I was watching John Stossel's show last night on the Fox Business Network where he interviewed Rep. Charles Rangel about the latter's proposal for bringing back an updated version of the draft to the United States. Mr. Rangel's main impetus for making such a suggestion to be considered by the Congress is to see that more Americans have the "privilege" of serving their country and sharing the burden of the common defense, particularly for the upper socioeconomic classes.
Now the first question is whether "serving" one's country is a privilege? If by serving, Mr. Rangel means being employed by the government, then, yes, it is a privilege that the People bestow upon government employees through their elected representatives who act as managers of the People's public affairs. There is a vetting process to ensure that the applicant is capable of doing the job that the People are hiring him to do that includes a minimum standard for education, physical fitness, and emotional/mental stability.
The next question is whether the young people from the upper socioeconomic levels of the United States are somehow shirking their duty to serve their country. Mr. Rangel implied that most of that work was being done by the poor. Mr. Stossel showed him statistics that pointed out that roughly two-thirds of the current members of the U.S. Armed Forces come from families in the middle and upper classes. Mr. Rangel had a little trouble accepting these statistics as real (gee, I wonder why?).
The unfortunate fact of life for young people from poor families is there is a tendency amongst a large portion of them, but certainly not all, to have been in some form of trouble with the law before graduating high school which can disqualify them from government employment. They also have a higher drop-out rate than other groups which means they do not qualify for service in the U.S. military which has a minimum requirement of a high school diploma or equivalent.
Now Mr. Rangel did emphasize that his program didn't require people to just serve in a military capacity but that they could serve in a civilian capacity in some form of domestic national security positions. Let's look at that a little closer. A bunch of people between the ages of 18-42 forced to do a job they don't want to at a minimum wage they don't want to accept at hours of the day they may not want to work with people they may not want to associate with protecting our country from terrorists and foreign invasion.
I'm sure such people would be above such corruption as taking a bribe of $10,000 to look the other way as a strange man with strange accent carted a nuclear device wrapped in a bale of marijuana with a few kilos of opium thrown in for good measure past their guard station, wouldn't they? I'm sure they would also be above reproach for using their positions of authority to personally enrich themselves like those honorable types that work for the TSA, right?
When I was a police officer, I took a course in terrorism where I was introduced to a black militant group that had a certain political agenda. Now these militants were a radical minor (very minor) minority of the entire black minority population of America so there isn't much to fear from them but their ideas had to qualify as terrorizing. To these folks there is no reparations for slavery, no affirmative action, no welfare program, that satisfies them beyond the enslavement of every non-black citizen under the ownership and management, by the whip, of every black person in America.
We now have the President of the United States calling for the enslavement of all school age children through compulsory volunteering and the third-longest serving member of the House of Representatives calling for the enslavement of everyone after they graduate from school in a paramilitary conscription program. And both of these gentlemen happen to consider themselves as black. One has to wonder if the political philosophy of that particular terrorist group has gone more mainstream...*
* Please note my tongue is firmly stationed against the inside of my cheek.
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