Rangel and the draft

At first listen, this is just a crazy liberal trying to offend. Rangel uses the old liberal complaint of minorities in the military.

Problem is, the military is an all volunteer force. And the demographics are fairly representative of the country as a whole. And the military is an excellent way to take a poor minority out of the repression of minority cultures where any black child that does well academically is called an "Uncle Tom". And the ratio of those in harm's way, that is front line troops, is way over-represented by whites. So Rangel is just another chip-on-the-shoulder minority.

But does the idea have some merit? Would we be nation-building in some hellhole if the Kennedy's and the Clinton's children could be drafted as cannon fodder to drive up and down mined roads? I don't think so. (Could you imagine Chelsea Clinton in the army? Wouldn't that be fun? I knew a guy in the military who was based in Washington. He was some kind of White House liaison in the Clinton years. He tells a fair number of incidents when a bratty teen-age Chelsea would remark to some military guy that her daddy hated the military and thought they were all fairies.)

I enlisted in the military myself out of a sense of owing something back to this country that has given me so much. But I see less and less people with this attitude. What I see are more and more people looking at the country and government as nothing more than a source for welfare, whether it be elderly on medicare and social security or younger people on medicaid and disability. I think a draft, with no exemptions for marriage, college or being rich, would get people to pay more attention to what their government is doing, and would instill patriotism in a lost generation. (Look at the demographics of the under-30 crowd).

Rangel quickly removed any thought that he actually supported the military by quickly saying that draftees wouldn't have to be in the military, but could be part of a giant new Public Works boondoggle. In which case, I would be against this as the government would take tax money to fund liberal social causes.

But still, wouldn't it be nice to have a draft that would take just enough people to fill the present manpower needs without having to recruit? And wouldn't a new GI bill that would send these people to college after their 2 to 4 years change the liberal bastions of education? I mean, do you think someone who has been shot at by people he's trying to save would listen very long to some nut-case liberal rant about how evil the US is? I think a few hard rights to the chin would patriotize even the most inveterate liberal professor with tenure.

But then with socialists controlling the house, and a President doing all he can to turn the US military into the world's policemen, dissolve our borders with corrupt kleptocracies like Mexico and allow criminal aliens to destroy our middle class and export our manufacturing base, I suppose we shouldn't dare let these Republicrat crooks in office have such a power.

Vincet Veritas, MEB