Slashdot Mirror
Publishers Gave Away 123 Million Books During World War Two
An anonymous reader writes Information wants to be free? During the Second World War, it actually was. Publishers took advantage of new printing technologies to sell crates of cheap, paperback books to the military for just six cents a copy, at a time when almost all the other books they printed cost more than two dollars. The army and the navy shipped them to soldiers and sailors around the world, giving away nearly 123 million books for free. Many publishers feared the program would destroy their industry, by flooding the market with free books and destroying the willingness of consumers to pay for content. Instead, it fueled a postwar publishing boom, as millions of GIs got hooked on good books, and proved willing to pay for more. It's a freemium model, more than 70 years ago.
I think servicemen in WWII were paying a large enough price
6 cents a book at current prices seems more like Amazon's discounted books business model. So it's not exactly free. Hell even brick and mortar stores conduct cut-price "sales". And at war time, reading books would have been a luxury both at home and at the battlefield. So selling them at the cost of production or at lost is more likely investing for the future loyalty of customers.
So many damn kids these days use the idiotic phrase "Oh, I don't read" whenever I try to recommend a good book.
Excuse me? Reading for pleasure is one of those things that opens up your mind to new possibilities, that is a window into a new world, that doesn't result in the brainrot of modern TV programming.
So many US Soldiers spend all their free time playing video games. (source: was in the US Army for 4 years)
Get off of work? Play video games. Weekend? Play video games and drink booze. Rinse repeat.
The majority don't take advantage of the educational benefits while in the service, don't take the initiative to research things themselves. I knew more about Field Artillery then the vast majority of my unit while being a paperpusher because I'd look things up.
Regardless of the ease of access to books, if picking up a console controller takes less effort, that's what people will gravitate towards.
Watching countless of hours of TV shows on netflix, playing Call of Duty for hours on end, there is no critical thinking. It's just accepting prepackaged crap.
Books though, they help to open the mind. I'm not saying that reading books automatically make a person a genius who succeeds at everything, but they do make you think. Any thinking is better than no thinking.
6 cents in 1943 was roughly the same as 83 cents now, and $2.00 then would be a whopping $27.54 today.
cheap, paperback books to the military for just six cents a copy, at a time when almost all the other books they printed cost more than two dollars
Sounds like a bogus comparison. The paperbacks were sold to the government in huge quantities at six cents each. But I expect that the comparison of "more than two dollars" is being made to hard cover books, likely even at retail rather than in bulk. I'm old enough to remember buying new paperbacks retail as low as thirty cents each in the late fifties and early sixties, I doubt if they were more expensive in the forties. Never saw a paperback go as high as two bucks back then, most or all were well under a buck.
It might be nice to think the publishers were doing their part to help servicemen, but I suspect that when you are buying books in the quantity that the government was, and likely cutting the author out of the equation by selling public domain "classics", six cents was a reasonable wholesale bulk rate.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Then immediately put it back to pariah status with no (or extremely difficult) legal means of growing it and paying taxes.
America does a lot of fucking retarded things in the name of corporate profit and the status quo.
Those GIs would have cringed, then vomited, upon hearing the word "freemium".
It's a freemium model, more than 70 years ago.
How?
They were given out for FREE, now "freemium" means the game is "free" but you are inundated with "in app purchases", so free but not really free.
I'm missing the part where the book demanded payment to be able to read past page 5 or some nonsense.
The tobacco companies went after servicemen in WW1 & WW2; got several generations addicted to smoking.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
and the college price was X100 higher
that in W.W. I - the war to end all wars - field-spawned butchers gave away nearly 20 million tons of horse meat, some without any shrapnel at all.
The Germans also had the Winter Charity (Winterhilfswerk), which printed millions of books for German soldiers, both propaganda and stories, humor, songbooks, etc.
I wouldn't be too surprised if the Brits and the Russians did something similar.
I don't read :)
This illustrates how new technologies enable phenomena which are not as revolutionary as some people like to claim.
True, they are making an impact and they can be important, and from time to time there are genuine novelties, but most things that are nauseatingly overhyped these days are something old but "on a computer!".
Social media, for example, was trumpeted as enabling the Arab Spring, and, yes, it's role was significant, but it was not qualitatively different from movements that in the past used audio tape, telegraph, letters, printing press, people sailing, people walking, etc.
Nothing replaces a skilled author and brilliant writing; especially in book form where an idea and theme can be explored and expanded upon. It allows for deeper thought.
Internet posts are long bumper stickers and written shouting matches. And most of the time, it is people parroting ideas and opinions that were spoon fed to them from another media source.
"Information wants to be free" is incredibly misunderstood.
First, it is information, and does not want anything. It cannot want anything.
Second, when someone learns something, their first instinct is to share it. Arcade game cheat, little known factoid, best restaurant in a different city, how to apply blush, or really anything that someone deems significant.
Third, publishers took hardcover books and printed them sideways on a magazine press. This was to reduce the loss on the discount.
Fourth, the intent apparently was to make readers of men. This is a business model, unrelated to what information wants or does not want. Whether they covered costs or not, publishers got a huge bulk order which may have sold for 25 cents instead of 200 cents.
I did not read the Council on Books in Wartime link, but I assume that's what people here want to actually discuss.
Nonetheless, this is unrelated to information wanting to be free. Please, just make a goddamned effort to understand words before using them.
Does patriotism today only count if you're in the military? The way we glorify military service over all types of contribution / sacrifice for the national interest is pretty amazing these days. It's like the movies have brainwashed us into believing that soldiers are the only national heroes around.
Not all contributions / sacrifice are equivalent. There *is* something different about putting one's own life on the line. And the reason military service is considered in such high regard today is that for many years of very recent history putting on the uniform included a high probability of a combat deployment.
That said, even in a time of peace there is some risk. Military personnel die in training. Plus there is the ever present chance that a war will occur. One of my high school teachers joined the Marines during peacetime and a couple of years later found himself fighting on Guadalcanal, short on ammo, short on food, short on support from the Navy, and ordered to hold his position at all costs.
Many people find themselves in terrible dangerous situations and rise to the occasion, but soldiers, police, fireman, etc volunteer for such risks knowingly. Volunteering to go into harms way is a little different from accidentally finding ones self in harms way. Are these people exclusively in uniform, no, for example there were civilians that safely made it out of the world trade center but went back in to help others. That is another example of volunteering to go into harms way.
World War II starts, and a group of publishers, paper manufacturers, editors [and] librarians get together in New York. And they decide that men serving in the Army and Navy need something to read. ... They printed over 1,000 titles of different books, and they sent over a million copies of these books to sailors and soldiers serving overseas and also to [prisoners of war] in prison camps in Japan and Germany through an arrangement with the Red Cross.
The greatest distribution of the Armed Services Editions was on the eve of D-Day. Eisenhower's staff made sure that every guy stepping onto a landing craft in the south of England right on the eve of D-Day would have an Armed Services Edition in his pocket. They were sized as long rectangles meant to fit in the servicemen's pockets. (Her assertion was it was this service which reintroduced American's to Gatsby)
--Maureen Corrigan talking about her book, So We Read On: How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures
Yeah, sure. But most of the people in the military are hardly putting their lives on the line. They're working in warehouses, changing tires, sitting at a desk doing analysis.
I find it amusing / annoying / ignorant when random people go up to someone in uniform and "thank you for your sacrifice". That's part of the brainwashing of the public to believe that military = heroes. For every 1 hero there are 100 normal unremarkable people. Just like in regular life. Why do we treat all the military like they're the 1% ?
Yeah, sure. But most of the people in the military are hardly putting their lives on the line. They're working in warehouses, changing tires, sitting at a desk doing analysis. I find it amusing / annoying / ignorant when random people go up to someone in uniform and "thank you for your sacrifice". That's part of the brainwashing of the public to believe that military = heroes. For every 1 hero there are 100 normal unremarkable people. Just like in regular life. Why do we treat all the military like they're the 1% ?
Basically because the 99% can very suddenly find themselves a part of the 1%.
Don't be so quick to judge someone by their occupational specialty. Let me explain it to you the way a WW2 paratrooper explained it to me when I was a kid: "Don't trust the TV commercials that the military is a good place to learn a trade, like electronics, its not that simple. Every person entering the military spends some time crawling around in the mud with a rifle learning to fight. Its not some hazing ritual. When the shit hits the fan and things get desperate the cooks, clerks and mechanics are told to pick up a weapon and fight. Regardless of what job you are expecting to have in the military, don't sign up unless you are willing to pick up that weapon and fight."
This former paratrooper then told me about the truck driver he shared a frozen hole in the ground with while on the front line defending Bastogne. The truck driver was part of group that made a dangerous last minute supply run into the city before it was completely surrounded, after delivering the supplies they were told to pick up rifles and reinforce some paratroopers that were spread out very thinly. The paratrooper's brother was a clerk in the Navy. He was assigned to a destroyer in the Pacific. When the ship went to general quarter, getting ready to fight, he put away the typewriter and ledger books and manned a 40mm bofors cannon. That high school teacher I mentioned earlier, the Marine on Guadalcanal, he was wounded but instead of being medically discharged he was assigned to various army company headquarters units in Europe as a translator. While preparing his discharge paperwork someone noticed that he spoke fluent German, his fate changed. Another high school teacher was a Marine in Vietnam. He was an electronics tech with a desk job on base. Then one day he was told he would be accompanying a force recon team into enemy territory to set up sensors on a jungle road to detect enemy supply convoys. These jungle roads were under a heavy tree canopy so aerial observation was not possible.
Don't be so quick to judge clerks, truck drivers, electronics techs, etc.
After they gave away the 123 million books, the ones after that were sold at regular market price. It's like a free trial magazine subscription. That's not the situation people are advocating today, where content from now on is just given away for free with ads.
Yeah, sure. But most of the people in the military are hardly putting their lives on the line. They're working in warehouses, changing tires, sitting at a desk doing analysis.
I hate to break the news to you, but you are very ignorant.
Take your example of comparing a soldier to a guy working at Bell Tire or some Amazon shipping. Sure, not all soldiers are deployed to a combat theater, but all soldiers must be trained and capable of being deployed. This means training. Lots and lots of training, which is often quite dangerous. Have you ever seen a person fall 70 feet repelling as part of their duty at jiffy lube? How about a guy at Bell Tire get his face shredded by a weapon malfunction at a range training for combat? The guy at Amazon risks a tank not seeing him and killing him while he's working at Amazon? None of those things real or realistic
That's not to imply you should give military people sympathy, we still have an all voluntary military in the US. People going in know the risks, just like a police officer in a big city knows their risks. You should however respect that these men and women regularly risk life and limb so that they are ready to protect you from enemies at all times, even if they are not out directly engaging foreign armies/militants every day.
For every 1 hero there are 100 normal unremarkable people.
Yet another completely ignorant statement. Every military person gives up rights as a citizen for the duration of their military career. This is not optional, and there is no choice that is not criminal. If you defy the orders and regulation, you spend hard time in a penitentiary and are dishonorably discharged from the military. Go ahead and try to get a job with that on your application.
As a veteran, I speak from experience and first hand knowledge. I was not deployed to an active combat zone, but was on the ready line numerous times and saw people die from all of the examples I gave above. You don't recognize the sacrifice because you have never made the same sacrifice, and never bothered to consider what a person gives up to serve in the Military.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
$.06 is about 80 cents today. That's not free. You may think it's a minor distinction, but the truth is it's not. We know from repeated sociological studies that people treat free as a different category than something that's charged for. And if you establish the value early on as free, it's VERY hard to go back and get people to pay later on.
That's totally different than charging 80 cents in 2014 dollars. I'd also imagine that being in the military has different expectations than civilian life. It's a donation the publishers gave to the war effort. Once the war is over, nobody would expect to go back to being given cheap books anymore.
AccountKiller
What if you would use the lessons learned by the publishers and use it in the music and movie industry ?
You have no point. In WW2 civilians {clerks, students, etc) were drafted and told to pick up rifles as well. The fact is that 99% of the military sits on their butt behind a desk today.
Regular civilians die at their jobs too. Construction workers, health care workers. You guys are so full of yourselves.
Except the military hasn't really protected us from enemies in a while. The role has been largely stirring up hornets' nests for short term political or financial gain. Putting your life on the line is not itself worthy of praise.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The writers of the US Constitution has the foundational documents of Sparta available to them. They deliberately chose to go in the other direction. This point seems to be one that is conveniently ignored by self-styled originalists.
People vastly misunderestimate the riskiness of various occupations in the US.
http://www.vox.com/2014/8/22/6...
The amateur radio club I once belonged to had a lot of older guys who had served in either the Atlantic or Pacific theaters in World War II.
The one thing they ALL remarked on was the mud. They estimate they must have had to truck in all the mud.
They were good guys - alas many have now died off.
People also die from papercuts. ZOMG PAPERCUTS ARE AS DANGEROUS AS LIVE COMBAT!!!!1!21@
(Filter error: Yes I know I used a lot of caps. It was intentional)
I plan on thanking my garbage man for his service next Thursday.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
And when the Construction worker joins their trade they give up all of their Constitutional rights? His foreman can come to his house without warning and inspect his house and go through all of his belongings when ever the foreman feels like it? The construction worker can be forced to work for several days at a time without any breaks to sleep? The same construction worker can go to jail for telling his boss he's not happy with working for several days at a time without a break? The construction worker quitting his job is a felony and he will go to jail if he walks out?
Substitute any other profession for construction worker above, with the obvious exception of a US Armed forces job, and the answers all remain the same. These are the facts every military person deals with every day while they serve. Your ad hominem is useless against facts.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Most people joining the military do so to "defend the US", just like all the TV commercials claim their job will be. Just like most police officers join the force to defend the public. You also failed to read or chose to ignore the 2nd point in my post, which is that all US Military people give up their rights as a citizen as soon as they enlist. This is a very unique sacrifice, and yes it's a huge sacrifice.
Blaming a soldier that can not control their assignments instead of the politicians who give them their assignments is idiocy. A soldier can not control where they are deployed, only what their actions are while they are deployed.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The point is still valid. You're arguing that because one puts himself in the position (by joining the military) where he can be easily forced to fight, that makes him a hero. That right there pretty much belittles those people who actually have participated in combat. No, I'm sorry...joining the military doesn't automatically give you a cape.
The writers of the US Constitution has the foundational documents of Sparta available to them. They deliberately chose to go in the other direction. This point seems to be one that is conveniently ignored by self-styled originalists.
As I said, volunteering to go into harms way is not exclusively done by those in the military. The founding fathers would be another example of doing so. By signing the Declaration of Independence they publicly declared themselves traitors to the king and put their lives on the line.
That said, having the military subservient to the elected civilian leadership and respecting the special contributions and sacrifice that members of the military make are two very different things. They are very compatible with one another.
Most people joining the military do so to "defend the US", just like all the TV commercials claim their job will be. Just like most police officers join the force to defend the public.
Bullshit. Most people join the military and/or become cops to earn money.
Regardless, intentions don't make you a hero, actions do. If a politician sends you into another country to support a coup to oust some leader who's hostile to American business interests...you're not a hero...you're a mercenary.
I'm not saying that those in our military don't make sacrifices or that they are themselves always bad actors , I'm saying that making those sacrifices is not an act inherently deserving of praise as we tend to give them.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The point is still valid. You're arguing that because one puts himself in the position (by joining the military) where he can be easily forced to fight, that makes him a hero. That right there pretty much belittles those people who actually have participated in combat. No, I'm sorry...joining the military doesn't automatically give you a cape.
You misunderstand and you distort what I said. Lets try it one last time.
(1) People who volunteer for the military are not forced to fight. They **agree**, up front, to go into harms way as needed. Going into harms way may or may not involve fighting. They further **agree**, up front, that participating in the fighting is a possibility. Furthermore, ordinary military training involves a certain amount of risk to life and limb, even in peace time.
(2) Non-military also **agree** to go into harms way up front. Ex. Police and firemen.
(3) Regular civilians have on occasion found themselves in a situation where they can help others by **voluntarily** going into harms way. Ex. Individuals who made it out of the world trade center but went back in to help.
(4) That people who **voluntarily** go into harms way for others deserve some extra respect.
Robert Heinlein, in Glory road, quoted Major Ian Hay, back in the “War to End War,” who described the structure of military organizations: Regardless of T.O., all military bureaucracies consist of a Surprise Party Department, a Practical Joke Department, and a Fairy Godmother Department. The first two process most matters as the third is very small; the Fairy Godmother Department is one elderly female GS-5 clerk usually out on sick leave.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
I think the militaristic jingoism is a result of how the US came into existence - through war.
I mean, most countries only have one day to remember their war dead (Nov 11), while the US does the same (Memorial Day), as well as those in service (Veterans Day). Interestingly, while most of the world celebrates those who gave the ultimate sacrifice, it's when the US celebrates those in service, preferring to be different and celebrate its war dead separate from everyone else.
You have no point. In WW2 civilians {clerks, students, etc) were drafted and told to pick up rifles as well. The fact is that 99% of the military sits on their butt behind a desk today.
The point that you missed is that going into harms way deserves respect, but **volunteering** for it deserves some extra respect. Today's military is all volunteer, hence the extra respect. Plus ordinary military training involves a certain risk to life and limb, even in peace time.
Another point that you miss is that desk jobs do not mean you had not gone into harms way in the past (the translator I mentioned), or will not go into harms way in the future (the clerk and electronics tech I mentioned, and a Navy radioman I did not mention).
You also seem unaware that one of the reasons the military utilizes civilian contractors so heavily for supply and support roles today is so that those in uniform may be assigned combat roles.
... intentions don't make you a hero, actions do ...
You have just made the point of those you are arguing against. The **act** of volunteering to risk life and limb for others over an extended period of time is worthy of respect. The **act** of accepting many personal sacrifices over this period of time is worthy of respect.
has to be the stupidest slogan of all time
information doesn't want anything; it has no feelings
information = decrease in entropy = energy expenditure = cost =TANSTAAFL
this slogan actually means either
a) I the speaker, haven't really thought about this
b) I , the speaker, want something for free that I should really pay for, but instead of just stealing it (like downloading mp3s) I'll make up some BS highfalutin theory to make my self feel better
Regular civilians die at their jobs too. Construction workers, health care workers. You guys are so full of yourselves.
The construction worker gets to go home every night to the wife and kids.
The construction worker decides every morning if he will go to work today.
The construction worker can leave the job site at any time if he thinks things are getting dangerous, or loses trust in his management.
The acceptable casualty rate on construction sites is zero.
Those in the military face very different circumstances.
Well, I registered for the Selective Service when I turned 18. I agreed--up front--to go into harms way as needed. I also pledged allegiance to the country every day for years as a child in America's public schools. I think I meet your dubious criteria for canonization.
Stating that the US doesn't face any viable military threat is something of a tautology, isn't it? The US doesn't face any viable military threat because it has an unrivaled military force that makes it far too dangerous to take head-on. So, no, with our current military strength, there's pretty much a zero percent chance of an enemy invasion on our home turf, which is a fine percentage for such an unpleasant prospect. How about our smaller and much weaker allies? Is it in our own national interest to help ensure their safety as well, including the many American citizens living and working abroad? It's a question for discussion, but our current military and foreign policy indicates affirmatively.
The world is, unfortunately, still filled with types that would love nothing better than to conquer their neighbors with military force, for a variety of reasons (power, ethnicity, religion). You don't have to look all that far even today to see a real-life example in action. Do you think China wouldn't simply roll over Taiwan if the US Navy wasn't there as a deterrent force? Or that N Korea wouldn't immediately drive their tanks over their southern border? Do you think the application of military power is a theoretical exercise to the folks in the Ukraine? One wonders if Tibet wished it had a more formidable military force to resist their current occupation. Israel is surrounded by countries who would make them disappear in an instant without their military force. Likewise, Israel is also using their military to hold areas beyond its own original charter borders which it won in previous wars, and has been creating civilian settlements in those territories.
Like it or not, we still live in a world where, in the end, liberty still must be safeguarded by military might. Those who refuse to acknowledge this are just as ignorant as the people who think the Internet just sort of happens by itself, and thinks that issues like net neutrality don't really apply to them. In the end, the military has done such a good job at defending us from external military threats that most civilians believe there *are* no real external threats. I suppose that's a nice problem to have, but much of the world isn't so fortunate.
In the end, it's the civilians' jobs to help ensure our leaders don't send our military out on unnecessary foreign adventures, which is a very real danger of having such a strong military, contrary to the stabilizing force it provides in the world when used as a deterrent for real aggression. The military is, after all, ultimately under civilian control.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Misunderestimate? George W. Bush wants his word back.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
You are forgetting that in order to justify invading a country, there has to be something worth invading for, and the perceived value of the invasion has to exceed the perceived cost. Factored into that are the effects of politics on the market, which generally doesn't respond positively towards war. So, while the solution is to not drop the military at once, we can make efforts to greatly reduce our military while calling out other powerful nations that don't in kind as imperialistic assholes stuck in a 19th century mindset or earlier in some cases (with providing the people in the countries you listed with the technology to communicate securely being a vital part of such a campaign). All we need to secure our safety is enough of a military to make us not worth invading, and with less and less of the world's GDP being resource centric, it's easier than ever to accomplish this.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Well, I registered for the Selective Service when I turned 18. I agreed--up front--to go into harms way as needed. I also pledged allegiance to the country every day for years as a child in America's public schools. I think I meet your dubious criteria for canonization.
So did I. The point you missed was that our selective service registration was **not** voluntary. We were required by law to do so. Actually enlisting was completely voluntary. All those who serve, drafted or volunteer, deserve respect. But those who volunteer deserve some extra respect. Which is entirely the case for those who have gone into harms way since Vietnam.
Also respect and canonization are very different things. You make yourself look foolish by conflating the two. Although those who volunteer to be combat medics or corpsman have taken a step closer to the later.
You're right, respect and canonization are different...I was just being smart ass. And maybe you're misunderstanding me. I don't disrespect people for joining the military. But I'm not going to give someone automatic respect for joining the army. I'll give them more respect for their deeds, but not for their intentions (at least not much more) because I know most kids join the military not because of an intention to die for their nation, but for their future careers or just to make a living after high school.
You are forgetting that in order to justify invading a country, there has to be something worth invading for, and the perceived value of the invasion has to exceed the perceived cost. Factored into that are the effects of politics on the market, which generally doesn't respond positively towards war. So, while the solution is to not drop the military at once, we can make efforts to greatly reduce our military while calling out other powerful nations that don't in kind as imperialistic assholes stuck in a 19th century mindset or earlier in some cases (with providing the people in the countries you listed with the technology to communicate securely being a vital part of such a campaign). All we need to secure our safety is enough of a military to make us not worth invading, and with less and less of the world's GDP being resource centric, it's easier than ever to accomplish this.
You are forgetting that in order to justify invading a country, there has to be something worth invading for, and the perceived value of the invasion has to exceed the perceived cost. Factored into that are the effects of politics on the market, which generally doesn't respond positively towards war.
I think your fundamental error here is that you're an intelligent and rational person, and tend to expect others to be similarly rational. People, both individually and in groups, regularly make highly irrational and unintelligent decisions. What is rational about wanting to wipe some particular ethnicity or religion from the face of the earth, for example? And, keep in mind that in many countries, the arbitrary whim of a single irrational person can foolishly commit an entire nation to war.
History is replete with examples of invasions that ended up disastrously for the aggressors, but still ended up costing millions of lives before the situation was resolved. The advantage of overwhelming military force is that it prevents all but the lunatic fringe from even considering aggressive action. A closer military parity may allow the more deluded to believe they can achieve victory, especially if they don't mind throwing away a few million peasant lives to do so.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I've known numerous combat vets from various wars and several vets who served during peacetime. None ever had any intention of dying for their country. I trust your just "being smart ass" again. :-)
As for joining the military to learn some trade or earn money for college, that absolutely happens. However even in peacetime these people are making a voluntary choice to risk life and limb and to forfeit personal liberties for an extended period of time. I know a Navy Corpsman who is saving up money for college, plans to go to med school, and then plans on returning to the Navy to pay for med school. In fairly recent times he was part of a humanitarian medical mission to Africa. Some really hairy stuff happens that never makes it to the news. By hairy I mean the corpsman has exited the Humvee with his M4 out as the driver speaks with the AK-47 toting locals blocking the road with their Toyota. When you enlist such stuff may be an unlikely remote possibility but you have basically agreed to take such risks at the discretion of your superiors.
They gave these books away for free?
I'd call such a construction worker being stupid, not a hero. I'd rather not give up my rights for preemptively being called a "hero".
I will agree that there are countries with leaders with such attitudes, and they are a threat, which is why the solution is not completely nixing the military all at once. That's also why we would undermine their rule by empowering their citizens. There is a strong relationship between freedom of speech and authoritarianism, and introduction of genuine free speech can help turn it around. The general populations of the world, absent the indoctrination that occurs in many countries, has little use for war. It's not economically sound if you actually have to pay for it.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.