In my Defining ideas article last month, “The design is still a bad idea”, I made a case against a traditional design for obtaining military manpower. A related proposal involves a universal drafting of young people, men and women, that would give them the choice between military and civilian service.
Such a design is also a bad idea. Some of the arguments against such a design are the same as the arguments against a military design. The distinguishing features of a universal trait also raise other issues. The bottom line is that, as I will show, universal conscription is even more objectionable than limited military conscription. A universal design, like a military design, would violate the freedom of young people to choose their profession and not take into account the losses to these young people. Moreover, a universal design would, by definition, take away the freedom of many more young people than a military design. Moreover, universal conscription could make it more difficult for the military to obtain the desired amount of high-quality manpower for the first term, as some military officials have acknowledged.
These are the opening paragraphs of my latest piece for the Hoover Institution: “Forced National Service: Worse than design,” Defining ideasAugust 2, 2024.
Another excerpt:
The suggestion of harsh measures for young people was not unique to William James. At the famous Military Draft Conference of December 1966, a conference seen by participant Milton Friedman as a turning point toward opposition to the draft, noted anthropologist Margaret Mead called for the drafting of women as well as men. She realized that there was a special problem in women that did not exist in men: women could get pregnant. (It’s a shame Mead wasn’t there to explain that fact to Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who during her confirmation hearing: said that because she was not a biologist, she could not define a woman. Anthropologist, not a biologist, Margaret Mead had no problem with that.)
Read the whole thing.