I disagree. With the current volunteer force, military service falls disproportionately on the lower socio-economic classes of society. While many better themselves significantly as a result, we still see an increasing detachment of upper and middle class America from the realities of military service.
As an alternative to the draft, I like Robert Heinlein's idea in Starship Troopers - military service is voluntary, but the price one pays for citizenship, and the right to vote or hold public office.
I am not sure that is the case, although I am open to it. I do not claim to be an expert, but I understand that while the leftists all claim that we sent all the poor negroes to die in vietnam, the reality is that more than half of the casualties were white volunteers. I don't see why this would be any different.
Ahem...
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."
Government is only just if it is instituted by the consent of the governed. Limiting the vote to those of any subset of Americans (save age) causes there to be a large portion of the population whose consent is not given.
In other words, Liberty is a birthright, not a privilidge to be given by one's Magistrate at the price of State servitude.
Since consent of the governed is the only way a government can draw legitimate powers, the one you suggest would be illegitimate, unjust and the people would be fully justified in heeding the Declaration's next paragraph:
"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
Tuor
Ya got that backwards. The price to govern me and request my military service is recognition of my right of citizenship and right to vote or hold public office, among other rights enumerated in the Constitution.
No recognition of citizenship = no recognition of governance.
"The results should have been predictable, since a human being has no natural rights of any nature"
Mr. Dubois had paused. Somebody took the bait. "Sir? How about 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'?"
"Ah, yes, the 'unalienable rights.' Each year someone quotes that magnificent poetry. Life? What 'right' to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What 'right' to life has a man who must die if he is to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of 'right'? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man's right is 'unalienable'? And is it 'right'? As to liberty, the heroes who signed that great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is always unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it is always vanquished. Of all the so-called 'natural human rights' that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost."
"The third 'right'?- the 'pursuit of happiness'? It is indeed unalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can 'pursue happiness' as long as my brain lives - but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it."
Mr. Dubois then turned to me. "I told you that 'juvenile delinquent' is a contradiction in terms. 'Delinquent' means 'failing in duty'. But duty is an adult virtue - indeed a juvenile bucomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge of duty and embraces it as dearer than the self-love he was born with. THere never was, there cannot be, a 'juvenile delinquent'. But for every juvenile criminal there re always one or more adult delinquents - people of mature years whe either do not know their duty, or who, knowing it, fail."
"And that was the soft spot which destroyed what was in many ways and admirable cultrue. The junior hoodlums who roamed their streets were symptoms of a greater sickness; thier citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constitutued, can endure."