Let's Hear Nothing Of A "Draft" Unless We're Talking About Beer

ToogoodReports ^ | May 8, 2002 | Lee R. Shelton IV

[balrog666]

My favorite beer hasn't been on draft anywhere I've gone - Franziskaner Hefe-Weiss.

Good stuff. Love those Hefeweizens.
It's getting much too difficult to get the best beers these days. I don't remember the last time I had some DAB or Dortmunder Union or ...

[Wolfie]

I dinkel'd my acker in a dunkel weizen once. I still have a small scar.

[Willie Green]

There are, unfortunately, times when national security demands military conscription.

I can't side with either of the extreme opposing camps: those who want to abolish it totally, or those who'd implement it permanently (to staff various charity "volunteer" social programs).

IMHO, at the present time, the current system of registration without active selection is appropriate. If there were to be any change, I'd agree to having young ladies sign up for the lucky lotto on their 18th birthdays. There are suitable positions for them within the military. Perhaps not front-line combat, but they provide useful service to their nation in time of need as well.

[Tuor]

There are, unfortunately, times when national security demands military conscription.

Such as when?

Tuor

[ctdonath2]

I fail to see how an armed citizenry would have prevented 9-11 either.

One quarter of the 9/11 attack was stopped by citizens armed only with attitude. How much more would have been stopped by more citizens armed with the same attitude AND effective tools...

[Britton J Wingfield]

In Starship Troopers the term 'citizen' meant one who had earned his franchise, if I remember correctly. Non-veterans still had normal civil rights, they just couldn't vote or run for office. Soldiers, btw, were not yet veterans, and could not vote while still serving.

[Psycho_Bunny]

BUT, do you think we could have put twelve million men under arms, and won WW II without a draft? Really, do you?

Yes but, that's not relevant.  Conscription is the ultimate slavery to the State; it is the pinnacle of tyranny.

If a free society is not willing to defend its existence voluntarily then it is unworthy of the freedoms it enjoys.  It's the obligation of the citizenry to intelligently weigh the issue of what is worth killing for and what is not...and then act on their conclusions.

I would have joined the military after Dec 7, 1941.  Though, I don't know what I would have done had I actually made it to combat in WWII :  I may have ended up cowering in a fox-hole.  I may have fleed.  I don't know.  It's impossible for a man to say what he would or wouldn't do in combat.  

But I do know I would have joined voluntarily.

Korea and Vietnam, on the other hand:  No way.  My opinion was that we had no business in either of those wars, and I would have refused to go.  I would have gone to jail first.

Hamilton writes, in The Federalist

They considered that the Congress was composed of many wise and
experienced men. That, being convened from different parts of the
country, they brought with them and communicated to each other a variety
of useful information. That, in the course of the time they passed
together in inquiring into and discussing the true interests of their
country, they must have acquired very accurate knowledge on that head.
That they were individually interested in the public liberty and
prosperity, and therefore that it was not less their inclination than
their duty to recommend only such measures as, after the most mature
deliberation, they really thought prudent and advisable.

He's talking about Pat Leahy?  Tom Daschle? Barbara Boxer? Sheila Jackson-Lee? Henry Waxman? Hillary Clinton?.........

Do you imagine for a second that I would allow fools and miscreants like these leftist-pandering socialist leeches decide what I will place my life in harms way for?

I think not.

I am a free man.  I will follow dignified and intelligent men and women into a honorable war to defend our country but I'll be damned if I'm going to be drafted and told to fight in Lebanon, or the Sudan, or Bosnia....or some other piss-hole that can't get it's crap together.

[RANGERAIRBORNE]

"I viewed it the other way around: that the action-adventure story was the surface stuff and the libertarianism was the real meat of it."

I always find it fascinating that two people can read something and come away with such disparate views. I suspect that in this case, at least, I had already rejected the extreme Libertarian philosophy by the time I got around to reading this book, and so the political subtext just rolled off me. I do remember thinking that this particular scheme sounded vaguely Fascist, although Heinlein's later work (after "STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND") made it pretty clear that he was a raving Libertarian. Most of these later works are practically unreadable (for me, at least- too didactic and humorless, with not much of a story to hang the sermons on...).

But "De gustibus..." and all that! (FWIT, his best book was probably "THE DOOR INTO SUMMER"- practically no political philosophy in there at all!) By the same token, "FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD" remains an awful book, in several ways. The first time I read it, I couldn't believe that it was actually written by RAH. I thought it was someone trying to ruin his good name.

[freeeee]

Well said!

<<< Standing Ovation >>>

[RANGERAIRBORNE]

Whoa, PSYCHO-BUNNY!! I'm not advocating a return to the draft. I think that people who do advocate this have not thought it through- aside from the moral problem (which is pretty basic- who do you belong to, yourself or the State?) there are a host of practical problems in the administration of a scheme like this- riots in the streets on every college campus and in every urban ghetto (I mean "Inner City") would be only the beginning.

[Tuor]

Well, I don't claim to be a huge Heinlein fan. Most of the books of his I read, I read when I was part of the Target Audience: a teen. And when I read Job: A comedy of justice, I was so incensed that I swore I'd never read anything of his again. I did, though...I read Starship Troopers, and liked it.

I never did read any of the books by which he was best known (other than ST): The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, The Number of the Beast, Stranger in a Strange Land, etc. Partly because my liking of SciFi is decidedly mixed and partly because Job stopped my reading of him, but mostly because the blurbs for the books just didn't appeal to me.

There is no denying that RAH had a big impact on SF, but most of his stuff just wasn't for me.

Tuor

[WhiteGuy]

Excellent!

Very well said!

I would add to the list, putting one's life on the line
to keep the oil industry profits high......

[balrog666]

I never did read any of the books by which he was best known (other than ST): The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, The Number of the Beast, Stranger in a Strange Land, etc. Partly because my liking of SciFi is decidedly mixed and partly because Job stopped my reading of him, but mostly because the blurbs for the books just didn't appeal to me. There is no denying that RAH had a big impact on SF, but most of his stuff just wasn't for me.

Most of his stuff just plain sucked. People liked his juvenile novels because they were "clean" as opposed to the avant-garde work of Philip Jose Farmer and the New Wave.

RAH had the most annoying habit of tediously explaining just how smart/educated/superior his characters were just before he made them do something particularly stupid. Whenever I would hit a point like that the book went into the fireplace.

[Tuor]

Whenever I would hit a point like that the book went into the fireplace.

At least his books had the added benefit of warming the house, eh?

Tuor

[mc5cents]

Draft Beer, Not Kids!

[balrog666]

At least his books had the added benefit of warming the house, eh?

He wasn't the only author that kept me warm!

[riley1992]

I swear I just saw that on tap somewhere but for the life of me I cannot remember where it was.