Remember those phony stories that individuals and the press were spreading about Republican plans to bring back the draft after the 2004 election. Fraudulent emails were sent to college students laying out supposed Republican plans, and some in the press covered them, not as the hoax they were, but simply as a seemingly plausible story that party officials were denying. As I wrote in September 2004:
[L]ast night on the CBS Evening News, reporter Richard Schlesinger used fake documents to spread an internet rumor that has been long debunked. The document, which CBS showed on the screen much as it had the phony Burkett Guard documents, purports to be an email from someone in the Department of Defense, but it is actually a chain email hoax letter.
In order to scare voters, particularly the young, into voting Democratic, there have been emails circulating that point to HR163 and S89, bills proposing national service for both men and women. Both bills are proposed and co-sponsored solely by Democrats, a fact that the emails fail to mention. Although some [bloggers and internet] commentators have suggested that "members of both parties have introduced bills to reinstate" the draft, I have not been able to locate any introduced by Republicans in the current Congress by following the links to the supposed evidence. . . . The most that has been pointed out so far is the statement of one Republican Senator (Chuch Hagel) favoring a draft, no actual Republican bills.
These emails usually, however, go further, sometimes claiming that there are plans to call up both men and women on June 15, 2005 and that "The administration is quietly trying to get these bills passed now," which is flatly false. . . .
[Despite reporting denials,] by showing phony documents and repeating phony facts, the email hoax is presented as plausible. Nowhere do they report that this is an already debunked email hoax.
Well, it's now 2006 and once again prominent Democrats are calling for universal national service, though only for three months and involving training for civil defense, rather than for the military. The proposal comes from Rahm Emanuel, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Bruce Reed, President of the Democratic Leadership Council :
A new social contract, or what you can do for your country and what your country can do for you.
The economy of the twenty-first century demands new skills and will require all of us to live up to new responsibilities. We believe that four mutual obligations that follow should represent the first terms of a new contract between the people and their country.
Universal Citizen Service
If you forget everything else you read in these pages, please remember this: The Plan starts with you. If your leaders aren't challenging you to do your part, they aren't doing theirs. We need a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us by establishing, for the first time, an ethic of universal citizen service. . . .
John Kennedy was right: A nation is defined not by what it does for its citizens but by what it asks of them. If your leaders aren't challenging you to do your part, they aren't doing theirs. We need a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us by establishing for the first time an ethic of universal citizen service. All Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 should be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic civil defense training and community service. This is not a draft, nor is it military. Young people will be trained not as soldiers, but simply as citizens who understand their responsibilities in the event of a natural disaster, an epidemic or a terrorist attack. Universal citizen service will bring Americans of every background together to make America safer and more united in common purpose.
What do you think of the merits of the Emanuel/Reed proposal?
UPDATE: In the course of a post about Rahm Emanuel's criticisms of Moveon.org and George Soros, Betsy also noticed that Emanuel was calling for universal service.
Done properly, it could probably be a decent thing to do, for the same reason that some of the smaller European countries have periods of compulsory service. But I am completely certain that it would not, could not ever be done right in this country. We're too large, too diverse. "Civil defense training", maybe, but "community service"?
Frankly, not everybody needs to know how to run a shelter. More people should than do, but we don't need every single human being in the country to know how. My bet is that this is a bait-and-switch, and the "community service" would turn out to be as non-partisan as MTV's "Rock the Vote". What does it mean? Do we get to choose whether to empty bedpans at the Medicare-provided nursing home or distribute clean needles and condoms to homeless drug addicts?
Common military service unites the participants in a common purpose because the military actually has a fairly clear and well defined purpose. You can't create a sense of common purpose in a program just by saying so. Sounds like those self-esteem programs which try to make kids feel better about themselves not by actually making them better kids, but just telling them that they're perfect no matter what they do.
Bravo.
I have a sneaking suspicion that if parents were confronted by the fact that their son or daughter would be called up and possibly shipped off to Iraq or Afganastan or someplace that more people would develop an interest in our foreign policy.
Then let's see how many wars, invasions, police actions, etc. we involve ourselves in.
I'd sign up.
Pretty craven.
Amen to that
The plan patronizes us with cliches and disingenuous ideals that only the dems can cook-up right before an election.
"An ethic of universal citizen service". Democrats proposing a mandatory government plan (an ethic no less!) based on universality, the collective, or commonality? Be afraid libertarians, be very afraid.
It's also not a new proposal, really, for the Dems. Kerry/Edwards proposed something very much like it in '04:
"As part of his 100 day plan to change America, John Kerry will propose a comprehensive service plan that includes requiring mandatory service for high school students and four years of college tuition in exchange for two years of national service." [my bolding]
Would this destroy the basis of the volunteer fire/emergency departments?
It is also not long enough to be meaningfull for the people doing it. What is three months Summer Camp.
Make it real service, 2 years or more. Or Nothing.
"All Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 should be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic civil defense training and community service."
I'm for this--as written, not as intended. I would love for our government to "ask" us all, even encourage us all, to get more involved. There's no reason for the government to create a program for it, to organize, or (heaven forbid) to mandate it... but if they want to ask for it, more power to them.
Mark
I fail to see the equivalence between patriotism and voluntary universal citizen service, much less compulsory service. I would find it harder to love and respect my country if it forced me give up three months of my life doing something I did not wish to do. I work at a VA medical center, and Vietnam conflict-era draftee veterans exude more bitterness than patriotism.
Let's strip Democrats of the right to vote. Then let's see how many more of these idiotic government programs get proposed. :)
Anyway, I realize that Newspeak is probably being used here, but I don't see any explicit call for *mandatory* service. Just a lot of yammering about "asking everyone to serve". Are we sure he's proposing a draft and not just some harebrained domestic Peace Corps?
Well, the supplies for the program would move in interstate commerce....
Rahm et al. at the DNC should be focusing on those things, not some stupid, half-assed attempt to garner Patriot points with people who already have his side scored at a -10230487 handicap.
I say make it voluntary with some reward or don't have it at all. And let the volunteers choose where they work, so they all don't get indoctrinated by the Left.
The sole purpose of a draft is to enable the government to avoid competing in the free market for employees.
The key to getting anything like this passed is to make sure the demographic it affects is too small to influence elections.
And I say that as a healthy male of prime draft age.
Now militia service, especially if that encompassed having full auto weapons for the defense of the nation (and maybe a little practice now and then, just to keep skills up) ... sign me up, even tho I'm over the age limit now! I could lay hands on a surplus artillery piece (Russians probably got a lot, and will do anything for hard currency) could I captain my battery?
(Actually, there was a debate, prior to the 1792 militia act, as to whether to change the age limit up to 21, on the ground that forming an army involved a lot of sickness (it involved clustering a mass of 20,000-100,000 men, at a time when sanitation consisted at best of slit latrines) and 21 year olds had better immunity than younger ones. And I just read a study of civil war pension applications that suggested that, yes, men in their 40s and 50s were a lot more likely to be incapacitated by disease or injury than they are now.
Buckley didn't propose mandatory service - he thought that the arguments against conscrption were convincing - but rather that there would be a number of carrots and sticks encouraging kids to join. You can consider cash payments or, better, Buckley though, tax credits (which are only useful if that the recipient is being productive to society). Or you can condition certain government programs on having met national service requirements - e.g., no Pell Grants or other student aid from the government if you didn't serve your country in return. Or just give national service veterans better interest rates in federally financed student loans. There are lots of government subsidies the receipt of which can be used as a stick.
I thought it was a very nicely done book.
That said, combatting individualism (in the Tocquevillian sense of the word) is certainly desirable even if it entails some coercion. I just don't think that the federal government should undertake this sort of program for civilian purposes (at least not directly).
Well if they ever started mandatory indoctrination service a good business would be to offer "debriefing" classes to everyone who went to undo all the lies that were taught. It could include firearms training sufficient for a concealed weapons permit.
Shifting gears, a voluntary WPA-like program might not be so bad. There's a lot of infrastructure that I've admired that got built during the WPA years. On the other hand, the WPA had a lot of make-work, and unemployment is at 4%, so I doubt you could catch lightning in a bottle a second time.
"Individualism" is a problem? That's a pretty strange concept in my opinion. I would probably define the totalitarian communist regimes as those with the least individualism, and historically that leads to poverty, starvation, corruption, collapse, etc. History seems to indicate that collectivism, communism, and totalitarianism are the problems. Of course collectivism and communism basically require totalitarianism to exist.
The antithesis of collectivism and totalitarianism - individualism organized by the free market - seems to be the way to go. Of course various forces on all sides are vigorously working to destroy any semblence of that in the US.
Hey, forget the "slavery" and "constitutionality" aspects--what on earth makes you think our military could use that many people? Especially if they were all short-term.
PersonFromPorlock,
You're brilliant! Of course the interstate-commerce connection seems obvious, once you've pointed it out...
Just to take an opposing viewpoint, a service ethic, or just a nice strong commitment to doing your part to make society run smoothly, would be a valuable and worthy goal. I just don't see how jerking people around for non-essential work does anything to advance that. Add in the suspicion that three months is too short to do anything worthwhile, and the program seems like it would be destined to failure.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction"
From Merriam-Webster:
Involuntary: compulsory; done contrary to or without choice
Servitude: a condition in which one lacks liberty especially to determine one's course of action or way of life.
If you want to claim that it is nothing more than a "nutty libertarian fantasy" to think that conscription is slavery, fine. But you have to engage in Orwellian twisting of the English language to weasel out of the fact that it is involuntary servitude inflicted not in punishment for a crime.
It is, rather, a reasonable thing that will help our nation function better
Which is odd, since the nation has never functioned as well as it has in the years since we abolished the draft.
Individualism is a reflective and peacable sentiment that disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of those like him and to withdraw to one side with his familiy and friends, so that after having thus created a little society for his own use, he willingly abandons society at large to himself. ...individualism at first dries up only the source of public virtues; but in the long term it attacks and destroys all the others and will finally be absorbed in selfishness.
Kevin P. and DJB: Try that argument on a judge when you are called for jury duty (or on a draft board if one is ever re-instituted) and see how far you get with it.
I would be considerably less likely to view this bill as opportunistic posturing if the upper age limit were raised far beyond 25 and there were very few ways to weasel out of service. As it stands, the bill proposes "universal service for all Americans! [born after 1980]".
Moreover, this program seems like it would be hugely expensive and given the stated purpose is disaster-preparedness, it would be much better to spend that money on, well, disaster-preparedness. In California, for instance, a shockingly large number of public buildings (including schools), bridges, tunnels and other crucial pieces of infrastructure would not survive a 7+ magnitude earthquake. If you want to spend public money on disaster-preparedness, why not spend it on better infrastructure so that professionals can better respond to a disaster rather than a three-months long civics lesson?
Voila, and all in three months of service.
Something tells me construction unions would not appreciate your proposal.
Making Slaves of the State does fit in well with the Pro<
gressive Paradigm,
I reject the concept of Involuntary Servitude for any American Citizen except as stipulated above a "punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,"
If you tell me where and when I HAVE to work, and I have no recourse but to accept it and cannot leave, that IS Slavery.
That's still basically collectivism. As long as someone obeys the laws and pays their taxes they should be left alone. They're not obligated to anything else, and trying to force obligations on them in anything but the most dire emergencies crosses the line into tyranny, indentured servitude, etc.
Voila, and all in three months of service.
The great mass of conscripts will have no construction skills. Or disaster relief skills. Or skills relating to whatever it is you want them to do. Every day you spend training them you lose 1.1% of the 90 days you have them under your control.
Did you ever try to get a construction job during the summers when you were in high school? It's tough to do unless you know the guy who's hiring, because crews are reluctant to hire somebody who can only do the lowest skilled jobs and will leave just as he develops useful skills. You're talking about doing that with your entire workforce.
Can you think of any job worth doing that you would even try to do with 7% of your workforce turning over every week? Where your average worker has been on the job for six weeks?
Then let's see how many wars, invasions, police actions, etc. we involve ourselves in.
Right. Do-gooder suicide missions like Bosnia (or Darfur, if it happened) and Somalia just have them bustin' down the doors trying to enlist! (/sarcasm)
Keep throwing away American lives in those places like popcorn, and we'll see how well the military competes on the market for new voluntary recruits. The draft circumvents this check on government's foreign adventures and entanglements; draftees are cheap, and are usually used that way.
That said, combatting individualism (in the Tocquevillian sense of the word) is certainly desirable even if it entails some coercion.
If it's so desirable, why would it entail some coercion? Why wouldn't people simply see how desirable it is, and sign right up?
Might it be because they just might have a different idea about what they think is right for their lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness -- and seek to act on their such ideas, and not yours?
How dare they? What the hell do they think this is, a free c.......
"Kevin P. and DJB: Try that argument on a judge when you are called for jury duty (or on a draft board if one is ever re-instituted) and see how far you get with it."
Oh. Never mind.
"I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need."
-- Ayn Rand
I think a period of national service is not unreasonable. I don't know that I would leave it to just civil defense matters but it's a start.
Such a national service is done correctly would have a unifying effect via shared experience and responsibility. If intergrated with local police it can provide an excellent core of people who can be relied on during a time of crisis.
The downside of course would be the likelyhood of the program becoming a patronage pit and the training used as an agenda by whoever controls it locally.
Still I think it's worth taking a look at as a pilot program. Things being how they are it would be worthwhile even with the flaws (among others) listed above to have some people ready in case things heat up in the next decade.
Or is the goal to make all engineering graduates non-citizens?
Actually, by distributing the risk of incurring casualties throughout society, the draft can operate as a check on adventurism rather than a source of cannon fodder. Perhaps one has to be of a certain age to remember that what led to the end, such as it was, of the US involvement in Vietnam was not student protests, but the reaction of the older generation to burying its young. In these days of a smaller volunteer force, we see the news of casualties, but most of us don't know anyone who has been injured or killed. When I was in high school, I attended a lot of funerals for the older siblings of my classmates; it has a different impact when a body bag contains the remains of someone you know.
It's easier to support a war if you don't personally have anyone at risk. If, on the other hand, every child is liable for military service, the public tends to be more skeptical of longterm involvements. I would speculate that if that there had been no draft, the political landscape would have been different in 1968; Lyndon Johnson might have been less inclined to withdraw, and with a volunteer force, the appeal of Nixon's "plan to end the war" might have been less than it was. Remember, both candidates ran on anti-war platforms -- the difference was that Nixon was running a "peace with honor" campaign opposed to what some would characterize as a cowardly "cut-and-run" proposal from McGovern, (Does any of this sound familiar?) In addition, we actually had legislators and members of the executive branch with family members serving in the military; we have relatively fewer of those today. It's much easier to send someone else's kid off to war than to send your own.
To an extent, the families of National Guard troops potentially bear a resemblence, politically, to the families of Vietnam draftees. National Guardsmen were with a very few exceptions, not called up during Vietnam, because it was considered politically risky to do so. That's why a slot in the National Guard was so highly prized -- it was a ticket out of the draft and out of Vietnam. Most longterm NG members signed on when the Guard was expected to help out domestically during emergencies -- there was no expectation of multiple longterm deployments to distant deserts. By some reports, NG recruiting is suffering as a result -- why join the Guard if you are going to be doing exactly the same job as the regulars? Those who want to do that are generally just joining the regular army; those who don't aren't joining at all.
As long as there are voting parents, politicians will have to recognize that in the long term it is politically risky to send substantial numbers of their children off to war. Essentially, a draft increases the number of potential Cindy Sheehans. Regardless of hether you like her or agree with her, you have to admit that she certainly has made her presence known. A draft, in my view, would lead to more circumspect decision-making.
With no age restrictions. (Draft the unemployed!)
With dormitories or other living that have midnight curfews, and other restrictions on the irresponsible.
There ARE irresponsible people, who "need help". Universal Service should be the social way for them to get help -- with strings.
Different states, probably different cities, should allow different sets of strings.
The key is voluntary.
Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress the power and authority in determining the composition and nature of the armed forces and the ‘militia’. In order to avoid power issues that plagued England with Kings and Cromwell, the writers of the Constitution decided to be explicit. While the President was to be commander in chief, the legislative branch was given power and authority over the laws of the military, the funding of the military, and the approval of commissioned officers to lead the military. That Constitutional power is manifested in Title 10 United States Code. In subsection 3.1.1 the law stipulates that there is an organized and unorganized militia. The organized militia is what you now refer to as the National Guard. However, the unorganized militia is composed of all males between the ages of 17 to 45. That means, every male is already part of the federal militia whether they like it or not. The ‘draft’ is simply the selective activation of the federal militia. So while the military obligation is indeed Constitutionally based, any other ’involuntary service’ could not be supported by any common reading of the law. No matter how twisted they try, the use of this authority to compel some sort of rationalized ‘national defense’ is explicitly defined as male only by Congress‘ own law. That of course, does not preclude some judge or set of judges to make it up to justify whatever they want the law to be, even though there exists no basis upon what Jefferson termed, the consent of the governed.
Isn't that what schools are for, to teach? Make it a requirement for high school graduation, including a GED.
Also, requiring such a course before allowing a new voter to register might be reasonable, but would almost certainly be called racist.
Higher pay for folks in the military would be good, and increase the bodies willing to volunteer, regardless of this mostly silly neo-draft idea.
Requiring service before getting a Fed. Student Loan is a good idea -- but lets the rich off. The Left really wants a chance to force rich kids to listen to Leftist junk (perhaps surprising, since so many do so on their own, anyway.)
Guess what they will mean by that? The same thing many schools with "community service" requirements mean: a three month-long ideological indoctrination period, where one is at the "service" of politically-correct causes, being indoctrinated into the Left, rather than really serving any good (that will be a secondary, *at* *best*, priority).
1. We know it will be abused. Look at how counterterrorism funds and disaster relief funds have already been squandered. The end result would be no training, but a huge expense.
2. Even if it worked, three months is a worthless term of service for the reasons already given. It's a federally funded summer camp, nothing more.
I am in favor of conscription only when it is required by military necessity. That is the only reason when it becomes legitimate - a position this country has taken throughout its existance. Conscription for social engineering or to promote pacifism is immoral and arguably illegal.
Porkchop's reasoning is typical: we need a draft not to enhance our national security, but to throw a lifeline to the anti-war movement.
It is arguments such as this that completely discredit the claims of so many Democrats to be concerned about civil liberties - after all, what is a more intense, violent curtailment of one's freedoms than compulsory military service?
You think the government reading your email is bad? Try sleeping in an open bay for three months with nothing to read but a training manual. Try having every aspect of your life regulated by a rigid code of behavior backed up by harsh and immediate punishment.
Any self-proclaimed "civil libertarian" who also supports a draft is a liar and a hypocrite.
This isn't a bad idea- assuming it's proponents are sincere about their intentions- but this is the wrong way to do it.
*USMC basic training: 13 weeks.
Why not start there?
The proposal is transparent posturing and will go nowhere.
The notion that a draft will somehow magically rein in the dark, warmongering excesses that we possess shows no logical or historical grounding. The US incurred far higher casualties in World War II and Korea, both overall, in a set time period (ex: four years), and indeed, even in one day periods (think June 6 1944). The forces were composed largely of draftees (ironic, huh?), so it was draftees who were chopped to pieces on Omaha beach, drove inferior Sherman tanks, and who racked up an impressive 1,500 self-inflicted wounds at ONE hospital in France one month after the Normandy invasion, which Eisenhower and Bradley visited. Eisenhower's aide recorded the shock that he expressed upon learning this. Also, it was the experiences in those wars that stopped NG units from being employed as frontline units; they simply didn't fare as well as Regulars. That decision led to the perception that NG service was 'safer', though NG and Reserves did serve in Vietnam (despite the myth being perpetuated) both as individual volunteers and as units, though mostly in a support role. Aso note that the last time 90 day units were employed was in the Civil War, because even then it was realized that the resources required to muster them in and equip them exceeded any possible gain. There's a reason that some specialities in the Military today require a lengthier committment than the standard enlistment.
Finally, before anyone spouts off about the virtues of a 90 day service period, why don't you try looking at community service programs that already do exist, and try measuring their effectiveness? Then, come on back and report results.
Oh yeah. Has anyone else noticed the irony that some of the crowd pushing this is the same crew that abhors mandatory criminal sentencing? If they had their way, a criminal faces a crap shoot when they receive sentencing, but you and yours are in for a fixed sentence.
Oy.
But, since I'm not a Libertarian*, I have to say that I think 2 years of mandatory military service at age 18 (with the only exceptions for mental and physical incompetence (I don't know how to handle those already incarcerated at 18)) would be a good idea. I'd envision it as basic training followed by assignment in non-combat bases and non-combat roles in combat theatres. Enough kids will go gung-ho and voluntarily sign up for combat roles to fill the combat positions. Obivously, actual Declarations of War will mandate that they will be assigned wherever needed, combat or not. If you want to throw in some form of College Scholarship cookie after their term (provided they stay in the reserves), fine. I think I would also rewrite all age based restrictions to expire at the end of service (legal drinking age, etc.). If you want to Heinlein it and limit voting to those who are serving or have served, I don't have a problem.
Pros: Civic spirit, etc. America's enemies will no longer be able to simply wait out the pool of Americans willing to serve voluntarily. A couple months in Leavenworth should straighten out most excessive youthful narcissism.
Cons: The whole "2 years of your freedom gone" thing. Declining birth rates are not anywhere near the point where every 18 year old serving will not overwhelm the system - massive additional spending will initially be needed for additional basic training and correctional sites. I do relish the thought of the DoD telling Congressmen "Sure, you can keep your ridiculously sited base - provided we turn it into Leavenworth #16. Or we'll close it. Have your constituents get back to me."
*I'm essentially a European-style Catholic Democrat (that reads VC for the writers and to stay intellectually honest). Obviously I voted Republican for moral issues, but the way the Republicans are going on spending, they will be actual CDs soon enough.
2) For those of you who think that the militia is the same as the army, it sure is not. Better re-read the constitution.
3) For those of you who think that compulsory national service a la Americorps is constutional you better re-read Article 1 Section 8 US Constitution. There are three missions which the Congress can use the state's militias for - "execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions." Meals on wheels isn't one of them.
Domestic surveillance outside the law; detaining U.S. citizens for years w/o habeas; kangaroo courts for whatever random brown-skinned folk we scooped up in Afghanistan--fine!
Serving one's country--SLAVERY!!!!!!!!
I just can't wait for the libertarians to buy an island and go move there and construct their libertarian utopia. Just be sure to get it all on video, folks--it'll be a hit reality show.
Then let's see how many wars, invasions, police actions, etc. we involve ourselves in.
~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~
The French have brought back the draft so that they can re-instill understanding of the history of France and its greatness as a nation. Overcoming the socialist driven ignorance and resulting apathy towards their country.
This is the best arguement for a draft, we too have lost sight of what makes this country great. It might somewhat discourage military adventurism, but it also might stop the left's tendency toward national suicide.
A lot more, probably, since we'd have the troops for it.
No alternative for conscientious objectors? That will be hard on those of your fellow Catholics who are pacifists (yes, there are some) and other Christian denominations who take seriously Jesus' adminitions in the Sermon on the Mount. Your reference to Leavenworth was telling, since there were Christians who were sentenced to Leavenworth during WWI, and several died as a result of abuse while in military custody.
If you want to Heinlein it and limit voting to those who are serving or have served, I don't have a problem.
That may not be a problem for the consientious objectors, since many Christian pacifists also reject participation in the government, but it would make you significantly more militaristic than Heinlein. If I remember _Starship Troopers_ correctly, the service was not necessarily military--it just had to be dangerous.
But really, how long does it take to instill the knowledge of how to wave a white flag and surrender? ;) Surely they don't need a draft for that - it could be a weekend refresher class.
It should be obvious, but it is the COMPULSORY aspect of the service that makes it "involuntary" servitude. Not slavery, BTW, as the 13th Amendment explicitly disttinguishes between the two (one is not considered property if subjected to involuntary servitude, in contrast to being a slave).
1. The Military doesn't want and can't find meaningful slots for a universal service program. too many in each year cohort.
2. I'm against the idea, however.
3. contrary to the views of many of the posters, You can teach a heck of a lot of material in 12 weeks of 12 hour days. 12x12x7. When I was a Drill SGT, basic training was 1 week of induction stuff and 8 weeks of training. At the end of that you got a motivated entry level soldier who could do riot control, sling sandbags in a flood or evacuate civilians from a natural disaster. Classes on first aid, WMD defense, code of conduct, weapons qualified, etc.
and a hell of a lot of bonding and egalitarian hard work
It's easier to support a war if you don't personally have anyone at risk.
What if the body in the bag was YOURS?
Don't the soldiers themselves have someone at risk? THEIRS is the only support -- and consent -- that matters. That is, if their monarch -- er, government -- deigns to permit them the use of their lives, that is.
A volunteer army combined with declining enlistment and high casualties would have forced LBJ to pull us out sooner... or start fighting the war properly, i.e. to WIN it.
After all, that's the entire issue right there.. Not the Constitution, for that is merely law. When we speak of "limited" government, the limiting factor which constrains government and its laws is the moral principle of individual rights.
What we are seeing here on the part of many posters is a cavalier willingness to dispose of the lives of others without their consent. How far we've fallen from "Don't Tread on Me!"
Once it becomes morally permissible to treat one's fellow man as a means to one's own ends, it will not matter what those ends were in the long run; that road only leads to one place, no matter who's driving.
I just can't wait for the libertarians to buy an island and go move there and construct their libertarian utopia. Just be sure to get it all on video, folks--it'll be a hit reality show.
That was done; it was called America. It wasn't perfect, and that might still lead someday to its downfall (over my dead body). But don't go telling US to go somewhere else.... THIS is ours. I'd say that its you and anyone else so willing to dispose of lives and life's time not yours, who ought to be pushing off. The rest of the world is no stranger to your mantras of "duty" and "service", rest assured... in fact they mean it even more than you do.
Not one minute.
"Beware Democrats bearing involuntary servitude."
Worth repeating. Well said.
1. I'd agree to begin with that it's unrealistic to "compel" a spirit of civil service. It's either there, or it's not; but a three-month summer camp isn't going to create it where it doesn't exist.
2. How to enforce it upon the hundreds of thousands or millions of "draft dodgers" who'd want to avoid even three months of involuntary service? What are we going to do with them - imprison them for three months? And at what financial and societal cost?
Volunteerism, whether for military or civil service, is the way to go. As a volunteer soldier, for example, I'd hate to have to work with whiny, complaining, moaning draftees who have absolutely no motivation to be where they are, or to do a good job at anything they're assigned, and whose minds aren't focused. They're at best a drag, normally a nuisance, and at worst a positive hazard to those around them.
Besides, when we can't get enough volunteers to come forward for civil or military service out of a population of 300 million, then we probably don't deserve to have a country, anyway.
The Real Patriots among us are those who subscribe to the ethic of citizen service by serving their country without being forced to do so. I believe a large majority of those folks today are called the All Volunteer Military of the United States Armed Forces.
But perhaps I am mistaken. Perhaps it really means our kids should all join the Hitler Youth, Young Red Octobrists, or the Citizens Committees of the French Revolution.
Subsunk
So true. If these posters are representative, we have fallen from a nation founded on rebellion against tyranny to a nation of wannabe tyrants.
It would certainly be overturned in the present day.
To quote the opinion:
In view of ancient usage and the unanimity of judicial opinion, it must be taken as settled that, unless restrained by some constitutional limitation, a state has inherent power to require every able-bodied man within its jurisdiction to labor for a reasonable time on public roads near his residence without direct compensation.
In the modern day, it is specifically restrained by a constitutional limitation.
I humbly submit to you that your judgement as to what is "truly better" to do with my life is inferior, not superior, to mine.
Anderson: I just can't wait for the libertarians to buy an island and go move there and construct their libertarian utopia. Just be sure to get it all on video, folks--it'll be a hit reality show.
This always makes me laugh. OK, tell you what -- deal. I'll go to an island and help organize a dynamic, vibrant society based on the principles of liberty, initiative, individual enterprise and free association, with minimal government intrusion. Meanwhile, you can stay on your island and really organize a centrally planned, statist society, with political and economic decisions (like who should serve the state, and when and for what duration) made by panels of the best and brightest experts.
One suggestion for your compulsory community service: Have the
indentured servantsvolunteers build the wall you'll need to keep people from fleeing from your island to ours.- Alaska Jack
The historical trend here is the same as throughout society - more technological sophistication requires more labor specialization, higher levels of education and an increasing ratio of capital to labor. In other words, technological advance inevitably decreases the value of amateurs. Economists of every political stripe agree on this.
In addition to the debate between liberty / "service" the bald fact is that the same phenomenon which applies to the military applies to social services as well. Bedpan emptiers are about as useful as cannon fodder - not very. Sure, you need some, but the overall supply in the population already exceeds demand, so creating more by some kind of "national service" is inefficient. If we want more social service, a far more efficient way to provide it is by tax-and-spend.
My sense is that the Gov't could do a lot more in promoting a "service" ethic by making service programs both more prestigious and easier to join. For example, I've never seen an ad inviting me to attend free classes to learn first aid, CPR, sandbag filling, or whatever. Most counties have volunteer (usually unpaid) reserve deputy sheriffs and my sense is that their main recruitment problem is usually keeping out undesirables.
An endeavor which is centrally managed more rigid and less inefficent than a less centralized one (assuming that less centralized ones don't suffer from lack of economies of scale). Most social services operations have very small efficient sizes. Regardless of ideological considerations, any "national service" plan will end up working about as well as old Soviet agriculture.
This reminds me of how Congress passes a lot of employee benefits and health care laws and then exempts itself from the same requirements.
GG
We already have enough volunteers to fight all the wars we want. Adding in a bunch of draftees won't change that -- the military has learned now that draftees make bad soldiers, so they'll still use the volunteers for the actual fighting. If anything, the draftees will simply be used to do the grunt work that volunteers have to do currently -- freeing up more volunteers for actual combat roles.
The "draft = no war" argument only makes sense if we also *forbid* people from voluntarily serving in the military -- which would be completely insane.
Mr. Emmanuel mis-paraphrases, and distorts, what the President actually said: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." Kennedy was exhorting us to aspire to and create a communal good greater than the sum of its individual parts. Nowhere did he suggest that the government should "ask" [i.e. - compel] us to become cogs in some bureaucrat's fantasy machine.
Setting aside the merits and drawbacks of mandatory physical service, military or otherwise, we shouldn't forget that Congress has thoroughly availed itself of the Sixteenth Amendment's authorization to allow the government to help itself to rather hefty portions of the fruit of our efforts. Whether capital gains from a millionaire selling stock or the ponzi-scheme swindle -- oops, I mean 12% payroll tax investment -- for social safety net programs paid by every burger-flipper, we all give considerable amounts to our country every time we show up for work.
How much more of our lives should society realistically demand us to surrender?
This reminds me of an eye-opening conversation I had with a couple of left-leaning friends back when the draft rumors were circulating. They were all in favor of it. Not because the pentagon desperately needed more soldiers, but because the “wrong people” were in the volunteer forces, and they thought a draft would further their vision of egalitarian social engineering.
We may yet find ourselves in dire need of compulsory services, just as the Israelis regularly do. But this is completely bass-ackwards. It is not just a slippery slope to tyranny, it could quickly become a sheer cliff.
Stipulated. Do you think the dynamics would change if the conscripts weren't subject to military discipline, though? The specific proposals have wandered a little, from primarily consisting of service to primarily consisting of training. If the conscription period consisted entirely of training, I wonder if you wouldn't have severe morale and discipline problems.
Zach 9.1.2006 4:03am
Sarcasm impaired wretches.
"Young people will be trained not as soldiers, but simply as citizens who understand their responsibilities in the event of a natural disaster, an epidemic or a terrorist attack"
It could amount to months maybe years of nothing. Can you imagine sitting through a gov't run class about what to do in the event of a natural disaster? I can't. This is at least twice as bad as "the draft" being re-instated IMHO.
1. My first post was not intended to be a moral statement; it was an historical observation intended to point out the error in a previous post that suggested a conscript army would provide a tool to engage in wider military actions. I suggest that in a democracy, there is a correcting mechanism: With univeral service, substantially more of the electorate will have a family member at risk. In the Vietnam era, there came a time when the electorate determined that the costs of the war were not worth the benefits. This is not a statement concerning whether any particular war is beneficial or at what costs are worth bearing to prosecute it.
2. The longterm effect of universal military service is that more civilian leaders have military experience. Contrary to what some may think, that tends to produce more circumspect decision-making about whether to go to war. I hope no one gets their underwear in a knot over this, but it is rather telling that the bulk of the neo-cons who wanted to start flexing American muscle as soon as the Cold War ended didn't have any military experience. (I'm a veteran, and a volunteer, by the way, so if you really feel that you want to debate the chickenhawk issue with me, bring your DD214 to the table with you. If you don't have one, I don't care what you think -- you can have an opinion, but I'm not going to respond. If you do have one, we can agree or we can agree to disagree respectfully, but at least we have something to talk about.)
3. I suggest that you are overly optimistic concerning our having enough volunteers to fight "all the wars we want." Let's assume that we have enough to continue with the the current situation in Iraq. What about the wars that we don't want? We may not get to choose the next war(s). Is the two-regional-war strategy still viable? When (not if) North Korea goes off the deep end, will we be able to respond? Remember that combat soldiers are a consumable resource. (I commend David Grossman's On Killing for a discussion of just how much actual combat a soldier is good for in a lifetime.) There are unstable governments all over the place. What if China decides that it would be a good idea to occupy Taiwan while we are preoccupied with Iran, Iraq, and Korea? Russia is unhappy with its reduced territories; what if it decides to take some of them back? When things happen, they happen fast.
4. It seems to me that your suggestion that the "the military has learned that draftees make bad soldiers" gives to much credit to the collective memory of the military. Much to my chagrin, it appears that in the 30-odd years since Vietnam, the Army forgot a considerable amount of what it once knew about counter-insurgency warfare. I am appalled to hear that the Army command structure did not have the foresight to train soldiers who were sent in as an occupying force to conduct counter-insurgency ops from the very beginning. It took a couple years for that to sink in, and we let an insurgency develop unnecessarily. That's not a "little" mistake; that's a strategic blunder. To be fair, the initial force was undermanned for an occupying force, and General Shinseki said as much, but the lack of preparation and training for the specific situation was still the Army command structure's responsibility.
5. I really doubt that if a draft were instituted that the fighting would be left to "volunteers." First of all, almost every draftee would "volunteer." It's really easy to motivate volunteering once you are in a training environment. It would be something like this -- about the second or third week of boot camp/basic training, voluntary enlistees would get spiffy new WARRIOR uniforms, and draftees would be required to wear a different color, maybe, oh, YELLOW. During the following weeks, the YELLOW draftees would be given multiple opportunities to change to WARRIOR uniforms. I can guarantee you that the majority would "volunteer." Okay, it would be more subtle than that, but it would be done, and it would be effective. I knew a number of men who enlisted in the National Guard in the '60's and early '70's who somehow got swept up enough to be motivated to change their enlistments to "go regular."