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It's Getting Drafty Again, or How Eugene Volokh Almost Singlehandedly Saves the Huffington Post from Becoming A Left-Wing Echo Chamber

It's no longer fun to make fun of the Huffington Post. The big and serious boys of the liberal blogosphere, as opposed to the celebrity-obsessed bits, have the virtue of having writers with serious opinions and the wits to back them up. The Post seems to think that blogging is nothing more than stringing together a list of rhetorical questions, assuming the answer is self-evident, and making no further attempt at analysis. Take, for example, Bill Diamond, writing about this draft that people like Brian Leiter have been predicting, due... err... months ago?:

I refuse to believe that the world has changed so much that 18-year-olds today are any more anxious to die or be maimed on the battlefield than I was back in the late '70s. But given all the talk about the possible reinstatement of the draft, why aren't we hearing more from the nation�s campuses? Is there resistance brewing and it's just not getting reported? Or is it, as I think Jim is suggesting, that college-aged students have become so narcotized by our entertainment-obsessed culture that they don�t see what may be headed their way?

Yeah, Bill: college students are morons too busy watching Spongebob battle to save the Crabby Patty to worry about whether we get drafted. ("We" being inclusive if you believe the worst Leiter-esque bits of the conspiracy theory, in which I'm still draft age.) Please, Bill, go sip another latte, crank the Patronize dial down from 11, and leave us in peace. Or here's a better idea: before you decide to spew drivel all over the internet, why not go talk to a college student, or visit a college campus, or even read a few blogs not run by B-list celebrity wannabees? It's not like finding a college blogger on the internet is a particular challenge. (Here's a hint for a start: Livejournal. Don't say I never did anything for you.)

What I want to know is why Prof. Volokh is slumming it over at the Post. Almost alone among his co-authors, he actually tries to answer the questions he poses. Indeed, he tried to give Bill a pointer:

From what I've heard, the talk is mostly from people who don't like the Administration, who oppose the war in Iraq, and who are using the talk to argue against the war.

The Administration is saying it doesn't want a draft. The political party in power in Congress seems to have no interest in reinstating the draft. The minority party seems to have no interest in reinstating the draft. Last time the draft was proposed in Congress, obviously as an anti-war statement rather than as a serious proposal, it was defeated 402-2. As best I can tell, the military has no interest in the draft. And reinstating the draft would be lousy politics, not the sort of thing that a barely-majority party would really want to do.

Is that the stuff that protest movements are made of? "We're resisting the draft that may be headed our way! Everyone in power agrees with us that there shouldn't be a draft! Rumsfeld says there shouldn't be a draft! Congress says there shouldn't be a draft! But we're resisting anyway!"


It's certainly the kind of imaginary hobgoblin that Bill Diamond seems to thrive on. What I want to know is when Prof. Volokh's going to get tired of answering this kind of question.

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Anthony at 'Three Years of Hell...' brought my attention to that the draft-talk is being brought to us by our favorites from the left. [Read More]

Comments

I remain mystified why this interests you so much. But oh well. The reason anti-war liberals don't think of the draft as somehow off-limits is that military planners' declarations have not proven, in the past, to be terribly good indicators of what actually will happen. Wilson campaigned on the slogan that he "kept us out of the war"; LBJ accused Goldwater of planning a military escalation that Johnson eventually put in effect. If there were not going to be a draft, I should expect the military brass and civilian leadership to say there would not be a draft. But it's not exactly unthinkable that they would say the same if there were going to be one, so it seems to me unjustified to put so much reliance on "The president said so." The president has said a great many things, very few of which I and other anti-war liberals believe.

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