675. Can the Government Force You to Serve in the Military? Understanding the Draft and Your Rights

[Speaker 1]
Hi, Rachel. Hey, Brittany. Have you ever been forced to do something you didn't want to do by like a parent or a teacher or someone or a kid?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, yeah. Oh, by a kid all the time.

[Speaker 1]
I was going to say, I think I made my parents sit through very, very bad violin recitals on or whatever play I was making up for them in my living room. I feel like that may have been bad. So we don't like being forced to do something, right?

We don't like it.

[Speaker 2]
No, I don't mind for my kids, but I remember being a kid and being forced to do things I didn't want to do. Yeah, it's not, it's not nice.

[Speaker 1]
Even beyond that, imagine like you're playing at recess. And if you were like me, I like playing on the swings or playing pretend, living in my own world somehow. And somebody like a teacher is like, no, you have to play soccer at recess.

Ooh. And you were like, I don't want to play soccer. First of all, I don't like sports.

Second of all, I'm not coordinated. And they're like, no, you have to. And you're like, okay, well, I don't want to.

And they're like, you don't have a choice. It's that or you don't ever get to have a recess again. You have to sit on the, remember being benched.

That's what we called it in my school. You were like benched. You have to sit on the bench at recess and watch all your friends play if you did something wrong.

So let's say you have to get benched or go play. So you're like, okay, fine. I'm going to go play.

And then you're out playing and people are pushing you over and you get hurt. I mean, you get hurt. And you tried warning them like, hey, not my game, not my fight.

Like I'm not good at this. And you get hurt and you sprain your ankle and you are, you know, whatever for the whole year. That would be a very bad situation, right?

I would be very unhappy. Now imagine, imagine that happening, but instead of risking spraining your ankle or something, you're very much risking losing your life, which sounds pretty awful because it is awful. That is kind of what the draft is.

And Rachel and I have kind of teased this topic a little bit. We've talked about it specifically. We've talked about free speech and the Vietnam war has come up a few times and we'll talk about that one in detail later, but we've talked about the draft.

So the draft, if your dads or your moms play fantasy football, which I don't, I just know I hear people that talk about like, oh, I'm drafting my team. And I think it's, it is a term used in sports. And I say, I think, cause I don't know anything about, I can't tell you anything about musical theater.

I can't tell you a thing about sports, but there's like, it's basically like you're picking someone to do something. Okay. So the draft is where the government randomly picks you to go serve in a war and it doesn't matter how you feel about that war.

It doesn't matter what you think about the war. It doesn't matter if you want to go, it doesn't matter you're going. So we have an unfortunate history of this in this country and it started in the civil war.

So 1860s is when this started and both sides were doing it cause you had the North and the South. And that was, I mean, that was interesting because you did have people who were kind of like, let me defend, you know, my side, but they had to draft people. And do you know why you have to draft people when things are unpopular and people don't want to fight them?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Cause they didn't have enough. They didn't have enough. So horrible.

But there was something that I think actually even makes it more horrible. And that is during this time, not everybody was drafted because let's say you were drafted and your dad had money and you say like, listen, I don't want my kid to go to war. Like here's some $20 bills under the table.

And then you didn't have to go. And that was allowed. So you could pay your way out of war.

And I would love to tell you like that, that, that never happened again. Even if it wasn't legal to do that, there are still people with connections that got out of, you know, serving.

[Speaker 2]
There's a song called fortunate son.

[Speaker 1]
That's my favorite 19, you know, that era song. Uh, I love CCR. Yeah.

That's a great song. Uh, the chorus is I ain't no Senator's son. So basically saying like, if I get drafted, I have to go cause I don't have a dad, you know, in power.

And that was the very, we'll get to that in a minute. So it starts with a civil war. That's where we first have the draft.

And then for the most part, I mean, if you actually think about it, there wasn't really another big war for a while until world war one comes around. Okay. That's, you know, 19, 18 ish.

And for us at least when we got involved. And this is like the first time we're starting to get into a global cause member civil war was civil. This is a global war.

And there's just not people. There's no one to go, right? We don't have the military we have today.

So everybody who went to world war one for the most part was drafted. They were not enlisting and listing is when you sign up for the military and know what you're getting into. Most of them were drafted.

Wouldn't a lot of people didn't enlist? No, some people did, but like a lot of people. I think I was like, I want to say it was millions were like, I looked at some redacted numbers.

I swear I said 10 million, but I don't know. That sounds too high. But I think it may have been.

We're drafted.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, it's, it's, it's in, it's in that, that song, boogie woogie bugle boy in the lyrics and his number came up and he's gone with the draft lyrics. So it's in a lot of, a lot of pop culture from then.

[Speaker 1]
And your number comes up literally. So we'll, I'll get there, we'll get to there when I get to Vietnam. So then world war two comes around and the draft had like never really gone away since world war one.

So that comes around and that one was, I mean, they're all bad, but so then people were getting drafted again and then they never took it out of place again. And so when Korea, people forget about the Korean war. We don't talk about that one a lot in the fifties, which is, I believe the whole North and South Korea thing is, was born out of that situation, which we don't.

It's funny. I don't know why we don't talk about it a lot, but that's just one of those things that for me, at least in school was kind of glazed over. It was just like, Oh yeah, then the Korean war happened and it's like, all right.

And then you move on to Vietnam. But so Korean war happens, people are still getting drafted and then Vietnam happens. Now Vietnam was kind of a switch.

So, okay. So all this is happening, how the government does it. Every time you turn or you turn 18, every time you're hopefully 18 months.

So when you turn 18 and you're a boy, you have to sign up for the selective service and that is essentially entering your name into the draft. You don't have a choice. Yeah.

If they ever have to call a draft. Now they haven't called a draft in a long time. We're going to get there.

No spoilers yet. So, okay. That's how they do it now.

And they, it's really like picking your name out of a bucket and it's like, okay. So Vietnam comes and the draft is brought back again. And Vietnam is different because Vietnam is a war that no one really understood, right?

So you have world war one, look at all these terrible things happening in Europe, world war two, same thing, Korea, communism, we got to fight it. And even though Vietnam was still kind of the communist thing, it made so little sense. And I think youth were becoming a little more like rebellious of like, no, we're not going to go fight your wars.

Don't get our generation into this. Don't send me off to die. And so you had this anti-war rebellion.

You had people burning their draft cards. So they would turn 18, they would get there, like sign up to vote. So when you sign up to vote, you sign up with your selective service.

It's like the same thing. So they were getting that draft card and burning it. And that was like a big like symbol of like, no, we're not going to do this.

So Vietnam is a game changer. And it was really powerful. We've talked about this and we'll talk about it in another episode of just Vietnam, really bringing wars into the living rooms of Americans because TV was showing it for the first time.

Anti-war music like Fortunate Son was on the radio. You're really hearing about it and you're becoming, it's becoming more something real and not something off in some distant land.

[Speaker 2]
MASH. Did you ever watch MASH?

[Speaker 1]
I didn't watch MASH, but my mom did. I remember her talking about it.

[Speaker 2]
It happened like right in the aftermath of Vietnam, but it was set in Korea. Yeah, that's what I thought. So it was all about the Korean war.

And there was this character, Clinger, who he would cross dress so that he could be declared ineligible and sent home anyway. That's so funny.

[Speaker 1]
That they were looking for anything. There was like some kid, they would eat cotton balls because they thought it looked, showed up as something on an x-ray. Because what you do is you turn in your card.

They pull your name. Like it was something, it was like, Oh, he's 1A. I remember hearing that.

And that meant that you were like the first group of people who could be drafted. And then you were called to like go get a, like an examination from a doctor to make sure that you're good, that you can serve in war. And now people who didn't want to do this, some of them fled to Canada and this was called draft dodging.

And it was, was it a felon? It may have been. It was a huge crime.

Like you faced jail time, you would be in prison. And people were doing it because they would rather do that than die. I mean, that's what it came down to.

Vietnam, such horrible things were happening and we were not winning that war. And so a lot of people risked their freedom. Now there's something called a conscientious objector.

And sometimes you can get out of war. I think, didn't Muhammad Ali do this? Didn't he say, but it was before it would have been when he was Cassius Clay.

Am I getting this wrong? I just remembered that. This will be your homework.

I feel like it was him, but maybe I'm wrong. You can claim to be a conscientious objector. And that's basically somebody who's like a pacifist, who's opposed to war.

It is your core belief. But I think that's a pretty high, I think you have to prove that because then any, everybody would just say, I'm a conscientious objector, you know?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. Now Ron Paul was drafted. Did you know that?

He was, he was a doctor. Yeah. He was actually drafted.

But what he did was he made it so instead of killing people, he could heal people. So he, he volunteered to go and be a flight surgeon. So that's how he handled that.

And I respect that a lot. So he still served his country.

[Speaker 1]
There's a really cute picture of him on the bike with his little military, his little hat. Remember? I think he has one of his kids on the bike with him.

It's a cute picture, but yeah, there was that line where he's like, I served or something during a debate. Cause I think it was Newt Gingrich was talking about, I can't remember. It's so long ago.

I blocked it out. But so draft dodging, um, was not repeal like that was not a whatsoever pardon. So president Carter in 1977.

So Vietnam war is what get really gets heated up. I mean, okay. Summer of love as they call it was 69.

It was about that time, early seventies. And it wasn't until 1977 when president Carter got into office where he was like, okay, we're going to pardon all the draft dodgers. We're going to take that away.

And to get back to what Rachel said, the draft has not been used again since then, because the backlash, right? The backlash that happened from forcing these boys to go, you know, and, and die for a cause they didn't understand. It wasn't to protect their country.

They weren't sure what they were doing there. And you know, there've been lots of scares since then of like, what if they bring it back? My least favorite thing is people saying, well, we should be able to draft women because you know, feminism.

And let me tell you. Please. No, please.

No, no, thank you. I will.

[Speaker 2]
I don't want that kind of equality.

[Speaker 1]
So haven't used it, but it's still there. We, you know, boys still have to fill out their selective service card. Like it's still there.

It could still be used. They didn't have to use it. You know, war on terror.

I honestly think a lot of that may have been because of 9-11. There were a lot of people who ran out and enlisted because they felt a duty, right. And it was so scary that there were people going out there.

And nowadays I think too, we have like drones. I'm not saying that's good, but like we haven't really needed the manpower to resort to drafting. And I think it ended so disastrously last time.

[Speaker 2]
So well, there is something to be said for having an all volunteer military. It doesn't mean that volunteers and they're not paid, but volunteer as in not drafted. Like they all raise their hand and willingly signed up and enlisted.

There's something to be said for that. And if you've got a war that you can sell to the people and convince them that this is for God and country, and you've got to, you know, save your country and be a hero, you know, I think that's better than dragging them off the street. And I've seen some terrible videos in Ukraine and I think not Russia, but in Ukraine these days, that war has been so unpopular with Ukrainians that there's horrible videos of like these ununiformed men driving around the streets in Ukraine, looking for any able-bodied military age man.

And they will just drag them off the street, throw them in a van. And then, you know, are they ever heard from again?

[Speaker 1]
Well, and there are some countries where they don't do the draft, but like Israel, for example, does mandatory military service.

[Speaker 2]
Mandatory, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Where it's not the draft. But basically how people here go to college after, you know, they go to high school, that's how a lot of people do it. You have to serve two to three years in the military, boys and girls.

Now it might not be active, you could have a different job there, but that's not the only country that does it. That's the only one that comes to mind. Switzerland does that too.

[Speaker 2]
Really?

[Speaker 1]
Interesting. Yeah, Switzerland does that. But they're not getting themselves into many wars, Israel is.

[Speaker 2]
Right, right. So maybe people don't mind because, you know, you do your two years, maybe it's like a coming of age thing. And plus you get a free machine gun after you serve.

[Speaker 1]
I've heard some, we won't get into the arguments here, of like when it's not like active war that there's a lot of responsibility that is learned and you could maybe make those arguments. But I think what this comes down to is voluntary. And you know, the Constitution promises us life, liberty and protection of property.

Now if you are forcing young kids who barely, I mean, your brains don't stop developing until you're 25 or 26, right, maybe 27. So little boys, I mean, you have sons. You are sending these boys off to very likely die.

That is not protecting your right to liberty, your life, liberty and property. So that's, the draft is horrible. I'm so glad that in our lifetime, my lifetime, we haven't seen it.

I hope that we don't see it. It's not been a thing.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
But you never, I don't put anything past government. So yeah, we'll leave it there. I hope none of us ever have to get drafted.

So don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast with your friends. And until next time, we will talk to you later. Talk to you later.