On Universal Conscription

 

 "I honestly think that every US citizen should serve in the military for at least two years."
~ Comment on Facebook

As we look at the degeneration of our culture, it becomes apparent that younger generations are lacking in things like discipline, self-confidence, and the idea of serving one's fellow man, but are instead increasingly dependent, self-centered, and narcissistic.  It isn't surprising that simplistic solutions are floated - like this common suggestion above, that young people be subject to universal military conscription.

The reasoning would be sound - if we were dealing with animals or machines.  If something doesn't work, you apply outside force to get a different result.  But most of us treat human beings differently than golden retrievers or Wankel rotary engines.  Especially, as members of Western civilization, as being within the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition, and as Americans, a solution grounded in empowering the State to solve social problems ought to raise a red flag (perhaps even literally so).

Applying the "military for all" option for human beings rests upon the fallacy of "post hoc ergo propter hoc" - that because previous generations (such as the generation that went through World War II) were better equipped for life than the current crop of young men and women, and because our grandfathers and grandmothers were shaped by the rigors of military life, both at the battlefront and on the homefront, it follows that widespread military service would inculcate values of discipline, service, thrift, and personal responsibility into the current profligate and rootless generation.  Of course, this presumes that military service and such positive traits are related by causation instead of mere correlation.  

There are indeed a lot of variables in the current cultural soup, too many to presume that adding one ingredient will assure a pleasant stew.

Another problem with the "make everybody serve two years in the military" solution is that it is merely a conservative appropriation of a progressive idea, namely that the military exists for the purpose of social engineering.  The Left believes the military is a means to promoting the agenda of ethnic diversity, pushing quotas and overt race-consciousness - if not outright racial hygiene - within the ranks to achieve its social goals.  The Left also uses the military to promote sexual diversity and the mainstreaming of identities and behaviors that are not within the normal range of the bell curve.  The Left is now also pursuing a political agenda that seeks to cull out soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines whose political ideas may be considered too "extreme" (read: "conservative").

To all of these, the Right rightly cries "foul!" - but the Right likewise sees the military as its own Petri dish to effect social ends, by means of the oft-floated idea of compulsory universal conscription.

The purpose of the military is not to make people more accepting of the woke ideology, nor is it to get your lazy twenty-somethings to learn how to wake up and go to work instead of sleeping in on mom's couch and playing video games all day.  The purpose of the military is to defend the country against invasion, and to provide a deterrent to such attacks.  This is not to say that the United States doesn't use their armed forces to twist foreign arms, to threaten invasion for its own global interests, and to essentially occupy other countries.  But in general, for a country - any country - the military's primary job is to protect the people of that country from invasion.

Turning the military into a social experiment, jobs program, path to college, or a way to instill responsibility in the minds of ne'er-do-wells does not serve the purpose of the military.  And it would likely weaken it.

The suggestion of vastly increasing the size and scope of the military by drafting every 18-year old man and woman presumes that the armed forces are understaffed.  To the contrary, the Unites States taxpayers pay more for "defense" than the next ten countries combined, including all military expenditures of China and Russia.  To add to the numbers of personnel by the millions would be to create jobs that are not needed, and to push an even larger tax burden for the military than we have now at roughly a three-quarter of a trillion dollars per annum.  This influx of recruits would need to be housed, equipped, fed, paid, and trained.  Conservatives used to understand the dictum that money does not grow on trees, though it is printed fraudulently by the Fed. 

And there is also the temptation that having a vastly larger military establishment will result in looking for ways to use it.  When one's only tool is a hammer, one tends to see nails everywhere.  Expanding the military could well result in increased bellicosity on the part of the military and civilian leadership of the country.  After all, what good is a massive standing army if you don't have someone to invade, some "monster to destroy"?

As any serious student of American history knows, the founders were greatly opposed to the idea of a standing federal army, and made no provision for it in the Constitution.  The founders considered standing armies to be a threat to liberty.  

At the time of the founding of the Republic, there was indeed a military obligation of sorts - but not to a standing army.  Able-bodied males of fighting age were considered members of the militia - citizen soldiers - who voluntarily trained with their own families and communities.  They were not taken away from home and perhaps even sent into foreign countries.  Instead, they drilled on the community green periodically with their neighbors. And this was part of genuinely defending the country - even against the federal government itself if need be - hence the Second Amendment.  The militia was not a character-building exercise or scheme to make citizens appreciate racial differences.  Its members  continued to hold their civilian jobs and lives.  

This scheme of artificially increasing the government labor supply in the now-professional standing federal armed forces is the equivalent of FDR's alphabet agencies to pay men to dig holes and fill them as a fallacious way to stimulate the economy - which resulted in prolonging the Great Depression for many years.  For conservatives to suggest such a massive Big Government "solution" demonstrates a lack of understanding of basic market economics.  Were we to suddenly give the military an influx of millions of teenagers - whose services aren't really needed - would create a vast supply with no demand - with the burden of paying for this discrepancy placed on the back of the taxpayer.  And given our progressive tax structure, this would amount to a massive Marxian redistribution of wealth.

And this is coming from the conservative side of things, not the progressive.

Moreover, today's military is not your grandfather's service.  No indeed.  Physical standards have been lowered, the sexes train and serve in close contact, the training received by soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines is today less rigorous than that of the men who prepared for combat in World War II - who would not have imagined the idea of maternity flight suits for female aviators and support crews.  In fact, in recent years, the leadership of the military has become, well, "woke."  Conservatives have been plucked out of the highest levels of leadership, and the military - like other institutions of our society - has become focused on leftist political ideology and goals.

So what conservative in his right mind would think of sending all young people to be brainwashed with the same Critical Theory and Intersectionalism that one finds in the debauched universities?

There is also a constitutional issue.  Were our judiciary honest in submitting the federal government to the strictures of the Constitution, the black-robes would have long ago forbad conscription based on the Thirteenth Amendment.  For under that provision, slavery (or "involuntary servitude") is only permitted for convicts.  In other words, we may enslave jailed criminals and force them into jobs against their will, but to do this to those who are innocent of any crime is not permitted.  That's why slavery is illegal in the United States.  Those who join the military currently do so voluntarily.  They willingly set aside some of their rights (such as criticizing the president) for the time of their enlistment, being told what do to and when to do it, being under the Uniform Code of Military Justice instead of the civil courts, and being subject to orders - even orders that may well assure their deaths.  To conscript people and put them into such situations is simply slavery by a different name.

It is common to refer to military "service," to refer to the military itself as "the service."  It is common for citizens to thank veterans for their "service."  The word "service" is based on the Latin "servus" - which means "slave."  And there are other forms of service in which one is under orders: such as the police and fire services.  But these too are voluntary vocations into which one enters by means of a voluntary contract.

It is curious that conservatives, of all people, should advocate a form of State slavery to achieve an elusive, if not Utopian, social goal.

There is also the practical consideration that armies made up of conscripts are just not as good as those comprised of volunteers.  This is not rocket science.  Whom would you rather have building an addition to your house, a professional contractor who does that kind of work voluntarily?  Or a team of 18-year -old convicts who have been ordered by the State to show up and labor under compulsion?  

Universal conscription is also a manifestation of bad economics.  

Most people are not familiar with the term "opportunity cost" or Frederic Bastiat's "broken window fallacy."  The idea is that any action taken is done at the cost of the action not taken.  If a family vacations at the beach, it does so at the expense of vacationing in the mountains - because one cannot do both.  If a young man or woman is serving in the military, he or she is doing so at the expense of some civilian calling.  This could mean that a young person who is brilliant in math or theology or medical research will instead be learning how to march, to field strip an M16, and passing time polishing boots instead of studying nuclear physics, going into labor and nursing a child, or starting one's own business.  The costs of such roads-not-taken are unseen, and thus are not typically factored into the equation.  But those costs are very real.

One might argue that one can be an engineer or chaplain or doctor, or one could be both a mom and a Green Beret, but the reality is that serving in the military, as is every other career option, is at the expense of serving elsewhere, where market forces communicate information about careers and opportunities to those entering the labor market.  The military does not operate based on the market, but rather by bureaucratic government planning.  Thus the Army will have to find something else for an aspiring poet to do, the Navy will be put into the unenviable position of employing the Latin scholar, the Air Force will have to figure out where to slot a dog trainer, and the Marines will be forced to put a nursery school teacher to work somewhere in the Corps.  

Again, the purpose of the military is narrower than the free civilian marketplace.  Conscription would result in "malinvestment" of human capital, and would socialize a good part of the job market, not to mention taking away a resource of human capital from the private sector.  And this central-planning government approach is a conservative idea?

Such a scheme also violates the Christian doctrine of vocation. 

God has created people with different gifts and talents.  Not everyone is called into service vocations, like pastors, teachers, police officers, nuns, those who work in orphanages, EMTs, and yes, soldiers.  Rightfully understood, the military is a godly calling.  We see this all throughout the Scriptures.  Joshua led a famous military campaign into Jericho and other cities in Canaan.  King David had his "mighty men."  St. Paul even famously compares the Christian life to a soldier wearing armor.  The Church on earth is often called the Church Militant.  Traditionally, military life is the place for big men who can fight hand to hand against other big men.  Technology has expanded opportunities for military service, for example, to support the big guys who are in the field with rifles and grenades and bayonets.  But the life of the warrior is just not for everyone.

Moreover, the suggestion that any and all people, even all 18-year-olds, are capable of being soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines is quite the insult to the military vocation.  It suggests that one who is obese, sociopathic, antisocial, of low IQ, a person with authority issues, the uncoordinated, the physically weak, those with demanding physical ailments, etc. can all become warriors is not only ludicrous, but takes a position that the job of soldiering is the lowest common denominator, that there is no reason to cull out anyone from military life.  

Why would a conservative strap the officers and NCOs of the military with millions of new recruits who may well be entirely unfit, and perhaps a detriment to the readiness of the country to defend against attack?  Again, this is the same as the Left insisting that sexual minorities be accommodated in the ranks at any cost - whether it strengthens or weakens the military forces.

No, the solution to our malaise does not lie in State compulsion.  That is the easy and lazy way out, and it won't work.  There are always unintended consequences.  What we need is not conscription, but parenting.  We don't need every man and women to put on fatigues and tactical boots, but rather to put on the Armor of God, procreate, and raise boys and girls of honor.  We need mentors, not drill sergeants.  We need volunteers who will lead for the sake of love, not more taxpayer supported authoritarianism with an end goal that has nothing to to with doing battle.  We need to restore our lost institutions: morality, community, a commitment to liberty, etc. and that is hard work - far harder than just having the president sign a piece of paper and ordering all teenagers to Fort Benning or Parris Island.

Both progressives and conservatives have the propensity to turn to the State to solve social problems.  This is natural to progressives, but is a contradiction to conservatives.  Those who identity with the political and social Right should abandon seeing Big Government as a Savior, and should instead roll up their own sleeves and get to work improving society by means of liberty, sweat, and the power of human cooperation by means of the market.