A new book expands on a familiar subject: the absence of America's elite and its governing class -- and their children -- from the ranks of our nation's military.

The book is "AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service -- and How It Hurts Our Country." Its authors, Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer, didn't embrace the military ethos so much as it embraced them.

Roth-Douquet describes herself as a former agitator, feminist, Ivy Leaguer and Clintonite. She just happened to fall in love with a Marine pilot and married him, she told me, thinking that within a year she would "turn him around" and get him out of uniform.

Instead she found herself falling in love with the military life, so much so that this year, when her husband made the list for promotion to colonel, she was delighted because it meant they could have a few more years on active duty.

Schaeffer, a novelist, painter and filmmaker, saw his plans for his youngest son -- "top college, good grades, smart jobs ... " -- go awry when his son enlisted in the Marines after he finished high school.

It almost goes without saying that both authors swiftly discovered that in their circles, they alone had personal connections to today's military.

As recently as 1956, 400 members of Princeton's graduating class went on to serve in the military. In 2004, nine graduates did so. Harvard, Yale, Brown and other elite universities don't even allow Reserve Officer Training Courses on their campuses.

In the years after World War II, virtually every member of Congress was a veteran of military service. By 1971, three-quarters of the members had worn the uniform. Today, only a third of the 535 members of the Senate and the House of Representatives have served.

During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had sons serving in uniform. Today's political leaders and the rest of the country's elite don't feel the same obligation to send their children to serve in harm's way.

Military recruiting has suffered as a consequence. Parents in some better neighborhoods demand that recruiters not be allowed to visit the schools their children attend, and that they not be given their names and phone numbers.

It's enough of a shame that less than 1 percent of the 300 million Americans are charged with protecting and defending all the rest of us. They and their families do all the fighting and dying and suffering and sacrificing for all of us.

Recruiters and their services are forced, as a consequence, to reach down rather than up, and to offer enlistment bonuses of as much as $40,000 to entice young men and women to accept the burdens of service.

The Army, in particular, has been forced to accept more recruits who score in the lowest quarter of the military's aptitude testing and has set up programs to bring in high school dropouts. This at the same time that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is determined to "transform" the Army into a smaller force that relies more on high technology and speed.

Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer argue that there are three potentially dangerous consequences to this civil-military divide:

* Not having veterans throughout the decision-making process damages the country's ability to make sound decisions on the use of our military. Without them, the political leadership has less understanding of the true cost of war and who pays that price.

* Any division between the military and the rest of us weakens the country and, the authors argue, increases the risk that the military "will be overused and under-led and that support will run out fast for any project that becomes a political liability."

* Finally, "When those who benefit most from living in a country contribute the least to its defense and those who benefit least are asked to pay the ultimate price, something happens to the soul of that country."

Both authors believe that the answer lies not in drafting America's young people into service but in asking them to serve, challenging them to serve, asking them to take an ownership of freedom and democracy that, in the case of many of the elite, their parents weren't willing to accept.

As Roth-Douquet told me: If the military life could turn around a dyed-in-the-wool East Coast liberal like her, there must be something there that makes all the sacrifices worthwhile.