‘You Don’t Have to Wear a Military Uniform to Serve Your Country’ [Mandatory National Service]

The Atlantic ^ | July 20, 2016 | Stanley A. McChrystal

[C19fan]

In 1838, a 28-year-old Abraham Lincoln declared that the greatest threat facing America comes not from a foreign invader:

If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

[piasa]

This isn’t a federal matter, if it were you’d have to register to vote federally.

You don’t, because voting is a state and local matter, according to districts. The president is elected by the electoral college... electors are chosen at the state level.

If there were any kind of mandatory service it should have to be limited to fall under state, not federal authority.

When we let the federal government have this much power it is at the expense of rather than in defense of our liberty and the powers of our state and local government and is a net loss for everyone.

[atomic_dog]

A free man decides when and how to serve his country, as I did. A subject serves as his masters tell him to.

[L,TOWM]

Never mentioned that it should be mandatory, but if that’s what you read, go with it...

[TalonDJ]

“You OK with millions of people voting for your rulers with no stake in the system beyond “gimme”?”

Two wrongs don’t make a right. You can’t ‘fix’ a bad system by doubling down on statism.

[L,TOWM]

And what’s your method of fixing the bad system then?

[MSF BU]

The “professional military” isn’t. A company worth of non-deployable unwed mothers in every regiment is not defense.

[Pining_4_TX]

It isn’t service if it’s forced. That is slavery and has no place in a free country.

[Laser_Ray]

20 years ago I would (very) cautiously support this idea, but now I am obligated to be starkly against it due to the massive potential for abuse by left-wing ‘educators’ and young people to be sent to die like flies in conflicts fought with all the fury of a blind pregnant ballerina.

As much as serving a couple years overseas in Turd World countries and being forced to obey orders from one’s betters has great potential to curtail whining and entitlement, the people likely to be in charge of such service make me cringe to think about. Any benefit would be massively outweighed.