There is a small possibility that he will start thinking for himself now.

Much more likely: You will have the conversation with him over and over again and he simply will not retain any of the previous arguments.

I’ve had plenty of lefties concede a point or be reflective about a set of facts that are off their radar, only to have them revert the next time.

If there was a “method” that worked, people would drink tap water in Marin.

Look at the bright side. If we were to draft any large number of unwilling citizens – and I’m inclined to think that if we _did_ draft them, most would be unwilling – we’d end up training them in the handling and use of weapons, as well as a fair amount of other war game technicalities that they might find useful. As it is, 99% of them are ignorant of both, and wouldn’t pick up a weapon if their life depended on it. Or if they _did_ pick up a weapon, they’d be as likely to harm friends as enemies.

And that might be a good thing.

Very true. Heinlein wrote stories to explore ideas, and if you read enough of him you will find all various stories advancing ideas which are incompatible with each other.

You are indeed correct. In fact, he said that a society which could not muster enough volunteers to muster an effective military was a society so sick that it deserved to be conquered.

I certainly don’t want America to be conquered, but San Francisco and New York certainly would have it coming. The question is: Even in such a hypothetical Future History (hat tip to Heinlein who coined the term) would even a Che-style gulag or a Muslim Brotherhood-style tyranny teach these latte-sipping morons the error of their ways?

I think that Heinlein was opposed to the draft, but I could be wrong.

He avers in Expanded Universe, ‘Who Are The Heirs To Patrick Henry’ afterword that “The Founding Fathers never intended to extend the franchise to everyone; their debates and the early laws show it.” He struggled constantly with how to achieve an enlightened voting public, often writing of it with sarcastic wit.

From that same afterword:
step into the polling booth and find that the computer has generated a new quadratic equation just for you. Solve it, the computer unlocks the voting machine, you vote. But get a wrong answer and the voting machine fails to unlock, a loud bell sounds, a red light goes on over that booth – and you slink out, face red, you having just proved yourself too stupid and/or ignorant to take part in the decisions of the grownups. Better luck next time! No lower age limit in this system – smart 12-yr-old girls vote every election while some of their mothers – and fathers – decline to be humilitated twice.

or:
Perhaps we did not go far enough. Perhaps men are still corrupting government… so let’s try the next century and a half with males disenfranchised . (Fair is fair. My mother was past forty before she was permitted to vote.)

I guess in summary it would be a mistake to take any one of his books and try to claim it speaks for any of Heinlein’s various philosophies. He was famously critical of the libertarian society examined in “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress”, explaining that it would collapse soon afterwards due to its own internal inconsistencies, as his controlling timeline for his Future Universe indicates. Yet many people think he has written of that society as his perfect society, or that in ‘Starship Troopers’ he’s done the same.

Nixon signed a peace treaty and made sure it could be enforced. Then he resigned and it all fell apart.

The interesting number of Executive disembowelments that occurred from JFK, to Johnson, to Nixon, to Nixon’s VP is an interesting collage of disasters that mirror what happened in Vietnam.

I say “luck of the draw” because if the draft was a full war time draft of millions upon millions of Americans for a fullly mobilized additional 100 divisions, then that’d be one thing. Scatter them out around the world and get some real colonies going. That would produce a lot of good both for the people around this world and the people drafted.

However, if all we need are like a couple more divisions than the draft will have far too many deferments than the benefit you said it should have. If you wish to teach the men and women of the United States duty and honor once more, it will take more than a draft that only takes in a couple of thousand individuals compared to the millions of deferments and exemptions that will exist.

Concerning what you said about the “burden of knowledge”, after studying and watching Democrat policies and grassroots operations at hand and in the past, I just don’t see what that would do in the long run to reversing the Leftist indoctrination of American children to believe that honor is an anachronism and that the US is evil because the US wiped out the noble savages called Native Indians (amongst other things they teach).

It’s still better than what Oz usually posts, which are just the link and a claim that says “it says this so it must be true”. If Oz provides a link, and a quote from it, and her own thoughts on the subject, then that is useful. Useful for analysis, that is.