Serving your Country: Expanded Edition

What I'm about to say is heresy to some, so please just bear with me till I get to the point.  No disrespect to the "brave men and women in uniform" who put their lives on the line for our country -- because they do indeed do that and they deserve our respect for it -- but I am pretty darn tired of that being the only way one can "serve one's country."  Signing up to risk one's life might be the ultimate way, but the only way? 

What about all those jobs we used to call "public servants"?  I know that we are supposed to think the Government is evil incarnate and that working for it makes you part of the problem -- but let's leave that to the Tea Baggers for a moment.  Let's consider the fact that government employees are the people who get the work of the government done.  Things like repairing the roads you drive your big fat SUV on, or cleaning up that shitter you use at your favorite National Park.  And before you go and tell me that government workers have a pretty good deal -- good benefits, paid leave, and virtually no way to be fired -- let me ask: What exactly is the proper pay rate for cleaning up an outhouse full of other people's poo?

And speaking of stinky jobs, how about your trashman?  What do you think that job is worth?  What would happen if you didn't have someone willing to serve his country by hauling your molding waste away from your tidy little suburban neighborhood?  Yes, I realize that corporate giant Waste Management may have taken over this service in your neighborhood, but just humor me and keep this one in the public servant basket for now.

And the greatest public servants of all: teachers.  They don't even make a living wage, much less get the respect their profession deserves.  Let's face it: no one goes into teaching for the money.  Then on top of that, they get their hands tied with crap like No Child Left Behind, which basically denies them any freedom to actually teach anything meaningful. 

I'll never forget the day this kind of thing crystallized for me.  I was reading Why we hate France but Love the French, which actually isn't as good as it sounds.  But it did discuss the French attitude toward public service: it's an honor.  That's right, people think it's the bee's knees to be a government employee, to serve one's country by spending a third of your life drowning in bureaucracy.  But it was a real light-bulb moment for me, a whole new perspective.

A perspective I think we would be well served by.  Instead of only focusing on the military, why not include all our public servants when we talk about "serving the country"?  Why not speak of such jobs with honor and respect?  It's pretty insulting to act like there's One and Only One way to serve your country.  So, if you dedicate your life to teaching children, let's say you do this in an impoverished inner-city neighborhood.....that's not serving your country?  How about those friendly public librarians, who can always help you find the book (ie, knowledge, ie power) you're looking for?  And again, the poor schlub whose job it is to clean up the poo?

These people (and many many more) serve the country equally well, in equally valid ways.  To say so does not denigrate the service of our military.  It elevates those who serve in all the ways we take for granted.