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I've been really thinking about this tweet.
This point is interesting, and I think rather noteworthy. There were many protests over the Vietnam conscription, Muhammad Ali's being the most famous example, so perhaps saying no backlash at all is a bit hastey. And who could forget our poor friends in Ukraine.
Still, I think she raises an interesting point. Most men still, (both legally and socially). Have to abide by the traditional man script. And this pressure is more on them then womens end of the social contract, which (from what I can see) is basically non existent.
Now the easiest explanation for this double standard is probably just gender bias: we simply have less empathy for men as a whole.
The way I see it, there are a couple of plausible solutions to make things for fair or consistent(any additional ones are welcome):
Gender "Equality". Extend "bodily autonomy" rights (for those who are actually consistent and believe in the concept, as a side note, I believe this is just a silly excuse) to men and end the draft, eliminate male disposability. Both men and women ask each other out. Stop valueing men as pure economic units. Men aren't wallets or soldiers, their people! Ect. Basically "Masculism" or some variation of MRA movement.
Extend the social contract obligations to women, and all that entails. Basically bring back some (or all) of the "patriarchy".
From what I can tell, 1 has kinda been tried, and has basically failed, probably due to the gender bias mentioned. I imagine Lauren favors the 2nd option, (& I kinda do). Implementing it may be unrealistic, however, due to various political and environmental constraints. I think realistically though, we are probably gonna have take a hard examination at the female end of the social contract at some-point, when birth rates and their implications become more severe and un-ignorable. Maybe we get lucky technology bails us out, but fundementally, I find the prospect of a society with no children, no families, etc, to be deeply dystopian.
I think one thing conscription shows (and the fact that many societies have it) is that, no society really wants to cease to exist. Nor should we. There is something valuable about societies existing, and continuing on into the future, even if we have to make some sacrifices for it. I think one can make a case (and many indeed do!) for extending some modified version of the social contract/roles to women. I've been deep thought about if societies might attempt this in the future, or what a modified variation of feminine roles/obilgations would look like. What do you think?
I mean, generally speaking a child is an 18 year commitment (and socially this is not usually passed on to fathers); the most we asked from any drafted Vietnam soldier was what, a 13 month tour? Sure, WW2 if you were unlucky it was maybe 4 years at most, WWI was only like a year, and the Civil War was a 3 year commitment (which ended early). This is not a fair comparison at all and I cannot really get past that so I don't understand what use the rest of the conversation is. They also all involved a pretty serious national or international emergency.
If you die it's forever. You can use this to do a qualia calculation by pulling coefficients out of your ass as it's customary for this type of exercise.
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The Civil War went from 1861 to 1865, 4 years by my math, so I don't see how that statement works. It was also the deadliest war in American history which I feel like might be relevant, but I am more concerned with how you came to this statement. Are you just thinking about those drafted in 1863 and ignoring the earlier soldiers?
A quick google was the source for the draft of 1863 yes, which was 3 years or the end of the war (whichever was first), which is obviously the right comparison because we're talking about a draft in the context of forcing men to do things against their will.
If you were a soldier in the North who signed up prior to the draft, it was highly dependent on when. Famously the first wave of volunteers only signed up for 90 days. And yes, many of them went home right after Bull Run when that expired and it became clear this might be bloody (which was a big issue). Pretty soon you could enlist for 3 years, standardized - which meant yes, you were stuck for 3 years (unless discharged) unless you were an officer who could technically resign a commission since you were not "enlisted" in the traditional sense. Still, this was a voluntary enlistment, not a draft, and "you can't leave the military once you join, at least for a while" is pretty normal historically, so I'm not ignoring them, they just aren't relevant to the point being made. Even then, it's notable that the enlistment duration was identical to the draft. If you signed up in 1861 and survived, you could go home in 1864, full stop (although of course, the army offered bounties and bonuses if you voluntarily re-enlisted). Sharp observers might notice that the draft was a thing right as the war was clearly ongoing for a while more and when the initial wave of 3-year enlistments running out would begin to be a concern - thus, a need for more men and obviously volunteers were largely tapped out by then.
The simple fact remains that the only post-WW2 era draft lasted 13 months which is orders of magnitude different from 18 years. Both are arguably full-time jobs.
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There is the risk of death that you're leaving out. IIRC for a conscriptee to Vietnam it was around 1 in 40; the risk for women dying of pregnancy related complications is at least an order of magnitude lower, so in terms of QALYs, military conscription probably outweighs it.
That said, we will never conscript again, so conscription seems like a kind of fake issue to me: if it were abolished tomorrow, pretty much no one complaining about male gender roles would change their tune, because it's not really a primary or even secondary issue motivating people in their day-to-day lives.
Google suggests that <10% of American men served in Vietnam, of whom about 25% were drafted, whereas even now about 80% of women are having children. Apparently 10% - 15% of couples have fertility issues, though some of that might be age related. The easiest win is probably to re-normalize families with 3 - 4 kids.
Nobody wants to lower the cost of that. Not just child seats as suggested above, but all the non-delegable (or extremely costly to delegate) labor that attitudes of child safety and enrichment has brought upon us. You can't just wish the K-selection spiral away.
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Meh, I kinda see what you’re saying. But going to war and fighting is probably a lot worse morally and on the psyche compared to raising a child.
Yes but I think it's also pretty compelling to say that having a child has a larger overall impact on your life than going to war (assuming you survive). The unlucky, if you'll forgive me for being blunt, get lifelong PTSD, but the median soldier is able to readjust and have a normal life, whatever that means. Vets aren't usually defined by being veterans, but parents often are. Having a child is a fundamental and ongoing reshuffling of priorities, has a major and durable impact on finances and lifestyle, sense of self-identity, and more. This point is obviously abused by pro-choice people, but they aren't wrong exactly, assuming no adoption option.
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Going to war against your children is even worse. Parents would do well to learn that the young generation always wins because the old generation dies. If you’re determined to go to war with your kids, don’t be surprised when they view you as the enemy if you’ve spent years hard at working achieving precisely that. Personally I love the idea of parenting. Yes it’s work but to me it’s also extremely fun. I’ve spent a good chunk of my life practically raising several people I know, being a positive force and influence in their lives, etc. I would love nothing more than that ideal.
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We could do a Spartan-style thing, and only have women "drafted" for the duration of their pregnancy with the ability to give up the child for adoption, with the children being raised communally.
That said, I really don't think any of that is necessary one way or the other.
A few glaring problems. Who is the lucky man to fertilize the drafted uterus? We have organ transplants already going to the wealthy, expect the same type of corruption with drafted women.
Suppose the birth mother decides to keep and raise the child herself. We just reinvented the welfare single mother, with more steps. Because we're obviously not going to take away a baby from an unwilling mother to be raised communally.
If it's a communal rearing then to defuse any specific parent bias a group of men should be 'drafted' at the same time.
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I know this is a bit more off-topic, but it's been extremely hilarious to see various right-wing communities essentially suggest or re-invent the American left-wing commune (that actually has a very rich and deep history that doesn't even have much to do with communism exactly) from first principles. It's uncanny. Understandable, but still uncanny. I guess in some sense communitarian counterculture homesteading has intrinsic human appeal, but in another sense they don't spring up out of nowhere and so their presence I think usually says something about moral and socio-political climates, beyond just "horseshoe theory is correct".
If by “commune” you mean some bizarre, 1960’s hippy nudist colony up in Humboldt County somewhere, there’s no one on the right that I know that’s pushing that. Our lot has always been tightly community focused and proselytizing you could say. That’s why “organicism” and “primordialism” have always been two major themes in so much right-wing political thought and sociology, over a collection of “abstract rights.”
I specifically invoked the rich American history of pre-60s communes on purpose, so it's a bit entertaining to me that you seized on hippie nudist communes anyways. These communes don't always follow a neat left-right divide on that longer timescale. For example, I'm Mormon - early Mormon communities went through at least two separate phases of highly communitarian living in the 1830s and 1860s and also didn't neatly fall into a nice grouping (and obviously religion itself if not consistently right vs left coded historically). Again not all of them are going to be explicitly "we have common property" but developing a tight-knit smaller community that rejects popular standards in various ways inherently requires a high degree of local coordination that is often extremely similar. "Communitarianism" doesn't actually require common property.
For example right now there are a few strains of various types of this "commune" type thought:
You have eco-crazies, who try and find carbon neutral or negative ways to live in harmony with the land and sustainability
You have a strain of modern liberals who want to set up the kinds of super-walkable, livable utopic urban centers, some of which promote "cohousing" and might pool childcare, meals, tools, greenspace, etc.
You have a few offshoots of various Christian hospitality houses, halfway houses, charities, etc. which can in some cases form loose communitarian associations
You have deliberately "trad" Christian and other non-religious conservative communities that pool homeschooling, might generate a local mini-economy, and emphasize physical closeness, homogeneity, or even exclusiveness
You have associated prepper types who gather together for the obvious practical benefits of living off-grid but with a little bit of community redundancy
You have a few libertarian projects that are technically diametrically opposed to collectivism but for practical reasons find it helpful to cluster together in order to consistently enforce (or decline to enforce, lol) norms friendly to libertarianism
You have the liberal-ish (OK I think this is mostly libertarian but I think it draws from the slightly left-leaning crowd within them) aligned "startup cities" like Prospera in Honduras
Some more extreme versions of "polycules" start to look awfully familiar to a longer more historical kind of "free love" society, even if they are inherently smaller-scale
Donald Trump himself suggested selling private land to "Freedom Cities" that aren't necessarily communistic but fit the vibe of "designed community/society" which isn't far off, during the 2024 election.
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Communes arent inherently leftwing. There is something very conservative about sticking with your own people and raising kids in a very orderly community based way. The problem of the left wing commune (and possibly Sparta, I am no expert on Greek history) is the intentional dissolution of family units which results in pedophilia, pederasty, and polyamory (with the associated bastardy) which are degenerate. A commune with strong families is just the Amish with electricity, and is a very strong social force indeed.
I mean yes, I agree and that's my point, I was just invoking the contemporary association of communes with purely left-wing establishments. A strong association as another commenter very clearly demonstrated. Obviously I made my point poorly or else you wouldn't be making this comment and I wouldn't be downvoted. Although I'm pretty sure most of the downvotes are a knee-jerk reaction because they read my comment on a surface level and went "he's booing me! downvote!!"
To be clear what I find hilarious is that many conservatives for many years mocked hippie communes as delusional and bad qua communes, not due to their inherent hippie-ness; thus the current crop of conservatives "inventing" the exact same thing and defending it as "totally not a commune, because communes are dirty liberal inventions". This is called hypocrisy.
More broadly this is because conservatives, if you'll permit me to speak broadly (especially Christian conservatives), wanted to dominate society entirely. Thus from a position of power, local enclaves are a threat or aberration. They now realize they can't (or rather, that they failed, or lost control, or however it's framed), and thus have conveniently changed the goal back to "let's dominate local communities instead" and local enclaves are back on the menu as something praiseworthy.
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Amish with electricity have less use for the physical labor of men. The more technology we have, the less men's labor and protection is valuable to women, which devalues the average man as a worthwhile husband.
What starts as a strong natalist force will fade over time unless backed with a religious imperative to reproduce.
If you’re a secular conservative you’re pretty much just fucked. A friend of mine and I once tried approximating what country out there and in what period might have approached something like that, that was nationally large enough to matter. Best we came up with was Czechoslovakia. Although you could say the Nazis tried something like that. They had strange ideas when you read into their “blood and soil” notions. They were against what they called “biological pacifism,” and wanted a 4-child family, health passports, a 4-stage hierarchy of eugenic marriages between biologically fit individuals (Class I, Class II, Class III, Class IV) etc. Really strange stuff.
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Communists to the left, communitarians to the right, pretty much no place for an individualist in this fallen world.
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