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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026

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It's worth noting there has also been the additional "end of history" meme where people seem to broadly think "wars requiring a draft" are a thing left behind in last century. Obviously there are examples like Ukraine even today, but I don't think the modal Western man realistically fears being called up by the draft board. And I'd like to think that such fear would be misplaced --- obviously the ending there is not yet written --- and it seems drones may fill a large fraction of that role going forward (see Ukraine).

In that context, specifically, "but men have the draft" seems a hard-to-win equality argument.

Drafts are not really a universal feature of history in the first place. The draft as the concept we see it as today, military service compelled by the State on penalty of death, is something that did happen but is far less common than privileges associated with service or simply fines/tax exemptions for service. A random person in history is probably far more likely to regard it as tyrannical and callous rather than legitimate and normal.

Greek city states had various levels of enforcement and tied it to political rights. Romans had a huge variation depending on the times, from entirely voluntary or even selective military service to drafts as such. And the Renaissance probably strayed furthest from mandatory service than any era, having largely mercenary armies.

For all we know we could be headed for far less compulsory militaries than ever. It all depends on state capacity, demographics and the needs of the battlespace.

There are many Western countries that have active drafts (or, like Germany, appear to be considering one). For young men in those countries, the draft is less a fear and more a certainty.

And of course, the Ukraine situation where men are marched to their deaths by the hundreds of thousands, is evidently possible. Even some risk of that should count for quite a lot.

It was very much a worry in the Cold War era. It was less of a worry during the Liberal Peace of the 90s, 2000s, and 2010s, but that was a mere few-decade aberration.

The principle is "help your country in times of need, whether you want to or not." Warfare, which is men's duty, is a perennial issue. Birthrates, which are women's duty, is probably the same.

The only reason we don’t have a draft today is because we’re able to get by on a strictly volunteer basis. But I recall in the last few years there was a real worry within the US military because recruitment drives had been massively down. Most of the enthusiastic new blood comes out of red states and the cultural shift in favor of blue policies left a lot of the youth feeling apathetic. Trump’s election a second time (or rather Kamala’s loss perhaps) was able to buck the trend a bit, and you saw recruitment spike back up.

One could also make the argument that any war requiring a mandatory draft is unjust. If the citizens are unwilling to fight for their country unless threatened with imprisonment or death, then you should allow them to surrender instead.