Debate on Military Service and a Draft Raged in National Review

During comedian Rob Schneider’s time in the draft demographic, he performed on HBO and wrote for Saturday Night Live. At 62, he wants young people to forgo their individual passions for mandated service to the federal government. “Each and every American, at eighteen years of age, must serve two years of military service,” he recently proposed in an X post. It seems the opposite of a punchline and conjures up images of a counter-fictional Deuce Bigelow who did not stand up to the European Union of Man-Whores but instead stood down.

Schneider, funny as both a standup comic and sketch comedian for several decades, seems an unlikely instigator for such a debate. But instigate he did — and in a debate that most living Americans had heretofore regarded as about as vibrant as the Victrola-disc-gramophone-vs.-Edison-cylinder-phonograph question. Schneider was nine, after all, when the American armed forces inducted its last member under conscription.

About the Author

Daniel J. Flynn

Daniel J. Flynn, the author of The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer, is an American Spectator senior editor, visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, and YouTuber @RightWingWilderness.

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During comedian Rob Schneider’s time in the draft demographic, he performed on HBO and wrote for Saturday Night Live. At 62, he wants young people to forgo their individual passions for mandated service to the federal government. “Each and every American, at eighteen years of age, must serve two years of military service,” he recently proposed in an X post. It seems the opposite of a punchline and conjures up images of a counter-fictional Deuce Bigelow who did not stand up to the European Union of Man-Whores but instead stood down.

Schneider, funny as both a standup comic and sketch comedian for several decades, seems an unlikely instigator for such a debate. But instigate he did — and in a debate that most living Americans had heretofore regarded as about as vibrant as the Victrola-disc-gramophone-vs.-Edison-cylinder-phonograph question. Schneider was nine, after all, when the American armed forces inducted its last member under conscription.