Our friend, James Joyner, proprietor of Outside the Beltway, is one of the participants in the NYT feature “Room for Debate” today. Their subject is the nomination of Gen. Mattis as Secretary of Defense and, more generally, civilian control of the military.
I have no opinion on the actual subject matter other than to point out that the military is among our most respected institutions while newspapers are among our least respected. I think we’d be better off as a country with a military that was a little less respected and newspapers that were a lot more respected.
On a side note if you believe in technocracy isn’t a general as Secretary of Defense a natural choice? I agree more with G. K. Chesterton who observed that there are some things that are too important to leave to the experts.
I think we’d be better off as a country with a military that was a little less respected and newspapers that were a lot more respected.
Agreed on both counts. But I think that respect for the military isn’t exactly what it appears to be, not for many people. I know more than a few people that have tremendous respect and admiration for those that put on the uniform, particularly those that serve immediately in harms way, who have little or no respect for “the military” or “the Pentagon” as such. But I’m not sure the polling would show that distinction.
As for newspapers and news organizations more generally: They’ve earned every single bit of derision they get, and more. From “Hands up, don’t shoot” to the coverage of riot porn more generally, from the UVA rape hoax to journ-o-list, from reporters openly getting caught now fantasizing for Trump’s death to reporters being exposed by wikileaks of extreme bias, they’ve earned nothing but disgust and mistrust. The worst of it is that so many of the people in the news business are coming from a higher social echelon now (how much farther up can one get than Anderson Cooper?), and they’re acting with less self-respect than a crack whore. It will take decades for them to rebuild any trust, and I expect that most of the practitioners now will be dead before it happens.