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https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-we-dont-know-about-veterans [login to see]
June 12, 2017 6:42 p.m. ET
After World War II, just about all Americans knew veterans, but today many don’t. We now tend to view them in a bipolar way, either as heroes or victims. Around half of Americans who see a homeless man believe he’s a veteran, one study found—they’re wrong 90% of the time—yet they also rush to thank veterans for their service.
Americans, in other words, don’t understand veterans. This is partly due to the professionalization of the military. In 1973 the federal government ended conscription and established the all-volunteer force. As the population grew and the military drastically shrank, the military-civilian divide grew wider and became self-reinforcing. Today, the child of a career-military parent is six times as likely to make the military his career, while less than 1% of Americans serve. Veterans are often assumed not to be representative of America at large.
Such assumptions are also due to scholarly neglect. University of Chicago sociologist Samuel Stouffer’s massive postwar American Soldier project is often hailed as kicking off modern sociology. It and later studies examined the effect military service had on attitudes and behavior in civilian life.
The more than 16 million American veterans of World War II had an unmistakable influence across American civic and social life. Their participation in the GI Bill dramatically expanded the number of college students and graduates. More than half a million people got help financing their own homes, farms and other businesses. Stouffer’s studies showed empirically that veterans mirrored the nation even as their commitment to it resulted in deep civic engagement.
Are Stouffer’s insights true of today’s veteran? Probably, but we can’t say for sure. We may even be shortchanging veterans’ civic-mindedness: Perhaps because of the divergences in ideology, geography and background between those who serve and the public at large, veterans of the volunteer forces are more engaged in public service.
If so, it might help explain why the military enjoys greater public trust and confidence than any other institution—doctors, the media, the Supreme Court, and never mind Congress. We need that better understanding because we are in the midst of a well-documented crisis of decline of civic engagement and “social capital” in America.
While more colleges and universities have veterans’ centers, these are generally designed to help veterans who are enrolled in school. Programs designed to generate knowledge about veterans and society are rare, even after nearly 16 years of continuous war.
It’s likely that veterans’ participation in civic life, and especially in politics and elected office, will improve the country similarly to how the World War II generation’s involvement did. There are signs that it already is. But this is something we should know, rather than speculate about, the next time we see a homeless individual or thank vets for their service.
Mr. Schmitt and Ms. Burgess are, respectively, director and program manager of the Program on American Citizenship at the American Enterprise Institute.
Appeared in the June 13, 2017, print edition.
June 12, 2017 6:42 p.m. ET
After World War II, just about all Americans knew veterans, but today many don’t. We now tend to view them in a bipolar way, either as heroes or victims. Around half of Americans who see a homeless man believe he’s a veteran, one study found—they’re wrong 90% of the time—yet they also rush to thank veterans for their service.
Americans, in other words, don’t understand veterans. This is partly due to the professionalization of the military. In 1973 the federal government ended conscription and established the all-volunteer force. As the population grew and the military drastically shrank, the military-civilian divide grew wider and became self-reinforcing. Today, the child of a career-military parent is six times as likely to make the military his career, while less than 1% of Americans serve. Veterans are often assumed not to be representative of America at large.
Such assumptions are also due to scholarly neglect. University of Chicago sociologist Samuel Stouffer’s massive postwar American Soldier project is often hailed as kicking off modern sociology. It and later studies examined the effect military service had on attitudes and behavior in civilian life.
The more than 16 million American veterans of World War II had an unmistakable influence across American civic and social life. Their participation in the GI Bill dramatically expanded the number of college students and graduates. More than half a million people got help financing their own homes, farms and other businesses. Stouffer’s studies showed empirically that veterans mirrored the nation even as their commitment to it resulted in deep civic engagement.
Are Stouffer’s insights true of today’s veteran? Probably, but we can’t say for sure. We may even be shortchanging veterans’ civic-mindedness: Perhaps because of the divergences in ideology, geography and background between those who serve and the public at large, veterans of the volunteer forces are more engaged in public service.
If so, it might help explain why the military enjoys greater public trust and confidence than any other institution—doctors, the media, the Supreme Court, and never mind Congress. We need that better understanding because we are in the midst of a well-documented crisis of decline of civic engagement and “social capital” in America.
While more colleges and universities have veterans’ centers, these are generally designed to help veterans who are enrolled in school. Programs designed to generate knowledge about veterans and society are rare, even after nearly 16 years of continuous war.
It’s likely that veterans’ participation in civic life, and especially in politics and elected office, will improve the country similarly to how the World War II generation’s involvement did. There are signs that it already is. But this is something we should know, rather than speculate about, the next time we see a homeless individual or thank vets for their service.
Mr. Schmitt and Ms. Burgess are, respectively, director and program manager of the Program on American Citizenship at the American Enterprise Institute.
Appeared in the June 13, 2017, print edition.
What We Don’t Know About Veterans
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