Jestor wrote: I am in the US, no.military experience...
And, I think it should be mandatory...
Two years (minimum) military training...
Then college/job/whatever...
I agree. In fact, I'd go so far as to agree with Heinlein in
Starship Troopers, which advances the notion that military service (or some governmental service, at least) should be required to obtain the priviliege of voting.
"Value" has no meaning other than in relationship to living beings. The value of a thing is always relative to a particular person, is completely personal and different in quantity for each living human — "market value" is a fiction, merely a rough guess at the average of personal values, all of which must be quantitatively different or trade would be impossible. … This very personal relationship, "value", has two factors for a human being: first, what he can do with a thing, its use to him… and second, what he must do to get it, its cost to him. There is an old song which asserts that "the best things in life are free". Not true! Utterly false!This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted… and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears. … I fancy that the poet who wrote that song meant to imply that the best things in life must be purchased other than with money — which is true — just as the literal meaning of his words is false. The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion . . . and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life is life itself — ultimate cost for perfect value."
Either way, in the area of conscription, it should be all or nothing--either service should be mandatory for everyone, or mandatory for no one. Which is why I have a HUGE problem with the way conscription (not currently in use, but still politically obfuscated as "Selective Service") works in the U.S.
The problem I have with it is that, while women can serve in the U.S. military, they aren't required to enroll for Selective Service. Men are.
In fact, they go so far as to state that
"Individuals who are born female and have a sex change are not required to register. U.S. citizens or immigrants who are born male and have a sex change are still required to register." It's the law, and failure to do so is a felony (which means that in many states
it can cost you your right to vote
) that can result in
"a fine of up to $250,000 and/or a prison term of up to five years" and finds themselves ineligible for
"...job training under the Federal Workforce Investment Act, student financial aid...which include such need-based programs as Guaranteed Student Loans and Pell Grants...the opportunity to work for the Federal Government and the U.S. Postal Service, or, if an immigrant, the priviliege of becoming a United States Citizen..." And, while the legality and constitutionality of excluding women from this requirement has been called into question,
"A Supreme Court decision in 1981, Rostker v. Goldberg, held that registering only men did not violate the due process clause of the Constitution."
So, in review: Only men are required to sign up for the potentiality of a draft in the United States, and only men can receive a felony penalty (which may impede their voting rights) for failing to do so. Which means that women in the United States have no military investment whatsoever tied up with their ability to vote. While I firmly believe in the equal suffrage of women, this poses an instance where men are essentially required to "pay" for their right to vote in many states and women achieve it for free.
This inconsistency troubles me, as it troubles
Karen Straughan
, who notes:
In several modern, democratic nations, such as Norway and South Korea, military service remains a mandatory obligation of the citizen. Well, if that citizen is a man.
And what price did women have to pay, in terms of a citizen's obligation to government, to purchase their right to vote? None, you say? Oh yeah, that's right, only men had to purchase their citizenship rights--women just had to finally agree with each other that they wanted them, and then ask.
And in light of that, you know what's really awesome? Men have, at times, though not always, been exempt during a draft if they were married or had children, because drafting a husband or father was considered an unfair hardship to women and children, and was to be avoided if possible. One of the few ways a man could avoid his obligation to society--to die--was if a woman or child would have to help him pay that price. Yep, society sure was interested in giving women the short end of the stick, all right.
So, all that rambling to say this: All, or nothing. Everyone, or no one. Anything less is unfair.
