“Today,” Lt. Colonel Joe Plenzler (USMC, retired) writes at Military.com, “the military needs only about 160,000 youth from an eligible population of 30 million to meet its recruitment needs. But after two decades of war — both of which ended unsuccessfully — and low unemployment, many experts believe the all-volunteer force has reached a breaking point.”

Plenzler suggests a “limited” military draft to make up for recruitment quota shortfalls. “We should have our military recruiters sign up new troops for 11 months out of the year,” he writes, “and then have the Selective Service draft the delta between the military’s needs and the total number recruited.”

As a practical matter, Plenzler’s proposal “solves” an artificial problem that needn’t and shouldn’t exist. The US armed forces are far too large and far too expensive if their purpose is “national defense.” If they were cut by 90%, the risk of a significant foreign attack on the US would remain the same as now — virtually non-existent, and mostly a matter of air and missile defense. Stop trying to rule the world militarily. “Problem” solved.

As a legal matter, the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution remains the Supreme Law of the Land: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” While the government and its courts have a long history of ignoring that unambiguous ban on conscription.

Which brings us to the most important consideration: Where Plenzler’s proposal falls on the moral axis.

The aforementioned 13th Amendment, while obviously applicable to military conscription, was proposed and ratified on the premise of outlawing chattel slavery.

Plenzler suggests returning to that evil and immoral practice: “We should hire cotton pickers 11 months out of the year,  then enslave as many additional people as needed to get the crop in.”

Three swings (practical, legal, and moral), three misses. If policy proposals are like baseball, Plenzler strikes out.

Unfortunately, policy proposals aren’t like baseball. The same awful ideas come back around periodically, and no matter how many times they strike out they never get cut from the team. Occasionally they get a base hit — and we get an extended military debacle like the war in Vietnam.

No matter how many turns at bat we allow it, a bad idea remains a bad idea. And Plenzler is preaching an irredeemably evil idea.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Testifying before the US House Oversight Committee on July 31, Devon Archer allegedly claimed that his former business partner, Hunter Biden, trafficked in the “illusion of access” to his father, then vice-president Joe Biden.

Republicans took a victory lap on Archer’s testimony,  saying it proves the “Biden brand” played a key role in various corrupt dealings, up to and including multi-million dollar bribes to the “Biden crime family.”

Democrats took a slightly less convincing triumphal tone, claiming the testimony establishes that, as White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said last week, Joe Biden “was never in business with his son.” The “brand” was Hunter Biden’s own. Any exploitation of Joe’s position presumably occurred without his direct knowledge, let alone any “10% for the big guy” type arrangements.

As I wrote when the “Hunter Biden laptop” story broke the month before the 2020 presidential election:

“Everyone who might care one way or another knew years ago that Biden the younger got a sweetheart job with Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, because Biden the elder was vice-president ….  Everyone who might care one way or another also knew years ago the Joe Biden used his position as vice-president to intervene in Ukraine’s internal affairs, pressuring Kiev to fire a prosecutor who had investigated Burisma, because Biden bragged about doing so on camera.”

Trump’s voters didn’t care about his hush money payments to Stormy Daniels when they voted in 2016, or about his first impeachment when they voted in 2020. Nor do they care about his growing stack of criminal indictments now.

Biden’s voters didn’t care about his influence-peddling when they voted in 2020. Nor is their discomfort level visibly increasing at the moment.

Per William James, “a difference which makes no difference is no difference at all.”

We may be headed for the third presidential impeachment (and likely third Senate acquittal) in four years and, as with the first two, this one is less about any alleged “high crimes and misdemeanors” than it is about trying to ride a scandal to victory in the next presidential election.

But in the post-Nixon era, no amount of scandal ever seems to move the needle very much for either party when it comes to election results.

And why should it? Behind their pomp, pageantry, and demagoguery, those who rule us have ALWAYS been the moral equivalents of organized crime bosses and street-gang shot-callers. Acknowledging the banality of their evil strikes me as … progress!

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“‘Generative AI’ cannot generate anything at all without first being trained on massive troves of data it then recombines,” Joseph Gordon-Levitt writes at the Washington Post. “Who produces that training data? People do. And those people deserve residuals.”

I disagree.

In the sense that Gordon-Levitt — an excellent and well-known actor, writer, and director — uses the term, “residuals” are the payments actors, writers, and directors receive when productions they act in, write, or direct get re-used as television re-runs, streamed media, DVD releases, etc.

Even in that very specific context, residuals only go so far. They’re a specific benefit negotiated between unions (on behalf of their members) and entertainment production firms, not a general principle with obvious applicability to anything and everything one person (or entity, like an AI “large language model”) might happen to learn from another.

Most of the things we do every day are “residual” in the sense that they rely on the “residue” of a large body of knowledge developed over thousands of years by others.

Fortunately, we don’t have to mail a penny to the estate of whoever invented the wheel — circa 4500 BC — each time we jump in our cars or on our bicycles to go somewhere, or to the descendants of Shakespeare every time we suggest that someone doth protest too much (Hollywood screenwriters would pay through their noses if Shakespeare’s estate got residuals — almost any modern production works as “which of The Bard’s plays are they cribbing from?” fodder).

Nor, even stipulating to the idea of “intellectual property” as a valid concept, is the debt we owe those we learn from something that we traditionally pay “residuals” on.

How many teachers, friends, and loved ones helped make Joseph Gordon-Levitt the man — and the actor, writer, and director — he is? How many people did he learn from? Quite a few, I suspect … and because he seems like a good guy, I’d be surprised if he hasn’t thanked them for it as best he can, in both speech and in action. But 99.9% of them are likely not collecting, nor are they owed, residuals on Inception, Looper, and Snowden.

In terms of  inherent financial obligation, what’s the difference between Joseph Gordon-Levitt learning his chops from reading great writing and watching great performances, or an AI  learning its chops from reading great writing and watching great performances?

In my opinion, there’s neither any difference nor any payment due.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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