A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Greeley against the draft

Great response by Fr. Andrew Greeley to Rep. Charlie Rangel and the other “authoritarian liberals” who want to use conscription to provide a check on executive warmaking and/or to promote social and racial equality and/or as a moral tonic. (via Conservative Green)

The obvious point is that the draft has historically not acted as a check on warmaking and if anything made possible wars like Korea and Vietnam. Greeley sharply questions the implication that draft riots would somehow be a preferable way to express opposition to war policy over, say, voting.

Greeley goes on to say that the “government has no claim on the time and life of anyone, except the people who volunteer for military service (often, alas, because they have not many other choices in life) and convicted criminals. Conscription is just barely tolerable in times of great national emergency, if then.” He also notes that the recently departed libertarian economist Milton Friedman helped bring an end to the draft during the Nixon administration on the grounds that it was “an inequitable tax levied against the young and in favor of the middle-aged and the old.”

The editorial writers of the New York Times, who have often had a soft spot in their hearts for national service, lament that Rangel’s proposal will fail. Like most authoritarian liberals, they think it right and proper and orderly that young men and women be pushed into adulthood by government pressure to do good. It will teach young people, they imply, maturity and responsibility and self-control (and get them away from video games and beer bashes!).

In fact, volunteer service rates among young Americans are the highest in the world. The generosity and the merit of volunteering is diminished if it becomes compulsory and is destroyed altogether when the young people are forced to work for an inept and incompetent government.

Moreover, volunteering as a requirement for graduation is a perversion. Humans grow in virtue not by being forced to repeat virtuous actions but by freely choosing such actions.

My personal view has been that any polity worth defending won’t need to resort to a draft, except perhaps under extreme circumstances. Granted that there may be problems with our current system, coercing people into the military isn’t the answer. How about reducing our overseas commitments for starters?

4 responses to “Greeley against the draft”

  1. jack perry

    White, college-educated young men and women would have to serve as target practice for Shiites, Sunnis and other murderous tribes in Iraq when they take time out from killing one another.

    Funny, I don’t’ remember that happening in the last draft. In fact, I distinctly recall that college was an exemption from the draft. Do I recall incorrectly? Does Rangel intend to remove that & other exemptions?

    I almost never agree with Greeley, but when I do, it’s scary. 🙂

    Although: Veterans of military service usually weigh in on this issue by announcing that the military “made a man out of me.”

    My father told this to me once, adding that he hoped I’d serve one day. I’d’a liked to, but there’s this prohibition against asthmatics. Anyway, the point my father was trying to make was not about killing other people, but about responsibility and getting to know people from wildly different backgrounds. In my case, I think I got that during my 5-year stint at Hardee’s and Wendy’s, and a 2-year stint as a high school teacher. There’s a way to meet the real world.

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  2. jack perry

    I should note that my father didn’t kill anyone. He signed up for the Navy out of patriotic fervor (he says Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry is a distant relative) and they promptly sent him to the Mediterranean basin, where he met my mother. A war of a completely different sort, that. 🙂

    He was also referring to self-discipline as part of the manhood deal.

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  3. Marvin

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but if the draft were reinstated, I don’t think there’d be any exemptions for higher education. I believe that the way the statute is written, a person could finish out their semester, and then would have to report for duty. If that is the case, then a draft might indeed be a deterrant to some types of war, especially if women were equally subject to the draft. (Don’t know what the law says about women).

    That said, a draft has been the exception, rather than the rule, in most of American history. The Bible tends to view it as as evil, but all too typical behavior of kings (and, I suppose, other highly centralized forms of government). See 1 Samuel 8: 10-12, and 2 Samuel 24.

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  4. jack perry

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but if the draft were reinstated, I don’t think there’d be any exemptions for higher education.

    Perhaps not as drafted, but it’s a distant journey from draft to law. Compromises and concessions are always made.

    In any case, according to CNN: Under his bill, the draft would apply to men and women ages 18 to 26; exemptions would be granted to allow people to graduate from high school, but college students would have to serve.

    So, the effect will be a lot of people taking an extraordinarily long time to finish high school. Six years for a college degree is the norm now; six years for a high school diploma could become the new standard?

    Curiously, Rangel voted against his own mandatory national service bill (military or civilian) in 2004.

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