It’s not just compulsory military service that 18th Congressional District candidate Colleen Callahan was talking about in a recent debate. According to the Journal Star:

[Callahan] said she’s in favor of “drafting” citizens for some form of national service, be it military or not as a way to bolster patriotism and bolster America’s standing at home and abroad. […] Callahan said the idea of a draft for national service had not come up before in talks with her staff and she hadn’t formulated a plan.

In the future, she may want to bounce her ideas off her staff first before trying to make up policy on the spot during a debate. While national service is laudable, making it compulsory is the sticking point. Many people have argued against forcing our young people into mandatory service for their country (other than a military draft in war time, of course), for a variety of reasons:

• It drains service of its virtue. Michael Kinsley writing in Time Magazine last year had this to say about compulsory service:
  

  So what would a plan for universal national service look like? It would be voluntary, not mandatory. Americans don’t like to be told what they have to do; many have argued that requiring service drains the gift of its virtue. It would be based on carrots, not sticks — “doing well by doing good,” as Benjamin Franklin, the true father of civic engagement, put it.

• It’s self-contradictory. Dr. Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute says:
  

  Compulsory national service turns young people into temporary slaves in order to inculcate in their minds the opposite premise: that they have a duty to selflessly serve society. To justify such a policy on the grounds of promoting appreciation for freedom is perverse. To call it patriotic is obscene.

  This is closely related to Kinsley’s point. How do you teach patriotism — “love of country and willingness to sacrifice for it” — when, under this policy, one is forced unwillingly to sacrifice for it? It undermines the virtue you’re trying to teach.

• It’s a tax. Gary Becker, University of Chicago professor (economics) and Nobel laureate, argues that compulsory service is a “tax in kind, on the time of young persons, rather than a tax on income, wealth, or spending.” Also, it’s a “narrow-based” tax, only exacted on young people — those with “weak political power…compared to groups who benefit either directly or indirectly from such taxes.”
• It’s a cap on the earnings of young people. Becker goes on to say that, besides it being a bad tax, it’s “partly equivalent to a ceiling on the earnings of young people,” because young people could get a higher-paying job, but would be prohibited from doing so under a compulsory-service scenario. They would essentially be forced to work for lower wages for two years, which is pretty much equivalent to having a cap on their earnings for two years. That prompts Becker to ask, “would politicians or anyone else who advocate compulsory service call explicitly for such a ceiling? I very much doubt it!”
• It’s expensive. Someone should ask Callahan how she proposes to pay for this initiative. Richard Posner, Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals judge and University of Chicago Law School lecturer, observed that:
  

  If 4 million persons [the approximate number of Americans who turn 18 every year] were conscripted for one year’s national service, at an annual expense of $27,000 per person [the federal contribution to AmeriCorps volunteers, used as a benchmark], the program would cost more than $100 billion a year–probably much more, because the $27,000 figure excludes the overhead expenses of the service organizations that receive the per capita grants.

Callahan almost immediately started backing away from her comments, according to the Springfield Journal-Register.

Callahan said Thursday that the question put to the candidates a day earlier was merely hypothetical and that her answer was conditional.

“I’m not advocating it,” she said of a draft. “I wouldn’t introduce legislation that says that.” But, she added, “When I’m the congressman, if that came up for my vote, would I consider it? Yes.”

So, Schock wants to send nukes to Taiwan, and Callahan wants to reinstate the draft. We’ve got a couple of real winners here in the race.