From IPR President Obama will end the 15-year-old “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that has prevented homosexual and bisexual men and women from serving openly within the U.S. military, a spokesman for the president-elect said. Obama said during the campaign that he opposed the policy, but since his election in November he has made statements that have been interpreted as backpedaling. On Friday, however, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs, responding on the transition team’s Web site to a Michigan resident who asked if the new administration planned to get rid of the policy, said: “You don’t hear politicians give a one-word answer much. But it’s ’Yes.’ ” Once this gets noticed there will be a chorus on the right bemoaning the destruction of the American military. This overlooks two facts: 1) Thousands of LGBT Americans are already serving in the US military, in most cases with the knowledge and tacit support of their heterosexual comrades. If you don't believe me, that only suggests you ...

There is a huge, fully socialized segment of our society that works extremely well: the United States Armed Forces. Soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, and coasties inhabit a world in which the pay is lousy (mimicking an exhorbitantly high tax rate), but the benefits--aside from the risk of dying young--are great: no-cost medical care, subsidized housing, cut-rate shopping, cheap travel, free education, equal opportunity. National military organizations are inherently socialized enterprises--at least in the modern world. Once you pass the initiation rituals, you are accepted into a parallel society of entitlements and benefits of which the Swedes and Finns could be jealous. Moreover, as anyone who is well acquainted with our military will tell you, we accomplish this without killing the spirit of excellence, the concept of competition, or the eye toward innovation that so often is suggested to mark socialist societies. So why does this work? And--more to the point--why won't it...