Rick Reuben wrote:Rangel reintroduced the National Service ( Draft ) bill again last week:
H.R. 393: Universal National Service Act of 2007
Bill Status
Introduced:Jan 10, 2007
Sponsor:Rep. Charles Rangel [D-NY]
Status:Introduced
Introduced in House: This is the original text of the bill as it was written by its sponsor and submitted to the House for consideration.
Text of Legislation
HR 393 IH
110th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 393
To require all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service, either as a member of the uniformed services or in civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, to authorize the induction of persons in the uniformed services during wartime to meet end-strength requirements of the uniformed services, to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to make permanent the favorable treatment afforded combat pay under the earned income tax credit, and for other purposes.
I hope they do this soon.
Statistics: Posted by DM_Archive — Tue Jan 15, 2008 12:39 pm
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Essentially, to carry your philosophy to its most extreme destination is to confirm that we are, as a species, more trouble than we are worth, all us humans with our wars and crimes and environmental destruction- whether we participate by doing it or by not rising up to stop it, we suck. Even to transplant a new peaceful world would require a grand finale of slaughter to bring it about, and then what, the survivors impose extreme totalitarianism to suppress the 'free will' that keeps us doing all that irresistible crazy violence?
We are deluding ourselves with our claims of civilization and progress, because we are really not seeing the forest for the trees with that claim. Seen from a distant perspective, we must look like one ultra-dysfunctional ant farm. For every person doing good there are two doing bad and another five just doing nothing / trying to stay out of the way.
Am I wrong?
Statistics: Posted by clocker bob_Archive — Wed Jun 07, 2006 9:20 pm
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clocker bob wrote:Soldiering by choice would quickly become soldiering by draft if soldiering by choice failed to staff the armed services, so it's really pick your poison- somebody will be sent to kill those arabs. The blame falls on all of us for keeping governments run by sociopathic death merchants.
However at the moment it's soldiering by morons so all I'm saying is I'm not going to lose sleep over their being set fire to in tanks. Soldiers are at the very sharpest end of ‘those’ who keep ‘us’ in check.
The thrust of the argument on this thread (from some) seems to be if conscription was introduced the middle classes would be affected therefore less shit like Iraq would go on.
As it is there are enough cretins (poor people if you want to see it that way. I don't because I am from that class and have this view) to fuel the armies need for fodder.
I am not feeling sorry for those morons who join up. Here's why:
Either – everyone is fated, victims of their circumstance and there is no such thing as choice i.e moral agency = all of this debate, and all others, are redundant anyway
Or
We all have free will and are born equal and so deserve to be treated equally in terms of the judgment of others/God whatever floats your boat.
Or
Some people are aware enough to behave with moral agency - to use their free will to choose how they live their lives – and some others aren’t. They are pushed by circumstance and ‘fate’.
A,B or C
If A is the case then it doesn’t matter anyway it’s all just interesting to observe and then you shuffle off this mortal coil.
B. If some fucking idiot chooses to take on a job where they will go thousands and thousands of miles from where they live and kill someone else because ‘it’s a good career option’ then I will choose to feel no sympathy when they die.
C. This means some humans are, well, humans and others are animals. This seems to be the middle-classes-need-to-be-forced-into-it view point.
The poor working classes are being shepherded into the army without their little brains knowing it and isn’t it awful how exploited they are? Etc etc
In this scenario I can’t help but think the person with the ability to choose is in my view ‘better’ than the unconscious ‘animal’. Or, at least they are not equal to the animal and should have more votes than them in whatever is standing for a democracy these days.
It means one (those who choose) should rule over the others (those that don’t).
How comfortable are you with that?
I don’t know which of A,B or C is the case but it feels like either B or C (though intellectually I imagine it is A) but, regardless, I decide this:
You join the army - you die – I don’t care.
You join the army – you feel bad about killing and seeing death afterwards – boo hoo, you joined the army dick head, pass me the remote control.
The alternative view seems to be:
You join the army and feel bad and poor you, you weren’t advanced or sophisticated enough to know what you were doing so we forgive you and blame the baddies who knew what they were doing. Blah blah blah
I will temper this with a sentence I think all should make when indulging in debate/argument:
I might be wrong.
But if I am at least I’m not shooting a child in the head cause a bomb just scared me and killed my buddy, eh!
Statistics: Posted by Earwicker_Archive — Wed Jun 07, 2006 6:39 pm
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Soldiering by choice would quickly become soldiering by draft if soldiering by choice failed to staff the armed services, so it's really pick your poison- somebody will be sent to kill those arabs. The blame falls on all of us for keeping governments run by sociopathic death merchants.
Statistics: Posted by clocker bob_Archive — Wed Jun 07, 2006 9:42 am
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Antero wrote:"I feel so clever because I cut out words!" You know about the GI Bill just as well as I do.
Not sure whether those quotes are meant to highlight imaginary words of mine or actual words of yours but no, I don't know about the GI bill.
Antero wrote:I must point out, also, that judging from the amount of psychological trauma seen in vets, your judgement is rather lacking in both compassion and connection to the real world.
I don't know what you mean. I think all animals deserve love and care and vets deserve the respect of us all as they provide a useful and important service to the rest of society.
Antero wrote: seems like a pretty fucking good idea in peacetime.
Not to me.
Antero wrote:Congrats?
Don't understand this question.
And maybe there's no peacetime in the Grand Struggle Against Dictatorship, Corporate Hegemony, And General Unpleasantness, but be realistic for a second: for a soldier, there sure as fuck is peacetime. It's when you shine your boots, run some drills, chill on a base, and collect your paycheck.
And when the smoke settles after discharging a full clip into an A-rab family and the sunlight sends striking shafts through the windows smashed by the still ringing explosion from a frag grenade.
Ah, peace.
If the definition of peacetime for a soldier is when they are not killing or being killed then of course, from time to time, there is peacetime.
But this is semantic tomfoolery if you ask me.
Which of course you're not...but anyhow.
Statistics: Posted by Earwicker_Archive — Wed Jun 07, 2006 8:24 am
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Earwicker wrote:
Getting respect only matters if you respect the people you want the respect from. The respect of tabloid newspaper readers I can do without.
Amazing! Someone with a lower opinion of the masses than myself!Antero wrote:a job that offers not only respect
Getting respect only matters if you respect the people you want the respect from. The respect of tabloid newspaper readers I can do without.
You really wanted to just cover ever comma in my post, ey? What, are you a televangelist?Antero wrote:but decent pay
Like the wages of sin?
"I feel so clever because I cut out words!" You know about the GI Bill just as well as I do.Antero wrote:and education
Like how to kill people and feel okay about it?
I must point out, also, that judging from the amount of psychological trauma seen in vets, your judgement is rather lacking in both compassion and connection to the real world.
Congrats?Antero wrote: seems like a pretty fucking good idea in peacetime.
Not to me.
Tautology. It's a large scale military force - if it's active at all, someone is getting fucked over.I can think of practically no period of time over the last 60 years when the military forces of western nations haven't been used somewhere in the world to fuck some poor unfortunate over.
And maybe there's no peacetime in the Grand Struggle Against Dictatorship, Corporate Hegemony, And General Unpleasantness, but be realistic for a second: for a soldier, there sure as fuck is peacetime. It's when you shine your boots, run some drills, chill on a base, and collect your paycheck.
Statistics: Posted by Antero_Archive — Wed Jun 07, 2006 12:54 am
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Antero wrote:If you're poor as fuck in a dead-end town,
hello
Antero wrote:a job that offers not only respect
Getting respect only matters if you respect the people you want the respect from. The respect of tabloid newspaper readers I can do without.
Antero wrote:but decent pay
Like the wages of sin?
Antero wrote:and education
Like how to kill people and feel okay about it?
Antero wrote: seems like a pretty fucking good idea in peacetime.
Not to me.
I can think of practically no period of time over the last 60 years when the military forces of western nations haven't been used somewhere in the world to fuck some poor unfortunate over.
There is no peacetime.
Statistics: Posted by Earwicker_Archive — Tue Jun 06, 2006 6:53 am
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alex maiolo wrote:I'm unclear on what prompted this. If it was directed at my comments, I think you may have misunderstood my point.
It wasn't actually a direct response to any post here but the subject of discussion just stirred up a bug bear of mine. In Britain (and I presume it is much the same elsewhere) as soon as a war starts everyone gets behind 'our boys' even if they were against the war right up to the declaration.
This is crazy.
alex maiolo wrote:-When you join up, ostensibly it's to defend the country. When you get sent off on an empire building mission, and that's not what you signed up for, that sucks and it violates the agreement in some way. Still, I see your point.
This is why I said in this day and age. If a Brit had joined up to fight Hitler in 1939/40 then good-o (we had conscription then but you get my point?) nowadays a brief glance over the political landscape demonstrates that wars have sweet fuck all to do with defending the country. If someone is too dumn to read a newspaper before going off to kill someone, destroy their house, kill family, spray white phospherous into building and set it alight then their death is, if anything, welcome.
alex maiolo wrote:People here aren't very much in favor of what's going on in Iraq, but they aren't doing a damn thing about it either. They re-elected Bush, right?
Two points a/ the poor working and under class have votes too.
b/ no, Bush was not re-elected.
You are correct that the middle classes are almost always the motivators of political change in any developed country so I am not attacking that point.
But what I object to is this idea that the poor soldier, often from a disadvantaged background with little career options in his free market ravaged small town, is somehow at the mercy of the fates when it came to his or her decision to join up.
Are poor people too stupid to make decisions for themselves?
If so then should they be voting?
In our countries the education systems may not be great but pretty much everyone can read. There are libraries. A poor person can educate themselves.
I know cause I did.
Statistics: Posted by Earwicker_Archive — Tue Jun 06, 2006 4:31 am
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Earwicker wrote:I'm sick to fucking bricks of this 'our boys' attitude. If military service is voluntary and you go off to fucking timbucktoo and get your legs/arms/head blown off as a result then I can find little space within me to find any sympathy.
You are a fucking idiot and now you are an idiot with no legs/arms/head.
I will reserve my sympathy for the poor fucking pleb whose house you are going into to gun down the mater and her kids.
If you are not forced to go in the army then don't. Fuck this patronising poor plebs attitude.
Rant over.
You are a fucking idiot and now you are an idiot with no legs/arms/head.
I will reserve my sympathy for the poor fucking pleb whose house you are going into to gun down the mater and her kids.
If you are not forced to go in the army then don't. Fuck this patronising poor plebs attitude.
Rant over.
I'm unclear on what prompted this. If it was directed at my comments, I think you may have misunderstood my point.
First, as an aside (not related to my point, but related to yours):
Yes, if you volunteer for the army, you never know what might happen. Sorry about that soldier, but them's the breaks.
But, two considerations:
-When you join up, ostensibly it's to defend the country. When you get sent off on an empire building mission, and that's not what you signed up for, that sucks and it violates the agreement in some way. Still, I see your point.
-Our National Guard is fighting in Iraq. They are volunteers who joined the military part time. Their job is to handle emergencies and domestic defense when our military is otherwise engaged, not to be called up to fight a foreign war. People here have called it a Back Door Draft. I feel badly for those guys. They signed on to direct traffic and keep order after a hurricane. As you probably know, their presence could have been used here twice last year. I would not have felt badly had they been deployed to New Orleans. *That's* what they signed on for.
Now to my point:
Middle class people in the US don't suffer one bit for this war. It affects them in no way daily.
If it did, we wouldn't be in it. I promise.
People here aren't very much in favor of what's going on in Iraq, but they aren't doing a damn thing about it either. They re-elected Bush, right?
They are still demanding tax cuts too.
A way it could affect them is if we had some sort of social service program to offset the expenses and manpower commitments that are required. That would get people's attention because they would actually have to give up something: time, earned income, time in college, or their life.
Sadly, this is how you get an American's attention.
-A
Statistics: Posted by alex maiolo_Archive — Mon Jun 05, 2006 4:47 pm
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a noble reason in my opinion
Statistics: Posted by jasoned_Archive — Mon Jun 05, 2006 4:26 pm
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My argument went like this:
'Look, I'm poor from a broken home with little hope at the on set of my life in social advancement.
I have spent large chunks of my life with barely threpence (english term I don't actually know what it means) to rub together and have done some absolutely God awful jobs to ensure I can get drunk of an evening. But nothing, nothing would make me stupid enough to join the army in this day and age.'
'But the underclass are targeted'
Yardy yardy yardy
'But there are expensive promotional campaigns aimed at the poor'
Blah blah blah
'The children of the rich and wealthy don't end up fighting the battles for the rich and wealthy'
Boo hoo fucking hooo.
I'm sick to fucking bricks of this 'our boys' attitude. If military service is voluntary and you go off to fucking timbucktoo and get your legs/arms/head blown off as a result then I can find little space within me to find any sympathy.
You are a fucking idiot and now you are an idiot with no legs/arms/head.
I will reserve my sympathy for the poor fucking pleb whose house you are going into to gun down the mater and her kids.
If you are not forced to go in the army then don't. Fuck this patronising poor plebs attitude.
Rant over.
Statistics: Posted by Earwicker_Archive — Mon Jun 05, 2006 3:45 pm
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Presently they will argue the virtue of a Constitutional Amendment to prevent gay marriage. Or some law to make racism legal or at least a acceptable social option.
As for the wealthy there will always be a escape hatch written in for them it is just that the only choice that the vast majority will use will be the military. I am sure that the president would allow drinking time deductions if you have a upper class background I mean if you don't have to pay tax why should your patriotic duty extend to serving in the army.
Statistics: Posted by Big John_Archive — Mon Jun 05, 2006 3:30 pm
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