Somehow, making an army out of the drunken louts doesn't strike me as the best idea.

The draft is not a cure for this problem. Until recently, I believe, Great Britain had a draft. The European countries have mandatory service programs as well.

I think the British draft (national service) was ended some decades ago.



Beyond that, Dalrymple is exaggerating.

No, the military won't solve the problems of society, but it will provide one exception to the general deadening trend.

"Beyond that, Dalrymple is exaggerating"



By how much?

The dole is wrecking England. Where have I heard that before. O, yeah, it was in a discussion of the servant problem.



England's problem is that it still has a working class and an upper class. It needs to get rid of one of them.

There is a problem with overly centralised government in this country but I doubt you'll see book burnings and mass goose-stepping military parades anytime soon.



To elaborate on Harry's point, the upper class have pretty much abdicated their responsibility in setting standards of behaviour, one reason why the underclass is in a pretty miserable state.



Still, Britain has gone through periods in the past where society as a whole was much more corrupt, vicious and depraved than currently.

OJ -- It already does.

Ali - When did the Sceptered Isle become the Sceptic Isle and then the Septic Isle?

Ali--That's right. The Brits were the exception to the rule. Of course, the rest of Europe is in much the same shape as Ma Brittania, and they've had longstanding drafts in place.



As to Dalrymple, he works as a headshrinker in an urban hospital and a prison. His prediciton may be a bit more down the road than he makes out, but it's still worth paying attention to, as are the rest of his pieces on City-Journal.

Orrin--If you think the military improves morality, I suggest you visit Bangkok when the Sixth Fleet comes in. You can also cruise around any military base overseas. Brothels, discos and bars galore. Domestic bases aren't a lot better, quite frankly. It took me personally a few years after I left the military to get moral balance back.



I'm not saying the military is purely unhealthy environment, but it's not a reform school. Anyone who leaves the military takes a bit of cynicism with him. Add to this the fact that that person was drafted, and you have the same environment that gave us the Roaring Twenties, not to mention the Sucky Sixties.

Derek:



I'm not saying it improves morality. I'm saying it teaches responsibility, obedience, and mutual dependence. Nothing else in the Modern Welfare State does any of those things.

pj: I'd suggest looking at the late Plantegenants as when England hit its nadir in terms of morality. The War of the Roses was merely the tip of the iceberg and the rot in the church and the commons was fairly widespread along with the nobility and royalty being out for their own self interests. I'm not sure if Ali meant that by his reference.

I was thinking more about Hanoverian times but yeah that was the general thrust of my argument.

I figured you were talking about the 18th

century. Curious how the ideals of self-

government and all that our Framers used so

deftly were jabbered about a great deal but

completely ignored in practice.



Recent reports on crime rates in the UK make

it sound like the Victorian era.



The idea that England was ever a counterexample

to alleged American violence (as American as

cherry pie) was and is a liberal myth.

Actually I was less interested in political history than etymological. Dalrymple used the phrase "septic isle" - and I've seen that once or twice since Mad Cow Disease struck - it seems to be a play on "sceptic isle" - and that phrase's origin I don't know. Is there some wit here that escapes us Yanks?

Harry - Victorian England was the most crime-free society in human history. In 1790-92 there were three murders in London, the world's most populous city. Crime of all sorts has risen tens of thousands of percent in England since the Victorian era.

Sorry, meant 1890-2, and turns out the number was for all of England, not just London. Got that from this Joyce Lee Malcolm column
: "A government study for the years 1890-92, for example, found only three handgun homicides, an average of one a year, in a population of 30 million. In 1904 there were only four armed robberies in London, then the largest city in the world."

I second Derek's comments about the military and morality. I never visited the Asian ports, but I heard many raunchy tales about Subic Bay.



Orrin, the problem with learning responsibility, obedience, and mutual dependence in the military is that it is within the very narrow sphere of military life. Men learn to depend on and be loyal to other men. It doesn't teach them to love, honor, respect and be loyal to their wives. Military service is very hard on marriages. The Commandant of the Marine Corps wanted to bar enlistment to married men in the late 80's, and it was only public outcry that stopped him.



I have no sympathy for men who won't buy shoes for their children, but drafting them in the military would only ship them thousands of miles away from their hated responsibilities, and let them visit Asian sex-shops on the government dime.



We let dead-beat dads off way too easy in our society. We need to enforce paternal responsibility on fathers as a matter of course, not as the result of lawsuits initiated by the mothers. If they won't pay, garnish their wages. If they have no wages, draft them into a government work crew. If they won't work, sell their blood.

pj:



I suspect there'd be a woeful underreportage of crime in Victorian times, particularly among the poor and also of unsolved crimes.



Here's a newsgroup link on the subject.



http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=37CB1BD5.D998CE29%40postoffice.pacbell.net&rnum=33

There are other forms of violence than gunplay.

RobertD:



I'll take the half a loaf over the none we're baking now.

Orrin: RobertD is correct; we used to have a horrendous problem with deadbeat dads when I was in the Army in the 80's. One fellow told the Army that they couldn't post him to Texas as his second wife would get the writ served on him for habitual non payment of support.

I'm coming very late to this discussion due to vacation, so it is likely no one will ever see this. But hey, I like to live on the wild side! As far as dead beat dads, don't discount the female equivalent, who have no catchy name. I guess welfare queen comes closest but does not do the problem justice. Welfare reform has helped with the problem of women who know Uncle Sam will step in for the role of provider so there is no reason to seriously weigh the attributes of suitors. Femism has long discounted the role of fathers in bringing up healthty, well-adjusted and contributing children. And it is not just feminism, but also popular culture, from Lifetime brave, noble women in peril from rotten, dishonest brutes to Cosmo articles detailing how you can have it all. Until women are faced with the prospect of raising children unassisted and we recognise the vital role fathers play in raising children, deadbeat dadism will continue. Welfare reform has helped one side of this equation but we still have a long way to go. Besides, if I was looking for a deadbeat dad, one who was in the armed forces seems like one of the easiest to find. And I'm sure I could get a congress person or two to help me out, too.