National service has always been the bridesmaid but never the bride in American politics. From the time the idea of some kind of service more comprehensive than military duty in the militia or in the conscript army became popular in the early 1900s, it's had a lot of support -- mostly on the center-left, some on the right. But national service has never really gotten very far. Now, after a century of failed attempts, we have proposals for some comprehensive service programs at the federal level.

It behooves us to ask why this idea has failed so often. Universal military training was proposed by General Leonard Wood after World War I, and there were people who wanted to revive the Civilian Conservation Corps after World War II, but they got nowhere. There was a big debate back in the 1980s, and that got nowhere either. I think we ought to look at this and ask: What are the arguments against national service that at least the majority of policymakers and the public found compelling then? Are they still valid -- or at least are they going to persuade a majority of people, whether they're valid or not?

My colleague Ted Halstead has mentioned three different rationales for national service, and I think this is a useful and constructive way of thinking about it. Two of these rationales, when it comes to the subject of a draft, are extraordinarily weak. They may be good arguments for some voluntary form of service, but not if conscription or coercion is involved. Only one argument in favor of national service is very powerful. The three that he has mentioned are: the unmet needs argument, which holds that there are not enough people helping out in nursing homes, there's too much litter along the highway, there's a need to build park benches in the national parks, and so on; the character-building argument, or the argument that people should not go for their entire education without encountering someone from a different race, a different socioeconomic background, or a different religion; and the final argument is the one based on practical military needs and homeland defense.

It seems to me to be a mistake for proponents of national service to say prematurely that we'll have the biggest possible coalition of supporters while we agree to disagree about what the purpose of national service is. I think this has hurt many of the efforts in the past. There has to be a hierarchy among these purposes, and as I say, two of them are very weak and one of them is very strong.

Unmet Needs

The weakest, in my opinion, is the unmet needs argument. In most cases this takes the form of an assertion rather than an argument. It's very subjective to say that there are needs that are not being met, not only by the private sector marketplace but also by our very flourishing philanthropic, nonprofit, foundation-base, church-based civil society. Depending on whom you ask, we have an unmet need in bringing the arts to poor children if you're on the relative left. If you're on the relative right, you might say there's an un-met need in providing manpower to faith-based church institutions.

Assuming that you can get a majority of Americans to agree on a list of unmet needs, it seems to me that you then have to go through a second process: You have to ask, can the marketplace take care of this? And if the market can't do it, then can nonprofit organizations or churches or other institutions in our existing noncoercive, nonconscriptive civil society do this? When you're dealing with the power of the state, with something like the draft, it's not enough to say that there are not enough people helping the elderly in nursing homes because of the prices of elder care. You first have to establish that you can't pay more money for adult professionals with benefits and perhaps union representation to do these jobs. And even if you can establish that, you have to say why this job must be done by the government. Why the federal government? Why not instead by the nonprofit sector, which could have a greater foreseeable role? We tent to forget about this and think it's just a question of the market or the state, but we have the world's most developed nonprofit sector.

So I think that the unmet needs argument is the least convincing argument for a draft. In a country with our own individualistic, libertarian tradition you cannot, in essence, enslave 18-year-olds to do things that might be inspiring for a nonprofit organization to do, like beautifying highways and helping the elderly. I use the term enslavement just to be provocative, as a supporter of the military draft. When you're talking about forced labor, the alternative to which is imprisonment, you have to have very good reasons for it. And having better highways and more beautiful national parks and emptying bedpans is just not a compelling enough reason for involuntary servitude to the government.

Character Building

I don't think that character building and class mixing, as much as I support both of those, are compelling reasons for a draft, either. We've now had a generation of Americans since the Vietnam War, maybe a couple of generations of affluent kids, who have essentially lived in a socioeconomic bubble. They have managed to go from birth through school through prep school through the Ivy League without encountering anyone from outside their rarefied social stratum. I think it would be good for the souls of these kids if they went out and helped the poor or helped teach children remedial instruction or even went and dug ditches. It might be good for their souls, but I don't think they should be drafted. Frankly, I don't think the federal government is in the character-building business.

The use of government coercion to shape the character of citizens goes against the American tradition -- both American traditions, really. The deepest American traditions are the Jeffersonian and the Hamiltonian traditions. Both of these are uneasy with the national service tradition, which comes out of English Fabianism and certain aspects of the socialist tradition. The Jeffersonians love the idea of the citizen soldier, but only at the local level. The whole point of the local militia was to restrain federal government, so you can't simply transfer the Jeffersonian model to the national government. The militia is intended as a check on Washington, and national service, even for the military, inspires uneasiness among right-wing militia types who are genuine, although somewhat neurotic, Jeffersonians. To make matters worse, from a Jeffersonian perspective, drafting people to perform civilian functions is just slavery, so no Jeffersonian could support that.

The other tradition in the United States is the Hamiltonian tradition, which supports a strong centralized government, a powerful military, and a powerful central intelligence agency. At the same time, however, the Hamiltonians love the division of labor, they love capitalism, they love commerce, and they also love expertise. Everything Alexander Hamilton says about the militia in the Federalist Papers is an insult. He was the number one aide to Washington during the Revolutionary War and both Washington and Hamilton were terribly frustrated with the performance of the militia. This was the experience of many subsequent leaders, including one of our greatest generals, General Winfield Scott in the Mexican-American War. Scott got so disgusted with the militia's incompetence that he sent them all home in the middle of the Mexican War. And he won the war with only his handpicked regular troops. It was with a great sense of relief in the 20th century that most military leaders turned to creating a professional full-time military instead of relying on what was, in some cases, little more than a local rural rabble with muskets, which often ran amok and was very difficult to control. So there's a real tension between American tradition and the idea that the federal government can simply conscript you for a period of time to perform functions that are not absolutely and immediately justified by necessity.

Military Needs

It's the third argument, the military argument, that Americans have found compelling. If there is no way to defend the country adequately with your professional military (and that includes having the level of expertise and the educational credentials you want in your soldiers), there seems to me to be a compelling practical argument for a draft in order to meet manpower needs alone.

In addition, there is a moral argument that is more subjective. It is the idea that in a republic, as opposed to the old-fashioned despotic monarchies, the citizens participate, they are the owners of the state, the state does not own them. The republican ideal is not socialism, but rather something like a property owners association: in return for being associated, you take part in the administration of justice through being a juror; you take part in the selection of leaders through voting -- which used to be considered a duty, not a hobby -- and you take part in defense, at least locally, through the militia. This republican ideal has faded away, and in practice our relationship with the government is largely one of paying taxes. If you never have jury duty and you don't vote and you never serve in the military, there is very little difference between living in 20th-century America and being an 18th-century Hessian subject of King George.

So there is both the moral and practical argument for military conscription. And as Paul Glastris has suggested, September 11 possibly has transformed this debate about the military aspect of national service. For the first time since the early or midpart of the 20th century, homeland defense is something that is very important, very significant. Homeland defense is not an afterthought, it's not a way of avoiding the draft. Homeland defense is actually something serious.

This leads me to draw conclusions that may hearten some and dishearten others. I think that a two-tiered program of national service, which gives you the choice between military service abroad and homeland defense within the borders of the United States, can be justified. Conscription for the purpose of homeland defense seems plausible -- that is, it doesn't look as though you're simply in favor of national service on principle and you've come up with an excuse for it. No, it's something we really need to do.

What would these homeland defenders do? Well, they could provide emergency personnel support for EMS units, firefighters, and policy. You would want professionals to be on the front lines, but in a lot of cases people would be needed to drive ambulances, to answer phones, to arrange those logistics behind the scenes.

Frankly I don't consider the admirable activities like many of those associated with AmeriCorps or VISTA as a legitimate alternative to homeland defense or to serving in the military. It seems to me you are at least in theory risking your life if you are responding to a tornado, if you are helping firefighters respond to a terrorist bombing, if you're helping hospitals during bioterrorism attacks. There is the same connection between personal and physical labor and sacrifice and citizenship that war abroad has historically had. Now with all due respect to the proponents of other kinds of civilian national service, I don't think that helping young children learn to read, picking up litter on the highways, or helping the elderly in understaffed nursing homes is comparable.

The contemporary debate on national service was started by William James in his essay, "The Moral Equivalent of War." I will conclude by saying that I don't think that most civilian service is the moral equivalent of war. The connection between citizenship and sacrifice lies in actually putting yourself in harm's way. I think that the argument of national defense is the most compelling argument for national service, especially if it uses the draft. And I suspect that for most of the public, it's the only compelling argument.