William S. Lind
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
William S. Lind (b. July 9, 1947) is an American expert on military affairs and a pundit on cultural conservatism.
Contents |
[edit] Education
Lind graduated from Dartmouth College in 1969 and from Princeton University in 1971, where he received a Master's Degree in history.
[edit] Military expertise
He is most widely known as one of the originators of Fourth Generation War (4GW) theory. This theory states that the state has effectively lost its monopoly on warfare, and seeks to address the new challenges posed by this situation. The root of this new phenomenon is the "State's Crisis of Legitimacy," which is also linked to Lind's work at the Center for Cultural Conservatism.
Lind served as a legislative aide for the armed services for Senator Robert Taft, Jr., of Ohio from 1973 through 1976 and held a similar position with Senator Gary Hart of Colorado from 1977 through 1986. He is the author of the Maneuver Warfare Handbook (Westview Press, 1985) and co-author, with Gary Hart, of America Can Win: The Case for Military Reform.
Lind worked closely with US Air Force Colonel John Boyd with whom he developed much of his theoretical work and drew much inspiration from. The OODA Loop primarily used in 4GW was described by Boyd.
With Bruce Gudmundsson, Lind hosted the program Modern War on the now-defunct satellite television network NET. He has been invited to lecture by the Swedish and Israeli military academies and the United States Naval Academy.
Lind, an opponent of the Iraq War, has written for the Marine Corps Gazette, and Defense and the National Interest.
According to writer Robert Coram in his book Boyd, during lectures on maneuver warfare Lind was sometimes criticized for having never served in the military, for having "never dodged a bullet, he had never led men in combat, he had never even worn a uniform". Coram writes that when challenged by an officer, Lind "cut him off at the knees." (Coram 383)
[edit] Center for Cultural Conservatism
Lind is the Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation. He advocates a Declaration of Cultural Independence by cultural conservatives in the United States, in the belief that the Federal government has ceased to represent their interests, and begun to coerce them into negative behavior and affect their culture in a negative fashion. The Center believes that American culture and its institutions are headed for a collapse, and that cultural conservatives should separate themselves from the calamity it foresees. It supports setting up independent parallel institutions with a right to secession and a highly decentralized nature that would rely on individual responsibility and discipline to remain intact, but would prevent the takeover of the institutions by those hostile to cultural conservatism's ideals.
Lind has authored and co-authored with Paul Weyrich a number of monographs on behalf of the Free Congress Foundation attempting to persuade American conservatives to support government funding for mass transit programs. He was a co-host of an NET program on light rail called The New Electric Railway Journal.
As a paleoconservative, Lind has often criticized neoconservatives in his commentaries. While not a libertarian, he has also written for LewRockwell.com.
[edit] Criticism
[edit] Southern Poverty Law Center
In an article for the Southern Poverty Law Center writer Bill Berkowitz describes Lind as Paul Weyrich ally "who has done the most to define the enemies who make up the so-called "cultural Marxists." Ultimately, this enemy has come to embody a whole host of Lind's bête noires — feminists, homosexuals, secular humanists, multiculturalists, sex educators, environmentalists, immigrants, black nationalists, the ACLU and the hated Frankfurt School philosophers."
According to the SPLC, in 1999 Lind wrote "The real damage to race relations in the South came not from slavery, but from Reconstruction, which would not have occurred if the South had won."[1]
Lind has been criticized by writer Thomas E. Ricks in an The Atlantic Monthly magazine article "The Widening Gap Between the Military and Society" where Ricks asserts that Lind's rhetoric differs from what Ricks calls "standard right-wing American rhetoric of the '90s" because Lind suggests that the U.S. military may assault Americans. Ricks quotes Lind, "The next real war we fight is likely to be on American soil."[2]
[edit] Sources
- ^ http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=106 Into the Mainstream
- ^ http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97jul/milisoc.htm The Widening Gap Between the Military and Society
