Imagine how much different our country would be if the Heinlein Model were followed, and that citizenship and government officials/electeds were restricted to only those who done service to this country.  It's one of my more pleasant political daydreams.

Politics
Starship Troopers is a political essay as well as a novel. Large portions of the book take place in classrooms, with Rico and other characters engaged in debates with their History and Moral Philosophy teachers, who are often thought to be speaking in Heinlein's voice.^{[citation needed]} The overall theme of the book is that social responsibility requires being prepared to make individual sacrifice. Heinlein's Terran Federation is a limited democracy with aspects of a meritocracy based on willingness to sacrifice in the common interest. Suffrage belongs only to those willing to serve their society by at least two years of volunteer Federal Service – "the franchise is today limited to discharged veterans", (ch. XII), instead of anyone "...who is 18 years old and has a body temperature near 37 °C"^[16] The Federation is required to find a place for anyone who desires to serve, regardless of his skill or aptitude (this also includes service ranging from teaching to dangerous non-military work such as serving as experimental medical test subjects).

There is an explicitly-made contrast to the democracies of the 20th century, which according to the novel, collapsed because "people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted... and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears."^[17] Indeed, Colonel Dubois criticizes as unrealistic the famous U.S. Declaration of Independence line concerning "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". No one can stop anyone from pursuing happiness, but life and liberty are said to exist only if they are deliberately sought and paid for.

Starship Troopers is also widely-regarded as a vehicle for Heinlein's anti-communist views. Characters attack Karl Marx (a "pompous fraud"), the labor theory of value ("All the work one cares to add will not turn a mud pie into an apple tart..."),^[18] and Plato's The Republic ("ant-like communism" and "weird in the extreme").^[19]

LTG Honore' is the owner of the infamous "stuck on stupid" observation during the debacle of Katrina in New Orleans.



In my 14 years of service in the Army, I did not serve for, or with, LTG Honore'.

But I wish I had.

For lesson in shared sacrifice, send Congress to boot camp

By Russel L. Honoré, Special to CNN

August 2, 2011 -- Updated 2210 GMT (0610 HKT)

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• The debt-ceiling debate was infuriating and disappointing, says Russel L. Honoré
• It's not just our image as a world leader that has been harmed. It's our nation itself, he says
• Our national elected leaders don't share a common purpose, Honoré says
• Honoré: Let's load them on troop planes and send them to Camp Shelby, Mississippi

RELATED TOPICS

• National Debt
• U.S. Congressional Politics
• Political Parties

Editor's note: Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré commanded the military response to Hurricane Katrina. He retired from the U.S. Army in 2008 after 37 years, sits on the board of the Stevenson Disaster Management Institute and is an adjunct professor at Emory and Vanderbilt universities. He is the author of "Survival: How a Culture of Preparedness Can Save America and You from Disasters."

(CNN) -- Like most veterans, the men and women who have worn our nation's uniform to defend this country, I am furious with and disappointed in the state of indecision that plagued Washington these past few weeks. Whether or not to raise the debt ceiling so our country can continue to pay our bills and maintain our global credit rating didn't seem like such a difficult decision.

As a retired, disabled soldier who spent 37 years in the Army, I can only see this debacle -- the weeks of haggling to get to an eleventh-hour deal -- as the definition of "mission failure." At this point, even the last-minute deal that is on its way to President Obama's desk will not repair the damage our elected leadership's amateur-hour, worthless grandstanding has caused.

And it's not just our image as a world leader that has been harmed. It's our nation itself.

Our nation won the Revolutionary War because we shared a common purpose: freedom. General Washington's ragtag army, 20% of whom were slaves, were poorly armed and trained, freezing and hungry, yet they defeated the most powerful military in the world. Those men and their families were willing to sacrifice, to risk their lives and everything they had, to achieve our nation's freedom. Now the country that generations of Americans have worked and fought for, that 1.3 million soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors died fighting for, is at risk.

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