Advocates neither defend the value judgments implicit in the policies nor suggest that people in their age cohort should be conscripted.



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Everyone who calls on Americans to create some sort of non-military draft, as Tom Ricks did earlier this week in a New York Times column, presumes that the forced conscription of American citizens during peacetime would be an ennobling enterprise. Why? It's true that Western democracies have instituted military drafts at various times, or even universal military or community service for young men. But at their best, they were necessary evils justified by the need to provide for a common defense, or, as in the case of post-World War II Germany, rebuilding and a common national identity.

The Framers likely understood Congress to have an ability to draft citizens in service of its power to raise an army. But the 13th Amendment to the Constitution states that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

That language would seem to prohibit at least non-military conscription.

Another thing to notice: the "national service" crowd always wants to conscript people unlike themselves. Born in 1955, Ricks seeks to mandate 18 months of service after high school graduation. How would he react, I wonder, to the forced conscription of individuals upon their 60th birthday? (Veterans could be exempt.) Given that one of the jobs he foresees is teaching kids at disadvantaged schools, the senior citizens would add more social utility than the 18 and 19-year-olds, who won't even get the benefits of volunteerism themselves so long as their labor is mandatory.