Draft-Nappers, n: A collective designation for people — both private citizens and government parasites — who advocate or seek to enforce the practice of child-theft, servitude, and murder called conscription.

“The United States military has a very big problem: Too many global conflicts and commitments – and too few soldiers,” began a recent Christian Science Monitor op-ed by academic Edward Bernard Glick.

“Yeah, go on,” I said, taking the safety off my Ballester-Molina .45 and putting it on the desk within easy reach.

(Oh, I should point out that as I read I was imagining a conversation with the retired Temple University Professor).

“That’s why it’s time to reinstate the draft,” he continued in a less confident voice, his eyes distending and lip beginning to quiver as, my face darkening in visible disgust, I heaved a weary sigh and reached slowly for the handgun. The good professor’s reedy voice vaulted an octave in alarm as he tried to continue his pitch.

“A draft would do more than just harness the energy and idealism of the nation’s youth to meet the military’s unmet personnel needs,” he said, the words tripping over each other in a panicked rush to get out. “It would also tap more of the resources of the nation’s women, heeding their demands for more gender equality by making their obligations more consonant with their rights –”

At this point, looking at our three-year-old daughter Katrina (who shows every sign of growing up to be an attractive version of Catherine Zeta-Jones) and our one-year-old daughter Sophia – who, in defiance of genetic expectations, has lissome blond hair, alabaster skin, and cerulean eyes – and imagining them being fed into the maw of the War Machine, I chambered a round and fixed the professor with a dispassionate stare.

A dark stain suddenly spreading across the front of his khaki pants, the professor stood up and fled, thus making it necessary for me to read the rest of his pitch in the Monitor.

“America must revisit the wisdom and morality of placing the responsibility for defending – and sometimes having to die for – this country only on volunteers,” Glick wrote from the safety of his office. “Consider the Israeli experience. Except for small minorities, Israelis feel that the responsibility for defending and dying for one’s country is a duty that must be shared equally. They feel that military service should not be determined by demographics, by social circumstances, by the unemployment rate, or any other aspect of the nation’s economy.”

“Well, bully for Israel,” I commented to the professor via cell phone, hearing him gasp and stammer on the other end, shocked and alarmed that I had tracked him down.
“If the Israelis want to put up with universal conscription, that’s their sovereign right. But my children are Americans, not Israelis. I wish the Israelis no ill, but I hardly find their experience a persuasive argument for inflicting an un-Godly, unconstitutional form of Marxist servitude on my children or anyone else’s.”

After fleeing to what he unreasonably believed to be a secure location, the professor resumed his proposal, which follows a now-familiar outline of a system in which all American youth at age 18 would be required to undergo a mandatory sentence of federal servitude:

“• All able-bodied and able-minded 18-year-old men and women should have their names placed in a lottery. Depending on how many soldiers are needed – typically just a few thousand each year – a modest percentage would be drafted.
• Then, the names of all those who didn’t get drafted should be placed into a lottery for nonmilitary service in city or suburban slums, rural areas, native Americans reservations, or other poverty-stricken places.
• If the lottery puts draftees in a nonmilitary program – say, in healthcare – that requires more education and training than they possess, they could opt for getting that additional expertise in the civilian world. But then, the draftees would have to enter that nonmilitary program immediately after completing their studies.”

“Now, it is always possible that in any given year the number of young people eligible for both the military and nonmilitary lotteries may exceed the need for their services,” the professor elaborated, casting a nervous glance around to make sure he was alone. (He wasn’t; I’d stalked him to his little redoubt.) “But whenever any young people miss involuntary service by the luck of the draw, they will have done so more fairly and honorably than was true during the days of the Vietnam War.”

“I have a better idea,” I said, emerging from the shadows that had enshrouded me, to the professor’s visible and audible shock.

The .45 aimed squarely at his forehead, I continued. “Why don’t we simply force the pack of criminals in Washington to abandon their idiotic interventionist foreign policy, and scale down the military establishment to a size appropriate to legitimate national defense? And why don’t socialist Pencil-necks like you find another country to ruin? I hear Israel’s nice this time of year – but on the other hand, don’t go there,” I continued, pressing the barrel of my gun to his forehead, “since those poor people have already suffered enough.”

“Wh-why are you doing this to me?” gibbered the professor as an antipodal stain on the back of his slacks joined the one previously left in the front.

“I warned you,” I said, grabbing the front of his shirt with my left hand and lifting him off the floor, “that if you threatened my children, I’d hurt you.”
Casting the gun aside, I dropped the professor to his feet.

“I only use a closed fist when I hit an actual man,” I said, bringing my open palm back to slap him. Recoiling from the anticipated blow, the professor tried to run, then tripped and face-planted into the side of his desk, knocking himself out, just as I had intended.

“Good,” I said, retrieving the gun I hadn’t really intended to use. “You’re exceptionally fortunate that I’m a Christian and therefore absolutely will not kill, except in self-defense or defense of my family,” I informed the prone and sleeping socialist, who was lying in a puddle of his own drool and feculence. “The same is true of my kids – that is, the children God gave me to protect, educate, and raise. They don’t belong to you, or to the abstraction you call `society,’ or to the monstrous criminal entity that calls itself our government. Like millions of others, they serve people every day, without government intrusion.”

Turning to walk away, I muttered to myself:

“Now I need to have a few words with Jack Murtha.”

(Apologies to Richard Daughty, aka The Mogambo Guru, for stealing his schtick and doing it poorly.)