Phyllis Schlafly: Great American or the Greatest?

One reason she disliked the ERA was that it could lead to the end of the all-male selective service system. I have to agree with that. Can anyone tell me how we could have the Equal Rights Amendment yet a gender discriminatory draft? Or should we have women signed up for potential military drafts?

 

That's a trick question. No draft should exist. Americans have never been cowards. A war in which we cannot enlist enough soldiers for is a war that the American people to not want or need and no shitfaced politician should be able to shove it down our throats.

 

American society is structured differently, has different values and thinks differently. In short, we have matured. Equally as important, changes in society and technology must be weighed as well.

Solutions to issues that would have required military force decades and centuries ago may no longer require military force.

Laws and rules that made sense 100 years ago may not make sense now. The draft is a great example.

If you are going to compare the change in military capability due to a draft for any war before Desert Storm and any war after, you shouldn't chime in on this discussion. You are coming from a perspective that's unquestionably wrong.

 

It appears you are right about the percentage of draftees in the Union army, so touche there. But the rest of what you're saying is quite a stretch. The US drafted over 2 million men into world war I and our entry definitely played a major role in ending the WWI stalemate. As for WWII, the Allies would have had very little chance of winning in Europe without the U.S., which used an almost entirely conscripted army. Hitler didn't start a two front war. We started it at Normandy. Western Europe had been pacified on the ground for 2-3 years prior to D-Day, and the Germans spent 1941-43 fighting the Russians pretty successfully. If we had stayed out, the Germans might not have been able to completely conquer the Soviets, but they would have at least dominated the rest of Europe and exterminated many more millions of people.

Also, why the concern with "war aims"? How is that relevant to a discussion of the good that has been done in the world as a result of compulsory military service? The fact is that the Germans would have remained in power and continued the Holocaust but for the efforts of a mostly conscripted US Army. So, the draft (along with a lot of other things) was a necessary cause of stopping Hitler and ending the Holocaust. It also stopped an evil, genocidal Japanese regime. Will you at least give credit for that because it was an explicit "war aim" from the beginning?

 

Phyllis was so persuasive. I remember visiting with people I had thought intelligent who were absolutely convinced that the ERA would require merging men's and women's restrooms.

 

She seems to me like a nutcase