But, of course, the real motive behind that social crime is not financial; the issue of costs is merely a rationalization. The real motive may be detected in the following statement made by Lieutenant General Lewis B. Hershey, Director of the Selective Service System, on June 24, 1966: “I am not concerned with the uncertainty involved in keeping our citizenry believing that they owe something to their country. There are too many, too many people that think individualism has to be completely recognized, even if the group rights go to the devil.”
The same motive was made fully clear in a proposal which was advanced by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and is now being plugged with growing insistence by the press.
On May 18, 1966, Mr. McNamara said the following: “As matters stand, our present Selective system draws on only a minority of eligible young men. That is an inequity. It seems to me that we could move toward remedying that inequity by asking every young person in the United States to give two years of service to his country—whether in one of the military services, in the Peace Corps or in some other volunteer developmental work at home or abroad.”
“Developmental” work—devoted to whose development?
Apparently, planting rice or digging ditches in Asia, Africa, and South America, constitutes service to the United States—but preparing oneself for a productive career, does not. Teaching our own illiterates in hillbilly regions or city slums, constitutes service to the United States—but going to college does not. Teaching retarded children to weave baskets, constitutes service to the United States—but acquiring a Ph.D. does not.
Isn’t the unnamed principle clear? Developing yourself into a productive, ambitious, independent person, is not regarded as a value to the United States; turning yourself into an abject sacrificial animal, is.
This, I submit, is a moral obscenity.
Whatever country such a principle could apply to, it is not the United States. It is not even Soviet Russia—where they do destroy the minds of their youth, but not in so mawkishly, wantonly senseless a manner.
That proposal represents the naked essence of altruism in its pure and fully consistent form. It does not seek to sacrifice men for the alleged benefit of the state—it seeks to sacrifice them for the sake of sacrifice. It seeks to break man’s spirit—to destroy his mind, his ambition, his self-esteem, his self-confidence, his self, during the very years when he is in the process of acquiring them.
Mr. McNamara’s trial balloon did not go over too well, at first. There were outcries of protest and indignation, which compelled the government to issue a hasty disclaimer. “The Johnson Administration,” said The New York Times of May 20, 1966, “quickly made it plain today that it had no plans to draft young Americans for civilian duty or to let such duty become an alternative to military service.” The same news story said that “officials called upon to interpret his [McNamara’s] words stressed that he had suggested ‘asking* rather than ‘compelling’ young people to serve.” Well, / want to stress that if a government intends to “ask” rather than “compel,” it does not choose the Secretary of Defense to do the “asking,” and he does not “ask” it in the context of a passage dealing with the military draft.
The suggestion of “voluntary service” under a threat to one’s life, is blackmail—blackmail directed at the entire American youth—blackmail demanding their surrender into explicit serfdom.
After that initial suggestion—obviously, as an intermediary step, to “condition” the sacrificial animals—the statist-altruist gangs began to plug the notion of “voluntary” social service.
On September 14, 1966, James Reston of The New York Times quoted President Johnson as saying: “I hope to see a day when some form of voluntary service to the community and the nation and the world is as common in America as going to school; when no man has truly lived who only served himself.”
The motivation of all this is obvious. The draft is not needed for military purposes, it is not needed for the protection of this country, but the statists are struggling not to relinquish the power it gave them and the unnamed principle (and precedent) it established—above all, not to relinquish the principle: that man’s life belongs to the state.
This is the real issue—and the only issue—and there is no way to fight it or to achieve the abolition of the draft except by upholding the principle of man’s right to his own life. There is no way to uphold that right without a full, consistent, moral-political ideology. But that is not the way the issue is now debated by the frantic anti-ideologists of all sides.
It is the “conservatives,” the alleged defenders of freedom and capitalism, who should be opposing the draft. They are not; they are supporting it. Early in the presidential election campaign of 1964, Barry Goldwater made a vague suggestion favoring the abolition of the draft, which aroused the public’s hopeful attention; he promptly dropped it, and devoted his campaign to denouncing the morals of Bobby Baker. Who brought the issue of the draft into public focus and debate, demanding its repeal? The extreme left—the Vietniks and Peaceniks.
In line with the anti-ideological methods of all other groups, the Vietniks—whose sympathies are on the side of Russia, China, and North Vietnam—are screaming against the draft in the name of their “individual rights”—individual rights, believe it or not. They are proclaiming their right to choose which war they’ll fight in—while sympathizing with countries where the individual does not even have the right to choose and utter a thought of his own. What is still worse is the fact that they are the only group that even mentions individual rights (if newspaper reports are to be trusted).
But of all this anti-ideological mess, I would pick one small incident as, morally, the worst. I quote from The New York Times of February 6, 1967:
Leaders of 15 student organizations representing both political extremes as well as the center called today for the abolition of the draft and the encouragement of voluntary service in humanitarian pursuits. In a resolu-
tion ending a two-day conference on the draft and national service at the Shoreham Hotel [Washington, D.C.], the student leaders declared: “The present draft system with its inherent injustices is incompatible with traditional American principles of individual freedom within a democratic society, and for this reason the draft should be eliminated. An urgent need exists within our society for young people to become involved in the elimination of such social ills as ignorance, poverty, racial discrimination and war.” Among those who signed the resolution were leading members of the leftwing Students for a Democratic Society, the right-wing Young Americans for Freedom, and the moderate Youth and College Division of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. . . . Although no unanimity on concrete recommendations was arrived at, Mr. Chickering [the sponsor of the conference] said he believed that most of the student leaders favored his proposal for the creation of a system of voluntary national service. Under this proposal … students at campuses throughout the country will be asked to fill out cards expressing their willingness to serve in humanitarian work.
(Observe the formulation “traditional American principles of individual freedom within a democratic society”—instead of “individual right to life.” What is “individual freedom within a democratic society”? What is a “democratic society”? “Individual freedom” is not a primary political principle and cannot be defined, defended, or practiced without the primary principle of individual rights. And a “democratic society,” traditionally, means: unlimited majority rule. This is an example of the method by which today’s anti-ideologists are obliterating the concept of rights. Observe also that the leaders of the “conservative” Young Americans for Freedom signed a document of that kind.)
These are not men who are being whipped: these are men who take the lash obediently and whip themselves.
Politically, that proposal is much worse than the draft. The draft, at least, offers the excuse that one is serving one’s own country in time of danger—and its political implications are diluted by a long historical tradition associated with patriotism. But if young men accept the belief that it is their duty to spend their irreplaceable formative years on growing rice and carrying bedpans—they’re done for psychologically, and so is this country.
The same news story carried some shocking statistics on the attitude of college students at large. It quoted a poll conducted by the National Students Association at twenty-three campuses throughout the country. If that poll is to be trusted, “Approximately 75 per cent said they preferred the establishment of some means to allow work in the Peace Corps, the Teacher Corps or Volunteers in Service to America as an alternative to military service. About 90 per cent, however, said they believed that the Government has a right to conscript its citizens, and 68 per cent thought such conscription was necessary in periods other than those of a declared national emergency.”