Contra Ed ‘They Bought My Seat’ Gallrein

“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.” Thus proclaims the Thirteenth Amendment, the first of the three Civil War amendments. Dubious their passage may be in a legal sense, but they are well established as law in this nation, and so we’ve stopped with all that slavery stuff, except when the government stuffs you in prison (a parody of the Biblical method). But that’s not actually true, because one from of involuntary servitude is still perfectly legal, still hanging over the head of the best-behaved citizen: the draft.

Expedience

Proponents of the draft, such as Ed Gallrein (who was pushed over the line by RINOs the day after this was drafted), urge considerations like ‘national security’ and other such mutters of expediency. Well, “[Danger] is always the tyrant’s plea,” wrote Spencer Roane, and expedience is just a variant of danger. Before we go ga-ga over the wonderful efficiency of the draft-process, we should ask whether it’s moral and what effects it has besides providing the military with an ample supply of bodies to expend.

The Bible

The draft, in its essence, does actually get a mention in Scripture. Not in the New Testament but in the Old Testament, not in the Pentateuch but in the history of Israel. So the draft is Biblical… in the same way that suicide is Biblical because Judas gave it a go. See, the mention is the precise opposite of complimentary: the draft is mentioned by Samuel when he warns Israel of the tyrannies, excesses, and evils which a king will levy upon them.

Thus Samuel warns of the king: “[He] will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots…. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. …and you shall be his slaves” (1 Sam. 8:12,16,17). Not that the king would stop with taking the labor of their men, in war and in peace: “He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers,” not to mention their land and their food (v13-15).

The Bible does not speak well of the draft.

The Law

Let’s be blunt: the only reason the draft is ‘legal’ is that we pretend the Thirteenth Amendment doesn’t apply to it. Now, quite possibly it shouldn’t, read as it was intended (though the draft, first imposed in 1863, was monumentally unpopular, triggering riots in New York City which were suppressed by literal military campaign), but we should at least recognize the utter hypocrisy of disallowing “involuntary servitude” through the force of a government which retains to itself the power to, without conviction (which is itself a violation of the Fifth Amendment, being a deprivation of liberty), enslave a man to fight and to die.

And, frankly, I’m not convinced that the Thirteenth Amendment shouldn’t apply to the case. SCOTUS’s opinion is weightless here, I think, both because it was delivered first in 1918, in the grip of war fever and propaganda and popular sentiment and SCOTUS’s usual horrific pro-government bias, and because SCOTUS is only rarely right about the Constitution, at least when it matters, even over the course of history.

The Effect

The practical effect of the draft I want to highlight is how it supports bad wars. If the draft is removed, the citizenry have a simple option to prevent a war or escalation in a war: vote with their feet. If the war is bad, the people can just refuse to put their bodies on the line to fight it.

Ask yourself: if the government can’t convince the people to fight, is the war really worth it? Is it a good war?

The draft prevents that question from mattering, when it is instituted. No longer does the government have to convince the nation to sign up to die (which shouldn’t be an issue if the war is truly in self defense); it can just point the gun back at the populace, can just walk its own people out to the frontlines with a gunbarrel in the back to match the ones they face in front.

Conclusion

The draft removes a powerful and effective check on military adventurism, expansionism, and profligacy. Yet we hold on to it…. Why? Because we are ruled by tyrants, SCOTUS an oft-enthusiastic participant, the rest no better as a rule. Never mind that it’s somewhere between Constitutionally dubious and pathetically illegal. Never mind that God makes it a central feature of tyranny, a part of the curse for desiring to be like the other nations. We just keep it around, in potential at least, and we forget the end of that address given by Samuel in 1 Samuel 8: “And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day” (v18).

God bless.