American soldiers are slaves, according to one of the dumbest columns I’ve read in years:
Our military is one of the last bastions of slavery in the United States. At the moment, our slaves are stuck in a combat zone, getting killed and maimed, and there’s nothing they can do about it except hunker down and pray.
Yes, our slaves signed up of their own free will, but most of them were as misled about their job as the rest of us were about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
And I don’t think “slave” is too strong a word to describe someone who is not permitted to quit his job no matter how dangerous it becomes or how much he hates it. For most of us, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery and guaranteed that we have the right to withhold our labor. It doesn’t protect soldiers.
Me Unless I’m in the dark about why this isn’t moronic, I’ll just let it speak for itself. But if for some reason people think this guy’s onto something we can have a nice long conversation in here about why joining the army of your own free will in order to serve your country in exchange for A) money B) education C) experience D) training E) a lifetime of benefits and the respect of your country is ever-so-slightly different than slavery.
Indeed, blacks should be deeply offended by this nonsense since it erodes the moral horror that actual slavery is in the same way that PETA’s comparison of factory farming to the Holocaust is offensive. And, obviously, veterans and soldiers alike should be upset because it suggests they are nothing more than buffoons. Shame on Reggie Rivers and shame on the Denver Post.