For obvious reasons, historians concern themselves with writing about things that happened, rather than others that did not exist, or that ceased to happen. In one instance though, we can learn a lot about modern America from tracing the long-term cultural impact of something that finished over forty years ago, namely the military draft. Odd as the linkage might initially sound, that absence still casts a substantial shadow on American religion.
No history of twentieth century America can underplay the significance of the draft. To varying degrees, the institution – or its threat – was a critical force in the lives of virtually all male Americans born between, say, 1890 and 1952, and on their families. Although the institution did not end overnight, it basically became a dead letter in 1973. Jimmy Carter’s loopy renewal of selective service registration in 1980 was a purely symbolic statement designed to prove that, despite all appearances to the contrary, he actually was running a serious foreign policy. The continued survival of that system into the present century is one of the mysteries of the universe: it exists because no politician wants to be seen doing anything that could be construed as anti-military.
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