Re: OT: sponge burning!
Andrew Sackville-West writes:
> I'm a very wildly-liberal guy and I'm all in favor of the draft.
Conscription is slavery.
> 1) it spreads the load throughout the population -- barring corruption,
> the Bush twins have just as much chance as any body else of ending up in
> the military. 2) we end up with a true citizen's army.
I was drafted. You are wrong.
> This means we get better diversity in the military and frankly, since
> most of the current US military comes from the largely uneducated,
> desperate for a job crowd (no offense intended, but it is reality -- look
> at recruiting numbers and lowering standards), getting a broader
> cross-section is good.
Even with the "lowered standards" many of the guys I served with would not
be able to get in.
> ...we end up with a true citizen's army...
No. You end up with a slave army with no morale. I know. I was there.
> ...which means more and more of the folks who end up in power have more
> at stake in a war situation -- either they've been there and understand
> or they know their kids might go.
Most of those now in power were subject to the draft. Didn't work.
> I'm a pacifist and the best thing I can think of to promote peace is to
>make war hurt *everybody* and not just a certain slice of the population.
I'ma pacifist too but I know better than to propose solutions that ignore
fundamental features of human nature. Give the politicians a slave army
and they will use it.
--
John Hasler
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