Opinion: Renewed draft could curb gun violence

Please tell me this is satire. Involuntary servitude as a way to identify the mentally unstable, and build character in the rest? People shouldn't be drafted for military duty any more than for any other line of work, and the idea that they should belongs in the Victorian era, when life was cheaper and rights were what you could afford to buy. The high-tech armed forces are not potato peelers and cannon fodder these days, and the idea of using military service as a way to scoop up dangerous psychopaths and make citizens out of slackers is insulting to the professionals who voluntarily serve, in and out of the military.

What reinstituting the draft would accomplish is increasing the number of walking wounded and prematurely dead, but with many more who never bargained for that possibility; trivializing "patriotism" and "character" as a matter of blind obedience, gun skills and a readiness to kill; resurrecting the corrupt system of dodges and deferments that socioeconomically perverted our last draft; saddling our career military professionals with a steady stream of unmotivated, angry draftees to train and fight beside. Nobody needs or wants this, and it is a fundamental violation of human rights to boot, a giant step backwards into a bad old world. What an appallingly illiberal suggestion for an ostensibly liberal commentator.

January 2, 2013 at 7:51 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Letter: Unfair criticism

Well, said, but completely wrong.

December 31, 2012 at 1:24 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Letter: Vengeful God

Dailey's God is not a vengeful God; he's a spaced out and negligent God. Or a coy God. But the important thing is he's Dailey's God, and he's welcome to Him, as Burkhead is welcome to his.

Theology is like Build-A-Bear.

December 26, 2012 at 6:02 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Death, suffering

Yes, being mocked is a sure sign that you are righteous. Really, we should all just start crying out to Burkhead, since we hear from him much more than we hear from God, and he seems better at explaining the whole demented Christian system anyway. Couldn't be clearer. "And let he who is without understanding heed the Head of the Burk, through whom all things are made known, who shineth the light of his torch into the darkness of the Word, wherein all manner of vileness is revealed." (Pharisees 2:45)

April 25, 2012 at 8:20 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Rights for all

Excellent letter. If you can't make your argument in terms that any decent, fair-minded person should be able to appreciate, regardless of their religious commitments, that argument has no place in the business of the government.

This applies to small intrusions of a religious agenda as well as large, because to say that you know how much religion, or what kind, is tolerable in secular government, is to arrogate to yourself the privilege of using armed government to endorse - and enforce - private belief, the thin edge of the theocratic wedge. Nobody has any authority to intrude the supernatural into the law of the United States, or to arbitrate how much and what kind is OK. Not liberals, conservatives, or anybody.

April 5, 2012 at 7:46 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Wall or hedge?

"A civil ruler dabbling in religion is as reprehensible as a clergyman dabbling in politics. Both render themselves odious as well as ridiculous." - James Cardinal Gibbons, 1834-1921, second American to be made a Catholic cardinal.

March 9, 2012 at 8:26 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Wall or hedge?

http://www.usconstitution.net/jeffwal...

Couldn't be any clearer.

March 9, 2012 at 8:19 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Wall or hedge?

Yeah, and why shouldn't a vegetarian who takes a job a McDonald's refuse to serve burgers? Because promoting vegetarianism isn't any part of the job, and giving people meat is. Promoting religion and enacting dogma is no part of the job in secular government. Politicians have no authority to impose their supernatural speculations in the performance of the public business. In fact they are specifically warned not to do so in the Constitution.

http://www.infidels.org/library/moder...

John F. Kennedy -
"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute."

John Adams-
“The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses. . . Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.”

March 9, 2012 at 8:13 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Motorist who hit tree after police chase faces several charges, traffic violations

This clever boy almost ran down my wife and I as we walked home, crossing Emery at University Drive. If they'd like to add assault or attempted homicide charges, I'd be happy to oblige.

March 3, 2012 at 11:26 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Pitts’ hypocrisy

Quite wrong Spoon. Faith is the magic "get out of reason free" card that believers like Pitts play when reality is piling up against them and their hand is losing. It's the ultimate, arrogant cop-out, nothing but a handy loophole and escape clause, and always a hypocritical finger in the eye of civil discourse. "I believe it so deal with it" is a breathtaking brush-off, the elevation of the personal intuition, local tradition and emotional preference into an arbitrary bludgeon over all reasoned argument. It is nothing of value, no matter how it flatters itself that it's the golden road to profound, eternal truths. We "debunkers" just see through the bluff and bluster, not a hard trick at all. Mystical hand-waving about what maybe might be true, followed by a leap of assertion, doesn't distract us.

Believers have it all backwards, when it comes to honest truth-seeking.

March 11, 2011 at 8:32 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )