How to lose the majority

Yesterday, the incoming chair of the House Ways and Means Committee renewed his call for reinstitution of the draft. It is odd that Mr. Rangel would renew his call during the week that Milton Friedman died. But such is politics.

Rangel and others argue that the draft is a democratizing force. That is nonsense. Those of us who supported to creation of the All Voluntary Military(I worked for a Senator who was a key supporter of the concept) found that all of the promises of the volunteer force have been realized and none of the risks raised by the supporters of this form of involuntary servitude threw out have come true.

The draft at it was last practiced was called the Selective Service System whose leader was a general named Lewis B. Hershey. It accomplished none of that - it was not selective, it did not perform a service and it was certainly not a system. It was run, as these kinds of bureaucracies are often run, with an indifference to anything but maintaining its own operations. Hershey was blind in one eye (somehow appropriate for his bureaucratic role) and the only person named a general who never served in a combat role - although he served in the military for 62 years. How about that for a role model?

One of the canards raised about the draft is that a president would be loathe to enter a war knowing that he would be sending people who were involuntarily there. The evidence from Johnson's wanton efforts in Vietnam belie that "logic" but Rangel continues to press it.

Rangel's proposal would cost plenty. One estimate is in the range of $800,000,000,000. That assumes that all 18-21 year old males would participate in the process at some point and that some range of young women would also avail themselves of this "opportunity" and that the government would not reduce the pay offered to enlisted soldiers. Even if it is a quarter of that estimate, that is still a chunk of change.

If the democrats begin to push this notion, their majority will be short lived. There is no support for the position in the populace and there are a lot of people in my generation who remember the genuinely bizarre policies that the SSS created. There are few issues that would mobilize me as much as a serious attempt to reinstitute the draft.