"Daisy" Girl Monique Corzilius Luiz

In the election of 1964, incumbent Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson unleashed the infamous — and devastating — “Daisy” ad against his opponent, Republican Barry Goldwater. Fifty-three years later, last October, Hillary Clinton had the child actor in the ad, Monique Corzilius Luiz, speak out against Trump. Luiz’s words echoed the message of the earlier “Daisy” ad, criticizing Trump as too reckless for the presidency.

“The fear of nuclear war that we had as children, I never thought our children would ever have to deal with that again,” Luiz said in the ad. “And to see that coming forward in this election is really scary.”

Luiz was born in New Jersey in 1961, and landed her first job at the tender age of 2 for an advertisement for Lipton soup — her mom took her to New York City for child acting auditions. At 3, she was selected for the “Daisy” ad, which she didn’t actually see herself until 2000. Her parents were paid the equivalent of $810 for the ad.

After other smaller advertisements, Luiz moved to France in the 1970’s with her family before returning the U.S. in the 1980’s with her Portuguese husband. Ironically, they settled in Arizona — two miles away from where Goldwater had lived.

Sources:

http://www.newsweek.com/grown-daisy-girl-recalls-her-infamous-attack-ad-63733

http://time.com/4551744/hillary-clinton-daisy-girl-donald-trump-ad/

http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/monique-luiz-star-lbjs-daisy-returns-hillary-clinton-ad-about-nuclear-weapons-174342/

Modern Satanism: Not Immorality, but Amorality

In an aptly named place in San Francisco known as the Black House, the Church of Satan was founded in the April of 1966. Its founder, Anton Szandor LaVey, had been heavily influenced by philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand — rather than promoting evil, LaVey’s Satanism promoted the ideals of strength, pride and raw human nature.

The religion — like a counter-culture — posited itself as a resistance against more traditional, mainstream ideologies, like Christianity and Judaism. Rather than believing in the supernatural, life after death and even Satan himself, Satanists who followed LaVey believed in the amorality of the world and in individualism’s superiority over generosity and egalitarianism.

This isn’t to say that Satanists were necessarily evil. Celebrities like Jayne Mansfield, an actress and model, and Sammy Davis Jr., a singer and actor, were known to associate with LaVey. Satanists simply wanted to live unadulterated, unrestrained lives.

LaVeyan Satanism was highly visible in the late 60’s, with LaVey often hosting public events like a Satanic wedding and Satanic funeral. But as the decades rolled on, infighting amongst the ranks led to several denominations of Satanism, from the Temple of Set which actually believed in the reality of Satan to the First Satanic Church, which resulted from a legal battle.

More recently, Satanists, whether LaVeyan or not, have been attempting to erect Satanic monuments in America. In a small town in Minnesota, the Satanic Temple is sponsoring a black monument at a veterans park, claiming that they have the right to and are not violating the Establishment Clause of the Constitution because another monument, one of a kneeling Christian soldier, already exists there.

The Satanic Temple has also attempted to erect monuments at the Oklahoma capitol — but withdrew its proposal after the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled against a Ten Commandments monument — and at the Arkansas capitol, where the installation of a Ten Commandments monument was approved.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/us/satanic-temple-sponsors-a-veterans-memorial-in-a-minnesota-town.html?_r=1

http://time.com/3973573/satanism-american-history/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Church-of-Satan

Inside the World of the New York Times' Crosswords

On December 21, 1913, the New York World pioneered the world’s first crossword puzzle, which had been created by journalist Arthur Wynne. In 1924, the New York Times would denounce crosswords in an editorial, calling them a “sinful wastes” of time and “a primitive sort of mental exercise.”

But in the midst of World War II, after the devastation and chaos of Pearl Harbor, New York Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger made an executive decision to start printing crosswords in the paper to give readers an opportunity to relax.

Seventy-five years later, the crossword is prospering under the guidance of Will Shortz. He follows in a short line of puzzle editors, which started with the legendary Margaret Farrar, who is often remembered for raising the rigor of the crossword to an unprecedented level and impeccably editing each Sunday crossword for 27 years.

After Farrar retired in 1969, previous Metropolitan Editor Will Weng took over, and started to add more humor and wordplay to the puzzles. After him came Eugene Maleska in 1979, who incorporated more cultural motifs and answers into the crossword.

In 1978, a 25-year-old Shortz premieres the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Stamford, Connecticut, which becomes the largest crossword event in the world and is still hosted annually. Shortz then takes over the New York Times crossword in 1993, and starts to elevate its status by raising the pay and increasing the number of contributors.

Today, many still solve Times crosswords puzzles to relax. According to clinical psychologist Helen R. Friedman in an interview with the times, “In difficult times, when life begins to feel out of control or when faced with an emotional dilemma, working on something that has finite answers can provide a sense of securities.”

Perhaps in a time that’s still uncertain for many, solving a crossword would be a good choice. So let’s all settle down and solve a crossword, celebrating the 75th year of the most rigorous crossword puzzle in the world.

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/crosswords/crossword-solving-search-for-connection-answers-psychology-emotions.html

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/02/14/crosswords/new-york-times-crossword-timeline.html?_r=0

How American Intervention in the Middle East Undermined Foreign Policy Goals: Part 2

The United States invaded Iraq in 2003. Allegedly in response to the claims the the Iraqi government possessed weapons of mass destruction and partially as a form of retaliation for 9/11 — nevermind that of the 19 hijackers most were from Saudi Arabia — America swooped in to depose Saddam Hussein. But the invasion catastrophically failed in the sense that by the time the last American troops left Iraqi soil in 2014, America had not succeeded in establishing a stable state, as evidenced by the rise of terrorist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda.

America’s intervention magnified the level of violence for the five years after the invasion, sparking other conflicts and creating a justification for the increased effort in the Afghanistan War. Although America successfully removed the Taliban from the government, American troops committed several war crimes and increased anti-Western sentiment, leading to the potential of a Taliban resurgence. But the far more devastating impact of the war was that it destabilized the neighboring Pakistan, a nuclear state, by creating a Taliban faction there that threatens the weak government and may have a chance at obtaining nuclear warheads.

In the meantime — in 2011 — the Arab Spring, a series of political uprisings, protests, and revolts, erupted. America, of course, intervened by sending ground troops to Libya in an attempt to protect human rights. But American airstrikes facilitated a massive rebel retaliation which took over the government and led to a state of sectarian violence and infighting among the rebel groups that led to an anarchy still dictates Libya’s political climate today.

Even more, the deadliest result that the Arab Spring led to was the Syrian Civil War. Having killed more than 450,000 Syrians since its inception, protests in Tunisia and Egypt galvanized opposers of the Syrian government to peacefully protest. In response to the protests, Assad killed and incarcerated hundreds of protesters — an act that led to an American declaration of opposition against the Assad government. However, although American involvement was consistently limited — a caution Obama took so as not to disturb the geopolitical balance of power — in the form of airstrikes, American attacks still created even more anti-Western sentiment and have been practically futile in toppling the Assad regime.

The pattern is clear. American involvement in the Middle East has only galvanized terrorist groups and prolonged unnecessary conflicts, leading to a countless loss of lives. Though some policies — like Obama’s of caution — may be admirable, ultimately, all American policies to protect human rights or spread democracy in the Middle East have empirically failed.

Sources:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/05/syria-civil-war-explained-160505084119966.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/10/middle-east-egypt-us-policy/409537/

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/08/25/341892606/america-s-middle-east-scorecard-many-interventions-few-successes

https://www.thoughtco.com/us-and-middle-east-since-1945-2353681

How American Intervention in the Middle East Undermined Foreign Policy Goals: Part 1

Starting with President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s covert coup against Iran’s prime minister in 1953, American foreign policy towards the Middle East has consistently represented a series of imperialist intrusions that have actually acted contrary to America's foreign policy goals.

In 1953, Eisenhower ordered the newly-formed CIA to overthrow Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected leader of Iran., in response to British allegations that he was leading the country in a communist direction. This was a flat-out lie — Mossadegh was actually strictly anti-communist — inspired by Britain’s desire to maintain their oil fields that Mossadegh was threatening to nationalize, which meant Britain would lose revenue. Though multiple attempts by the CIA to remove Mossadegh failed, they persisted, and their propaganda eventually led Iranians to protest against Mossadegh and proclaim Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a CIA-handpicked lover of Western ideals as their new leader.

But even though Pahlavi economically modernized the country and encouraged women’s education, he was a brutal dictator who created a police state and jailed and tortured dissenters. America, seeing him as a necessary evil to defend against communist influences, supported his regime. Pahlavi’s oppressive measures over two decades culminated in the violent Iranian Revolution of 1979, which replaced the pro-Western Pahlavi monarchy with an Islamic fundamentalist autocratic theocracy. Anti-western sentiment was now reflected in the Iranian government, and the revolution would lead to such sentiment spreading to other neighboring countries.

Later in 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Again fearing the spread of Communism, America aided and supplied $40 billion worth of arms to the Sunni Muhajideen rebels that fought against the USSR and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. These rebels were the Taliban, and included a man named Osama Bin Laden. They triumphed, and became Afghanistan’s government, which resisted America’s demand for Osama Bin Laden after 9/11, and would fight America in the bloody Afghanistan War from 2001 to 2014.

In another part of the Middle East, the Iran-Iraq War raged from 1980 to 1989. The Reagan administration provided Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s tyrannical leader, with arms and logistical support because they thought he would defeat the new Iranian fundamentalist regime and roll back the changes that had been caused by the Revolution. The effort failed, and America’s aid to Iraq solidified Iranian anti-Western sentiment even further. Furthermore, American aid enabled Hussein to invade Kuwait in 1990, which George H.W. Bush had to respond to by launching Operation Desert Storm and placing troops in Saudi Arabia. Though the operation was successful in repelling the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, it created more anti-Western sentiment and would solidify the start of Osama Bin Laden’s war against America.

The history of American foreign policy in the Middle East is convoluted, and the situation there today reflects that. American actions have consistently undermined their political power, sparked massive conflicts, and solidify dictatorships. These events would pave the way for the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, the Arab Spring, and other conflicts like the Yemeni and Syrian Civil Wars. Stay tuned for Part 2 for a discussion on more recent interventions.

Sources:
https://www.thoughtco.com/us-and-middle-east-since-1945-2353681
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/08/james-ostrowski/american-intervention-middle-east/
http://fpif.org/u-s-interventions-dismembered-middle-east/

Yoichi Okamoto: First Official White House Photographer

Born in 1915, Yoichi Okamoto would become the first official White House photographer under Lyndon B. Johnson, establishing a precedent that survives to today. Okamoto photographed for the army during World War II, then joined the United States Information Agency (USIA), an entity devoted to public diplomacy.

In 1961, Okamoto met Johnson while he was still the vice president and photographed his trip to Berlin. Johnson liked Okamoto, and Okamoto started to accompany Johnson on all of his overseas trips.

When JFK was assassinated, Johnson invited Okamoto to the White House to take portraits of him, to which Okamoto responded, “Rather than just take portraits, I’d like to hang around and photograph history being made.”

Johnson agreed to Okamoto’s request. Compared to previous photographers like Cecil Stoughton who had only taken pictures of JFK at public events, Okamoto gained unfettered access to the president, documenting his most private moments. Some of Okamoto’s iconic pictures include Johnson meeting with MLK, Johnson meeting with Nixon and Johnson meeting some of his aides in a swimming pool.

LBJ meets with MLK. 

Okamoto would go on to tell David Hume Kennerly, the White House photographer during Gerald Ford’s administration who won a Pulitzer Prize for feature photography, that, “You just have to be there all the time. You can’t not be there.”

LBJ meets with Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon.

LBJ meets with his aides while skinny-dipping. 

After Johnson’s administration ended, Okamoto founded Image Inc., a custom photo lab, and did freelance photography until the early 1980’s. In 1985, Okamoto committed suicide by hanging, but his legacy of White House photography lives on.

Sources:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1985/04/25/photographer-yoichi-okamoto-dies-at-69/49e170df-c57b-420e-b6b9-6963f3fd66b4/?utm_term=.4c34ba151458

https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/photographing-the-white-house-from-the-inside/?_r=0

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-one-photographers-finally-convinced-a-president-to-give-him-full-access

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/yoichi-okamoto-lyndon-johnsons-photographer

A History of Popcorn

Why do we eat popcorn at the movie theater? The answer to this question can be traced back to during the Great Depression, when investors saw a chance to make a profit through selling popcorn at movie theaters. Other blog posts have already talked about the movie-making industry and what movies were like during the Great Depression, but here, I’ll talk about food with the movies.

Over 8,000 years ago, popcorn was cultivated in Central America from maize. It became a quite popular snack by 1848, and could be found at fairs, circuses, and other types of entertainment venues, except for at movie theaters. Movie theater owners didn’t want kernels or shells all over their beautiful floors, and they didn’t want crunchy sounds while a film played, so they worked hard to keep popcorn out of their venues.

But with the Great Depression came an opportunity. By 1930, movie theaters had 90 million clients weekly, and since a small bag of popcorn could be bought around five or ten cents, it was cheap enough for most people to afford. If you bought a $10 bag of popcorn, it’d be an intelligent investment, and street vendors took to the streets outside movie theaters in hopes of making money. In order to stop them, movie theater owners changed their minds and started to sell snacks themselves, with popcorn being the go-to.

So the next time you go to the theaters and get a bag of popcorn, remember, you’re eating it there because of the Great Depression.

Across the Atlantic: The Great Depression’s Effects on Great Britain

Though we’re in a history class about American history, it seems appropriate that we should touch upon our neighbors across the Atlantic at least once, especially if we’re studying an event with such catastrophic ramifications as the Great Depression. With that, let’s jump in.

Right away, Britain’s situation was different from the US’s because it had never experienced the boom cycle that the US had in the automobile and construction industries. Yet, from 1929 to 1933, Britain’s global trade fell by half, and in 1932 there were more than 3.5 million unemployed people. Industrial and mining areas were hit the hardest, and unemployment peaked around 70% in some areas of northern England and northern Scotland.

Britain had been plunged into the Depression mostly due to its debts from WWI; the failure of the Austrian Credit Anstalt Bank kick-started Britain’s descent. Throughout Europe, debts for WWI had been causing economic instability throughout the 1920’s, so the Great Depression in the US only compounded to that.

In response, Neville Chamberlain, the Chancellor in 1932, implemented a tariff of 10% on all countries except those within the British Empire. The previous chancellor, Philip Snowden, had tried to increase the income tax and cut public spending, yet the measures were unsuccessful and only served to prolong the economic downturn — these reforms also led to a mutiny in the Royal Navy.

As you can see, many similarities can be drawn between the US and Great Britain during the Great Depression, with a large percentage of the population being unemployed and each respective government attempting to solve the problem.

Hobos in Seattle (and elsewhere too)

As we all know, due to the Great Depression, unemployment soared as the economy collapsed. Along with unemployment, homelessness surged as landowners increased rent prices in attempts to pay their own cost of living. As such, by 1932 millions of Americans couldn’t afford normal rent and were kicked out of their old homes, moving into so-called “Hoovervilles.” One good example of a typical Hooverville was in Seattle, where Hoovervilles flourished for about a decade.

In Seattle, such places had originally been destroyed in 1930 and 1931 when neighbors complained. The police burned down the city’s central Hooverville twice, which was in an area called Pioneer Square. Each time, the residents rebuilt their settlement, and when a new mayor was elected in 1932, Seattle’s Hooverville was supported and started to to grow because his support was primarily founded on the Unemployed Citizen’s League.

By 1934, almost 500 self-built homes composed the Hooverville, with 639 residents occupying them — only 7 were women. Seattle’s government created a Vigilance Committee — two whites, two blacks, and two Filipinos who would be elected — in an attempt to impose order on the Hooverville. The city also required that women and children not live in the settlement, trying to keep it sanitary. As the main settlement grew, other towns popped up, and in late 1935, Seattle’s government estimated that there were between four thousand and five thousand residents in the various settlements.

Such Hoovervilles existed in Seattle until the cusp of World War II in 1941, when the city established a Shack Elimination Committee tasked with removing unauthorized housing clusters. In April, residents of the settlements were told to evict by May 1, and once again, police started to douse homes with kerosene and light them as examples. Seattle’s experiment was over.

Nationwide, Hoovervilles were home to 25% of America’s work force with an estimated number of 13 million people residing in them. Places like Washington D.C, New York City, and St. Louis, Missouri, were known for being humongous and long-standing Hoovervilles, with thousands of inhabitants at each. Though a systemic phenomenon, Roosevelt's New Deal programs eventually reduced unemployment, and thus Hoovervilles became obsolete as World War II approached.

Lorena Hickok: Ardent Journalist, Passionate Lover

In 1893 in rural Wisconsin, Lorena Hickok was born into poverty. Kicked out at the age of 14 by her father after her mother died, she went on to become one of America’s greatest female journalists, helping document the Great Depression after being assigned to do so by Harry Hopkins, one of Roosevelt’s closest advisers and head of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). Along with this, she was known for her intimate romantic relationship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and was known within the White House as a lesbian.

Hickok’s journalism career began in 1913 when she started writing for Battle Creek Journal, a local newspaper, and started writing for the Minneapolis Tribune in 1917. In 1926, she was also diagnosed with diabetes. By 1932, she worked for the Associated Press and was one of the nation’s best-known female journalists, marked by her unique blend of humor and candor. Yet when she covered the 1932 election, she became romantically involved with Eleanor Roosevelt, which compromised her journalistic integrity, so she left the field.

In 1933, soon after she had resigned from Associated Press, she got the position of Chief Investigator for FERA under Hopkins. Hopkins instructed her to travel the country and report the effects of the New Deal so that he could determine what course of action to take next.

“I want you to… go out around the country and look this thing over,” Hopkins said to Hickok in July 1933. “I don’t want statistics from you. I don’t want the social-worker angle. I just want your own reaction, as an ordinary citizen.”

Hickok visited 32 states, noting that almost a third of the nation faced poverty and/or malnourishment, generally reporting back to Hopkins the terrible state of life that many people lived in. With her astute advice and ability to get sharp comments from locals, Hickok helped the White House understand how policies they passed affected citizens from citizens’ point of view.

Though Hickok and Roosevelt remained friends for the rest of their lives till Roosevelt’s death in 1962, after Roosevelt became the First Lady she had less time for Hickok. Hickok desired more time alone and grew angry and jealous, and they continually grew apart.

After her diabetes worsened in 1945, Hickok essentially retired from public life, moving to Hyde Park so that she could be closer to Roosevelt. Hickok also wrote a few books, co-writing Ladies of Courage with Roosevelt in 1954. She passed away in 1968, leaving a legacy as a trailblazing journalist and as one of Roosevelt’s confidants.

A Small Marxist Thought

Whereas most analyses of the Great Depression may be centered around an ideology of capitalism, grounded by someone like John Maynard Keynes views, a Marxist interpretation of the Great Depression seems also significantly educational.

While I won’t delve into Karl Marx’s philosophy too deeply and explore and explain terms like “theory of alienation” or “absolute surplus value,” there’s a simple way to explain Marxism. It’s fundamentally a bottom-up economic approach that says the needs of a society should begin with the economic needs of the base, and that society should build upwards to provide for those needs. On the other hand, capitalism is more of a top-down approach, where the higher class funnel the lower classes’ energy and labor into whatever projects they so desire. Marx argued that revolution was inevitable in capitalist societies because workers at the bottom of the ladder were too continually exploited and oppressed, which meant they were removed from their humanity. Thus they would gain class consciousness and unite with other oppressed workers, and violently strike back against the ruling class of the bourgeoisie.

During the Great Depression itself, as a result of mass unemployment, the labor movement seemed helpless and in 1933 there were only 3 million union members, compared to 5 million a decade before. Yet, due to new legislation from the New Deal, union membership rose significantly again, and the Great Depression represented one of labor’s finest times.

With a new unity between workers, class conflict started appear in the form of strikes, particularly in the 1934 waterfront strike which began on May 9, 1934. Longshoremen, workers who loaded and unloaded ships, walked out in California, Oregon, and Washington as a result of lower work standards (since labor was cheaper for employers, they could significantly reduce the quality of work). The strike shut down trade along the coast for 83 days and created a supply crisis for Hawaii and Alaska. Tensions in San Francisco came to a head on July 5, now known as “Bloody Tuesday,” where San Francisco police attacked striking workers and killed two men, which prompted a four-day shutdown of the city. The strike finally ended when the California National Guard and San Francisco Police Department forcefully took the workers’ headquarters, completely destroying the facilities and arresting over 150 people.

While this example may be indicative of the fact that Marxist elements lie behind facets of the Great Depression, it’s only a small example, and a more in-depth analysis on the entirety of the Great Depression would probably serve to be more cohesive.

We Keep Bursting Bubbles

As we’ve been learning in class, one of the primary causes of the Great Depression was a lack of diversification in the American economy, where the automobile and construction industries were bubbles, oversaturated industries, that popped and caused a chain reaction in the economy.

There are several other instances of bubbles that seem relevant and are important to study: the first is the housing bubble that popped in 2008 and was a catalyst for the Great Recession, the second is the tech bubble today which experts warn will burst soon.

Housing:

From 2007 to 2009, the value of real estate in the U.S. fell by around 6 trillion dollars and led to the Great Recession. For the eight years prior to the bursting of the bubble, housing prices had been increasing at double digit rates, and investors had been significantly speculating with the belief that the housing industry could only expand.

According to the Washington Post, in 2006 subprime mortgages (mortgages for consumers with bad credit histories) became 20% of the market. Because some banks prioritized these types of mortgages, they collapsed when they started to see late payments and defaults on their mortgages in early 2008, and with their collapse, they brought down insurance companies like AIG that had insured the mortgages. In attempts to save themselves, banks foreclose 3 million homes in 2009, which spiked unemployment to over 10%. Similar to the banks in the Great Depression, the banks that collapsed had held people’s money, so with their collapse, that money also went “poof.”

In efforts to prevent future banks from pulling down the entire economy and bring the country into a recession, the Obama administration passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010. The act is detailed in over 2,300 pages, and creates a few government agencies intended to create more oversight on various aspects of the banking system, like predatory subprime mortgaging.

Tech:

For the past few years, tech unicorns, startups with a perceived large market potential, have been abundant with the rise of companies like Uber, Airbnb, and Snapchat. Yet the money supply for startups seems to be dwindling, and there’s a consensus among many, like Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal, that the tech bubble will inevitably burst soon. Entrepreneurs have fewer opportunities as the older startups, like Uber, Airbnb, and Snapchat, dominate their fields with almost unlimited funds that had been provided by venture capitalists before.

According to capital research firm CB Insights, there are 163 unicorns. Empirically, there’s no way there can be this many unicorns, which means some of them will have to pop. While a few unicorns have been disappearing slowly, at a rate of about one a quarter, some, like venture capitalist Bill Gurley, fear that this slow-motion bust could just be hinting at something more catastrophic.

Since this is a history class and the bubble hasn’t popped yet, there’s no way to write about the tech bubble bursting. So it’ll suffice to say that Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry predicts it’ll burst next March or April because the public will bail out of investing in the private market, and the too-high valuations will inevitably crash. All we can do is anxiously wait and see.

The Ethics of Military Conscription

Context:

Throughout US history, there have only been a few select times in which military conscription, or the draft, have been utilized by the government to fill their ranks: the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War.

As we're learning about WWI and how Wilson created a draft to fill the military, it seems relevant to discuss whether such drafts are morally permissible or not. This debate is still continuing today, with advocates for the draft citing countries like Singapore as stellar examples of how compulsory military service helps a nation's character and strengthens their populace. Opponents of a draft argue that the draft would violate freedom and autonomy, and instead of guaranteeing citizens’ rights, the government would be infringing up them.

These are only a few examples of the arguments people bring up in support of or against the draft. Ultimately, whether the draft seems good or bad is necessarily contextualized by the lens through which we evaluate it.

Why a draft is good in general

Proponents for the draft argue that having a compulsory military service would decrease adventurism, the willingness to take risks in politics, and would overall decrease the likelihood of war. Their logic is that because policymakers’ sons, daughters, and other familiars are all at equal risk of being drafted and sent to war, policymakers will be more cautious in engaging in wars if they know their children are at risk of dying. This forces policymakers to only engage in absolutely necessary wars, which overall betters the world because there are less unnecessary wars, and because the wars that are being fought will actually yield utility and improve the world (like if we defeated ISIS).

Another argument that falls in favor of the draft is simply that of military readiness. The argument goes that if America has a draft, that means we have a stronger and better military, which in turn means we deter otherwise hostile nations from acting aggressively. By reifying American hegemony around the world, we theoretically lead to more peace.

Why a draft is bad in general

Of course, there are also several reasons military draft can be considered bad.  

One of the most common objections is that a draft would be too expensive. According to US Army Reserve Officer James Lacey, it would cause around 3 trillion dollars to equip and train new draftees, and about 1 trillion dollars each year to maintain an army of draftees. This would crush the economy and tank growth, which would severely decrease the overall quality of life for citizens and decrease their happiness.

Another objection is that the draft would be unequal and would increase social disparity because of the structure of the draft. Historically, the rich have always been able to get out of the draft, which means that the draft would be disproportionately comprised of exploited minorities. As such, proposed drafts have often been called “poverty drafts,” and imposing a draft would only oppress the poor while letting the rich get away, a clear detriment to societal welfare.

Clearly, both sides offer compelling arguments, and it’s up to individuals to decide which side’s arguments they buy more. Yet it seems like this calculus mostly rests on the assumption that we aren’t at war, something different than what the draft in WWI should be evaluated under.

Wartime emergency:

Remember that the question of whether conscription was moral or not that Wilson had to answer was different than the question we are answering today. The main reason for this is because we are essentially at peace, while Wilson was dealing with the turmoil of a worldwide war.

Intuitively, it seems that a draft is more legitimate during times of war because the nation is facing a crisis that should be averted and solved as quickly as possible. If the best way to solve that is a draft, then a draft should be instituted. In World War I, the draft seemed legitimate enough for even Wilson, a morally uptight person, to approve.

The Selective Service Act of 1917 was generally met with enthusiasm, most likely due to previous efforts by the government to spread pro-war propaganda to instill patriotism in the country. Whereas around 2 million men had volunteered, 2.8 million had been drafted, and less than 350,000 men tried to dodge the draft.

But it’s important to recognize that the American government also deprived people of their rights during World War I by censoring newspapers, imprisoning those who were against the war, and passing the Espionage Act and Sedition Act. By instituting a draft, the government asserted its power to infringe on individuals’ rights more and built to the precedent, possibly paving the way for more human rights abuses.

As with the case for a peacetime draft, there are compelling arguments on both sides, and I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether drafts are good or not.

Why the American Government Theoretically Works

#10

“The effect of the first difference is, on the one hand, to refine and enlarge the public views…  it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose.”

“It must be confessed that in this, as in most other cases, there is a mean, on both sides of which inconveniences will be found to lie… The federal Constitution forms a happy combination in this respect; the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular to the State legislatures.”

The primary thesis of this essay is that in order to be able to prevent a case where majority rule becomes oppression, the type of government the Constitution details - a federal republic - solves the problems a democracy would exacerbate. The American form of government works primarily because of its construction, in the very way in which it was set up. Because citizens have their own private interests, they will elect representatives who carry out those same private interests. In the diverse dynamic of America, factions will functionally be restricted from oppressing others because representatives are elected by pools of people with vastly different private interests, which means the majority of voters are likely to not share a desire to oppress the minority. Although problems may arise at the extremities in the structure of the government e.g. if there were too many representatives at the federal level, the Constitution already accounts this because the extraneous representatives would just be placed at the state level. Basically the entire reason we have an electoral college system and it works is because otherwise we’d just be “two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch” (this was not said by Franklin).

#51

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”

“In a single republic, all the power surrendered by the people is submitted to the administration of a single government… The different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.”

In this essay, Madison gives a nuanced explanation of the separation of powers, probably derived from Montesquieu’s writings, and how the Constitution dictates the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. There are many examples of this in modern day America like Garland being stalled by Congress when Obama nominated him for SCOTUS, SCOTUS being split on Obama’s immigration executive order, or Obama vetoing a bill to cut allowances for former presidents. Because of the system of checks and balances, government officials will not be able to gradually solidify power and turn the government into a dictatorship. As clear from the angel quote, people are sometimes greedy and they’re not perfect, which is why this type of system is necessary. Madison again touches on what is discussed more thoroughly in #10 - the possibility of majority rule becoming oppressive against minorities. He again expounds the idea that since the government draws all of its power from the citizenry and that the citizenry is so diverse, the rights of minorities will continue to be protected.