Susan Crabtree over at The Hill reports that Congressional gadfly Charles Rangel, plans to introduce legislation to reinstate the draft sometime this year, the same legislation that he introduced (and voted against) back in 2004.

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) likely will introduce his controversial legislation to reinstate the draft again this year, but he will wait until after the economic stimulus package is passed.

Asked if he plans to introduce the legislation again in 2009, Rangel last week said, “Probably … yes. I don’t want to do anything this early to distract from the issue of the economic stimulus.”

Rangel’s military draft bill did create a distraction for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) soon after Democrats won control of Congress after the 2006 election.

In the wake of that historic victory, Pelosi said publicly that she did not support the draft and that the Democratic leadership would not back Rangel’s legislation. She also said Rangel’s legislation was not about reinstating the draft but was instead “a way to make a point” about social inequality.

I want to make my own point about an individual trying to “make a point about social inequality” in an all-volunteer military…the man’s an idiot.

Service in our nation’s armed forces is no longer a common experience. A disproportionate number of the poor and members of minority groups make up the enlisted ranks of the military, while the most privileged Americans are underrepresented or absent.

Let’s for one moment ignore all the demographic studies showing that the fastest growing military category is people of upper and middle class backgrounds, and think about the consequences of a draft.

Asides from the logical fallacy behind Rangel’s idea that a draft is less offensive to justice than a voluntary policy, what we do know about involuntary servitude (the draft) is that it will have the exact opposite result from what Rangel claims that he wants to achieve.

In a draft, that class of “privileged Americans” allegedly “underrepresented or absent” from the ranks will get college deferences, while that percentage of blacks and minorities who today can freely choose NOT to enlist in the military, will now be drafted.

Rangel’s plan is not one seeking a solution to non-existent “social inequality” in the military…he intends to create that inequality in order to profit politically from it in the future.

“There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.” – Booker T. Washington