Compulsory military or civilian service would help overcome our divisions and pull the nation together, according to Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway in The New York Times. But can you really force young people to work for the USA?
Background Resource:
To Unite a Divided America, Make People Work for It, by Jonathan Holloway, The New York Times
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59 replies on “Force Young People to Work for the USA to Overcome Divisions and Pull Nation Together”
Like you gents, I balk at compulsory service, especially at a federal level. Many of my friends have sometimes wished for a national draft. I always thought it was a horrible idea. The military would be turned into a babysitting service moreso that it already is. I spent my last 2 years in the Marines as a Company 1stSgt of an entry-level MOS school. I dealt with a lot of 18-20 year-olds who made their share of stupid mistakes (all in a day’s work). But I also dealt with people who clearly had no business in the military & the amount of time, effort & money that we spent on them (not to mention the negative impact on morale) was absolutely frustrating because you were often limited by idiotic policies & regs. And that was 15 years ago. (BTW, have you seen our current Secretary of Defense???)
Now, I once saw a video of Japanese kids who had to clean their classroom at the end of the day before leaving. Instead of classes on CRT or self-esteem, we need to bring this into the schoolhouses; from pre-K on. Also, maybe a program where students have to do shifts with the custodians, grounds crews or in the cafeteria so they better appreciate the amount of effort it takes to keep them comfy during the day. Add to that enforcement of common courtesies (please, thank you; sir, ma’am; etc), this would build their self-esteem a heck of a lot more than all of these “victimology” classes they’re mandating now.
Stoopid, stoopid Gummitup.
Work programs in the ’70s and ’80s produced little, and the welfare kid crews I worked with had crew leaders that made every excuse possible to avoid doing any work.
I was hired by Ca state parks through a CETA program, was initially turned down because I had to be unemployed for six months. The dept of unemployment on Watt ave. in Sacramento had a huge banner on the back of the room saying, “Best bet, hire a vet”. And me a disabled Vietnam vet, turned away. So, unemployed for six months I went back and was given a job with other CETA “workers’ who avoided doing anything and made trouble for me because I enjoy working.
Fock the gummit. Give the 16 or older children of welfare bums this choice- Work, or do without. Offer them job training with housing, continued education and send them to learn the joys of working in agriculture or any other work they can be trained for in a short amount of time. but their employers must be in private enterprise and able to fire employees without any kickback from the gummit.
For those who do not choose to work? Homeless encampments need to be built in the Salton Sea basin, and the same training given to those able to work.
A lot of facilities for the mentally ill need to be built in more hospitable climes, and if welfare bums need to be put on chain gangs to get any labor out of them, do it.
I’ve thought about this since the guys mentioned it on Backstage. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a great sounding but unworkable idea. Like Communism is actually a great sounding idea but when it moves from theory to reality it becomes subject to human character influences and because of the human factor can never, ever become what it is lauded to be.
Rich people would find a way to get their kids out of such service and thereby give their own children a year or two head start in education and employment over everyone else.
Like the Draft, poor people would not be able to afford deferments, couldn’t hire lawyers and such to discover and exploit loopholes, etc. Poor people couldn’t afford to hire lobbyists and “contribute” to lawmakers campaigns sufficiently to generate legal exceptions either. The middle and lower class income people would bear the brunt of this forced service and the rich people who along with their kids are the problem with today’s society would skate right above it.
It is a virtual form of paid enslavement no matter what other perceived virtues it may impart. Those with power would find a way around it and those without would suffer the yolk unevenly.
Just like Communism sounds good, like any other utopian scheme. If you don’t realize that you really have never studied Communism. The fact that it can be sold at all in America proves that it has an appeal which is undeniable. The real problem with Communist theory is that it is an utopian scheme and when it is manifested in real world circumstances other immutable, irresistible factors besides the ideal come into play. The worst of which is that it concentrates power at the top and that power will be seized by someone.
The ideology of Communism ignores human nature in arguing for its own implementation and is therefor unequivocally doomed to failure. Because of those facts, Communism has become a ladder for the power hungry to climb seeking to supplant whatever other system is extant. Communism sounds good but is nothing more than one more in a long list of schemes for ultimate power. It is a poison pill hidden in a tasty looking piece of candy. It’s a great sounding idea that can never fulfill what it promises because it’s own destruction is built into it in the form of human nature.
Conversely our Founders were acutely aware of human nature and did all they could think of to thwart the normal quest for power some people have. They attempted to create a system where power was not concentrated in a single place. Leaving little or nothing for the power hungry to covet. Every way that we have deviated from this workable ideal which takes human nature into account has been detrimental to our Republic. That deviation leads us ever closer to eating a poison pill like Communism.
This idea of mandatory service making people appreciate what they have and come together as a society is the same sort of thing. There might be something here that can be worked into an applicable idea and I’d be interested in more discussion along those lines. The way it stands as presented is unworkable.
I am one of the fortunate people who can say, I belong to the BROTHERHOOD of U.S. Navy Submariners. That, my good man, is a lifetime unbreakable bond (same boat or not) we are all brothers. Be advised, submarine duty is completely voluntary, no one is assigned submarine duty without volunteering as with any other ship in the navy.
It still astonishes me that an actual thinking human being conceived of this notion, nonetheless put his name on it. As a man who is in college right now, it was no surprise it was a professor. No other thinking creature (not journalists, I said thinking) could be so utterly cavalier about the human rights of others in the name of so vague a concept as unity.
In other news, its good that Starship Troopers was mentioned or I would have blown an artery in my eye.
Force them to work? Give them job training and a start in agriculture. Work for the Gummitup? No! As with most job programs, it is merely another means of feeding the indolent with FreeMoney!
I have worked with kid cons and crews of welfare kids, and welfare was by far the worst with their crew leaders making every excuse they could to avoid getting any actual work done.
If the WPA and CCC were reinstated, using their militaristic means of ordering things, it might be better, but I doubt if the will to do so has infected any politician.
I grew up in the 50s, as far as we knew the draft had always been there, it was later I realized it only started in 1940. As I recall, conversations were not about which college we were going to after high school but about which service we preferred, or you could do nothing and wait to be drafted. I chose Navy for three years 64-67. The thing that kept it all working was the concept or shame and disgrace. We or at least I thought that Honorable Discharge was something beneficial to have for future employment and success. Later anyone who did not serve would explain why, he wouldn’t have to he just would to save face, bad elbow, asthma, flat feet, whatever. It is important to realize that the world turned upside down in the miserable mid 60s, it seems almost all of of the problems we’ve since then stem from this period. I said often I joined the Navy in a time of Richie Cunningham’s Happy Days and when I got out it was Haight -Ashbury , Woodstock and drugs on every corner , it was a different country. The concepts of shame and disgrace had been eliminated, I only knew one guy who when drafted went in with the intention of messing up until he was thrown out a few months later. Others, no one I knew, ran to Canada or Sweden and were welcomed back as heroes but Carter and, of course, the press, draft-dodgers themselves.
Having libertarian tendencies I’d be opposed to anything compulsory on involuntary servitude grounds but also because this is a different country from those days. There is no shame , no disgrace , nothing that won’t be excused. It may work in Israel for the reason that being under constant threat those concepts still exist there.
Being a Vietnam Veteran, one thing one gets to see is the result of 50 + years of Hollywood propaganda when well meaning people express surprise at that veteran status since I don’t appear to be in the verge of cracking up. Certainly many suffer from PTSD and other problems both physical and mental but just like other wars, 95% of us just came home and just went about our lives.
To the point of the piece, I think the service did me a world of good back then and continues to do so to this day, I look differently on young people when I find they’ve served.
Add to it the reluctance to hire Vietnam vets in the early ’70s(“You guys are crazy”).Yeah, but needing to work has nothing to do with that.
A mind is never quite so collectivist as when it is prone to believing that fealty unto death is a legitimate moral mandate upon citizens by a government incentivized to enter endless wars. This condemns to poverty by taxation those whose loved ones were condemned to death by political ambition.
Bravo! Well stated!
The muster-roll of the dead may be a monument of governmental incapacity as well as a certificate of patriotism and courage. It is always glorious for the other man to die for his country,—at least the survivor says so; but the fact that his life has been needlessly thrown away is calculated to throw some doubt on the subject. A civilized nation cannot afford to throw away a single life.
Or as Patton said,”No dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.”
Patton had that just about right.
Anyone besides me detect the Twinkle of Scrappleface in Scott’s eye with his last comment to the “professor”?
Like in the Kurt Schlicter’s Kelly Turnbull series. In the half of America that remains America, they require service in order to become a full citizen. You still have rights if you don’t. But voting isn’t one of them.
Oh no! Not Heinlein’s “fascistic” you must earn your Rights awfulness!
That is your daily Dimmish whine, you get only one, that being more than enough.
My main concern for ‘mandatory government service corps’ is; what about the socialist infiltrators?
I remember a story from a few years ago about an Annapolis graduate who displayed communist slogans under his dress cover and uniform DURING COMMENCEMENT! He spoke on his social media about bringing about a communist/socialist revolution within the military.
I don’t know what ever happened to that midshipman. Was he commissioned? Is he now a serving officer in the USN?
That would explain a lot about the direction the US military is headed today.
While I like to think that he was stripped of his rank and given the Big Chicken Dinner, I fear that he was allowed into the ranks.
How would this sort of infiltration affect a Service Corp organization?
So very odd! I spoke with him via Twitter! He is a militant communist that believes that people are owned (yes, owned) by the “web of humanity”. He proclaimed that we would either join or wish that we had. No joke. That kid was a twisted commie.
I thought we had this compulsory organization operating already – at least more so out West than in the East – but I think they call it Antifa. At least they are into compulsion — is that the same thing?
If you don’t want to serve on a jury, a sure fire way to avoid such service is to get a PhD in Engineering. Many times the lawyers don’t want people with that skill set sitting on their juries. At least I have been excused more times than not during the voir dire stage. Or become a law enforcement officer. Another way is to get old enough to be over 70 or 72 years old – then they ask if you want to be excused permanently from the selection pool.
I like that survival boot camp idea.
I think the Starship Troopers model might work. Remember, service was not compulsory. The father of the main character had lived all his life without doing a term of government service. He declared the only thing missing from his life was the right to vote, and he didn’t miss that at all.
So while service is optional, it really comes down to how important anyone considers the right to vote. (Ignoring any number of other factors, such as any honor that attaches to having served.) If people really want to be able to vote, they will sign up for service.
Lately, we’ve been hearing about how various requirements to vote, such as having a photo ID, are “disenfranchising” people, especially the poor and minorities. Somehow, it’s too hard to obtain a free government ID or any of the legal substitutes. If people had to spend a year at a camp, carrying out some sort of government service, I think they’d find obtaining an ID card not worth fretting over. (Well, plus the fact they’d probably emerge from their service with an ID card if they didn’t already have one.)
I’m coming more to the belief that if any individual can’t find a way to obtain a government ID card during the years between any pair of elections, it’s because they don’t care about voting.
And if they don’t care about voting, I don’t care what their votes might be.
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As for the system being taken over by the Left, that’s very likely to be an issue. Heinlein assumed that the system could be set up so that it was and could only be run by the non-Left. By the time anyone had gotten to where he could have any kind of influence over how the system was run, he’d have been through a process that screens out those who would warp it toward the Left.
In other words, it screens out everything but the sheepdogs. I’m not sure it’s possible to screen out the sheep and the wolves, and I give due deference to the Laws of Human Stupidity, so I’m sure it would break down eventually.
We’d have to do it differently than we do the military these days, judging by the stuffed shirts with all of the shiny stuff on their pockets and hats.
Also, given the number of people that don’t vote, I’m not sure requiring service to vote would be that much of a deal breaker for them and unless we change some of the other rules, we would have 15 imaginary vets voting from Arlington for every 15 voting elsewhere.
Requiring people to earn their franchise kind of destroys the notion of “consent of the governed.”
I’m not sure how much worse that is compared with the early requirement that one had to be a landowner to vote.
And while we’re born with our citizenship, immigrants have to earn the right to vote. (Unless they’re a demographic deemed likely to vote Democrat)
Declining to earn a franchise could be seen as consenting to what everyone else is voting for.
Requiring land ownership is also not consistent with consent of the governed.
As for immigrants – they earn the right to vote by becoming citizens. That’s a choice they made when they made the decision to immigrate. That is, when they -chose- to become one of the governed of the US, they consented to the fact that they would have to earn their right to vote.
Consent to what?
How the alternative, where you have a vote (that may or may not be counted) is dropped in a pool of votes coming from random sources, including people without skin in the game, possibly also dead, fictional, etc) better?
Well, that was… actually rather meaningless as a response.
Commitment is the key word here. How many of our youth are prepared to commit to anything in life that may require sacrifice in any form? This is the new paradigm that must be considered as opposed to the past, when so many were taught that helping others and your country was a virtue that was worth sacrificing your own selfish interests to achieve as a path to honor and respect. These personal characteristics were once expected, and even demanded in society, but we have fallen away from it. I am speaking on upholding our founding documents, family values and faith in God and country. We must find a way to return to such.
A good start would be committing to support yourself, and not be a leech upon the rest of us.
In a word, yes…yes indeed. Section 8 housing, AFDC checks, welfare checks, internet free or close to it, free cell phones, school breakfast, lunch and afternoon snacks takes mom off the hook of providing such, not to mention medicaid and often some form of disibility payments through the social security system. This is a sick form of making people dependant on government handouts, and it is often generational. People on these programs mostly have not intention of ever leaving them, it has become the norm. Pumping out babies that you cannot afford is no deterrent because they simply get more benefits, and many think they are entitled to such. It has become a lifestyle.
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Scott, at the local level there are too many people who aren’t willing to get involved in their local community, yet bitch about how it’s run all the time. It takes effort to make changes that they just aren’t willing to expend. Take HOA’s for example. You can’t get more basic than that!
I don’t think we’ll ever see the kind of unity this country had during WWII when everybody did their part for the war effort, like buying bonds, planting a victory garden, or sending Red Cross boxes to the troops.
Are you equating HOA’s with service organizations? Because they seem much more like training grounds for communist dictators. 😉
He might also have meant the groups that band together when there are natural disasters. Bad floods, wildfires, and the like tend to bring out the workers and open the pockets of the rest to get a town back on its feet. Smaller towns more than the larger ones, I don’t think Boston was as strong as the 15k pop town my uncle is near that was nearly washed out when the river flooded the dam last year.
In New York State, even judges get called for jury duty! Volunteer firefighters, LEO’s, and veterans are exempt on the county level, but not for state or federal courts.
In New York State, even judges get called for jury duty! Volunteer firefighters, LEO’s, and veterans are exempt on the county level, but not for state or federal courts.
My friend’s mother used to volunteer for the Grand Jury all the time because it usually only takes one day and no criminal decisions are made.
Unless it’s at least 2 years, nothing will get done. It takes most of a year to train someone so the 2nd year will have an effect on both the person and the organization. The Israeli’s are doing this and it works quite well.
The gummit should start gently, by training welfare bums for a career in agriculture. A few days of training, a week or two to acclimate to the work. Fenced in housing for the workers, and a goad for their leaders. Private industry should run such a program, with no government interference other than to jail those who refuse to work.
Here’s a better solution:
Stop incentivizing sloth with welfare programs that require no work. Those grasshoppers who prefer to exist while perpetually suckling the tax-supported welfare teat should be starve. Forget jail for sloth, because we’d have to pay for that as well. Let people learn (the hard way if necessary) that work will feed, clothe and shelter.
A thought experiment if you don’t mind. (And I invite comment.) I liked the idea of Starship Troopers, (the book far more than the movie,) even though I would be opposed to compulsory service. For the USA, I would propose that there be three classifications of legal residents: Call them legal citizens with the right to vote, legal residents without the right to vote and legal residents that receive largess from the government. I was in the Marine Corps in the sixties and other than learning how to dive into the mud stark naked while taking a shower at first sign of a mortar attack, Boot Camp, with that stern Mother and Father figure known as a Platoon Sgt. or drill instructor. He yelled at me all the time just like my mother and threatened ( I was that effing German spy — check my name) to kick butt and exercise as punishment just like my father and we, our platoon, had to work together and keep everyone of us up to date or the whole group would be chastised (and exercised) as punishment. What I learned from that miserable time was that I could do far more than I ever thought — my mind could push my physical body far more than — I could persevere.
To become a Legal Citizen and voter, one would have to go to Citizen Camp, a six month physical exercise mixed with lectures on modern civics — how petroleum products come into existence, electrical grid and how it works, how it’s produced, hydroelectric, coal and gas generation, nuclear generation, the amount of electrical necessary to convert to electric cars and perhaps creating local, versus trading internationally. The exercise and lecture part would take about two months and the other four months would be spent supporting the facilities and incoming “students.” A legal resident need do nothing of the sort, may live and work or whatever, but may not vote. People that receive largess from the the government, whether Residents or Citizens may not vote. Having worked for a local government, I am aware of how much power city employees have in pushing or twisting proposals up for vote by the councilmen that are elected yet have little experience compared to the bureaucracy. I could probably go on for quite some time. I’ll leave it with this. Voters should not be able to vote themselves largess and governments should not be able to spend the future income of their children and grandchildren. Gentlemen?
I fully agree with you on two counts:
1) that I could do far more than I ever thought — my mind could push my physical body far more than — I could persevere. [Although perhaps my time in the Army was not as physically demanding as your time in the Marines. I did not end up in Vietnam.]
2) governments should not be able to spend the future income of their children and grandchildren.
But how do you pay for your camp proposal? I might suggest an alternative as a mandatory class in high school covering those topics (maybe two to four weeks of class?) and passing a test on them before you get a HS diploma. No voting without the diploma. And a resident seeking citizenship who has the diploma goes ahead of a resident who does not.
As usual, the minds are pre-infested with the dogma that everyone is just entitled to rule over others by the virtue of being born. Most people I see just accepts it as given and a mandatory starting point – -even those who find the same idea ridiculous in other contexts (like you’re entitled to the gold medal by just showing up).
I suggest the /natural/ starting point, that no one is entitled to anything. And work from there.
Most classic-liberal principles are easy to reach in moments. Like every population that got /settled/ soon discovered individual property rights and why protecting them serves everyone better than the alternative.
But to the point about ruling over others it’s still a long a winding road.
A century ago someone could state that democracy is a bad system but still beats the known alternatives — and it wasn’t obviously false. But by now, having the ripe, media-driven fortified version it should be clear that almost anything is better. And if you were just drawing office candidates like a lottery from the full population (using true random), even that would run circles around the current state. That inherently ensures that scumbags rise to power and stay there, filling all the other ranks with the same rot too. (see Parkinson’s law and Peter principle for elaborate explanation).
Giving out power without balancing with responsibility will never get you a good system. In Tranai at least the major had to wear that exploding medal.
We have a 13th amendment and I don’t recall it exempting the government.
After twenty-two years in the Navy (about half enlisted, half officer), I can say that I don’t want to burden my chiefs with maintaining discipline among those who are there, unwillingly. It CAN be done, but it’s not a good thing.
Beyond that, though, the thought of giving the government the power to compel service for anything other than threats to the existence of the nation is repugnant and reverses the relationship between the government and citizens. And, frankly, even allowing the government to compel service for threats to the existence of the nation is kind of sketchy.
My dad was a senior officer in the Navy and he told me the military is run by the chiefs and sargents so listen to them because they get things done.
In my time in the Navy as an enlisted man, my division chief’s name was Murphy. A wisened old salt with more gold braid on his arm than an admiral. He scared the hell out of me the first time I saw him, but over time, he turned out to be the best friend I had. You couldn’t put anything over on him because somewhere in his career he’d done the same thing himself. Just by the look on his face you knew he knew what you were trying to pull.
My first thought as well. This is a pretty simple sentence.
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.
Add Section 1 of the 14th Amendment [1] to that, and the question of mandatory service is completely discredited without two separate actions exercising the Congressional procedure defined in Article V [2].
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[1] All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
[2] The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.
When I was younger I liked the idea while recognizong its flaws. But tody? No way. To use the Isreali comparison, implementing such a program in the US made up of roughly 50% Democrats would be like the IDF mandating that 50% of the force be composed of members of the PLO & Hamas.
Simple question, how is this working in the current military? From what I understand there are already serious issues both in morale and in recruitment. Doesn’t seem to be “pulling” anyone together or building stronger groups.
The “Team Work” concept only works when the “team” has the same understanding and supports the goals. That is what makes a group a “Team”. Otherwise its just a bunch of random people doing nothing in the same place.
To be fair, the all-volunteer military is still working well. Yes, the brass have their heads up their asses, but the junior and mid-grade officers, as well as CPOs and NCOs are holding things together.
Sailors will find a way to make it work.
Is that a Marxist professor? Marxists love the “law of force” aka mandates aka compulsory.
The Bible says (in layman’s terms), if you don’t work, you don’t eat. If we could just get back there I’d be happy. Far too many people are staying at home because the government is desperately trying to implement basic universal income. When you make more money sitting at home on your tookus instead of getting out there and working, we will end up with a society of sloths. But I guess sloths are easier to control.
The only area that I would support any kind of compulsory service is if you are a healthy individual living on the government dole, but it should not include military service unless that service is limited to administration tasks on a part-time basis. But to Steve’s point, any program along these lines would be corrupted based upon whoever is in power. If there were any way to prevent that corruption from occurring, it might be worthwhile to consider on a local level only. Things like working in soup kitchens to feed the homeless, community cleanup activities and the like. Other than that, it’s a big nope.
Ignoring Keynes’s misrepresentation of it, Say’s Law basically says (no pun intended) that in order to consume, you must first produce. Extrapolated to an entire economy, it can be said that in order to BE served, you must first serve others.
To me, that’s a beautiful truth that we ignore at our own peril.
Thank you – I think I now understand Say’s Law a little better than I did before. The supply side view that I had absorbed previously was that “there had to be production” before you could consume. With no discussion of how or when said production was to have occurred, or what would have caused it to be done (pull demand or push production). Just sort of generic and open ended. So there was no good way to really distinguish between supply vs. demand as the leading element in creating an economic transaction.
But I now see that what Say was really conveying is that you have to first provide (i.e., produce) some value to the marketplace if you are going to trade that value for something else of value from that marketplace (consumption). Your explanation brings it back down to the individual producer, not just some generic “you” out there representing everyone or anyone.
I presume what you meant by “Keynes’s misrepresentation” was his demand side idea, that giving people “money” (that they had not earned and thus that money did not really store any value from their efforts) would generate marketplace “demand” and thereby “pull” others into producing something to soak up that “new money”. This basically becomes a “loan” that is paid back by the tax payers rather than the recipient of the extra money. And many of those taxpayers are the people who “produced” the goods bought with that fiat money — giving the “fiat” money back to pay their taxes, except then it has a store of value from their productive efforts.
If you meant something else, I would welcome a better explanation/ clarification.
I’m glad that helped. Say’s law is absolutely important to understanding economic transactions, yet it’s not taught very well, if at all.
The misrepresentation that I pin on Keynes is has characterization of it as “supply creates its own demand.” This ignores the importance of what Say wrote, specifically “As each of us can only purchase the productions of others with his own productions – as the value we can buy is equal to the value we can produce, the more men can produce, the more they will purchase.”
From this, there are two important consequences – first that we produce so that we may subsequently consume (this was before easy credit). The second is that money is simply a medium – goods and services pay for goods and services and that every economy is still a barter economy – just some of us have abstracted the bartering through use of currency.
However, you are very correct that giving people money without increasing the pot of goods and services that underpin it has an inflationary effect. Keynes’s theory created additional demand, but did not adequately address the supply – especially in areas where equilibrium price did not move enough to overcome the cost of expansion. He liked to talk about “sticky wages,” but didn’t really consider “sticky supply.”
I would go for compulsory job training in private enterprise, gummit work programs tend to be a joke. Have employer provide housing, work and a paycheck, and the gummit to not provide any more FreeMoney! to anyone capable of working.
Good on you, gentlemen for arguing against compulsory service. There is nothing that will engender human resentment more quickly than forcing people to do things contrary to their individual will. Such resentment will span generations of those affected (i.e., parents will despise those who force their sons and daughters into service). All forms of service are meant to be voluntary, and it is not a lack of service but the devaluation/destruction of family has bred the lack of national/community unity. Fathers, mothers, grandparents, etc. are necessary to raise responsible and grateful citizens — not government coersion.
The interesting thing is, compulsory service has its lowest support among those who served – who are the only people who might have at least some credibility in supporting it.
It has its highest support among certain groups who never, themselves, served, but who are more than happy to vote that you should.
I recently got into “it” with some folks about this mandatory military service notion, and I am wondering where you draw the data for your assertion that “compulsory service has its lowest support among those who served.” I’m curious to have data to back up my opposition in the future.
There have been studies, though I’m afraid I didn’t save the links (and half of them I can’t get to anymore, since I’m no longer a student with access to VT’s research libraries).
For the most part, it’s my own observations based on conversations. Usually Sailors’ responses rage from “no” to “oh hell no!”
Ken, by VT’s research library do you mean that lovely campus in SW VA? I am class of 88.
In fact, I do. Class of 2010 (Building Construction). Would have been there earlier, but I got lost in Uncle Sam’s canoe club for a decade and change.