Covenanters and the Draft?
- Thread starter jwright82
- Start date
- Status
CasualWestminsterEnjoyer
Puritan Board Senior
Historically they were conscientious objectors. Today the RPCNA permits members to joined the armed forces, if I understand correctly. A few of their pastors are veterans. (Actually quite a few.)
Northern Crofter
Puritan Board Junior
Covenanters have historically (up until the last century) refrained from activities which require an oath to the U.S. Constitution - voting, jury duty, and military service in particular. During the Civil War, many Covenanters being ardent abolitionists, they joined the Union army via a modified oath (pledging loyalty to the United States, but not pledging to support the US Constitution itself): "I do swear by the living God, that I will be faithful to the United States, and will aid and defend them against the armies of the Confederate States, yielding obedience to military orders."
This and other aspects of the Covenanters participating (or not) in American wars is covered briefly here: https://www.logcollegepress.com/blo...history of,to support an immoral Constitution - this post has a lot of internal links if you really want a deep dive.
I don't think the link to the historical WWI Covenanter Service Flag works in the article so here it is:
This and other aspects of the Covenanters participating (or not) in American wars is covered briefly here: https://www.logcollegepress.com/blo...history of,to support an immoral Constitution - this post has a lot of internal links if you really want a deep dive.
I don't think the link to the historical WWI Covenanter Service Flag works in the article so here it is:
jwright82
Puritan Board Professor
Thanks.
Wilhelmus à Broccoli
Puritan Board Freshman
Could one still do this if we found ourselves in a state of war again?
Wilhelmus à Broccoli
Puritan Board Freshman
I beg your pardon?
Sorry, I was reading the thread and put my phone down to finish a chore. It would appear I inadvertently posted a reply by accidental random tap. Please disregard.
Wilhelmus à Broccoli
Puritan Board Freshman
Duly disregarded.
Northern Crofter
Puritan Board Junior
Yes. This would be my conviction. I've expressed/discussed this on PB before - these posts might be of interest to you: https://puritanboard.com/threads/when.109303/post-1315916 and https://puritanboard.com/threads/se...y-within-reformed-thought.117339/post-1406676
Wilhelmus à Broccoli
Puritan Board Freshman
Thanks for your post - helpful. That's where I stand too; I would be willing to fight for the country I love but I have no allegiance to our Constitution and would certainly not swear to defend it. I think I'd be among the "enemies...domestic."
darrellmaurina
Puritan Board Junior
I think everybody (or almost everybody) here knows this, but we haven't had a draft since the last years of the Vietnam War, and the chance of having one again is close to zero because most of our military leadership strongly opposes having one. I sometimes hear young people, when they have to register for the draft, get confused and think they're actually at risk of being forced into uniform.
It's not happening in America apart from national extinction levels of warfare, and if we ever get to the that point, the draft will be among the least of our problems because we will have seen an economic and political collapse the likes of which we simply can't see on the farthest horizon today. Only China has a realistic possibility of becoming a peer-level competitor, it's not even close to being there, and what we're seeing right now showing the uselessness of Chinese-made military equipment in Venezuela and the Iranian conflict should give a SERIOUS warning of FAFO (don't ask, if you don't know what it means, ask a soldier) to the Chinese military planners and military industries. Put bluntly, putting Temu-level technology up against what the US can do sent a REALLY strong message to the Chinese and Russians, and that may be the best outcome of the current conflicts.
I wouldn't be surprised if Secretary Hegseth has spent some time singing Psalm 2 as he gets intel reports of the Chinese reaction to their equipment's failure to perform under battlefield conditions against a major military power, rather than insurgents and third-tier thugs running failed states. Cheap Chinese stuff is cheap for a reason.
By contrast, thanks to our technological dominance and the likelihood that we will completely control the airspace in any future conflict against anyone except China and (maybe) Russia, we simply do not need the mass numbers of men that were needed in World War I, World War II, or even in Korea and Vietnam. A draft isn't just unnecessary, it would be counterproductive.
During the Gulf War and the early days of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, enough of our generals had been young officers during Vietnam that they saw the radical difference between volunteer troops who wanted to be in uniform and their prior experience with draftee troops who didn't. While that level of direct firsthand experience with American conscript troops is gone from the active duty rolls -- the youngest officers who would have commanded troops in Vietnam would now be in their seventies -- American military views on this are just about as close to universal as anything can get, and there are plenty of retired senior-level military personnel who are ABSOLUTELY ADAMANT on saying to the people who now fill their shoes, "No draft, not again, never."
The last time anyone who wore a uniform got attention for talking about any sort of draft, it was decades ago with a young person who wrote an academic paper arguing that we might someday have to have a draft for medical personnel in a major combat situation since we weren't having enough doctors and nurses volunteering for service. That proposal got media attention during (if I remember right) President George W. Bush's time in office, and he put a stop to even talking about such ideas. (He also increased the incentives for medical personnel to join the military, which was a far better way to address a medical recruitment problem.)
It's true that at the end of Vietnam and the years following, there had been a lot of doubt about whether an all-volunteer force would work, but after five decades of experience, it's been proven beyond any reasonable doubt that, apart from very small countries facing obvious major military threats in which support for universal military service is close to unanimous, conscript armies don't work anywhere nearly as well as professional military forces. The two major exceptions to that rule are Israel and South Korea, whose countries and cultures have been transformed by near-universal military service in ways that the United States simply would not tolerate. There could end up being something similar in Ukraine if their war becomes a long-term simmering low-grade conflict comparable to what happened on the Korean peninsula with a war that never really officially ended, and well into the 1970s and even the 1980s still occasionally had flareups that could have turned into major combat, but there is no other country in the world, other than Ukraine, where a widespread draft under current conditions would help rather than make things much worse.
Professional militaries work in advanced countries with economies that can support them. Irregulars, guerillas, and militias work if the populace is highly motivated to defend their own families, villages and (in homogenous countries) their nation. Conscript armies simply do not work on a modern battlefield against professional military forces with high levels of training and technology.
Saddam Hussein found that out the hard way and a lot of other people learned the lesson from his mistake.
The only way to take on the United States and win is guerilla warfare that changes civilian opinion and gets America to lose interest and go away. Direct conflict ends with your sons dead due to your own people deciding to turn them in for reward money, and you hiding in holes until Americans find you and drag you out to face trial and execution at your enemies' hands.
It's not happening in America apart from national extinction levels of warfare, and if we ever get to the that point, the draft will be among the least of our problems because we will have seen an economic and political collapse the likes of which we simply can't see on the farthest horizon today. Only China has a realistic possibility of becoming a peer-level competitor, it's not even close to being there, and what we're seeing right now showing the uselessness of Chinese-made military equipment in Venezuela and the Iranian conflict should give a SERIOUS warning of FAFO (don't ask, if you don't know what it means, ask a soldier) to the Chinese military planners and military industries. Put bluntly, putting Temu-level technology up against what the US can do sent a REALLY strong message to the Chinese and Russians, and that may be the best outcome of the current conflicts.
I wouldn't be surprised if Secretary Hegseth has spent some time singing Psalm 2 as he gets intel reports of the Chinese reaction to their equipment's failure to perform under battlefield conditions against a major military power, rather than insurgents and third-tier thugs running failed states. Cheap Chinese stuff is cheap for a reason.
By contrast, thanks to our technological dominance and the likelihood that we will completely control the airspace in any future conflict against anyone except China and (maybe) Russia, we simply do not need the mass numbers of men that were needed in World War I, World War II, or even in Korea and Vietnam. A draft isn't just unnecessary, it would be counterproductive.
During the Gulf War and the early days of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, enough of our generals had been young officers during Vietnam that they saw the radical difference between volunteer troops who wanted to be in uniform and their prior experience with draftee troops who didn't. While that level of direct firsthand experience with American conscript troops is gone from the active duty rolls -- the youngest officers who would have commanded troops in Vietnam would now be in their seventies -- American military views on this are just about as close to universal as anything can get, and there are plenty of retired senior-level military personnel who are ABSOLUTELY ADAMANT on saying to the people who now fill their shoes, "No draft, not again, never."
The last time anyone who wore a uniform got attention for talking about any sort of draft, it was decades ago with a young person who wrote an academic paper arguing that we might someday have to have a draft for medical personnel in a major combat situation since we weren't having enough doctors and nurses volunteering for service. That proposal got media attention during (if I remember right) President George W. Bush's time in office, and he put a stop to even talking about such ideas. (He also increased the incentives for medical personnel to join the military, which was a far better way to address a medical recruitment problem.)
It's true that at the end of Vietnam and the years following, there had been a lot of doubt about whether an all-volunteer force would work, but after five decades of experience, it's been proven beyond any reasonable doubt that, apart from very small countries facing obvious major military threats in which support for universal military service is close to unanimous, conscript armies don't work anywhere nearly as well as professional military forces. The two major exceptions to that rule are Israel and South Korea, whose countries and cultures have been transformed by near-universal military service in ways that the United States simply would not tolerate. There could end up being something similar in Ukraine if their war becomes a long-term simmering low-grade conflict comparable to what happened on the Korean peninsula with a war that never really officially ended, and well into the 1970s and even the 1980s still occasionally had flareups that could have turned into major combat, but there is no other country in the world, other than Ukraine, where a widespread draft under current conditions would help rather than make things much worse.
Professional militaries work in advanced countries with economies that can support them. Irregulars, guerillas, and militias work if the populace is highly motivated to defend their own families, villages and (in homogenous countries) their nation. Conscript armies simply do not work on a modern battlefield against professional military forces with high levels of training and technology.
Saddam Hussein found that out the hard way and a lot of other people learned the lesson from his mistake.
The only way to take on the United States and win is guerilla warfare that changes civilian opinion and gets America to lose interest and go away. Direct conflict ends with your sons dead due to your own people deciding to turn them in for reward money, and you hiding in holes until Americans find you and drag you out to face trial and execution at your enemies' hands.
- Status
Similar threads
