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Many of the world's mature democracies require every high-school graduate to serve a year or two of either military or nonprofit service, as Congressman Charlie Rangel has proposed every year for some time now. At first blush, this may seem like an oppression by government, but history shows it's actually one of the best ways to prevent a military from becoming its own insular and dangerous subculture, to prevent the lower ranks of the military from being overwhelmed by people trying to escape poverty, and to keep military actions of the government accountable to the people.
The Founders of America extensively considered this same issue. Many were strongly against there ever being a standing army in America during times of peace, although they favored a navy to protect our shoreline borders, and today would no doubt favor an air force. The theory was that an army had too much potential for mischief, to oppress people, or even stage a military coup and take over an elected government (as recently happened in Pakistan and has happened in several other nations over the past century).
Thomas Jefferson first suggested that we not have a standing army, and wrote a series of letters in 1787, as the Constitution was being debated, urging James Madison and others to write it into the Constitution.
The idea was, instead of a standing army, for every able-bodied man in the nation to be a member of a local militia, under local control, with a gun in his house. If the nation was invaded, word would come down to the local level and every man in the country would be the army.
Switzerland has such an army, and many have suggested it's one reason why Hitler never tried to invade this neighbor.
To facilitate this, it was suggested that three things were necessary. A ban on a standing army; a provision making every able-bodied male a trained member of a local militia that could come under nation control if the nation was attacked; and a provision making sure every male had a weapon handy if that day ever came.
Step one would be to write a ban on a standing army into the Constitution. When Jefferson received the first draft of the new Constitution in 1787, he wrote that without an addendum, a Bill of Rights, he would recommend that Virginia oppose it.
In a Feb. 12, 1788 letter, he noted to his friend Mr. Dumas, "With respect to the new Government, nine or ten States will probably have accepted by the end of this month. The others may oppose it. Virginia, I think, will be of this number. Besides other objections of less moment, she will insist on annexing a bill of rights to the new Constitution, i. e. a bill wherein the Government shall declare that, 1. Religion shall be free; 2. Printing presses free; 3. Trials by jury preserved in all cases; 4. No monopolies in commerce; 5. No standing army. Upon receiving this bill of rights, she will probably depart from her other objections..."
The topic was hotly debated, and Alexander Hamilton wrote an extensive article about it, first published in a newspaper titled The Daily Advertiser on January 10, 1788. This article is now known as Volume 29 of The Federalist Papers. (The entire text is at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/const/fed/fed_29.html .)
"If standing armies are dangerous to liberty," Hamilton wrote, "an efficacious power over the militia, in the body to whose care the protection of the State is committed, ought, as far as possible, to take away the inducement and the pretext to such unfriendly institutions." A citizen's militia, Hamilton noted, "appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it..."
But while many Founders saw a standing army as a threat to democracy, others pointed to threats ranging from hostile Indians to French Canadians and Spanish Floridians as reasons to keep it.
The debates among the Framers of the Constitution led to a clumsy compromise, with the ban on a standing army and universal requirement for membership in a militia chopped away, to be revisited at some (presumably near) future time. The tattered and compromised remnant of that discussion is today known as our Second Amendment to the Constitution, which reads, in its entirety: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
(As you can see, the Second Amendment thus had virtually nothing to do with the "we can rise up against an oppressive government" argument put forth by today's advocates of ownership of assault weapons, or the "right to self defense in your own home" argument put forth by the NRA.)
As president, Jefferson again tried to revive his argument. He slashed the size of the army to just over 3000 soldiers, closing forts and cutting costs. But he couldn't kill off the army altogether, because the citizen's militia had never been formalized at a federal level.
After he left office, Jefferson came to the conclusion that if he couldn't get rid of the army, then every man should be a member of it, if only for a brief time. This would insure diversity of opinions in the army, and minimize the chances of a military coup or a military culture that could become so powerful it would influence the government or seduce the president into playing commander-in-chief too often in foreign adventures.
Jefferson was also morally offended by the idea of an army that people would join only because they were so poor there was no other way to get an education and a job (for such people, he wanted universal free public education, including free college tuition - which he brought into being when he founded the University of Virginia).
He wrote his thoughts on the topic in a June 18, 1813 letter to his old friend and future president James Monroe.
"It is more a subject of joy that we have so few of the desperate characters which compose modern regular armies," he wrote, pleased that his army had taken on a different nature during his tenure as President, just completed five years earlier. "But it proves more forcibly the necessity of obliging every citizen to be a soldier; this was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free State. Where there is no oppression there will be no pauper hirelings."
He noted that so-called "voluntary" armies depend upon a "pauper class" for their existence. By the end of his presidency (1808), Jefferson had largely done away with America's standing army, and he was thus inspired to write to his friend Dr. Thomas Cooper, on September 10, 1814, that "our men are so happy at home that they will not hire themselves to be shot at for a shilling a day. Hence we can have no standing armies for defence, because we have no paupers to furnish the materials."
In history, Jefferson found justification for his opinion. "The Greeks and Romans had no standing armies," he wrote in that letter to Monroe, "yet they defended themselves. The Greeks by their laws, and the Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a standing army. Their system was to make every man a soldier, and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible; and the same remedy will make us so."
He noted that such a system of universal service "was proposed to Congress in 1805, and subsequently; and, on the last trial was lost, I believe, by a single vote only. Had it prevailed, what has now happened [in the War of 1812] would not have happened. Instead of burning our Capitol, we should have possessed theirs in Montreal and Quebec. We must now adopt it, and all will be safe."
He noted that three-quarters of a million men qualified for a draft in 1814, and added, "With this force properly classed, organized, trained, armed and subject to tours of a year of military duty, we have no more to fear for the defence of our country than those who have the resources of despotism and pauperism."
As history shows, Jefferson was more often right than wrong. We should institute a universal draft in the United States, with a strong public service option - from planting trees to assisting in schools to helping in hospitals - easily and readily available for those young people who don't want to go into the military.
The result will be a generation of citizens who feel more bonded with and committed to their nation, who have experienced the critical developmental stage of a "rite of passage" into adulthood, and who have experienced more of America and the world than just their own neighborhood.
Universal service would also help calm President Dwight D. Eisenhower's fears. The old general left us the following warning as he left office in 1960: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
"We must never," he added, "let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted."
As Jefferson wrote to Monroe: "We must train and classify the whole of our male citizens, and make military instruction a regular part of collegiate education. We can never be safe till this is done."
Herbert Hoover correctly noted, "Old men declare war. But it's the youth who must fight and die." When the children of our President, Vice President, and members of Congress are all obliged to serve, the odds are infinitely higher that our leaders won't speak so glibly about the acceptability of "a few casualties" in optional wars of choice like Iraq.
By including women, and adding a very broad government-funded option of national public service, we can bring about a modern version of Jefferson's vision and create both a more egalitarian society and a less belligerent and poverty-driven military. And prevent future "adventures" like Iraq.
Thom Hartmann is a Project Censored Award-winning, New York Times best-selling author, and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show carried on the Air America Radio network and Sirius. www.thomhartmann.com His 17 published books include "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection," "We The People: A Call To Take Back America," "What Would Jefferson Do?" and "Ultimate Sacrifice." His most recent book is "Screwed: The Undeclared War on the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It."
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Yeah, the current system is
Yeah, the current system is working swimmingly.
On edit: i've been trying to post this to the discussion on the Poll thread about Rangel's bill, but i keep getting an error message. Maybe it will work here.
As i've gotten older, i've come to support a national service program. All citizens should be required to give 2 years of service, between the ages of 18 and 28.
This would include, but not be limited to, military service. Teaching kids to read, distributing vaccinations, restoring our national parks are all tasks that could be included in this program.
The military service component, though, is a key piece.
Part of the reason for universal military service is expressed, albeit inadvertently, by noted chucklefuck Richard Cohen, in his WaPo column today:
Things are precisely the same with Iraq, and here, too, I originally had no moral qualms about the war. Saddam Hussein was a beast who had twice invaded his neighbors, had killed his own people with abandon and posed a threat -- and not just a theoretical one -- to Israel. If anything, I was encouraged in my belief by the offensive opposition to the war -- silly arguments about oil or empire or, at bottom, the ineradicable and perpetual rottenness of America.
On the contrary, I thought. We are a good country, attempting to do a good thing. In a post-Sept. 11 world, I thought the prudent use of violence could be therapeutic. The United States had the power to change things for the better, and those who would do the changing -- the fighting -- were, after all, volunteers. This mattered to me.
I'm sure you know some right-wing mouthbreather, the kind who thinks Bill O'Reilly is really, really smart, who'll tell you that our soldiers are volunteers, they knew when they signed up that they could be losing limbs, suffering permanent brain damage, getting killed in service to their country. And because they're volunteers, it's OK to send them to Iraq, or Iran, or wherever the president decides our national pride requires.
So the conventional wisdom, espoused by the esteemed inside-the-beltway pundit Mr. Cohen, is that if our army had been composed of draftees, well then, that would have mattered, and maybe going into a foreign country and overthrowing their government following a concerted government propaganda effort aimed at marginalizing anyone who disagreed might not have seemed like such a good idea.
Yikes.
No, what would happen if we instituted a program of universal, compulsory, service to the country is that people like Richard Cohen would soon find that their petty opinions about what matters no longer form the conventional wisdom.
Josh Marshall, on the other hand, makes a very good case for why Charlie Rangel needs to rethink his bill:
I understand that Rangel's proposal is in the manner of a Modest Proposal. If more political and opinion elites had close relatives in uniform we'd probably be a lot less eager to sign on to new wars for frivolous or inane reasons.
On the draft issue, I get the concept behind Rangel's call for a draft. I understand the separate argument for a draft on national service grounds, though I think that's a bit different from where Rangel is coming from. But this isn't the way people hear this proposal on first contact. We've just had a national election that became a massive repudiation of the Iraq War. If you're a casual news consumer who went to polls to say, enough! on Iraq, I think a vote on reinstituting the draft has got to come off to you, at best, really out of the blue. At worst, I imagine it registers with a big 'What the hell are they thinking?'
It would be one thing if a draft would materially change our present options. But it won't. The US military has been all-volunteer for three decades. Whatever is on paper, it would take a really, really long time for a draft to actually start putting real soldiers on the ground anywhere.
But these are both* highly divisive issues, ones tailor made for Republicans hoping to trip up the new Democratic congress right out of the gate.
You start with broadly popular and critically needed changes. That allows you to build up the electorate's confidence in your governance and gains you political capital to tackle more difficult problems. This isn't about following a timorous legislative agenda that will offend no one. There is a war going on. Two actually. Our military faces a readiness crisis in the very near future. We are in a soldier-slaughtering drift in Iraq. These are complicated questions requiring bold solutions.
I can understand Josh's call not to fritter away the opportunity for Democrats to show the nation that they understand how to take the reigns of government. But eventually, and i think sooner is better than later, the issue of Bush breaking the military has to dealt with. And if the conventional wisdom is that it's OK to treat volunteer soldiers as dead men walking, while drafted soldiers would, well, matter, then i think the conversation that Rangel's bill will start is worthwhile having.
======================================
* - Josh also talks about Barney Frank wanting to revisit "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
Conversation is good - slavery is bad
Conversation is a fine thing. Slavery is a bad thing. Sending volunteer soldiers to fight aggressive wars over control of other peoples' oil is repugnant. Sending draftees to fight aggressive wars over control of other peoples' oil is even more repugnant, if that's possible.
Don't feed the Neocon war machine - starve it, instead. Want to prevent future wars? Cut off funding for this one, and put the Congress back in charge of war spending.
_______Now at midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Warring repugnancies
"Sending volunteer soldiers to fight aggressive wars over control of other peoples' oil is repugnant. Sending draftees to fight aggressive wars over control of other peoples' oil is even more repugnant, if that's possible."
This is exactly what neocons believe. They like the idea of wars, but not personal military service. The only way to get chickenhawk leaders to be intellectually honest, and to drain them of their chickenhawk voting base, is to make sure everyone has skin in the game.
No. You're completely wrong
"Sending volunteer soldiers to fight aggressive wars over control of other peoples' oil is repugnant. Sending draftees to fight aggressive wars over control of other peoples' oil is even more repugnant, if that's possible."This is exactly what neocons believe. They like the idea of wars, but not personal military service. The only way to get chickenhawk leaders to be intellectually honest, and to drain them of their chickenhawk voting base, is to make sure everyone has skin in the game.
You're completely mis-stating the argument of the person you're responding to. Neocons don't believe that 'sending volunteer soldiers to fight aggressive wars over control of other peoples' oil is repugnant'-and the poster certainly wasn't supporting the neocon ideology. In fact, the biggest reason why they fear a draft probably isn't because they don't want more soldiers-it's because they don't want to actually come out with it as an idea until they're sure that they have enough control over American society as a whole to make it stick. Someone who says that "A policed society is a secure society" or something to that effect (from Richard Perle, one head of the neocon hydra) isn't going to have much in the way of objections to ever more onerous burdens upon citizens in the name of greater conquests.
Instead, here's a novel idea that doesn't involve enslaving young people and throwing them onto the sacrificial altar of the twin gods of neocon bloodthirstiness and Democratic complicity: it's called actually exposing the neocons and changing the way government operates so that the neocons, or people with ideas similar to theirs, aren't in charge.
The actual reasons why we are at this point are:
1) The executive branch has too much power over foreign policy.
2) Related to 1), Congress lacked sufficient power to do what was necessary to challenge the neocon lies and make it explicitly clear that they were making it all up as they were going along beforehand.
3) Congress itself was often incurious because the Republicans believe in supporting the party over anything else, and most of the Democrats were blinkered with centrist mythology.
A draft changes none of these things. In fact, it might make several of them worse.
In the time of Vietnam, the
In the time of Vietnam, the draft helped fuel resistance and protests. Even with scores of loopholes, it did tend to homogenize the army with a wider sampling of recruits.
For a fascinating look at the Swiss experience find a copy of "La Place De La Concorde Suisse" by John McPhee.
_______jester
I think this ship has sailed
Tom Jefferson's notion of the military was a sensible one. HOWEVER.
It is at this point too late to dump the standing army. I haven't done any polls, but I can pretty much imagine how well that argument would go over, when so much political mass has accumulated behind the idea of "supporting the military," and how many politicians (ie most of them) have a vested interest in maintaining the military machine in its current state.
So if any national service arrangement was to be passed into law, it would not be a replacement for the standing army, as Jefferson envisioned, but a supplement to it. As the first poster on the thread points out, at this point a national service requirement would function as an involuntary draft, pouring more soldiers into the eager arms of the military. Bush & co. are willing enough to flounder on in Iraq even with the army as undermanned as it is; how much worse do you think it will get when they have enough people not only to continue hemmoraging soldiers' lives at the current rate in Iraq, but to carry out any other ridiculous adventures they care to devise?
Even if we weren't actively in a state of war, such a service program wouldn't do what people Mr. Hartmann promises. It probably would give ordinary Americans more of a sense of responsibility to their country, and more of a sense of the responsibility their country owes its people; it would probably benefit America to have its young people performing public service jobs. But it's not going to somehow turn back the clock on our standing army and turn it into the egalitarian tool Jefferson imagined. Not unless you also disassemble the whole convoluted system and then reassemble it as something different- and that, as I said, is not going to happen.
Without a much more basic redesign of our country's military, a national service requirement (stacked, as it were, on top of the existing military) will simply feed more young people into the military machine, to be used in whatever ventures the president sees fit to embark on.
De Ja Vu all over again
I am getting the creeping feeling of being HAD that I remember having soon after Clinton was sworn in, and he started beating the drum about NAFTA! WONDERFUL FREE TRADE!
(And, the disasterous results that speak for themselves). Screw your damned statistics, if you work for a living, NAFTA, hell, everything since 1968 has been a damned disaster.
I realize what Charlie Rangle is doing, he is making a protest that only the "niggers, spics, and hillbillies" wind up dying in the war, because it's the only job they can find. I speak from experience. Burger King turned me down, so I joined up. (I fall into racial slur number #3 btw)
I think the rep. is LABORING THE POINT, and giving limbaugh and his ilk much ammo to throw at us.
A Frigging DRAFT won't do anything but enable the war machine further. Maybe it will bring some equality to the killing fields, but JC, man, don't you think that's kind of like burning down the barn to deal with the rats?
So, now we taken control of congress. I remember many chimpsters (myself included) have griped for many megabytes and many months about the DINO democrats in congress. Why do I suddenly feel Bill Clinton's NAFTA breeze blowing down my back?
"I am obviously wrong" Rush Limbaugh Oct 19, 2006
nothir hillbilly...
and 1 term ra (sp5, the best rank there ever was!) in vietnam.
the army should always be filled with people who HATE war AND the army. when one does occur, they get it over with.
i suspect that many lifers LOVE the wars in iraq and afganistan: lots of promotions, public adulation, ignore their wives, cibs and bronze stars around. they certainly don't seem to be ending it. i thought the same thing in 1968. westmoreland, casey. they love it.
_______throwback
we need to consider..
..that Israel requires 3 years of military service from its people. Has it made them avoid war? No.
And the US has had an
And the US has had an all-volunteer army for over 3 decades.
How's that working out?
_______The all-volunteer army is
The all-volunteer army is not working out at all, in my opinion, Mr. Ragin. Also, Israel's belligerence is only possible because the U.S. government supports, and uses, Israel.
Assuming that required military service, or a universal draft, will automagically make us a less aggressive nation, is naive. We just have to observe Israel to see that.
I do think a universal draft is a better idea than the all volunteer army we currently have. However, it is far from a perfect solution to our destructive lust for empire.
I don't know that i'd call
I don't know that i'd call Jefferson naive. And certainly you could cite evidence from all aspects of human history to make whatever point about the behavior of nations that you wish.
I believe, though, that compulsory, universal service, which would probably, but not necessarily, include some military training, will broaden the experience of, on the one hand, a whole lot of individual Americans who currently grow up with a dearth of real-world knowledge about anything they don't see on the TV or encounter in their high schools, and on the other, a smaller but more influential group that never has to experience first hand the economic struggles which for most of us constitutes daily life.
I don't think the "destructive lust for empire" of which you speak is "ours." I think it belongs specifically to a small subset of the empowered class. I think many people lack the skills, and more importantly the ability, financial and otherwise, to make the choices necessary to resist becoming the tools of empire.
Now, as the editors point out, Rangel is being a bit disingenuous, and not really proposing that we reinstate the draft. "Rangel is advocating a public debate about the costs of the war, with testimony from Administration officials, and he is advocating that war supporters in Congress make a choice between ending the war and committing political suicide."
But that's OK.
Let the remaining neo-cons explain to the country how they're going to win the war in Iraq, and the one in Afghanistan, and possibly the one in Iran, with the current armed forces. The one that's staffed with National Guardsmen on their second and third tours of duty, and stop-lossed specialists who should have come home 8 months ago. That's worth seeing as well.
_______(I do not think Jefferson
(I do not think Jefferson was naive. That criticism was aimed at the idea that a draft will, by itself, fix the mess we are currently in.)
I somehow missed that Rangel's intent was to foster an honest conversation about the ruinous cost of BushCo's Sandbox Adventure. If he manages to force the neocons to fess up about how completely they've screwed us over, when they have done everything possible to cover their butts by concealing that information from the American public, it will indeed, be something to see.
as noted above, Rangel voted
as noted above, Rangel voted against his own bill 3 years ago when he first managed to get it to the floor. Who knows what he'll do with it this time.
That said, i do think there's good arguments to be made in favor of universal, compulsory, service. It might be a generation or more before the effects are fully felt, but i think it would make us a completely different country. In good ways.
_______There is that
I would be interested in seeing the level of aggression that Israel would display if the US did not dump billions of dollars in US tax revenue down the Tel Aviv rathole. It is of course a bit of a symbiotic relationship, with Israel being a good customer for the weapons industry.
The all volunteer military does not work and never will. It is the educator of last resort to the poor and it seems that even they are beginnng do finally realize that the government who made the promises of education and healthcare for those it employs in the armed forces are increasingly empty.
I think that universal service in the armed forces certainly is not the best solution but it is better than the present. To that I would add that if there was to be universal service and a draft to provide the people, a provision would have to be made to make the service truly universal. That means that no one should be able to buy their way out. With the tradition of service avoidance by the wealthy and the politically connected, I don't see this happening.
I still say that if people like Wanker and Dickless had experienced the "joys" of armed combat they would think differently when it comes to starting wars.
_______"A poet lies with coins in his eyes, but there's no one around him to mourn. Who needs a poet who won't take commands and would rather make love than war"
Not exactly regarding Israel
Israel (and those terrorist groups that would later form Israeli leadership) wasn't exactly peaceful before the US started supporting it on a significant scale during the Johnson administration, and expanding massively during the Nixon administration.
I think a real solution would be along the lines of reforming a government-from scratch if/when necessary-that treats war as the solution to every single problem. Lots of nations manage to get along just fine in the world without an enormous army and even larger monetary/material supports for it like the United States does.
Poorly
....but adding more meat to the grinder won't help either. When the U.S. government ceases it's imperialistic ambitions, then we can possibly talk about universal service, but for those aged 35 - 45 or older, not 18-year olds.
What the hell do most 18-year olds know about life and death?
If service is that critical to the nation, then let those who have already lived some life put theirs on the line. Hell, I'd rather go at 48 then let them take my son or daughters.
Drafting our youth to fight and die is immoral, period.
Military Service permits a maturing period.
My three years in the Air Force during WWII was a great experience.
I graduated from high school and was drafted at age 17 (two months before 18).
I was a mediocre student in school.
I was placed among older, more educated people. The Coach of our baseball team, Captain Vincent Circeo, was grad of Cornell and professional ballroom dancer in NYC..
Handsome and great ball player.
He took me as understudy and taught me about life and how to conduct oneself.
The education was super.
Discipline was invaluable.
I could not have been so successful in life without that early exposure to so many good, intelligent people.
Thanks UNCLE SAM.
clarence swinney
former dumb southern kid
Thanks. Hope it works.I need simple things.
SC is THE BEST.
National service in exchange for college
National service of a non-military type sounds like a good alternative to a standing-army draft. It might make a good mix with Nancy Pelosi's intention to lower the cost of college loans. How about a no-interest loan if you agree to serve a year after college in some worthwhile pursuit, e.g. tutoring or environmental cleanup?
This would enable low-income kids to get a college education without putting their bodies and lives on the line for the benefit of the military-industrial complex. And it would perhaps satisfy conservatives' insistance that social programs not be giving people "something for nothing."
They'll get a deferment...
If I wasn't so certain that the priviledged children of this country would get deferments and other ways out, I might be more partial to this idea of a universal draft. No matter what anybody says, it just seems that the haves find ways of avoiding this service.
_______Have I mentioned yet how much I hate these people? - Mike Malloy
Don't drink that Cool-Aid! Instead, share a little tea with Goldie...
I just needed to throw in
I just needed to throw in part of a collection-
From
Martin Luther King Jr. speech paragraph 8-
Delivered at Riverside Church April 4th, 1967
"Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor."
“The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he’s on.â€
Joseph Heller, Catch 22
But would non-military service violate the 13th amendment?
Military drafts have been upheld by the supreme court because the constitution grants Congress the right to raise militias. A non-military mandatory service bill would probably be unconstitutional based on the 13th amendment, which bars involuntary servitude.
i guess i just assumed that
i guess i just assumed that if we reached the point where we were seriously discussing adding a compulsory, universal service requirement, we'd go ahead and amend the Constitution to permit it.
_______The Supreme Court is wrong on this one
That supreme court ruling was nothing more than an expedient to perpetuate the ruling classes power over the people. Kind of like the one making corporations "persons". There is nothing in the Constitution requiring ANYONE to serve in the militia. The Constitution merely says that congress can call forth the militia and regulate it. It says nothing about giving them the ability to force service on anyone. Militias can be both voluntary and involuntary.
And the 13th Amendment expressly forbids involuntary servitude, which the draft most certainly is.
On this issue the supreme court is wrong, and I'll be damned if I accept it. If people think a draft is so wonderful then we should pass a constitutional amendment specifically providing for it. Otherwise it's slavery, pure and simple.
A Tale of Two Bushes
At Latino USA they are
At Latino USA they are noting the 300+ undocumented non-citizens that have given their lives over at the Bush Fun House. 100 or so were awarded citizenship posthumously for them to enjoy. Now this again brings back the Dred Scott v. Sanford case (1854) which boiled down to the question: Is Mr. Scott (plaintiff) actually a citizen and entitled to bring an action?
Economic conscription equals Bush volunteerism-
The Empire will need the draft.
What a really, really stupid idea. We are beset with war mongers, so let's give them the draft! Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Rangel needs to get his head x-rayed.
The rich have always been ready to send their offspring to war. They will of course get them a cushy slot in the national guard protecting Texas from Oaklahoma, if they can. And of course, the rich will get preferential treatment.
Resist fascist changes in the infrastructure. The last thing we need is a fresh infusion of manpower into the Neocon war machine.
_______Now at midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do