More Liberty

"Rethinking the Draft"

"Conscription is wrongly associated with patriotism, when really it represents collectivism and involuntary servitude."

"Ronald Reagan said it best:  'The most fundamental objection to draft registration is moral.'  The notion of involuntary servitude, in whatever form, is simply incompatible with a free society."

Congressman Ron Paul, 11/27/06

Black Civil Rights Leader Wants to Restore Slavery

According to the Associated Press, civil rights activist and U.S. Congressman Charles Rangel from the 15^th District of New York, will introduce a bill when the 110^th Congress reconvenes to reinstate the draft. Apparently lost on the self-proclaimed civil rights leader is the text of the slavery-banning 13^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which reads, in part: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. It seems that either Congressman Rangel doesn’t equate being conscripted into the military as “involuntary service” or he somehow believes slavery is dandy, so long as it is government that is the slave owner. Neither is tenable.

It is self-evident that forcing citizens to register and be conscripted into the military is both an extreme form of servitude and certainly most involuntary. In these days of ongoing U.S. foreign global interventionism, one would hope that the rounding up of young men by warlords, only to have them shipped off to unfamiliar and dangerous lands against their wills might strike a disharmonious chord -- especially among those forever loudly claiming strong ties to their cultural heritage, their history, and those still seeking reparations.

Or, can it be that in Mr. Rangel’s mind, because it is government rather than private individuals assuming ownership of the enslaved that this “military slavery” is somehow innocuous? From his voting record it is apparent that Mr. Rangel believes generally that collective ownership and control of property is preferable to self ownership and individual liberty. He apparently also fails to understand that, for a good number of reasons, government-owned-and-operated slavery is necessarily and decidedly worse even than that of a system of private or monarchial slavery.

Reinstate the Draft!

Representative Charlie Rangel (New York):  Reinstate the Draft!  All Youth Must Serve the Glorious Homeland!  Sieg Heil!

According to John Heilprin, Associated Press Writer, Rep. Rangel will seek to reinstate draft:

"Americans would have to sign up for a new military draft after turning 18 under a bill the incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee says he will introduce next year.  Rep. Charles Rangel, D-NY., said Sunday he sees his idea as a way to deter politicians from launching wars.

'There's no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the Administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way,' Rangel said.
....

'If We're going to challenge Iran and challenge North Korea and then, as some people have asked, to send more troops to Iraq, we can't do that without a draft,' Rangel said."

Rangel is truly living up to the ideal of the Democratic party's mascot. The one thing the neocons don't have enough of is cannon fodder, and this monumental ass of a Democratic "leader" wants to give them just that –- all the cannon fodder they can order up, by enslaving people who otherwise have the good sense to not enlist when our nation's foreign policy is under the control of a cabal of chicken-hawks with a fetish for "pre-emptive" war and empire.  Does Rangel really think a draft would have stopped the neocons from invading Iraq?

As for the notion that politicians will hesitate to go to war with a draft in place because it means kids from their own communities will have to fight, Rangel is presuming that Congress will even be consulted.  Under the 2001 AUMF, and the broad grant of power Bush has claimed it gave him, he does not think he needs a vote from Congress to go to war.  Bush is more likely to send in the troops first, and then ask for Congressional "support" after.  And even if the President did ask Congress what it thinks prior to just starting a war, warhawks in Congress have already demonstrated, with a volunteer military, that they don't give a damn about sending kids from their own communities off to die in some sand-pit.  Why should they care more about draftees?  Does he really think the politician's own children will actually be drafted and sent off to fight and die? What a fool.

So why is Rangel is so hot for a draft?

He said having a draft would not necessarily mean everyone called to duty would have to serve.  Instead, "young people (would) commit themselves to a couple of years in service to this great republic, whether it's our seaports, our airports, in schools, in hospitals," with a promise of educational benefits at the end of service. (Emphasis added.)

Ah, there is Comrade Rangel's real motivation; his real wet dream -- a communist-style nationalization of all us unwashed masses -- the worker bees -- for compelled national "service to this great republic" wherever he and his fellow travelers at Party Headquarters think we are best utilized as their resources. 

Lenin, Stalin and Mao would be so proud.  Of the ten planks of the Communist Manifesto, number eight was "Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of Industrial armies, especially for agriculture" and part of plank ten was the "Combination of education with industrial production." 

Keep your eye on this totalitarian idea of "national service" -- with all of our kids enrolled at eighteen into an American version of the Hitler Youth -- it is not going away anytime soon.  Would-be slave foreman Rangel is not alone in his desire that the federal government own the means of production -- your kids.  As William Grigg noted back in 1997, in a New American article responding to a similar idea during the Clinton Administration, the idea of National Service is a staple of statist regimes throughout history, whether they be communist (international socialist) or fascist (national socialist) in orientation.

Reinstate the Draft!

Reinstate the draft!  So says Edward Bernard Glick in his commentary published by the Christian Science Monitor on September 5th.

Mr. Glick, where are we?  Ancient Sparta?  The USSR?  Nazi Germany or the ant hills of Maoist China?  What is happening to this nation? Where has the land of the free gone?

Where in our Constitution was Congress, or any part of the national government, given the power to use our children as literal national resources, for military or domestic "service?"  The answer is no where.

The closest thing to a draft power in the Constitution is the power “To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions” but even that is not a power to forcefully induct people into a standing army. The militia were state military forces, made up of the people of each state, under officers of their own choosing, and they would fight as such, and here at home, not abroad, for the limited purpose of enforcing the laws of the union (which were very few) suppressing rebellions and repelling invasions.