The lawyers go to war
In World War II, manufacturing grew to employ 26% of the labor force by 1944. With so many men in the service, women were critical to keeping the nation’s factories churning out war materiel. One fortuitous result of this was Howard Miller’s fabulous poster of Rose Will Monroe, the real Rosie the Riveter of the Kay Kyser tune and subsequent war booster movies with Walter Pidgeon.
Today, manufacturing has waned in importance in terms of employment. Though the US still accounts for about 22% of world manufacturing output, manufacturing jobs are only 11% of US employment. As manufacturing jobs declined, others grew. Professional, technical, and kindred jobs have soared. During WWII, there were fewer than 100,000 lawyers in the United States. Today that total is over 1.1 million, which, believe it or not, is twice the size of the Army, and nearly as many as are in the entire US active duty military (1.45 million). So it is good to see the lawyers go to war.
Some might say that since 2001 the lawyers have gone to war — but they were mostly warring for the other side. Perhaps that is the case. But judging by the responses over at Powerline to calls for smacking down the lying, flying imams (here and here for example), there are lawyers rising to the challenge. Our war today is not primarily a military war, though the military is critical to victory. Our war today is primarily an ideological battle — indeed, one of very long standing. (We’ll leave aside for the moment our government’s pathetic refusal to engage the central ideological issue of the war.) It’s good, and essential to victory, to see the stirrings of an army of lawyers coming to do battle for our side.
In the 1940’s Rosie the Riveter was a symbol of how those outside the military could help win the war. What should today’s poster look like?
UPDATE
Not just lawyers, but doctors too. Anti-CAIR Dr. Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy is helping to fund the war effort.
March 23rd, 2007 at 1:18 pm
They wouldn’t take me, I’m too old.
There are thousands of people who would welcome a chance to directly aid in the war. All sorts of skills and abilities, part or full time. Many are veterans.
There are thousands of soldiers, sailors, marines, and airpersons doing non military jobs- librarians, storekeepers, sweeping up.
A shame that no one in the services sees an opportunity there.