Today's Military: Conservative, Right, and Principled

America's society today is going through rough times; times where America is looking to its military protect and represent them. This military needs fight for every freedom the American people have, as well as to be its voice across seas to those it interacts with, to be its eyes seeing what the real situation is, to be its ears in hearing all that cannot be heard from the television sets of American homes, and to be its brain in understanding what is actually going on and why. However, this is not what is happening as this country is at war. The soldiers are fighting and protecting, but the people of America have different political and moral views than that of its protectors. These people are not on the front line, and they are not going through what the military is going through, but simply taking what they can from the media and their civilian leadership. All of this is contributing to a gap that is forming between the American public and its military. Within Gordon Trowbridge's essay "Today's Military: Right, Republican and Principled," these important issues are highlighted, concluding that the Civilian-Military gap that has been apparent since Vietnam is influenced by the military's apparent conservatism, higher values, and different lifestyles, as well as their questioning of civilian leadership.

The Military Times Poll discovered that more than half the military members questioned considered themselves conservative or very conservative, whereas the general public is divided equally with about a third each conservative, moderate, and liberal. Samuel P. Huntington1, author of The Soldier and The State, wrote in his article "The Military Mind," how the military man is thought to be opposed to democracy and have a heart for the organization of society based off of the chain of command. This is a seemingly obvious point seeing as though general democratic views keep most democrats from joining the service. Colonel Mackubin Owens2 addressed this