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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (130857)	2/14/2010 5:18:20 PM
From: Bread Upon The Water	Respond to of 542233

Thanks for your reply. I'll get back to you.

To: Lane3 who wrote (130857)	2/14/2010 8:39:24 PM
From: Bread Upon The Water	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 542233

Lane you're pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness comes at the expense of those who are dying for it. And why shouldn't every eligible to vote young adult be equally exposed to that risk? Sure war is hell, but why should the cost be borne unequally. Sabato cites studies which show that the elite and privileged largely avoid service while the lower and middle classes mostly compose it. Are we not just not buying off our values by doing this? Additionally, he cites studies which indicate that in the 1970's over 70 percent of the congressmen had served in the military and now the figure is less than 25%. So the people are sending us to war have less and less of concept of what is involved. Now you have stated that you disagree with the principle of fairness in requiring service, but have never indicated why that is so. Why is it OK that the burden isn't equally shared? Furthermore, aside from the proposed civics class for college students you have not indicated how and what programs will produce the responsible citizens we both desire. And the fairness argument can be made apart apart from the costs argument. If universal service is not doable from a cost stand point of view (and I am not conceding that it is too costly) we could at least reinstitute a lottery system that would give us a more representative military. Now the fairness argument goes to whether we should do this, while the cost argument goes to whether we can do this. I will concede from that stand point of view it is not a slam dunk. But I think the argument is more than just about dollars---its basically about how we choose our values as represented by the money we spend. Numerous articles in the news media in the past 6 months have indicated that unless we can our political act together and establish the will to live within our means we're basically going to go belly up in the sense that we will reach the point were we will not be able to finance the deficit any more. (No one will want our government bonds when they see we haven't a clue as to how to reduce the debt.) Depending on who the author is this is possible from anywhere from 5 to 30 years out. All this data points to an era of belt tightening and sacrifice on the part of the citizens as some of the governments programs will have to become less generous. And I submit that unless we find a way to instill the value of sacrifice for the common good, the country, back into the citzenery we are just going to face class warfare (old vs. young who will no longer consent to the higher taxes necessary for SSI & Medicare, have's vs. have nots) and not be able to pull off the collective will power to rescue ourselves from the sea of red ink set to drown us. (Will be like California is now--20 billion in debt with no way to pay for it.) And I do think one of the best ways of doing this, to instill this value of sacrifice for the common good, is to require UNS.