Marx Was a Hegelian?

What's that, the German word for hooligan? Just kidding, I seem to remember a German philosopher named Hegel, but I looked it up to make sure. Don't remember what he stood for though, I'll put it on my weekend research list.

I think today's all volunteer army is more selective than it was in my day, although they didn't accept gays back then. You're right that they didn't tell you what to think, just what to do. They wanted everybody to have a high school diploma, but if you didn't have one they would still enlist you and send you to GED classes once you got in. They didn't have to worry about not getting enough recruits because they could always make up the difference with draftees. After the draft was discontinued, they must have improved the pay and living conditions or they would never have gotten enough people to join. Then again, they seem to have shifted a lot of their missions to the National Guard since then, so maybe they don't need as many in the regular army.

I don't know why, but I was surprised to hear you say that the drugs came first with the hippies and the politics came later. Was the hippie culture already pretty well established when you got into it, or were you one of the founding fathers? In my world, all that stuff was just something that I read about or saw on TV. We didn't have many real hippies in Cheboygan, but we had kids that came home from college walking the walk and talking the talk. After they were home a year or two, though, they just got married and settled down like everybody else. I understand there was more of a hippie culture in Petoskey, about 40 miles away, probably because they have a community college there.

On the other hand, the drug problem around here seems to have gotten a lot worse over the years. Our county prosecutor was recently quoted in the paper as saying that 80% of his cases are drug related. When I first moved here, drugs were virtually unknown, except for some pot that the college kids brought home with them. Now it's meth and prescription drugs that you hear about the most. It's not just kids either, people of all ages seem to be involved. Of course, the people of all ages were kids once, but I'm not sure if they grew up with the stuff or got into later in life. I don't get around much anymore and, if I did, I probably wouldn't be moving in the same circles, so all I know about it is what I read in the paper or see on the news. One of my neighbors, the one who plays the loud music, is rumored to be involved with drugs, but he also drinks a lot, so I don't know how much of his behavior is actually caused by drugs. He isn't a bad guy, just a little spacey, depending what time of the day you run into him.

I think you're right about how all those mass movements get diluted by people jumping on the bandwagon later on. It's kind of a paradox, isn't it. On the one hand, the more people you have the more power you have but, on the other hand, carrying a bunch of lukewarm believers on the rolls has got to slow you down eventually. Then there's always the danger that the new guys will just take over and change the group so much that the charter members don't want anything more to do with it.