I have read Theodore Pappas’s review essay (November 1990) in which he advocates compulsory national service and find his proposal quite unconvincing for the following reasons.

First, despite the inclusion of military “boot camp,” it is not likely that the courts would uphold the constitutionality of the law because of the “window dressing” nature of the training. Second, the option to serve the remaining nine months in a military service with real warriors is quite impractical. The current organization of all of the armed services requires high degrees of professionalism and motivation, and the “nine-month soldier” would not only be completely useless to the military units to which he was assigned but would degrade unit performance as well. Third, compliance would be difficult to impossible to enforce. Fourth, in this age of burgeoning deficits, where would the funding come from? And fifth, before making claims that the public supports compulsory national service, a great deal more surveying and analysis needs to be done. If my estimate is correct, the proverbial “man on the street” supports it for his neighbor’s son, not for his own.

In conclusion I must say that I am surprised that an editor of Chronicles would make a proposal so redolent of outright fascism.

        —Robert C. Whitten
Cupertino, CA

Mr. Pappas Replies:

No careful reader could conclude that my essay advocates national service. Instead, it points out both the pros and cons of many of the plans recently proposed in Congress and then offers a sketch of what might be the least harmful and most beneficial plan of national service that could be enacted. It even acknowledges that the type of national service most likely to be approved is a pork-barrel serving of what Bruce Chapman calls that “old liberal porridge” from the “great stove of government expansionism.” This is hardly a clarion call to rev up the draft boards.

Secondly, the charge that I outline a fascistic plan of national service is patently absurd. A system of national service organized and operated at the state and local levels—meeting the social and environmental needs deemed worthy by state and local communities, not Washington bureaucrats—would be the very antithesis of the centralist dogma on which fascism is based, li Chronicles were going fascist, we would be supporting the plan recently proposed by a prominent conservative, a plan to tie college financial aid and homebuying assistance to service in a Police ROTC and to organize high-school students into paramilitary platoons that would conduct “surveillance” while acting as a “presence” in our neighborhoods. We’re not and we don’t.