HB - A Constitutional Amendment (Amended, Final Vote)

[Goldwater]

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This is a House passed bill that was amended by the Senate, so it will go to an immediate final vote. Please vote  AYE, NAY, or Abstain.

[OneJ]

Aye

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

READ THIS TRUMAN POST!!!!!!

I can see that I'm in the minority here, and I don't expect to convince anyone, but I'd just like to point out that in the absence of a draft, the Union would in all likelihood have lost the Civil War (something I hardly believe would have been good for the country, its citizens, or the world). War and popular opinion are not nearly as simple as whether the country is worthy of defense. Historically, most major conflicts in our history have followed a similar trajectory. At the outset, there is normally a great, patriotic outpouring, and volunteers are easily found; but as the fighting drags on, and the casualties begin to add up, that spirit is replaced by an understanding of what war actually means. It becomes harder and harder to find willing recruits, not because citizens believe the country is not worth defending, but because they would rather someone else were responsible for it. To insist that it would be better for the nation to submit to the conquest of a foreign enemy than to conscript citizens into military service strikes me as a very odd position – and I say this as someone who would have opposed every war waged in the last fifty years.

To clarify: I don't think a draft is at all necessary at the present time, nor likely to be necessary for the foreseeable future. I would happily support legislation to abolish the Selective Service, and would just as happily support this amendment were it restricted to conscientious objectors (or, for that matter, if a clause were added allowing Congress to temporarily reinstate the draft by a 2/3 vote). Yet to engrave in the Constitution a prophesy that we will never again have need for the last resort of conscription strikes me as foolish and short-sighted, and I would ask the Congress – with little hope of success – to reconsider the extent of this proposal.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Members of the House, I encourage you to read carefully both the post above and the post I am about to make on this matter.

For me, I am completely opposed to the concept of a draft and like the distinguished Prime Minister, I oppose the continuation of the selective service.

However, I don't think it responsible to insert into the constitution a complete prohibition on the practice in all circumstances. I think it should require or a substantial threshold to be put into effect, like say 2/3rd as the Prime Minister suggested.

That being said we have seen historical examples where this would have made victory impossible. The left-libertarian opposition to the draft seems to take the approach that sovereignty is merely a market place. If countries cannot stand on their own merits, they should fall and if the notion of joining the defense of a country cannot be convincing enough, it should lose the war and possibly its existence.

In a world of tyrants this could be mean the extermination of democracy. In world of slavery, this could mean the surrender of freedom. I think this is too doctrinaire and too ideological of an approach to take and one that necessitates a complete rejection of the lessons of history to accomplish such. We have not experienced directly a situation where "stay the course" was anything other than act of folly and incompetence. But the students of history know that there have been many instances where staying the course was necessary for sake of freedom, for the sake of democracy and for the sake of humanity. We cannot know what form warfare will take, nor the multitudes necessary to provide for a common defense and it thus irresponsible to deny completely the manpower necessary to provide for such defense when the extreme cases should arise.

It is for these reasons, that I cannot vote for this amendment.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

NAY

[LLR]

Abstain

[CMB222]

Nay

[Leinad]

I had a thing written up earlier but it timed out. I will try to recreate it:

We must remember that we live in the nuclear age. Talking about the Civil War in the context of modern day warfare is like talking about how long it took to ride somewhere on horseback when estimating traveling the same distance by plane. In the time it takes to deploy ten thousand troops to storm an enemy city, we could probably destroy 90% of their country with a tiny fraction of the people. Not that massive destruction of that sort is a good thing, but when we're talking about the (very unlikely, in the age of nuclear deterrents) scenario where it is an any way an appropriate response to literally force people to risk their lives (which I would argue in itself is morally reprehensible, but I'm taking a more "realist" approach than a morality-based one for the sake of an effective debate with regards to my audience) I would imagine it would be just as appropriate to get rid of this existential threat to civilization by technological means (which is how wars will be fought going forwards--see: drones--and I can't foresee a way that the rapid advancement of technology will slow down other than it being used to destroy everything--and in the case of an end of civilization we can come back and amend this ).

To sum it up: I find it very unrealistic that we will "need" the draft again, and considering how horrible a thing the draft is, I can't at all support it continuing. To me, that's not a "left-libertarian" position or an "ideological" one, but the sane one considering the context of modern warfare.

Obviously, I will vote

AYE

and encourage everyone else to do the same. Like, change your vote if you've already voted. Keeping the draft because of an irrational fear based on something that happened in an almost completely different military climate is absurd.

[Trans Rights Are Human Rights]

Aye agree with Leinad and apologize for the pun.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Talking about the Civil War in the context of modern day warfare is like talking about how long it took to ride somewhere on horseback when estimating traveling the same distance by plane.

Isn't that rather what you're doing, though, with this confident assertion that there will never again be need for a draft because of the state of 'modern' warfare? Setting aside the fact that real-life military academies do use the Civil War as a source for contemporary strategy, it seems contradictory to scorn the past as a model for the present while adopting the present as the model for the future.

I'm not at all convinced that modern technology will render conventional warfare irrelevant, not the least because various individuals have been predicting it for centuries - and they've always been wrong. Once upon a time, machine guns and airplanes were supposed to render massive infantry forces irrelevant; it strikes me as the height of arrogance to declare the end of warfare as it has existed for the last 10,000 years because the guns are bigger now. Nuclear age or no nuclear age, were we ever (God forbid) to find ourselves at war with a major world power, the resolution of that war would depend - at least in part - on our ability to occupy and hold territory. I don't see anything in our present arsenal that could accomplish that quite as effectively as foot soldiers.

I can see I'm going to be outvoted here, but I stand with my counsel and that of Speaker Yankee, and hope fervently that my estimation of the opinion of this House may be proven wrong.

[LLR]

Abstain

Aye

[Goldwater]

By a vote of 4-2, this passes.

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[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I'm fairly certain Constitutional Amendments require the assent of two thirds of the whole House (i.e. 6 votes) to pass, not merely two thirds of voting representatives.

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The "membership of [the House of Representatives]" is nine, as there are nine sitting representatives; ergo, a vote of 6-3 is the smallest majority sufficient for ratification by this chamber. This was the case under the previous Constitution also, as I recall.

[Goldwater]

Yeah, you are correct, I messed up there. The vote actually fails, due to not getting the required two thirds of the votes.

[Leinad]

I am 100% convinced that modern technology makes a "necessary" draft obsolete, so all you guys just did was leave the door open for malevolent governments to put us into more bullsh!t wars like Vietnam. /sigh/

Also, where is Clyde? A bit concerning that he wants to be President but can't show up for a vote like this, no?

[Anna Komnene]

Okay so if I understand the constitution/rules correctly, this means the amended version that the Senate agreed to is rejected and the original version goes back to the Senate for an up or down vote?

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

Okay so if I understand the constitution/rules correctly, this means the amended version that the Senate agreed to is rejected and the original version goes back to the Senate for an up or down vote?

No, the bill is dead.  The Senate will be taking up PiT's compromise amendment soon.

[Anna Komnene]

Okay so if I understand the constitution/rules correctly, this means the amended version that the Senate agreed to is rejected and the original version goes back to the Senate for an up or down vote?

No, the bill is dead.  The Senate will be taking up PiT's compromise amendment soon.

Oh right.  I see now.  Bills going back and forth for months can be confusing.  It's unfortunate that the House killed this after we did so much to try to appease them.

[Anna Komnene]

Actually I'm not sure.  This is what the constitution says.  For this bill, the original house was the House of Representatives and it was amended in the Senate.  So in this case, the bolded part would imply it goes back to the Senate in its original form, no?

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[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

Huh.  I guess I stand corrected, then.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

There is nothing that dictates you have to follow that path to its complete end, particularly since the unamended version of this bill is rather unworkable.

By that I mean, there is nothing that prevents an alternative bill from being considered in the meantime by the Senate or by the other house.

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

There is nothing that dictates you have to follow that path to its complete end, particularly since the unamended version of this bill is rather unworkable.

By that I mean, there is nothing that prevents an alternative bill from being considered in the meantime by the Senate or by the other house.

Why not?  It sounds like the Senate is clearly obligated to reconsider the original amendment, based on my understanding of the Constitution.  (Although this does sound impractical.  In this case, the Senate clearly did not like the original bill and that's why it made changes to it, so why would the unchanged bill be reconsidered again only to presumably be voted down?)

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

Senate rules would also seem to dictate that we vote on the unchanged version:

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[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Senate rules would also seem to dictate that we vote on the unchanged version:

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Yes, the Vice President would administer that vote.

My point was that PiT could bring up another bill/amendment dealing with the exact same issue, like his compromise before that whole process runs its course.