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Are Army Recruits Poor and Dumb?

October 31, 2006, 10:16 pm

The Republicans are having fun beating on John Kerry again.  The stated reason for their anger is that Kerry implied only the lazy and uneducated dregs of society go into the military.  The real reason for their focus on Kerry is that he was such a terrible, weak candidate last time around, they would love to run against him again, rather than whomever they are actually facing in their Congressional races this year.

I do think Kerry's remark betrayed a general liberal assumption that the army is made up mainly of uneducated southern rednecks and poor urban blacks.  Its hard to get an exact demographic handle on this, because the army does not really ask how much money your parents make when they recruit you.  However, they do ask you what zip code you are from, and this analysis seems to belie the common liberal assumption, showing the army is actually made up disproportionately of recruits from the richest rather than the poorest zip codes. 

Military_demographics

More on this analysis here.

Update: LOL;  Also this

Tags:
Category: Government
  • http://www.electriccommentary.blogspot.com DannyNoonan

    Are you suggesting the poor is an adequate proxy for "don't do well in school"?

  • Teri Pittman

    John Kerry thinks that we are still drafting folks and that a student deferrment will keep you out of the service. I cannot for the life of me understand why the Democrats think that man is fit to be President.

  • Matthew Brown

    I'm not sure Democrats think the guy is fit to be president anymore - though they did in 2004. I think a lot of it is that Kerry managed to present himself as the offends-nobody candidate in the primaries and got through because he ended up the consensus choice that everyone could hold their nose and select. Only too late did people realize that offends-nobody candidates become appeals-to-nobody candidates.

  • Jim Collins

    My Father used to have a saying "Engage brain before opening mouth.". I think that the engage mechanism might be busted in Mr. Kerry's case.

  • http://shrimplate.blogspot.com/ shrimplate

    I am not sure that zip codes are a meaningful way to establish the demographic trend that you certainly mean these to infer.

    There are rich and poor people, good students and bad, in many zip codes, no?

    Whatever. You have your views, and it would be unhopeful to suspect that any number of facts or figures will sway you. I suspect, however, that these days the truly rich are woefully under-represented amongst those in Iraq.

    Rather than zip-codes, perhaps you should peruse the ranks of the fallen.