Congressional Digest has pro-con on national service and resuming the draft

The September 2006 issue of Congressional Digest featured the stunning pro-con debate “Should the All-Volunteer Force Be Replaced by Universal Mandatory National Service”? Congressional Digest Pro & Con features debated presentations in the spirit of the “Opposing Viewpoints” book series.

The issue discussed some of the current volunteer organizations sponsored by state and federal government. These include AmeriCorps (state and Vista), and Citizen Corps (Neighborhood Watch, Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), Volunteers in Police Service, Medical Reserve Corps. Also discussed was the Senior Corps, including Foster Grandparents (age 60 and up), Senior Companions (age 60 and up) and Retired and Seniors Reserve Program (age 55 and up). Some of these pay small stipends. Also mentioned is the Peace Corps. It is not necessarily easy for someone to transition into involvement with these. For example, to become a Foster Grandparent, one should have experience as a parent or working with children.

Also mentioned, or course, is the Peace Corps, which has volunteers as old as 82, but is not as easy to join later in life as one would imagine.

The issue also discussed the current contingent Selective Service law, and covered some details that I did not encounter in my discussions with them before my 1997 book. Student deferments had been a big controversy during the Vietnam war, and the first national lottery was held on Dec. 1, 1969. Under current law, if the draft resumed, college students could postpone induction only until the end of the current semester. The first priority for a draft would go to someone in his calendar year in which he turns 20. This eliminates the uncertainty of waiting until 26. Females could not be drafted now, although it is easy to imagine that if the draft resumed, there would be considerable political pressure to include females.

One particularly obscure area of draft law includes surviving sons. Contrary to popular belief, the “last son to carry the family name” (still an important concept to some people) can be drafted unless the family has already had a military death (in most cases).

In 2003 there were media reports that the Selective Service System in some areas was looking for “volunteers” to meet on local boards.

There is some debate in this issue on the controversy over the possibility of resuming the draft. Charles Rangel (D-NY) has twice proposed it, with little success, on the theory of sharing sacrifice, and that politicians would be less likely to become reckless about committing the U.S. to war (like in Iraq) if their own kids were at physical risk. Ron Paul of Texas provided a Con. But Charles Moskos of Northwestern University was a very strong Pro. He listed forms of the pseudo-draft, such as the “Poverty/Economic Draft”, “National Guard/Reserve Draft”, “Stop-Loss (Back-door) Draft”, “Individual Ready Reserve Draft”, “Recruiter Fraud/Misrepresentation/Intimidation Draft”, “Socialization-to-Militarism Draft”, “Target Latinos Draft”. He did not mention his “don’t ask don’t tell” regarding gays in the military in this article, but in other communications he has said that resuming the draft should end “don’t ask don’t tell.”

William Galston, a Brookings Institute Senior Fellow in Governance Studies, has suggested a mandatory 18-month national service. He writes:

“Numerous studies have documented the rise of individual choice as the dominant norm of contemporary American culture, and many young people today believe that being a good person -- decent, kind, caring and tolerant – is all that it takes to be a good citizen. This duty-free understanding of citizenship is comfortable and undemanding. It is also profoundly mistaken.”

However Galston does not favor the military draft alone. He talks about Woodrow Wilson and the concept of “universal liability to service” during World War I. He mentions the concept of “spectator citizenship.”

The national service debate comes up as it underlies a moral rift that society has always had: how burdens, especially those among generations, must be shared, and how the risks of defending freedom are to be distributed. The political left likes to cast this in terms of class warfare or struggles among groups, whereas conservatives like to hide it in terms of family values and public morality (even evading the question of whether conscription is a form of involuntary servitude or fails to respect the value of human life -- I always found it interesting that at one time the law could prosecute both abortionists and draft-dodgers). The volunteer movement carries the unpleasant idea that government can steer individualists into some kind of mandatory socialization, and idea more accepted in other countries like Israel. The Bush administration has try to suggest decentralizing this with faith-based initiatives. But a debate on “participatory citizenship” sounds inevitable.

My correspondence with Rep Moran (D-Va) on this matter is at this link.

My earlier (2004) editorial on the draft and national service is at this link.

Update: March 11, 2007

On March 11, 2007, on CBS 60 Minutes, Andy Rooney called for conscription "whenever the United States decides that it really needs to go to war, in Iraq or anywhere else" so as to share the burden and not scrape "the bottom of the barrel." He also indicated that he never thought he would say that.