MEMO FROM THE EDITOR
MEMO from the Editor Involuntary Servitude They're beginning to bang the drums again for military conscription and other forms of officially sanctioned involuntary servitude. Who are "they"? The...
...Many modern liberals seem drawn to the notion that we all owe a piece of our lives to the State...
...And that offers a clue to the attraction of compulsory service for liberal Democrats: It's a way of showing they are not "weak on defense," as The Wall Street Journal observed, but it's also a way of seeming to address urgent domestic needs without attempting to redistribute wealth or power...
...Instead, he suggests, those who refuse induction can be punished by withdrawal of drivers' licenses, refusal of college admission, and similar kindnesses...
...a society that can afford to pay for Star Wars can afford to take proper care of its children and its old people...
...But the principal rationale advanced in favor of compulsory service is that it would somehow help to democratize the nation, and especially its armed forces...
...I'm not sure how this is supposed to happen...
...Noah does offer a generous concession to resisters: "Compulsion does not have to offer the threat of prison...
...What Noah did mean was that it's much easier, politically, to draft young people than to draft money...
...That's quite a lot to be achieved by the simple expedient of seizing young people against their will and assigning them for a year or two to tasks they would not touch except under coercion...
...In the meantime, the opening salvo in what is likely to become a heavy barrage of compulsory-service propaganda has been fired by The Washington Monthly, which styles itself the organ of neoliberalism...
...That, at least, is what conscription did for me, and I suppose I ought to be grateful...
...In the November issue, Contributing Editor Timothy Noah declared that national service is "an idea whose time has come...
...The evidence he cited was persuasive: "Stores that once catered to customers across the economic spectrum are either closing (Korvettes, Gimbels) or repositioning themselves to serve the upscale market (Sears, J.C...
...I haven't taken time to check the reference, but it sounds like something we might well have said—and certainly like something we believe...
...Obviously, Noah didn't really mean to say that our affluent society "cannot afford to pay" for essential services...
...Draftees are rarely named to sit with the Joint Chiefs...
...In his own clarion call for The Washington Monthly, Timothy Noah did not suggest depriving young people of all freedom...
...when I served in the military as a draftee more than thirty years ago, conscripts were not involved in formulating foreign policy...
...Noah wrote: "Those who oppose such a draft often argue that during peacetime sufficient need does not exist to justify compulsion...
...It won't work for everyone, but some people will emerge from their tour of involuntary servitude with a deep contempt for all things military and a profound skepticism toward the machinations of the State and its bureaucracy...
...society for the individual, we have the individual for society...
...I'm sure it did not occur to him or to his worshipful listeners that he was articulating the essence of fascism—but he was...
...Senator Sam Nunn, the Georgia Democrat who will head the Senate Armed Services Committee in the new Congress, is expected to hold hearings soon on reinstating the draft...
...National service would make it possible for society to get essential work done that we cannot afford to pay for in an era of $200 billion deficits—work like caring for children and the elderly, cleaning up the environment, teaching in ghetto schools, and rebuilding the nation's crumbling infrastructure of roads, bridges, and water and sewage systems...
...Presumably, if we all get to tote a rifle, shovel, or bedpan together, it will fill the vacuum left by the demise of Gimbels...
...The Journal notes that at least two other potential Democratic aspirants for the nation's highest office, Bill Bradley and Bruce Babbitt, are also keen on compulsory service...
...Some Democrats, The Wall Street Journal reported in November, "view an endorsement of national conscription as one way to shake the politically damaging perception that their party is weak on defense...
...I know the services have made important changes since the 1950s—GIs now wear black boots rather than brown, for example—but I still haven't heard of anyone below the rank of lieutenant colonel in a policy-making post...
...Alfredo Rocco, Mussolini's favorite political theorist, put it this way in a speech called "The Political Doctrine of Fascism": "Instead of...
...The Joint Chiefs of Staff...
...This simply is not the case...
...he proposed leaving them with a choice between compulsory military or civilian service...
...That ought to teach them to cherish democracy...
...The unreconstructed militarists on the ultrareactionary fringe of the Republican Party...
...Still, there is something to be learned from conscription—though not necessarily something its defenders have in mind...
...In a brief rundown of opponents of compulsory service, Noah was kind enough to include The Progressive, which, he wrote, "has compared national service to the Soviet Gulag...
...Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country," John F. Kennedy intoned as millions cheered...
...The rich are left with Bloomingdales, while the poor and middle class go to K-Mart and Woolco...
...The argument is even made that an army composed largely of conscripts would shun foreign military adventures...
...Penney...
...He also called it "a good way to perform a variety of important tasks, from rebuilding infrastructure, to caring for those in need, to cleaning up the environment, to boosting military manpower...
...Advocates of compulsory service often depict conscription as the great leveler...
...Senator Gary Hart, a perennial enthusiast for the draft, says it "may be the biggest issue of the 1980s" and, presumably, of his forthcoming campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination...
...Most of us," Noah wrote wistfully in The Washington Monthly, "have little shared experience with people from significantly different walks of life...
...Whatever powers the citizen chooses to cede to the modern State—and each citizen must make a choice based on his or her circumstance, conviction, and conscience—no one should be coerced into bearing arms or otherwise surrendering the freedom to engage in lawful pursuits that do not comport with the State's priorities...
...In addition to the urgent need to bring Americans together in a common enterprise, our country faces a long list of serious problems that won't be solved any other way...
...The hard-core authoritarians of the New Right...
...And he added, "Just as important, it would be a way to break the apathy and self-absorption that have taken hold of our culture...
...No, the new demands for reviving the draft and instituting a host of compulsory national-service programs come mainly from the Democratic Party, and particularly from its liberal wing...
Vol. 51 • January 1987 • No. 1
