Saturday, June 14, 2008

Military Service & Draft

Military service and the American draft haven’t been discussed much in the news lately. I, like many people, may have mixed emotions about the subject, but this is something that has crossed my mind in recent months. I have noticed more and more young people with bad attitudes, bad manners, and outright rudeness. This would also include drinking habits and bad driving abilities. They seem to have a lack of respect for other people in general. These young people appear to be in the age range of 17 to 25, with some 25 to 30. I have to associate this behavior with the parents of these young individuals and a failure in parenting skills or possibly parents not being around enough during the growing up stage. I am not condemning the majority of this group, but I am talking about a large percentage. I will admit that there are a lot of very stable, polite, great young kids in society.
In my opinion, reinstating the draft in some format would be beneficial to society. Having to at least experience six to eight weeks of boot camp and training would provide some discipline, structure, and better attitudes. The American family has changed drastically over the last 25 years as a unit and this does seem to have affected a generation in many ways. The volunteer military that exists today may serve the needs (even though that may be questionable), but it wouldn’t hurt to have a pool available if a situation occurred in society that called for additional resources. There could also be a period of time after basic training where there is required community service to assist the needy and poor in their own community. The draft could serve more than one purpose and would be for everyone in a certain age range (nobody excluded) and then utilized as a reserve call-up list for a 1-2 year period of time. This would create a spending issue that many taxpayers would probably oppose, but needs to be explored. If this is not a possible avenue to consider, then is there anyone with an explanation for the situation and a possible remedy?

1 comment:

St. Jogo said...

Yes, I would agree with you on the unfortunate lack of etiquette found among today's younger people. Maybe a compulsory service arrangement, where the young person, male or female, is required to serve two years in the military, health care, education or even government service and in exchange is given perhaps tuition assistance or job placement upon completion.