Should the US Selective Service be abolished?

[specific_name]

I'm of two minds on the issue. On one hand I dislike the idea of compulsory service, especially as it only targets males - it feels unfair to me. However, the lack of compulsory service in the European sense allows American youth to be blissfully unaware of what's going on around the world and of any current "hostilities" we might be involved in.

Perhaps the youth would care more about citizenship and voting, if they realized that democracy and self government is not purely about rights and individualism, but also responsibilities. Regardless, it's difficult for me to feel that military service being mandatory would bring us any civic virtue. You can't do such things through force.

So in the end the SSS should be replaced with something else. There ought to be a national discussion on what citizenship means in the "new" America - that is America as a regular country rather than the only global superpower. I think that's where we're headed in the next two decades, toward multilateralism. As a nation our core focus and self image will have to change, and certainly how we view our military will be a part of that realignment.

[specific_name]

Any country that has a draft cannot legitimately consider itself a free country.

My father was drafted to fight in Vietnam so I take this issue is very personal to me.

A lot of people were drafted to fight so called "good" or otherwise winnable wars, but we don't hear so much about resistance to those. Just think of WWI and how Wilson stamped out dissent like a dictator. Agreed, it would be hard to call America a free country under Wilson's second term at least.

However, by this logic America essentially never would have been a free country nor would any of the Western democracies. All have had conscription and chattel slavery often simultaneously; all while espousing liberal values.

America didn't have a true national draft until the Civil War of course, but the state militias were filled with drafts during the War for Independence and on some other occasions.