Mixed on this one...tie it to Citizenship (vote).
Rand it out of his mind
Oh, good gravy, not this again.
Sometimes, as in this case, the old kook is right.
Compulsory volunteerism could only come from the minds of brain-damaged liberals.
as this is an issue that has long united authoritarians on the left and right.
No Ronnie paul bot - there cannot be authoritarians on "the right" by definition. They may be Republican (McCain), but they are not "on the right."
Congressman Paul has forgotten it seems that Congress sets the End Troop Strength Levels. Shortages of today are not caused by a lack of willing to volunteer but rather a ridiculous and unrealistically low number of allowed volunteers set by congress.
The Mandatory Service seems like a foot in the door for the likes of ones like Obama and other future presidents to have a temptation too or attempt to form a national police to enforce administration and agencies agendas upon the public. No good can come from it.
The ability of having The Draft itself is a necessary evil to ensure the survival of our nation and congress does have the right to call forth troops for such. That doesn't mean it should exist when conditions do not require it. In short no declaration of war then no draft.
Our government needs to stop trying to regulate charities of all origins and allow volunteers and agencies or organizations to function unharassed. The ones providing things like free medical care etc should be exempted from litigation. The one receiving such services waiving litigation rights.
Ordinarily I would agree, but if perpetual war is the new normal, then we must all share in the sacrifice, including a dedicated war tax. Then we’ll find out how important this stuff is to the American people.
Another reason to dislike McCain as well as Obama.
Maybe someday a candidate will show up who actually believes in liberty, rather than the state.
To be honest, I wouldn’t mind us having something along the lines of Switzerland’s militias, though more to get a majority of people trained in armed defense than “national service”. After all, Switzerland did retain her neutrality in both World Wars without an actual military.
Unfortunately, given our government’s habit of sending our boys into third world cesspools and crippling them with idiotic rules of engagement, it would eventually become the very thing I despise.
Service whether military or civilian should not be mandatory, especially military.
Draftees in combat will get you killed. They don’t want to be there; they don’t follow orders well and they are the source of most of the problems.
I a foxhole or on patrol, I want someone who volunteered to be next to me. The draftee will be high on dope or alcohol and you don’t need someone you have to babysit for.
“In a free society, many people will give their time or money to service projects to help better their communities”
This was actually the case before the depression. During that time since everyone was low on cash, charity diminished.
So, I agree that for the Depression it was valid for govt to get involved, but the problem is govt didn’t stop when the depression was over. It only expanded its social programs, once it saw the cash cow.
Get govt out of the charity business and the old local philanthropic organizations will return. No need for national service org in that case.
I read an op-ed piece some years ago in which the author was in favor of a mandatory two year service commitment in the armed forces. His premise was that many, if not most, today have never been cold, hot , hungry, wet, etc. and therefore are unable to adequately manage a little discomfort.
He contended that if young people were forced to manage discomfort and shut up about it, the wussification of America would not be occurring.
Mandatory national service was really big with both Hitler and Stalin. Socialists dream of a big field where everybody has to go every morning to exercise the same way to a cadence.
For his part, Stalin’s national service was to send students out into the malaria-wilderness to do forced labor building dams. Tens of thousands of them died doing this, and the dams they built were impressively shoddy. Gigantic, but destined to fail.