Lots of response to my suggestion for a draft of young men into something other than the active-duty military, about half for and half against. Several offered the usual libertarian cowflop about being enslaved by the State, but most criticisms were sensible and thoughtful: it would cost a lot (no doubt); the courts wouldn’t allow only young men to be drafted (I don’t know anything about the courts’ fabrications of the “law” in this area, but only men have to register for Selective Service now); such a draft would need to be into separate units (I suggested the militias in states that still have them), because they’d overwhelm the training function of the National Guard; population imbalances would result in way

more men than New York, for instance, could usefully occupy, while Idaho would remain storthanded during wildfire season.

One pithy critic of the costs (“One-year service obligations waste more money than owning a boat”) suggested ROTC (or I guess JROTC) as a cheaper way to instill discipline and patriotism. But on balance I still think that a year together with other men from different backgrounds, away for your family, serving your country (in the military, as opposed to the voluntary, non-military proposal that WFB wrote about in his 1990 book Gratitude) would help cultivate the patriotic solidarity that our society sorely needs.