I hope that was some mighty good stew, Esau.

"As the boys grew up, Esau became a skillful hunter.  He was an outdoorsman, but Jacob had a quiet temperament, preferring to stay at home.  Isaac loved Esau because he enjoyed eating the wild game Esau brought home, but Rebekah loved Jacob.

One day when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau arrived home from the wilderness exhausted and hungry.  Esau said to Jacob, “I’m starved! Give me some of that red stew!” (This is how Esau got his other name, Edom, which means “red.”)

“All right,” Jacob replied, “but trade me your rights as the firstborn son.”

“Look, I’m dying of starvation!” said Esau. “What good is my birthright to me now?”

But Jacob said, “First you must swear that your birthright is mine.” So Esau swore an oath, thereby selling all his rights as the firstborn to his brother, Jacob.

Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and lentil stew. Esau ate the meal, then got up and left. He showed contempt for his rights as the firstborn."  Genesis 25: 27-34.

Some things never change.

Sometime around 2000 BC Esau sold his birthright as Isaac's firstborn son for a bowl of stew.  He wasn't in danger of starving to death.  He was hungry and he wanted to eat right then.  So he traded away something lasting and transcendent for instant gratification.

In the 1930's the people of the United States of America did the same thing.  We had a birthright, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, conceived by the most brilliant collection of political minds in recorded history.  The Declaration clearly stated the only legitimate purpose for government, to secure the unalienable rights with which we were endowed by our creator.  It further declared that governments should be judged by how well they do this.

The Constitution was the result of long discussion and debate about how to create government strong enough to guarantee the rights of its citizens, but constrained enough not to pose a threat to those very rights.  The structure they came up with preserved liberty by dividing power.  The government would be divided into three separate and coequal branches, each largely independent within its sphere but with measures available to check the other branches if they exceeded their authority.  This divided power horizontally within the federal government.

Power was also divided vertically between the federal government and the states.  The federal government was one of limited and enumerated powers.  The States were the original and natural sovereigns.  They had been declared so by the Declaration of Independence.  Before there was a Constitution or Articles of Confederation to establish a unified national government, the states were sovereign, free and independent, possessing all the rights, powers and authorities that belong to sovereign polities.

From that toolbox of sovereign powers, the states delegated some to be used by the newly created federal government.  Everything not delegated was retained by the states and any attempt by Congress to legislate in areas not delegated to it was illegitimate.  This is the meaning of the Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Now, the Tenth Amendment didn't really state anything new, it was actually restating explicitly what was already implicit in the text and history of the Constitution.  The very first words following the preamble are "All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States..."  Article I, Section 1.  Those words "herein granted" can only mean that there are legislative powers not granted and Congress has no right to appropriate them.4

This was our birthright.  And we sold it for a bowl of stew called Progressivism.

As Jonah Goldberg as argued convincingly (I think) in his book Liberal Fascism, Progressivism is essentially the American manifestation of the fascist movement that swept much of the world in the early twentieth century.  Progressives, like their European fellow travelers, argued that modern society was too complex and fast-paced to be left to lay people and the vicissitudes of the free market.  They said that the only hope for civilization was to identify experts, give them control over the levers of power that influence a modern economy and free them from interference from outdated concepts like due process and the separation of powers.

Although Progressivism really took root in the '30s, and has remained entrenched since then, it had a brief flowering from 1913-1921 with the administration of Woodrow Wilson, the first American President to be openly contemptuous of the Constitution he swore to "preserve, protect and defend," and one of the most racist men ever to hold the office.  In his second term, he used World War I as an excuse to centrally plan the economy, jail his critics under the Espionage Act, establish an army of informers reporting disloyal citizens to the authorities, establish the first official propaganda office and take many other steps that created what Goldberg has identified as the world's first fascist government.

Wilson's progressive vision didn't take hold.  The public wanted a "return to normalcy."  Wilson was succeeded by Harding and then Coolidge, perhaps the last president who could take the oath of office without perjuring himself.

But the people were panicked by the depression of 1929 and turned once again  to the prophets of central planning.  In so doing they "showed contempt" for their birthright of liberty and sold it for a roll of the dice on a shiny new ideology.  And that's what it was.  Despite the myths about FDR and his brain trust heroically battling the Great Depression, they actually made it deeper and longer.  America and the world had been through depressions before.  It wasn't until the progressives got their hands on one that it became "Great."  At least Esau's bowl of stew actually satisfied his hunger.

The thing about toxic ideologies like progressivism is the effects don't become apparent right away.  Adam Smith said there's a lot of ruin in a nation.  Eighty years later the effects of progressive government can be seen in an ever expanding and uncontrollable federal government and a national debt approaching 20 trillion dollars. But the progressive ideas have become so ingrained we hardly notice them anymore and we can't connect our current troubles with the decision we made long ago to sell our birthright for a bowl of stew.

Bad Idea

So I saw this post on Facebook the other day:

Now I don't know if R. Lee Ermey actually endorses this post or if his image is being used without permission.  Regardless, this is one of those policy ideas that appeals to patriotic Americans on a gut level and is designed to elicit clicks and shouts of "Damn right!"  It is also a variant on an idea that gets resurrected from time to time that usually goes by the name of "National Service."  And it's a bad idea, both in general and as a means to advance the particular policy goal cited in the post.

The United States military today is among the most proficient in the world man for man.  How it stacks up to other first-class militaries cannot really be determined outside of an actual shooting war.  It's true that readiness has been suffering under the policies of the Obama administration but American arms are still a force to be reckoned with.

It is almost universally agreed that one of the biggest contributors to the United States' dominance on the battlefield is that every American serviceman is a volunteer.  They all chose to leave civilian life, go through rigorous training to earn the right to wear an American uniform and then go through even more training to master their particular specialties.  Those at the tip of the spear are there because they volunteered for the toughest training regimes.

A second reason for American military effectiveness is as a clear sense of mission.  The United States defense establishment exists to win wars and to deter other nations from starting wars by being demonstrably lethal on the battlefield.  Whenever the military is distracted from this singular purpose, it loses some of its battle-readiness.

The American military also dominates because of its clear technological edge over its adversaries, although this technology gap appears to be shrinking.  The sophisticated technology deployed by American forces can only be effectively operated and maintained by volunteer professionals, not by conscripts.  This was clearly demonstrated during the Cold War years when the sustainability of Soviet naval vessels was severely curtailed because their enlisted crews were too poorly trained to keep modern electronics and weapons systems operational.   All maintenance had to be performed by the relatively small number of officers in the crew.

With that in mind, the problems with signing up every American for two years' military service become blindingly obvious.  By its own terms, this idea is proposed not to increase military effectiveness, but to create political support for veterans' benefits.

The total number of Americans in uniform today stands at about 1.4 million.  There should probably be more, but the sort of universal conscription advocated here is not the answer.  In the 2010 census there were just over 30 million Americans between the ages of 18 and 24.  With a two-year service requirement we could expect roughly one-third to be in the forces, less those who are physically or otherwise unfit for service.  I have no idea how many would ultimately be excluded but lets say, for the sake of argument, that it's 25%.  That means roughly 8 million additional bodies wearing army, navy and air force uniforms (I'm assuming the marines would continue to take only volunteers).

What are these 8 million people going to do for two years?  Are we going to spend money on advanced technical training that may very well take up the majority of their service commitment, only to see them return to civilian life?  Do we expect career officers and NCO's to spend their time babysitting conscripts who are only marking time until they can get back to their real lives?

And the stated purpose of this service requirement, to create a political constituency for veterans' benefits, can only be achieved if we confer benefits on this vast horde of new veterans.  That means spending huge sums of money to bring the vast majority of Americans into a massive new dependency class.  Because, in the end, all this is is a gigantic new welfare program.  And that will not make America great.