gswann@presenceofmind.net
Posted on 12/31/2002 8:29:26 AM PST by Greg Swann
The jackass brays back: Rangel wrangles with National Youth Slaveryby Greg Swann |
Yesterday I held a colloquy with a braying jackass over New York Democratic Representative Charles Rangel's plan to institute universal military conscription. Today Rangel is back, in an op-ed in the New York Times, insisting that he really means it, that he wasn't just braying at random on CNN. Fine with me. I'm clipping and snipping, so see the original to wrangle this jackass unedited. I believe that if we are going to send our children to war, the governing principle must be that of shared sacrifice.Remember that 'sacrifice' always means blood sacrifice. Politicians tell you the bald truth and you never listen. Throughout much of our history, Americans have been asked to shoulder the burden of war equally.Except for women, children, the elderly, the blind, the halt and the lame. And the children of the elites. And throughout the rest of our history, America has been defended by an all-volunteer military, which is what is in keeping with American principles. Carrying out the administration's policy toward Iraq will require long-term sacrifices by the American people, particularly those who have sons and daughters in the military.They are volunteers. I wish every one of them peace and safety, but they made a choice to risk harm in pursuit of benefits for themselves and for their families. They are not conscripts. Yet the Congress that voted overwhelmingly to allow the use of force in Iraq includes only one member who has a child in the enlisted ranks of the military--just a few more have children who are officers.But a heck of a lot of kids in medical school, I'll bet. Different people make different choices. This is liberty. The choices they make are influenced by their initial circumstances. This is an accretive consequence of liberty. I believe that if those calling for war knew that their children were likely to be required to serve--and to be placed in harm's way--there would be more caution and a greater willingness to work with the international community in dealing with Iraq.Could be true, but it won't happen. Children of CongressVermin 'serve' as photographers, like Vietnam 'veteran' Al Gore. What will happen, what always happens, is that politicians will massively waste their 'free' conscripts. There is a monolith in Washington to testify to this fact. A renewed draft will help bring a greater appreciation of the consequences of decisions to go to war.I love that word 'appreciation.' It's a favorite of educationists. It means sensory awareness without knowledge or understanding. Unfortunately for Rangel, history's plain lesson, perhaps not 'appreciated' but well known, is that conscript armies make the decision to go to war that much easier to make. Cannon-fodder is the food of the warfare state. Service in our nation's armed forces is no longer a common experience.Never was, thankfully. A disproportionate number of the poor and members of minority groups make up the enlisted ranks of the military...Now we get to the real issue. I was sure this was what he was saying yesterday, but he didn't come right out and say it. The implication is that the all-volunteer military, by being comprised of a "disproportionate number of the poor and members of minority groups," is simultaneously racist and bad for defense. Both are false. The military is no more racist than is the National Football League, another place where poor young black males seek to reap the best available benefit from their initial circumstances. If 'disproportion' in the one is racist and not rational, then the same must be true for the other. And an army of volunteers, actively seeking benefits for themselves and for their families, is surely a better defense of American interests than a cadre of seething, resentful slaves. ...while the most privileged Americans are underrepresented or absent.And the implication here is that the anequalitarian distribution of self-selected volunteers for the military, for medical school and for the NFL is an injustice in se. Many poor young black males don't have the money or the academic preparation to go to medical school. Most pre-med students don't have the athletic ability to play pro football. So what? We are each of us free to choose our own careers, and in so doing, we provide secondary benefits to the society at large. Our only responsibility is to ourselves and to our families. Where the choice to act in our own behalf is usurped by force, we are slaves. The irony, from Rangel's jackass point of view, is that enslaving a pre-med student in a conscript army will hurt poor young black males in two ways: By depriving them of military roles for which they would have volunteered but for which the medical student has better academic preparation. And by depriving them of two years or four years of the life-saving abilities of the physician that pre-med student will ultimately become. This is the broken-window fallacy, only Rangel is proposing to enrich us by breaking our skulls instead. We need to return to the tradition of the citizen soldier--...The citizen soldier was a volunteer. The story of Cincinnatus is fascinating and inspiring, but the point of the story is that the citizen soldier is a volunteer who fights when he must and then returns to his plow. ...--with alternative national service required for those who cannot serve because of physical limitations or reasons of conscience.And there is the call for National Youth Slavery. Those who would lead us into war...Not you, thankfully, you jackass. ...have the obligation to support an all-out mobilization of Americans for the war effort,...Not only are our children to be enslaved, our politicians are themselves obliged. Slavery is pernicious, ain't it? ...including mandatory national service that asks something of us all.It is important to understand that military conscription is a Trojan Horse. The real issue, for which Rangel is probably an unwitting stooge, is National Youth Slavery. The idea has been 'trial-ballooned' for years, by William F. Buckley, among others. And, of course, the people to be enslaved are not the ones who get to vote for their enslavement. Ironically, as with the other truly serious domestic policy issue, the incremental nationalization of medicine, the underlying concern is health care: Buckley and other dotards want to compel your children to change their bedpans. Acquiring 'free' conscript soldiers to be shredded overseas is pure gravy. "O brave new world That has such people in't!" But fear not, for the libertarians, civil and otherwise, understand that the true battle is to prevent John Poindexter from discovering that they wear mis-matched socks. What possible peril is posed by the enslavement of America's young and her doctors, compared to Big Brother? Charles Rangel may be a jackass, but at least he's a straightforward enemy of liberty. May god spare America's freedom from her alleged friends... |
No, it's called serving one's country. As millions have over the years.
The unfortunate thing, here, is that Rangel does not belive this and would oppose it vigorously. This was one of those trial baloons to make him ( and the anti-American lefties) look like they are out front with Bush on defending America. Rangel is a black race pimp and would only be interested in universal military service if blacks were segregated into locations where he and the other race pimps could propagandize them against whitey.
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I don't think universal service would end wars, quite the opposite. It would give moral clarity to our national position. A congress of 535 members who once wore the uniform would understand their freedoms just a wee bit better, and cherish and defend freedoms throughout the world.
It is a volunteer army. However, nobody that I served with was from even the upper middle class let alone rich, in the enlisted class. It is a dividing line. It is not a conservative or liberal thing. Rich folks don't serve.
The word chickenhawk is thrown around quite a bit, but it can be useful in the sense that, when somebody isn't willing to die for a cause, but they are willing to let your kids go instead, it does give you a moment to reflect on the urgency of the cause.
Military service wasn't mandatory in Starship Troopers, but only those who had served could vote. I'd actually be willing to consider a system like that, but a mandatory draft is by definition involuntary servitude.
I suppose if tell my son or daughter to wash the dishes that too would count as childhood slavery. Certainly to be totally PC we would never call it service to the family. So in like manner service to the community and the nation. Some seem to forget that service is not the option of choice for the desperate and disposessed, but the preferred choice of pride for the responsible and the strong.
I volunteered for the Navy and served my four years, some of it Vietnam combat, because I knew that I owed much to the extent (and beyond) that I had received much, and wished to repay that, enabling others to receive in turn. A sense of duty to the society that nurtures us will inevitably keep that society strong; a sense of entitlement can only weaken it.
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