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This Writer Wants You To 'Stop Thanking the Troops' For Him: They Don't 'Protect Our Freedoms

This Writer Wants You To 'Stop Thanking the Troops' For Him: They Don't 'Protect Our Freedoms

"We need not thank the troops for every breath we take."

Left-leaning news website Salon.com is under fire for publishing a contributor's article on Veterans Day that instructed individuals to stop thanking members of the military on his behalf for their service.

The article, titled "Stop thanking the troops for me: No, they don't 'protect our freedoms'" and authored by freelance writer Justin Doolittle, was featured on Salon's front page Monday and questioned why the media and professional sports are "constantly jamming military fervor down our throats."

"The 'freedoms' most Americans think of when they hear the term are enshrined in constitutional and statutory law," the article said. "They are in no way dependent on the size, scope or even the existence of the U.S. military."

Salon published a contributor's article on Veterans Day instructing people to stop thanking members of the military for their service on his behalf (Image source: Salon.com)

"The combination of unanimous, entirely uncritical appreciation for the military, and the irrational belief that we owe gratitude to the troops for virtually everything we cherish in life, up to and including freedom itself, is very dangerous for our intellectual culture," the article said, adding that if someone "disbanded the entire military, Americans' 'freedoms' would not suddenly vanish."

[sharequote align="center"]"We need not thank the troops for every breath we take"[/sharequote]

"We need not thank the troops for every breath we take," it concluded. "When we do, we reduce our entire existence as free people to something that only exists at the whim of the U.S. military, and suffocate critical thought about the military and what it’s actually doing in the world."

On Twitter, users immediately criticized the news magazine for publishing the article.

"This is asinine," tweeted user @KevinUsealman. "I don't even understand the point."

"Are you kidding me?" user @LouiseCzuba tweeted. "You put this out on Veterans' [sic] Day?"

"This is so infuriating, I can't breathe right now," another user tweeted.

Nonetheless, the author told TheBlaze he stands by "every word" he wrote and said the response to his piece is not warranted.

"[T]he backlash has been pretty fierce," Doolittle said. "Probably even more so than I anticipated."

"[N]o, it's not warranted," he continued. "Virtually all of it has been ad hominem and emotionally charged, which is very revealing."

In August, Salon published a similar article titled, "No thanks: Stop saying 'support the troops'"

Front page image courtesy of Shutterstock.com.

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Follow Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) on Twitter

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