The rich don't serve - so what?

• Author: Kinsley, Michael
• Position: Armed services

Michael Kinsley, the editor of The New Republic, is on sabbatical in London where he is working for The Economist. He was an editor at the Monthly in 1975 and 1976.

One chapter of the Gospel According to The Washington Monthly that I have some trouble with is Charlie Peters's enthusiasm for a military draft. This bad idea in its own right also reflects two characteristic defects of the Peters Gospel generally. First, a slight authoritarian streak: a too-casual willingness to say that something ought to be required just because it would be nice (such as Charlie's notorious proposal for a law banning banks from the ground floors of office buildings). Second, an occasional failure to think through the practical difficulties of achieving some desirable end through a seemingly simple policy initiative (such as the idea of giving a capital gains break to "new" and "productive" investments only).

It certainly would be nice if the armed services represented a cross section of the population; if every citizen made a patriotic contribution to America before going off on his or her own life course; if there were one guaranteed occasion of social class mixing in our increasingly stratified society. These are the advantages Charlie sees in a draft, based on his own experience in World War II. (These, plus saving the government money.) But telling people they must give up two years of their lives is a major infringement on freedom, for which there ought to be a major reason. "The defense of our country" is, of course, a major reason, but the defense of our country is not at stake. It is being defended adequately without a draft, by people who are in the military because they wish to be there. The people who make defense policy are not merely satisfied with current arrangements-they actively prefer a volunteer force to adraft, for obvious reasons. Are the genuine but amorphous spiritual reasons for bringing back a draft more important?

Nicholas Von Hoffman put the practical case against a draft in a nutshell many years ago when he "Draft old men's money, not young men's bodies." One way to look at a draft is as a tax on the difference between what the Army pays you and what it would take to entice you into the Army voluntarily. At some level of pay and benefits, the military can meet its manpower needs without resorting to this tax. Von Hoffman's point was: why not pay for the national defense by taxing the people who can best afford it?

Look at this...