This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, September 18, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown.

There was a time when, as a young man of 18, you could be conscripted into a foreign war with a very real chance of dying within the year.

Barry Lynn was among those working to end the draft in the 1960s and 70s.

He's author of the new book, God and government. We spoke last week. Prior to 1973, we had a very real possibility if you're a young man who's able-bodied that you would be drafted.

And after that, we got rid of the draft for some period of time and now I remember very distinctly in the mid-1990s

signing up angrily I might add for the draft. So if you wouldn't mind just

detail some of that some of your history in in that movement to to get rid of conscription.

I was actually the chairman of the board of an organization called a committee against

registration and the Draft or Card.

It was a convenient little way to phrase it.

This was at a time when the possibility of a return to the draft or mandatory national service, which in my judgment is even worse than the draft from any kind of moral or political standpoint, this was a real possibility and there were people

Democrats and Republicans who wanted to go back to this, wanted to reject the idea

that service was something you did if you volunteered for it and the military was something in which you served

if you volunteered to do it.

And I had a lot of reasons for opposing the draft and its return, one of them constitutional.

I mean, to me, this is a violation of the involuntary servitude prohibition in the 13th

amendment.

But moreover, I thought, if you have a draft you have an endless

pool of people to draw from to say if you don't go to war this place or that place

or the next place will put you in jail. And notwithstanding the

fact that some people have changed their mind and said oh yes but look at all

...