<Providing market incentives to entice enlistment may suit your ideal of freedom, but others paid the price for our freedom because they felt it was their duty.>
You are right, people are always going to value their lives, over money. So, money and other perks (like college tuition, or land for homesteading) isn't enough. Volunteers during a war, have to be motivated by patriotism, or they won't volunteer.
But why shouldn't this be an individual decision? Why should it be the President (or Congress, back when Congress declared wars) who decides what everyone else's patriotic duty is? Why can't this be the right of every person, for themselves, to decide? I thought Americans were individualists, who didn't like Big Government jostling their elbows?
<There would be equal chance among all of being on the front lines taking chances if there was a draft.>
That's not the way it has ever worked. When we've had a draft, the smart/rich/connected find ways to keep their kids out of danger. In the Civil War, you could pay someone else to take your place, if you got drafted. In the Vietnam War, there were various ways to stay away from the bullets. For instance, if your daddy is rich and has powerful friends, you can get an appointment to the Air National Guard, and then not show up for duty. See Message 19237594
The theory that a draft is more fair, has always remained a theory. |
