Conscription

Serving the Servants - Matt Yglesias

Unlike Mr. Yglesias, I think we are coming to a point in our history where a form of conscription is almost necessary. But like Matt, I do think that we need to expand the idea of what conscription would include. Yet the way I think of it is not in terms of rebuilding our armed forces or providing enough bodies for agencies like Child Protective Services and homeland security. I think of it as a means of adjusting the country's attitude toward college and the expectations of our post-grade school teens and twenty-somethings. I believe we should have a 'gap year' between high school and college where teens are allowed to experience the world in a non-academic fashion. I also believe that conscription would take a mass of teens and give them a sense of what is possible for their lives. Conscription does not have to focus solely on military service. Instead we could easily fill the ranks of civil organizations and agencies that commonly suffer from understaffing. CPS is a glaring example of where we need far more people than we get, even if those people are there just to do office work. Police forces, border patrols, emergency services, there's a whole host of public service jobs out there that desperately need more people. Sure, there's a good portion of the conscription classes that would opt for military services, but with a population of our size we would still have plenty of teens left over to fill the ranks of civil service.
I would not be opposed to putting my future children through conscription, nor am I opposed to doing it myself. Say two years for military service or four years for civil service. Such an arrangement would put a lot of post-high school kids in college when they are around 21 to 23. It will have put them through an experience where they must display responsibility right after spending a year without any serious responsibility. It would raise the value of a high school education since a good number of kids wouldn't go on to college afterwards while providing those who do go on to college with the money and attitude to make it through successfully. Certainly there are those kids who will not do well in conscription, just as there are kids who don't do well in college or life in general. We can do what we can for them but at some point either they get it or they don't. But still, I think that conscription would offer the post-high school kids with an opportunity to get their feet wet without pushing them into the world defenseless and unprepared. Particularly for those kids who don't go on to college and never intended to, conscription would offer them the chance to learn about the possibilities. I like the idea and I think there are practical ways of implementing it, even in today's political climate.