Everyone knows about John McCain’s brave and honorable military service in Vietnam. A lot of people know that he comes from a long line of military officers.

According to Senator Harkin, (D-IA), this is a bad thing. Not just bad, but potentially dangerous:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s family background as the son and grandson of admirals has given him a worldview shaped by the military, “and he has a hard time thinking beyond that,” Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., said Friday.

“I think he’s trapped in that,” Harkin said in a conference call with Iowa reporters. “Everything is looked at from his life experiences, from always having been in the military, and I think that can be pretty dangerous.”

Harkin said that “it’s one thing to have been drafted and served, but another thing when you come from generations of military people and that’s just how you’re steeped, how you’ve learned, how you’ve grown up.”

A McCain spokesman said Harkin’s remarks were offensive and showed that Democrats are out of touch with Americans’ values.

“Senator Harkin’s comments are an affront to the many thousands of Iowans who have served our country so valiantly for generations,” said spokesman Jeff Sadosky. “This sort of attack shows just how out of touch Democratic leadership has become with the values that have made our country so great.”

So serving in the military at all is bad as is, but you get a pass if you’ve been drafted. Only an uneducated idiot or a cruel, violent warmonger would volunteer to serve in the military, right?

And gosh, what a horrible way to be raised, in a military family! Imagine — being raised with values like courage, integrity, honor, valor, selflessness, and sacrifice. How awful!

Of course, Senator Harkin is a liberal, so he probably doesn’t understand those kinds of things.

Personally, having a Marine for a father and two grandfathers who served in the Navy (one as a career), I think growing up in a military family is pretty great. The military can instill values that you won’t find anywhere else. You learn things and form bonds from military service that you won’t find in anything else you will do. I can’t convey the respect and admiration I have for those that serve enough. It’s just unfortunate that libtards like Harkin can’t understand it.

I’ll let Ed have the last word:

This comes, of course, from the same party whose Senate Intelligence chair suggested that military pilots have little human feeling. It precedes an effort by the New York Times tomorrow, along with some of McCain’s oh-so-courageous unnamed Senate colleagues, to suggest that McCain didn’t really experience Vietnam because his five-plus years as a POW kept him from learning all of the lessons John Kerry experienced in his three months in a Swift Boat. This also comes from the same party that celebrated Kerry’s military experience while denigrating George Bush’s National Guard service. According to Harkin today, Bush would be a better candidate — right?

If the Democrats want to party like it’s 1968, that’s their choice. The rest of America grew up. People stopped drinking the New Left Kool-aid a long time ago and quit treating veterans like baby-killers and Dr. Strangelove. Tom Harkin, Jay Rockefeller, the New York Times, and a good portion of the Left apparently never stopped.