Get real for a moment and tell me what war we have fought with your volunteer military? WWI, WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, Spanish American, Revolutionary, !812 ? Oh, maybe the call up for the Cuban Missile crisis? Naw, didn't happen, won't happen, probably can't happen in any mass military adventure.

Part of my brand of liberalism is that I am allowed to have my own brand, I am first and foremost an individual. The difference is that I recognize my individualism exists in concert with my environment, my society, my nation, and that I am also a part of each element.

I seriously doubt the "liberals" of your college days would have thrown stones at me--that would have negated liberalism and they would have been behaving like fundamentalist conservatives!

Your header Draftee=property has a point. Our country is our property and we all have a duty and obligation to protect our own property. Point is that when I protect my property I am also protecting yours and in the terrors of war there is no room for free riders.

How can you approve of our people having to owe their soul to the company store and not approve of them owing their hearts to their country? Maybe this is the summer soldier and sunshine patriot syndrome?

And FYI, I do fear government as Jefferson did and feel the obligation to keep government as the servant of our society. We can do this by participating in this government in whatever capacity we are capable. We own the government, the government does not own us.

I also fear big business as a monster that society has to restrict from eating us. Regulations have to put in place simply because we can't vote for big corporations. Before you say we can by virtue of stock ownership, let me remind you of Galbraith in the New Industrial State; management is "professional" and divorced from ownership in the large corps. Ownership is responsible, but detached management is amoral by definition.

Publius