After viewing Fahrenheit 9/11 I made a mental note to look up the number of legislators with kids in the military and compare it to the population at large.



(I thought the "sign your kid up for the army" was an effective bit, but not a supportable argument on the war one way or another because no one can actually enlist another person).



Someone has done the numbers already:



Seven out of 535 congresspersons have sons or daughters in the military at the present time.



According to the census bureau,



there are around 130 million people in the 40 to 79 age group.



These are people statistically likely to have kids in military service range. I don't know how many congressional types have kids that fall into military service ages, so for the sake of argument I'll presume they all do.



Given that there are about 2.7 million active military personnel(armed forces and national guard).



Five of the seven of these congressional children is serving in Iraq. There are 112,000 troops in Iraq. So the ratio of congresspersons with kinds in Iraq is 5/535 or about 1/107. The ratio of total 40-79 year-olds to troops is 112,000/130,000,000 or about 1/1,160.



Now, that doesn't address Moore's issue about the disproportionately large service on the part of low income individuals. The rates of service per parent in Flint (his sample area, being his hometown) may well be larger than the congresssional kids'. If anyone gets those numbers, I'll post an update.



But it does undercut the idea that congressional kids are somehow dodging their responsibility to sign up for the military or be sent to Iraq, as opposed to the average American.