An overcome approach to the Melting Pot - Essay Example

Enlistment was next used after the United States entered World War I in 1917. The first peacetime call up came with the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940. Active conscription ("the draft") ended in 1973. Currently, male U.S. citizens, if aged eighteen through twenty five, are required to register with the Selective Service System, whose mission is "to provide manpower to the armed forces in an emergency" including a "Health Care Personnel Delivery System"2 and "to run an Alternative Service Program for men classified as conscientious objectors during a draft.

" No one has been prosecuted for violating the conscription law in the USA since 1986.3Conscription should be considered as a hypothetical panacea to cut down, for example, crime, teenage pregnancy and substance abuse rates decline; or to foster a more hard-working, respectful, disciplined, honorable and prepared for life youth4. Enlistment could surely help all of those immigrants in the States to get more, deeper and better integrated within the American society by helping their adoptive country to reinstate peace and freedom where needed by the time they give to the society something in reward for all they have already received.

Mandatory military service is one of the oldest forms of national service and is common to both democratic and non-democratic countries. Such democratic countries as Austria, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Israel, Mexico, Norway, Russia, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey require male and occasionally female citizens to participate in military service when they become 18 years old. These countries prove that conscription, when handled properly, can be an asset to the military, the society and the conscript.

Furthermore,. An overcome approach to the “Melting Pot” After the introduction of a bill to reinstate the military draft by Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY) on January 7, 2003, rumours went out on the real reach of this measure. A little over a year after, another bill, this time by Representative Tim Johnson, announced on October 5, 2004, that the House defeated a bill that would have reinstated the military draft. H.R. 163 was introduced by and would have required every U.S. citizen, and every other person residing in the United States, between the ages of 18 and 26 to perform a two-year period of national service, unless exempted, either as a member of an active or reserve component of the armed forces or in a civilian capacity that promotes national defence .

Detractors of H.R. 163 argued that too many have already lost their lives at the battle field and the Vietnam issue became a recurrent double edged argument. However, it has to be understood and taken into account that the USA are involved in several campaigns all over the world to guarantee freedom and Human Rights where otherwise would be rotten to the core. In addition to this, the military draft should be assumed not as a punishment or backward movement, more proper of a reactionary society than of a leading and modern one, but as a different solution for daily concerns.

Besides, military draft is another way to interpret the path to the achievement of the American Dream, overcoming the well worn “Melting Pot” topic: recruits and conscripts can enter the military branch of their liking, request to be trained in a specific field, and serve in the state of their choice.