Should the US Selective Service be abolished?

[greenforest32]

I think the military should be 100% voluntary and therefore don't support conscription, a draft, or the Selective Service (basically a pre-draft).

Your thoughts?

[dead0man]

Yeah it should probably be abolished, but it's pretty far down the list of the govt agencies that need to 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.

[TNF]

Absolutely not. It should be expanded to women as well, however.

[Frodo]

No, keep it.  It's an insurance policy in case the unimaginable occurs (e.g. another world war).  I personally like to think of it as a backup weapon -you hope never to use it (and most of the time you don't), but in case you do at least you know it will be right there at your disposal when you really need it.  

[Del Tachi]

Keep it.

If the need ever arises for the United States to amass a huge standing army then it already has the paperwork!

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Thing is,we're not set up to conduct a draft, and in the time it would take to set up the bureaucracy to handle it, we'd be able to do the registration from scratch.

That doesn't even consider that in any conceivable situation in which a draft would be needed, the paperwork that had been previously collected would be a bunch of radioactive dust.

[courts]

Abolish it. Although it's not really enforced anyway.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Ignoring moral arguments about conscription, it's a waste of money anyway, especially since it's not really enforced as noted.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Abolish & pass a Constitutional amendment outlawing conscription.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

     Abolish & pass a Constitutional amendment outlawing conscription.

We already have one, the 14th.

[Yelnoc]

     Abolish & pass a Constitutional amendment outlawing conscription.

We already have one, the 14th.

The one about racial discrimination?

[TJ in Oregon]

     Abolish & pass a Constitutional amendment outlawing conscription.

We already have one, the 14th.

The one about racial discrimination?

The one originally written about racial discrimination that has systematically been interpreted through the idea of a living constitution to constitutionally gurantee a lot of the liberal social positions deemed as required by the constitution. Wow, say that ten times fast.

[Free Palestine]

     Abolish & pass a Constitutional amendment outlawing conscription.

We already have one, the 14th.

13th, actually. 

Conscription is involuntary servitude, and should be abolished.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Abolish & pass a Constitutional amendment outlawing conscription.

We already have one, the 14th.

     We do, but the courts have found their way out of actually applying it to military conscription. Given the power of the status quo in American law, I believe that the best course of action is simply to pass an amendment that unequivocally applies to military conscription.

[Free Palestine]

We should have mandatory conscription for men AND women.   Everybody should do time in the military in some capacity.

If we had mandatory conscription we wouldn't have invaded Iraq.  Mandatory conscription would cut down on all this ridiculous flag waving and those stupid flag pins.

I'm sick of arm chair patriots.

You're American and love this country... Fine we get it.  We love this country too.  That's why we live here AND PAY OUR TAXES.  Difference is we are secure and don't need to wave a flag and talk about how much we love the country every five minutes.  Its really getting old.

But is sacrificing liberty really worth some social engineering?

[Brandon H]

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.

[Free Palestine]

We should have mandatory conscription for men AND women.   Everybody should do time in the military in some capacity.

If we had mandatory conscription we wouldn't have invaded Iraq.  Mandatory conscription would cut down on all this ridiculous flag waving and those stupid flag pins.

I'm sick of arm chair patriots.

You're American and love this country... Fine we get it.  We love this country too.  That's why we live here AND PAY OUR TAXES.  Difference is we are secure and don't need to wave a flag and talk about how much we love the country every five minutes.  Its really getting old.

But is sacrificing liberty really worth some social engineering?

I don't see how NOT invading Iraq is sacrificing liberty.  Instead we have to live under the crushing yoke of the trillions of dollars that misadventure cost us.

The crushing yoke of forced military service isn't much better.

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.

As was mine.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

And my father was drafted to fight the Japs.  Altho he never left stateside, (he wasn't old enough to be drafted until after D-Day) he did meet my mother at the USO, so I'm not about to complain about the draft.

[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.