Should US require mandatory military service of citizens?

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You'll go to the stockade for sedition, mutiny, treason, and whatever other charges they can make stick and the war goes on as planned without you.....

It's only being fulfilled by design.

Don't insult me with the term 'liberal'. I'm far more left wing than that.

Ditto. For some reason, many people on the right (especially North Americans) think that liberal is synonymous with being on the left.

Nope, its seems to be just an American thing.

On this side of the pond, specifically the UK, liberals are actually regarded as being somewhere between the centre and the 'soft right'. Even right wingers here are sensible enough to understand the differences between liberal, social democrat and socialist.

I guess that goes right over their heads though.

If you meant to write "soft left,"

.

I did not.

I do not know about America, but most here consider advocacy of free markets and laissez faire economics which most liberals subscribe to to be a reactionary form of politics.

Many liberals of course describe themselves as progressive or leftist, but self definitions are often unreliable at the best of times. In America, they are progressive merely through comparison and there appears to be a 'gentlemens agreement' in place where the pro market mafia hold all the cards to ensure that no opposition to the neo liberal agenda ever enters mainstream debate.

The reality is that America like so many other so called western democracies is succeeding in running a multi party-single ideology dictatorship.

As I understood the draft (from afar) it was easy for high socio-economic types (middle class if you like) to avoid it, leaving a skewed population with low education in the military in general and in Vietnam in particular. This I believe caused problems.

I think in any country, if there is compulsory military service, there should be no easy "opt-out" for anyone.

I may be wrong. I defer to others who may know better.

If Europe combined its resources, it would be stronger than the USA on all fronts. Also the USA is nothing special, China acheived superpower status some time ago.

Also last I heard your astronauts are having to hitch hike on Russian rockets.

Guess I will just have to contend myself with nationalised healthcare and free prescriptions.

Things would end differently in the internet age than they did back then. The US wouldn't be able to use military force against the fragmented regions without facing an extremely negative response from the global community. The majority of nations wouldn't be afraid to protect the fragmented regions, from the tyranny of a crippled US, in a righteous, defensive war. Even the majority of the supporters of the draft would probably be against using military force to return the fragmented regions to the union. It's unlikely that the US would still have the power or the support to regain its lost territories.

Remember the vietnam war, people did avoid, boycott and resist the war, the result apart from having your national guard killing your own people (Kent state) and dividing the population was that the USA was forced to withdraw.

Either way, people are cool with fighting the communists/terrorists/anti-American people who hate our freedom as long as it's the inner city hoodlums and redneck trailer trash going off to war, and not their future doctor/lawyer/CEO sons and daughters.

So with or without draft, nothing has changed.

Yes, it's one of the benefits of being a citizen of a superpower nation. Or should I say THE superpower nation?

This notion that service men and women are inner city hoodlums and redneck trailer trash is insulting, especially since it’s generally untrue.

27-th country in median income doesn't sound like "THE" superpower.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/america ... paging=off

But the warmongers still send the people off to useless wars because they believe this is true.

From a liberal source, of course.
Besides, who cares as long as we can bomb the countries that think they're above us back to the stone age?



Then maybe I was wrong; we DO need to make everyone do a hitch in the military.

From a liberal source, of course.

Besides, who cares as long as we can bomb the countries that think they're above us back to the stone age?

The reality is that America like so many other so called western democracies is succeeding in running a multi party-single ideology
dictatorship.

Whereas in Nazi Germany the state dominated economic actors, in inverted totalitarianism, corporations through political contributions and lobbying, dominate the United States, with the government acting as the servant of large corporations. This is considered "normal" rather than corruption.

While the Nazi regime aimed at the constant political mobilization of the population, with its Nuremberg rallies, Hitler Youth, and so on, inverted totalitarianism aims for the mass of the population to be in a persistent state of political apathy. The only type of political activity expected or desired from the citizenry is voting. Low electoral turnouts are favorably received as an indication that the bulk of the population has given up hope that the government will ever help them.

While the Nazis openly mocked democracy, the United States maintains the conceit that it is the model of democracy for the whole world. Wolin Writes:

Inverted totalitarianism reverses things. It is all politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash.