Should the United States Reinstate the Military Draft

I was reading something yesterday that described the all volunteer military as a fifty first state, with bad implications. It started me to wondering how wise it is to have a military that is essentially "us" and then there is "you" and if it could become something like the (unknown number of) cops who have such an attitude. Young persons in need and immigrants seem to be the main source of manpower. The people who make the civilian decisions about the military seem less and less knowledgeable, from a close personal perspective than they ought, and many on the take from lobbyists. I don't necessarily hold that every single person ought to be forced to serve, but that there ought to be a fair lottery system in place. Just thinking aloud, at this stage.

I'm mixed on it, have thought the present system touches on the unwise, with the whole income/class thing, but don't have a solution at first hand. Will read along.

It's an issue many likely think is already settled, but I don't think it gets enough attention.

Fine, so long as females get drafted to the front lines at the same rate that males do.

I'm opposed to a draft for several reasons:

(1) The draft itself might be fair, but the assignments wouldn't be. Those without influence would be the ones sent to die.

(2) Forced military service is involuntary servitude.

(3) It would push the youth towards a conservative view, the same way college pushes them towards liberalism. As a liberal, I'm opposed to that.

I do think most Americans think of military service as something other people should do for us.

I've been struggling with this Edgar, I've written and re-written line after line after line. But I'll get back later when I sort out my thoughts on this. I noticed that far too any people have an unrealistic view of what the real military experience actually is. It make me a little crazy. Back later.

From my top link
The result is that the world’s mightiest and most active military power fields a fighting force derived largely from a highly circumscribed set of people. The active duty force in particular is heavily biased toward the working class, minorities, and, increasingly, immigrants or first-generation Americans. This is nothing new: The draft, combined with a broad student deferment, produced much the same result. A young Elvis Presley, who, before he became famous, tried to make a living in the country’s budding post-World War II trucking industry, fit the typical background of peacetime draftees when he was called up. Today military recruiters would consider someone with his profile but without his fame to be a prime candidate for service.
Without much reflection or argument, the United States now supports the professional “large standing army” feared by the Founding Fathers, and the specter of praetorianism they invoked casts an ever more menacing shadow as the nation drifts toward an almost mercenary force, which pays in citizenship, opportunity structures (such as on-the-job technical training and educational benefits), a privileged world of social policy (think Tricare), and, in the case of private contractors, lots of money. Strict constructionists of the Constitution frequently ignore one of its most important principles—that the military should be large and powerful only when it includes the service of citizen-soldiers. This oversight clearly relates to the modern American tendency to define freedom using the neo-liberal language of liberty, shorn of any of the classical republican terminology of service. We would do well to remember Cicero’s most concise summary of a constitutional state: “Freedom is the participation in power.”
Others voices have bemoaned the increasing isolation of the military world within society. Most of these critiques suggest that society suffers when it is ignorant of the military’s organization, function, and virtues. In this view, the republic is harmed, if not endangered, when the outlook and priorities of the military diverge significantly from those of the national elite. One commentator recently went so far as to claim that U.S. political dysfunction generally could be treated effectively by restoring the draft. Dana Milbank of the Washington Post claimed in a November 29 column that: