Inside me Define the idea According to an article last month,Draft is still a bad idea“I opposed the traditional conscription to provide military manpower. A related proposal would be a universal conscription for young men and women, giving them the option of military or civilian service.
That kind of conscription is also a bad idea. Some of the arguments against it are the same as those against military conscription. The unique nature of universal conscription raises other problems. The bottom line, as I will show, is that universal conscription is much more objectionable than limited military conscription. A universal conscription, like a military conscription, would infringe on young people’s freedom to choose their careers and would not take into account the costs to these young people. Moreover, a universal conscription would, by definition, take away far more freedom from young people than a military conscription would. And, as some military officials have acknowledged, a universal conscription would make it harder for the military to get the high-quality first draft it wants.
This is the opening paragraph of my latest work for the Hoover Institution.Forced National Service: Worse Than Conscription, Define the ideaAugust 2, 2024.
Another excerpt:
William James was not alone in suggesting harsh measures for young men. At the famous draft convention in December 1966, which attendee Milton Friedman saw as a turning point in the opposition to the draft, the eminent anthropologist Margaret Mead argued that women as well as men should be drafted. She realized that women had a special problem that men did not: they could get pregnant. (It is unfortunate that Mead failed to explain this fact to Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was to be heard in her confirmation hearings.) said She could not define woman because she was not a biologist. Margaret Mead, an anthropologist and not a biologist, did not have such a difficulty.)
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