A Journal for Western Man-- Issue IX
G. Stolyarov II
But what happens when the soldier is deprived of the volitional authority to state, �I am fit to fight, and I see a promising future in fighting,� and is instead taken, via the threat of physical harm in the event of non-compliance, into a recruitment center, equipped with �standard� materiel, i.e. the minimum of provisions possible to ensure that he does not drop dead on the spot from strenuous marches, hostile lodgings, and the gruesome muck of non-mechanized ground warfare? He cannot operate a tank, he cannot load a cannon from ten kilometers beyond enemy range, he cannot pilot an airplane; he was chosen merely because he was born on a particular day whose number was drawn in the lottery. Has he a reliable chance of survival in the face of attacks by both nature and malicious opponents who have journeyed to the battlefield solely to kill him? And will his commanders value his services when he has a pitifully minuscule quantity of them to offer, when he can be replaced by the next doughboy who will perform his task just as poorly should he happen to be killed? This reeks of the horrid approach of manual sugar refiners of the Caribbean toward steadily imported slave labor during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The slaves were beaten profusely for the minutest of offenses and worked late into the night with but five hours of rest, perishing like flies from exhaustion, starvation, injury, and disease within months if not weeks. Was that an enormous hindrance to their owners? Considering the backbreaking but primitive nature of the labor involved, and every slave�s utter lack of qualifications for it, the sugar manufacturers needed but to wait for the next ship to sail into harbor from across the Atlantic.
Draft advocates claim that a nation of freedom entails certain obligations toward the preservation of its institutions, but this is vilely fallacious rhetoric. The sole responsibilities of every citizen toward a purely free society (but, alas, not the food-poison hybrid of today�s mixed economy welfare state) are negative. Joe Citizen cannot initiate a private war against the United States government, nor can he enter a criminal rampage, nor undertake acts of theft, vandalism, threat, or fraud. Such deeds are impositions of physical force that inherently conflict with a free system. Once wanton coercion is removed from a society, free market dynamics enter the scene, or, in the words of classical economist Claude Frederic Bastiat, �work becomes more profitable than plunder�, and further regulation and oversight become unnecessary and harmful. If people relate to each other solely within their mutual interests, what threats are there to guard against?
Now consider what the introduction of a fresh threat, such as terrorism, to a laissez-faire society would entail. Because all persons are free to act in their own interest, they will mount a defense of their own volition, without the need of a costly and intrusive conscription apparatus! After all, their lives and property are at stake, their liberties are the ones hanging on the edge of a fanatic�s knife. But does every man best serve the cause of liberty as a doughboy on the field? Given extensive specialization of labor in a free market society, such a hypothesis is empirically invalidated. A desk clerk who is aware of his capacities can employ himself at a post office and assist in the mailing of military communiqu�s throughout the world, a railroad tycoon can generate a fortune on the shipping of weapons and troop cars to their desired locations, a scientist can patent and sell to the government a sleek new fighter jet or a smart bomb of more concentrated impact, and a writer, such as myself, can direct his energies toward the campaign for people�s attitudinal and ideological support at home by writing reasoned commentaries on the necessity and/or the efficacy of a given war effort. Despite America�s lack of wholehearted adherence to the philosophy of freedom, this is nevertheless the case today, and the reason for America�s multifaceted success, during wartime and peacetime, in the military and the civil arenas of international relations. It is precisely in this manner that freedom is preserved, and not in the fulfillment of some concocted, mythical, positive obligation of �sacrifice for the greater good.�
Rangel especially among the draft pushers suggests that the draft is a means toward �closing the social gap� between rich and poor and dragging both into a foxhole, thus rendering them �on an even playing field.� Mr. Rangel is correct in asserting that poorer individuals, especially persons seeking money for a college education otherwise unaffordable or those not satisfied with the income of their regular jobs, comprise a significant portion of the military. Yet this is their avenue toward wealth, advancement, and success! In some ten years, should they decide to remain within the armed forces, they will attain a bountiful livelihood as officers, trainers, technicians, or equipment operators. The ambitious ones will become strategists or even generals. Why clog the ranks of the armed forces with �the rich� (who have little incentive to serve, given the plethora of further wealth they can accumulate in the commercial and industrial world) against their will (which will create half-hearted and expendable fighters) and deprive the military of the free market tendency to improve the lives of all of its participants? Moreover, what repulsive communistic worm is the idea that �social gaps� need be narrowed in the first place? True, the rich enjoy a higher standard of living, yet it is deserved, through innovation and effort, the design of products people desire and benefit from, and planned, skillful investment. At the same time, the contributions of a Gates or a Rockefeller or a Ford elevate, through the goods they render available and the economic stimulus they provide, everyone�s lives dramatically, from the lower upper class to the poorest of the poor. The gap widens, because people�s riches are magnified at different rates, but all become wealthier under undiluted capitalism. The vilest taint that can be applied to such a system is the reduction of everyone, regardless of accomplishment, individual fortitude, and ideology, to the muck of the trenches.
And this is precisely what the prospective structure of today�s draft would bring upon us. If Franklin Roosevelt can be deemed Rangel�s intellectual grandfather, his father is another Democratic President, Jimmy Carter, who had reinstituted the draft registration requirement in 1980 (incidentally, also as a lame-duck measure!). Congressional adjustments to the draft in 1971 coupled with Carter�s initiative generate a menacing scenario that could stifle the dreams of the most intelligent and ambitious people in the country. A U.S. Military website (http://usmilitary.about.com/library/milinfo/bldrafthistory.htm.) explains that �if a draft were held today, there would be fewer reasons to excuse a man from service. Before Congress made �improvements� [quotations are mine] to the draft in 1971, a man could qualify for a student deferment if he could show he was a full-time student making satisfactory progress toward a degree. Under the current law, a college student can have his induction postponed only until the end of the current semester. A senior can be postponed until the end of the academic year.� If a striving young man, perhaps even a prodigy, who studies to become a scientist, a physician, a humanities professor, a businessman, holds expectations for himself to generate millions from his efforts in addition to an incalculable amount of self-esteem gained from self-fulfillment, the government cares not and dismisses his rational desires with a casual, one-size-fits-all �Pah!� He is relegated to the front lines, or, in the best possible scenario, to a branch of the armed forces which he does not select and in which his particular comfort in the performance of required tasks is disregarded. He may be grouped with thugs, scoundrels, ex-convicts, and what will unite them will be naught but a date on a birth certificate. Imagine the grueling torment, internal and external, that a man robbed of a college education will face, imagine the ruin or at least the crippling delay it will pose to his life, imagine the chronic terror, the cringing submission, the futile appeasement, and the never-relenting barrage of insults he will need to endure before his malicious prankster peers and his slave-driving officers. Those who neither desire nor are currently undertaking higher education will pay the same physical price, yet endure no psychological burdens; they are already apathetic to their fate in all regards. It is he, the one for whom life would have been bliss, who is degraded to the greatest possible level, all for the sake of egalitarianism in the armed forces.
A clever but unsubstantiated argument employed in favor of conscription is that it would deter popular support for military involvements by imbuing the populace with a more direct �sense of responsibility� in regard to the conflict. Risky engagements, say the draft advocates, can be avoided by persons who would in the instance of their occurrence be required to place their lives on the line. As a first line of defense against this contention it is fitting to refer to historical facts. Did a draft during World War I deter against U.S. involvement in World War II? Did a draft during World War II deter against U.S. involvement in Korea? Did a draft during the Korean War deter against U.S. involvement in Vietnam? Of course not. Why?
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