ST has taken a stance in support of a draft for national service. I am not sure how I feel about this.
If I had kids, I would be extremely reluctant to send them to college, because I wouldn’t want them to be brainwashed. If national service becomes a thing, all the same people who want control over our children through the school system will be lining up to control national servce. The only difference would be, you wouldn’t be able to opt out of national service. I am very wary of this.
I think I understand why ST likes the idea, but I am not convinced that it would do what he would like for it to do.
ST UnWoked & UnVaxxed! 
That’s probably the next post, JaC; but think “Volunteers in Service to America” and “Teach for America” (both retooled, of course).
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I think we are beginning to move away from the interminable “educational” process for young adults, and from requiring expensive credentials h. I think it would be better if they all had to do something useful, maybe from 18 to 19. They would learn they have value. They might even find something they like and are good at, and then: they’re set for life! I think that’s a good idea.
And so is a professional soldier class…I think..? That is a harder problem. When our country goes to war, shouldn’t every citizen serve and sacrifice, like Churchill said: they also serve who only stand and wait.
Right now, I reckon we have the worst of all possible worlds: a volunteer, non-professional cadre, BUT drawn only from a tiny percentage of the country. It was not like that during VietNam, as I wrote in a post several years ago. There was almost nobody who didn’t have someone at risk, if they weren’t at risk themselves. To be continued…
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Thanks for this and looking forward to this discussion. L1 is too FYI.
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My thinking on National Service is it may be a tool to make Milton Friedman’s quote below more likely than what we are doing now.
“I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or it they try, they will shortly be out of office.”
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My dad always used to say: the military is a soft berth in peacetime. What I wonder, Simon, is where we’d get the professional warriors. Do you think we could get enough men ( and yes I said men, not women and— for God’s sake! not people who have undergone radical trans surgery) to effectively defend, fight a war, for us?
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