Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Reinstate the Draft? Think again....

The events in Berkeley have prompted commentary from some on the Right along the lines of this:

What needs to happen is to reinstall the draft, and require each college grad to spend at least two years in the military service, preferably the Marine Corp, and I believe we would see some great changes in the minds of our youth.

Sorry, but no, although the sentiment is in the right place. Our military has done splendidly in Iraq (and don't let the liberal media fool you, they have done splendidly) precisely because they are all-volunteer. I would be wary of taking commie kids into the service, because then there would be a 5th column of unhappy traitors in the serivce who would "frag" their officers if given half a chance. That would be a bad idea.

Would exposing some commie brats to real hardship knock some of the Bolshevik brainwashing out of their heads? For the naive ones in a state of youthful rebellion, perhaps, but then again, two years post graduation, trying to find a real job and otherwise working in the real world, would accomplish that too, and at much less taxpayer cost. Moreover, there are two big problems with this line of reasoning:

1. For a good many of the leftist brats, it is *not* rebellion. They are "red diaper babies". They are actually "good" sons and daughters, following the scripts instilled in them by their commie parents. The Old Left of the 1930's spawned the New Left of the 1960's which has spawned the Newest Left now.

When I was a student at Berkeley (I know the territory) I came to know the "Student activist" types. Nearly all of them had parents in the faculty or otherwise in the University bureaucracy administration, and their parents were tacitly and sometimes actively egging them on.

You would NOT want to draft these people--potential Benedict Arnolds, Alger Hisses, and Philip Agees all. I would use a revived Un-American Activities Committee on these people instead. Name them and shame them.

2. A draft would give these aforementioned ringleaders a "hook" with which to recruit the naive and the youthfully rebellious. It was no accident that campus unrest ended almost immediately, once Nixon ended the draft.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Would you serve? Just curious.

Curmudgeon said...

Sure, if push came to shove. But you really aren't getting Rangel's and the rest of the Left's angle, are you? They *want* malcontents in the ranks. As their banners at their demonstrations say, "We Support Our Troops--When They Kill Their Officers."