aka the Draft.

I know that if the implement the draft, and I'm drafted, will NOT serve. I wil NOT be a member of the American Imperial Military. I will not oppress other people. I will NOT be unconstitutionally kidnapped.

from [url]http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/draft.html[/url]

---


Conservatives for Kidnapping

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

The guardians of ordered liberty and traditional values over at National Review are pushing a solution to all our problems: the draft, or, as they say in the private sector, kidnapping. Or, if not the draft, the magazine is pushing steps in that direction, as many steps as the state can get away with.

William F. Buckley, of course, has long favored peacetime national service, as he demonstrated with his 1974 book, Four Reforms, and again in his 1990 book Gratitude. He may not have contemplated sending these kids off to their deaths, but rather that they serve in some sort of "conservative" social movement centered on civic loyalty and patriotism.




But once the imperial state owns people, what else do you expect it to do with them but send them to their deaths? The state acts as a kind of anti-parent: to the same extent that moms and dads love and care for their children, protecting them from harm, the state is careless with other people’s kids, caring only about the public-opinion consequences of body bags.

In wartime, the gloss of civic duty and patriotism has been stripped away. Stanley Kurtz, writing for the online edition of National Review, doubts that we are militarily prepared for a full-scale war on Iraq. Given the likely casualties, he says, we need a draft that "can provide us with combat replacements."

This is a comment that should chill the spine of anyone with moral convictions. Just to make sure we understand, let’s spell it out.

Kurtz, writing from his comfortable chair at the Hoover Institution in lovely Stanford, California, is urging an invasion of a country that has already been reduced to pre-modern living standards by a twelve-year US war, and he is fully willing to contemplate that this will likely mean sending many American troops to their deaths.

Kurtz’s plan for dealing with the massive loss of life is to forcibly drag other Americans out of the workplaces and schools of their choosing and send them to their deaths in a far-flung country as slaves of the US military empire, all in an effort to impose ever-more suffering and death on Iraq.

A more ghastly public policy is hard to imagine, short of all-out nuclear war. National Review conservatives like to posture as guardians of virtue and manners, but when it comes right down to it, what these people are pushing is morally reprehensible and uncivilized. And they have the gall to decry libertarianism as morally lax?

Maybe we should start using the word "combat replacements" more broadly. "How many combat replacements do you newlyweds hope to have?" "This education bill insures that no combat replacement will be left behind."

Now, Kurtz is aware that the draft would meet with political resistance. So he has some suggested half-measures too. He wants people to join the ROTC, a kind of young-pioneers training camp for the military state. In fact, he wants Junior ROTC groups imposed on every public high school, on pain of federal sanctions. "Growth in JROTC and ROTC might solve much of our manpower needs, and do it with volunteers (sic.)."

Yes, this might be resisted, he admits, because we have all become corrupted "in the wake of Vietnam and the sixties." He then informs us that to purge people of such corruption is the real point of the conservative "culture war." "So in the end, the real war and the culture war are the same war."

That’s interesting to know. In the 1980s and 1990s, many regular Americans thought that joining the conservative’s culture war meant being against teen sex, rap music, abortion, and family disintegration. They believed that conservatives were fighting the influence of secularism and humanism in the culture. Now, it turns out, according to Kurtz, that there is only one real purpose of the cultural war against the legacy of sixties: to make parents more willing to part with their offspring as fodder in the war on terrorism.

Kurtz is hardly alone in his views. There is a faction of the right that is trying to whip up a kind of pro-draft movement. My fans over at Americans For Victory Over Terrorism (chairman William Bennett attacked me by name at the group's first press conference) have released a survey on the draft. They asked college kids what they thought about having military service forced on them.

The results of the AVOT poll: 37 percent of students said they would evade; 35 percent said they would love it, even it meant being stationed in Beirut; and 21 percent said they would serve but only within US borders. This last group is puzzling: a government that steals your college years to enslave you in the service of its imperial military ambitions is not going to concern itself about where you want to do so.

Why was AVOT conducting a survey? To judge whether compulsory military service is feasible. They probably were not very encouraged by the results of their survey. In fact, they probably see resistance to the draft as a sign of cultural decline. Actually, it’s the opposite. Those who are willing to tell pollsters that they would defy the state rather than be coerced to fight its wars are examples of the true American spirit. That 37 percent of students are willing to tell a pollster so demonstrates that not all is lost.

We shouldn’t be surprised at the vogue of the draft on the right. The problem with the post-World War II right is that its devotion to the idea of freedom has been more rhetorical than substantive. They have favored a planned military economy while decrying the planned economy generally. They have pushed for an imperial foreign policy while believing in small government at home. They want wars and more wars that kill kids and take them away from families, but also favor family values.

In the end, they have to make a choice between freedom and the state. They choose the state. That these people are now calling for making slaves out of young workers and students so they can be forced to fight unnecessary wars abroad, is merely the next step in a long ideological decline. Freedom is threatened as much by these people as by any leftwing socialist.

June 25, 2002

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him mail], is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, and editor of LewRockwell.com.

Copyright © 2002 LewRockwell.com

Lew Rockwell Archives

Good, and maybe while you're in jail we'll get a break from the endless, and mindless, Libertarian propaganda you dump on us like dropping from a bird's ass.

More banal bullshit from Lew Rockwell's site...what a big surprise.  Not.

It's a shame, too. Some of the things Libertarians stand for are right on the money...

Edited to add:

The topic in question is [b]not[/b] one of them, BTW...

Very true.  Before 9-11, I would have called myself a small-L libertarian because I support the legalization or at least decriminalization of drugs and prostitution, less government interference with business and of course no restrictive gun laws.
But big-L Libertarians are totally screwed in the head when it comes to foreign policy.  What will work INSIDE a nation WILL NOT necessarily work BETWEEN nations.

I WOULD like people to argue why the draft is constitutional and why it should be implemented. Instead, as this thread demonstrates, people instead result to name calling and other personal attacks.




I don't see anything about FORCING people to fight for the government.

Congress can provide for CALLING forth the militia, but not forcing them to serve. And even if they COULD, that would ONLY be to suppress rebellions and enforce federal laws, NOT to fight a war. We have a standing army for that.

Now, you might have an argument if you cited this section:

"to raise and support armies."

I would of course disagree, but that would have been a better argument to make.



What is the point of this? He is the commander-in-chief. I see no power granted to him to draft citizens. And his power as commander in chief is activated  when the military  is "called into the actual Service of the United States."; meaning that war is declared, and war can only be declared by Congress.


To tell you the truth, I am really surprised that people would force others to fight for them, to drag them away from their families and their lives to fight and die, for ANY reason. Its different when people volunteer. At least you have to have some respect for those who want to fight. But to force unwilling men and/or women? I just don't get it. It really is slavery.

both north ans south had conscription. south was first. not favorably received on either side.

From reading the same articles, it seems pretty clear to me that the draft is constitutional.

It also seems pretty clear that you are arguing just because you don't want to be drafted.

-legrue

Here's my take on the draft, as I've just been recently registered for it. (Don't you how many of you are still eligible, if you're not eligible for the draft, of course it's easy for you to support it).

I would only serve IF I get a guarentee that I will not be sent overseas. Why this restriction? Because I don't trust the government, that's why. I don't like the imperialistic foreign policies that our government have been executing since WWII. It have costed thousands of American lives and squandered our treasury. There's no reason why I should be sent to Iraq to get killed or exposed to their chemical gases and come back dead or disabled.

I know many here are very gung-ho about patriotism and sacrifice. But all those romantic notions aside, What is the point of sacrifice if you sacrifice it for some ill conceived operations with no real purpose other than to show that the president can walk the walk as well as talk the talk? I think that's what's so cowardly about our modern presidents. George Washington was a real commander, he lead the troops. What did Bush or Clinton ever do? They don't know the first thing about war, they've never tasted it. This is one of the biggest reasons why I'm not a Republican. They like big government in their hearts, just not a political government, but a military one.

   That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
      Let him depart. His passport shall be made
      And crowns for convoy put into his purse.
      We would not die in that man's company
      That fears his fellowship to die with us.
      This day is called the feast of Crispian.
      He that outlives this day and comes safe home
      Will stand a-tiptoe when this day is named
      And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
      He that shall see this day and live t'old age
      And say, "Tomorrow is Saint Crispian."
      Then will he he strip his sleeve and show his scars
      And say, "These wound I had on Crispin's day."
      Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
      But he'll remember, with advantages,
      What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
      Familiar in his mouth as household words-
      Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
      Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Glouster-
      Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.
      This story shall the good man teach his son,
      And Cripin Crispian shall ne'er go by
      From this day to the ending of the world
      But we in it shall be remembered,
      We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
      For he today that sheds his blood with me
      Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
      This day shall gentle his condition.
      And gentlemen in England now abed
      Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
      And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
      That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.


--Shakespeare, Henry V



Maybe its your duty to serve?

Smalls
LCpl of Marines

Coward.

And yer surprised by this??? [:D]  You haven't been paying attention. [:D]

BTW, I disagree with your suppostion about the draft being unConstitutional.

CLEARLY, the power to make war is a delegated power of the Congress, and the President.

SOMEONE has to fight those wars.

And ESPECIALLY in THIS day and age, where people have almost completely and totally lost all vision of their civic duty, the draft is becoming more and more relevant.

After once again going over my thoughts about BHD...I can see some of the objections to a draft...ya want us to fight and win or go play patty-cake?

Theoretically voting is also a civic duty.

Here's my problem, there are too many old geezers who know they won't be affected by the draft calling for a draft. As for matter of civic duty, how is it my duty to be sent half a world away and kill people that aren't attack us? Bush effectively declared at West Point that he will pre-emptively strike whatever country seems threatening, without having to present his evidence or justify his actions to anyone. And he's going to do it with American troops. Should there be a disaster and he need more men, why, the draft, how convenient. Should we suspend our liberties just because there's a war? Or what if there's no war? but the president decides that we need a war to keep his approval ratings high? If Bush wants a war, he can go fight it himself.

THIS is why people need to be more careful who they vote for.

The Constitution makes it CLEAR the gov't has a right to fight a war, which necessitates conscripting people to fight it, in some cases.

The FACT that people are TOO STUPID to follow thru on their voting civic duty INCREASES the likelihood that they will abused in their OTHER civic duties.

Your point is well taken, and there may be NO answer for this question. In short, sans a revolution, our republic is destined to collapse under its own "freedoms / license."

("license" being the abuse of freedom)

BTW -

I have NO PROBLEM with people refusing to fight in an unjust war.

Just turn yourself in to the local authorities, to await trial. Its what I will do, IF EVER conscripted to fight in what I deem an unjust war.

As prolly the one MOST guilty on this board (at least until recently) of making charachterizations RATHER THAN just addressing the point and substance of the post, I can tell you that charachterizations will END meaningful debate.





And myself and those prone to making charachterizations RATHER THAN just addressing the substance of the issue should consider how our charachterizations come across to others.

HINT: It appears like an attack.

Just some food for thought, from someone who (used to be)  as guilty as anyone.

IMO, the military should be fighting off volunteers when America calls for fighting men.

You think our founding fathers wanted to fight? Fuck no! But unlike some of you, THEY HAD BALLS!

G-man,

Yah, I noticed, bro. You've been positively GENTEEL lately. What happened???

BTW, I'm waiting on that email :)

-legrue

I had a good look at myself, and didn't like what I saw.




One of the things I saw was a bad memory. [BD] What have I forgotten????

You were going to email me your original dissertation on homosexuality.

BTW, I applaud you personally. Self introspection can be a tough task.

legrue <---doing some myself

edited because I kant spel

You can't fool me Lib.

Get over it.
Being a good neighbor sometimes means taking up arms in defense of your fellow Americans.

Just because you don't understand why we fight doesn't mean it's wrong.

I've seen your picture, I've read your posts, I know why you REALLY don't want to serve.
HINT: It's the same reason you've never played team sports, or been much of a hit with the ladies.

For you, boot camp would be hell.

Garandman, I was thinking (a dangerous pasttime, I know) about this and I have a potential problem with this argument.  It occurs to me that forcing people to fight when they otherwise would not may have an effect similar to that of the government preventing necessary corrections in the economy.  That is, things appear to continue on safely, but in reality things are eating away from the inside out and it will lead to an outcome far worse than what would have happened if things had been left alone.

Just a thought...

Now I remember.

I tried, but the e-mail never arrived I guess. I just re-sent it. Let me know (via e-mail) if you don't get my e-mail with attachment. (I sent it to your hotmail addy.)

Good thought. You show, what I beleive, is an appreciation for a "free market economy" to control - a sort of self-levelling force within gov't.

I applaud that. Its solid logic. I just am not sure a free market economy works in an arena that is the polar opposite of the free market - gov't.

My GREATER concern was that the draft in the US produces what the Germans had in forcing the Poles to fight for Hitler in WW2 - a sloppy, ill-tempered, ready to surrender fighting force.

That said, I still favor the draft. And if conscience won't allow me to fight the war my gov't wants to fight, I turn myself into the local authorities, and tell them I refuse to go.

I agree. I and I would take up arms if I had to defend my fellow Americans. I just don't see that yet.

If we were be invaded, by say Mexico(and I mean troops and such), I would sign up the day I heard about. If American was in danger, I would fight. But the current war on terrorism is nothing but empire building. Bush and his administration have said that they can't stop the terror attacks, so what is the point of fighting something that has nothing to DO with the terror attacks?


Oh, I understand, which is why I'm opposed to it


*Cough*Personal attack*cough.


This is absolutely not a trolling exercise. I wanted to debate this.

War on terror = empire building?

Gimme a fuckin' break.

Gee, another Bill Clinton.  Anyone else notice how Libby sounds a lot like DU.  'Imperial Army' my ass.



Duh, ever heard of a college deferment?  That's where most officers come from, college grads, you know.  What a DU.  It also looks like the majority would be willing to serve.  Only 37 percent feel that they should enjoy the freedoms of our country with no obligation to help protect them.  Only 37 percent are cowards.

What the hell is the difference between calling forth the militia and forcing them to serve?  All of us state, and make a very big deal about it as part of our right to bear arms, that every able bodied man is part of the militia.  That seems to right along with Article I, Section 8 that you quote.  Or are you only a member of the militia when it suits you?  Your whining sounds hypocritical to me.

You bring up ridiculous subjects, make ridiculous statements, try to pretend you are some kind of intellect and Constitutional scholar, and wonder why people resort to name calling?  You deserve it!

Damn, we agreed on something.  I am going to have to mark this down.  Now, get out of the left lane[:D]

I also agree with garandman on the same post:


Holy cow, in agreement with both of you on one subject.  Uh oh, something really bad must be about to happen.[:D]

Most of us 'old geezers'have already served, many during a time when it was very unpopular and many in a very unpopular war, only to come home and be spit at by people like you.

That's right, let's not be preeemptive.  Let's wait until they hit us again and kill 2900 more people.  We have always been preemptive, that's why until now we have never been attacked on our own soil.

Is that you Cynthia Mckinney.  The president wants a war to boost his approval ratings?????????  And you wonder why there is name calling at times.  Are you and infiltrator from DU?

Being drafted is not suspending our liberties.  It is allowed for in the Constitution.  This type of rhetoric sounds just like Bill Clinton and his ilk who called service personnel names and demonstrated against us.

From your earlier post:


There's that word 'imperial' again.  Are you and Libby the same person or do you just hang out together at DU?  If you are going to post psuedo-intellectual crap and try to seem intelligent, at least learn to use the correct words.  'it have costed thousands' would be 'it has cost thousands'.

To tell YOU the truth, I'm surprised that someone on this board would NOT fight for this country.  You seriously sound like a sniveling little bitch who would only take what this country has to offer without ever returning the favor through standing in her "imperial" army. [rolleyes]


Who in these modern times REALLY wants to leave their families and loved ones in time of war?  Rationalize this one for me, I'd love to take down whatever logic you think you have.  In this country, where the majority of its citizens are complacent with everything, why would they want to fight?  This isn't 1943 anymore, people don't have the patriotic calling that once existed.  

If called, I would go and fight.  Keep in mind I have my BA and JD degrees and I'm no 18 year old.  I have a girlfriend of 8 years and a dog, but does that mean I wouldn't go and fight for US?  No, mainly because my dog and GF need me to protect them.  

IF the draft were to be reimplemented (which I believe we should have universal service at age 18 or after HS), I believe this country would have more solidarity.  The brotherhood of the armed services might, JUST MIGHT create better class and race relations as a side effect.  Whether the war is something you believe in (or in which you have financial interests) or not, it doesn't matter.  What Garandman said is correct, if you don't like the politician's policies, VOTE SOMEONE ELSE.  Don't bitch because they're trying to prevent some crack head from bombing our country from 5000 miles away.  If any of us were called, I would hope we'd have the sack to perform our patriotic DUTIES as set forth in the Constitution.



Slavery??!!  You think being required in a time of war to fight for your country is slavery?  Now that was a good one to start my day!