Wimpy Draftees!
LTC Bob Bateman authored a post today at Altercation about the waves of hysteria regarding a draft that regularly wash over the U.S.
Aside from sayin’ a draft ain’t happenin’, he also notes that many people have started . . . how should I say it? . . . softly supporting . . . a draft to “toughen up” and “instill some values” in the coming generations.
Being a historian as well as a soldier, I thought that I should bring some broader perspective to this issue. What follows was published in a professional journal of the United States Army:
The first step toward toughening up the Army is to toughen up the moral fiber of the Nation as a whole.
Your future recruit is born in an expensive hospital, the bill probably being paid for by taxation and charitable contributions. Immediately a bevy of nurses and female relatives start to coddle him. Perhaps his daddy has some of the old Spartan spirit left in him, but let him try to spank the toddler, and the wife divorces him for cruelty and gets custody of the child. When the boy starts to school he has female teachers. Let one of them spank him, and she is arrested or discharged, or both. The little fellow must never know what it is to suffer pain or be disciplined.
If the family is poor, does little Johnny go out and peddle papers or sweep out the grocery store to help support it? He does not. The family goes on relief, while Johnny goes down to the YMCA and listens to a lecture on ‘Safety First.’ …
‘Security!’ ‘Safety First!’ Fiddlesticks. Mankind has always wanted security. When he had none he fought for some. Now he wants it on a silver platter.
Now, to put that in perspective, let me explain that this excerpt was pulled from an article by one Staff Sgt. Robert W. Gordon. SSG Gordon was writing in the Infantry Journal, and the coddled, namby-pamby, soft youth he was talking about were those wimps who would come to be known a few years later as “The Greatest Generation,” because SSG Gordon wrote those words … in 1936.
Maybe we don’t need a draft, but wouldn’t some sort of military service or national service requirement be nice?
10. May, 2007 at 08:53
My proposal has long been that everyone should be obligated to two or three years of service–not necessarily military in nature–following high school, then have college paid for at the public institution nearest their place of residence. It’d give kids a chance to grow up a bit before being out on their own in an environment with few rules, help them earn an education (which ought to be freely available for anyone in this day and age), and would ensure that everyone gets a shot at what high school used to provide: the minimum education needed to ensure a person could be a productive citizen.