The civilian has no natural obligation to fight a war that a political agent starts. If a political agent wants a war, that political agent can pick up a rifle and demonstrate the depth of that conviction. The civilian is not a pawn, a spare part, or a convenient body to be fed into a policy choice. If political agents had to bear the risks they impose, the world would discover a remarkable new era of peace, restraint, and sudden diplomatic creativity.
Counting people who "entered the military" is meaningless, since the military could not accept everyone who volunteered and had to turn some volunteers away. They were constrained by infrastructure and funding.
Actually the Japanese had planned to deliver the declaration of war an hour or two before but delays in decoding etc meant the Japanese ambassador was late in seeing Cordell Hull.
And the Japanese did not design the Pearl Harbor bombing to provoke our martial sentiments. Admiral Yamamoto intentionally made battleships the primary targets, not carriers, because he thought that would be a more devastating blow against American morale. The attack and the entire war plan was designed around the idea that decadent and weak Americans would choose to negotiate rather than fight.
Yes, but he promised to run wild for six months or a year, and expressly made battleships the primary target because he believed it was the best way to attack Americans' morale and make them negotiate.
If people didn't want the draft, they could have repealed it in the middle of the war.
If people didn't want to be drafted there were options to avoid it or even openly accept the punishment (which wasn't that bad).
Some democratic countries have even introduced drafts mid-war (see England ww1).
Typically when a countries draft has little legitimacy you see a lot of draft dodging and draconian enforcement mechanisms.
I despise the draft and I'm glad its gone, but I can see the logic behind it.
1) Enemy invader has more people because of the draft.
2) We need a draft to match their draft.
3) We all know this is a job that needs to be done, but individually we would prefer to free ride. We can't bring ourselves to enlist, but we are willing to pre-commit to a statistically equal likelihood of having to serve if our fellow citizens agree to the same likelihood.
When these three things hold, when people believe the war is legitimate, they usually comply with the draft without much difficulty.
Conscription is slavery, and slavery offers nothing that raising pay can't offer, except the sadistic joy of coercion. Compliance comes not from believing a war is just, but because people don't want to be one of the few prosecuted pour encourager les autres.
Yes, it’s slavery. Of course, when you lose the war the invading power can enslave you too!
At least speaking in the modern American context including the world wars, conscientious objector status is granted to anyone who wants it. Tens of thousands of people accepted this status. They either served in non combat roles for the military for their length of service, could do civilian corp of engineers volunteer service stateside, or if they objected even to doing public works they could serve in prison, which very few did. Emigration is also allowed for anyone that wants to avoid the draft.
In the Vietnam war there were 570,000 draft dodgers. Only 0.5% of them ever served a penalty.
Today several countries require mandatory military training services in peacetime. Including Singapore, South Korea, and Israel. Nobody considers these slave societies. South Koreans understand that North Korea is what an actual slave society looks like and mandatory military training is the cost of not being invaded and enslaved.
Conscription as used by totalitarian societies is evil. Free societies have often have to respond to the threat that mass conscription armies fielded by invading totalitarians by utilizing their own draft. The draft is a law passed by the legislature and can be unpassed by the people at any time. In response to the unpopular use of the draft during Vietnam we now have an all volunteer army.
What makes the draft work in non-totalitarian societies is largely voluntary compliance and the voting public supporting it. If these things aren’t present the draft doesn’t work.
“In the course of his [Westmoreland's] testimony, he made the statement that he did not want to command an army of mercenaries. I [Milton Friedman] stopped him and said, 'General, would you rather command an army of slaves?'“ -- Milton Friedman
“I also think there are prices too high to pay to save the United States. Conscription is one of them. Conscription is slavery, and I don't think that any people or nation has a right to save itself at the price of slavery for anyone, no matter what name it is called. We have had the draft for twenty years now; I think this is shameful. If a country can't save itself through the volunteer service of its own free people, then I say: Let the damned thing go down the drain!” -- Robert A. Heinlein
I’m sure house slaves were greatly relieved that they weren’t field slaves. But they were still slaves.
1) Milton freedmen won his debate. The American people decided they wanted an all volunteer force. They decided it because we weren’t fighting an existential war versus a peer competitor and they didn’t want a draft for wars of choice like Vietnam.
2) Do you actually believe a country that can’t save itself with an all volunteer army should stop existing? Do you think South Korea should stop existing and be swallowed by North Korea?
Is that your actual opinion?
I’ve made my stance quite clear. There have been several examples of free societies faced with invasion by totalitarian slave societies who use conscription to overwhelm the free. In these instances, where free peoples choose it through their legislator, I believe that using a draft can bring more freedom and less slavery to the world.
0a) Conscientous objector status and working stateside or working in non-combat roles is still slavery; that's why I compared them to house slaves. You used the oxymoronic "volunteer service" as an alternative to conscription, even prison as some sort of non-conscription alternative. What the dickens do you think slavery is, if it's none of those?
0b) Only 0.5% of draft dodgers "served" a penalty. Served! Oh, no coercion there! And if 0.5% is acceptable odds to you, that's nice; who put you in charge? Most people, if you said the goons were coming to town and would enslave every 200th person just for shits and giggles, and only for 2 or 4 years, would they find that acceptable?
0c) You name countries with conscription (Singapore, South Korea, Israel) and yet deny that is slavery, after your very first words in your comment were "Yes, it's slavery." That's one reason for the Milton Friedman quote. Then you tried to distinguish South Korean and North Korean slavery, again why I commented on house slaves vs field slaves. Slavery is slavery; if the worker is not free to quit, it is slavery.
0d) You excuse conscription as being passed by the legislature. News you can use: slavery was also legal before the 13th Amendment.
0e) You excuse the draft in non-totalitarian societies because of voluntary compliance. "Voluntary compliance", that's rich. All those ante-bellum slaves also compled voluntarily, but not because they preferred slavery.
1) Some blather about Milton Friedman, showing you did read my quote, but your complaint that I addressed none of your issues shows that you didn't understand anything I wrote.
2) You brought up a strawman which shows you noted Robert Heinlein's quote but again without understanding it. He said a country whose people don't care to defend it voluntarily is not worth saving by slavery. Government is supposed to serve the people, not the other way around. If the people don't want to save the government, let the damned thing go down the drain!
Your biggest mistake runs through all your comments: you conflate government and country.
0a) I described the actual term that's used. The labor and conditions were similar to those for volunteers in the civil service corp (was in fact run by them).
The article I found the description in featured a Mennonite farmer's who refused combat and his father was aghast that his son would only have to do eight hours a day of labor instead of the fourteen he was used to, afraid his son would come back lazy.
0b) Being taken over by totalitarians (if they don't outright shoot you) is a lot worse.
0c) Yes, its temporary and conditioned slavery (where people still have many rights*) meant as a last resort to prevent complete slavery or execution by invading powers.
0d) Selective service is passed by the legislature and has been repealed before.
0e) They had to be tortured constantly, roving salve catcher gangs patrolled the countryside, and slaves occasionally had to be executed. Ultimately the confederacy had to fight a war it lost in an effort to force free peoples into supporting this system.
By contrast with essentially no penalty beyond a small chance of having to do eight hours of common labor while being provided with adequate living conditions, the vast majority of people complied with their draft call.
If your position is that it would be better for South Korea to be conquered by North Korea then for 18 year olds South Korean's do 18 months of military training, I just think you're insane. Luckily South Koreans agree your insane.
The civilian has no natural obligation to fight a war that a political agent starts. If a political agent wants a war, that political agent can pick up a rifle and demonstrate the depth of that conviction. The civilian is not a pawn, a spare part, or a convenient body to be fed into a policy choice. If political agents had to bear the risks they impose, the world would discover a remarkable new era of peace, restraint, and sudden diplomatic creativity.
Counting people who "entered the military" is meaningless, since the military could not accept everyone who volunteered and had to turn some volunteers away. They were constrained by infrastructure and funding.
Actually the Japanese had planned to deliver the declaration of war an hour or two before but delays in decoding etc meant the Japanese ambassador was late in seeing Cordell Hull.
And the Japanese did not design the Pearl Harbor bombing to provoke our martial sentiments. Admiral Yamamoto intentionally made battleships the primary targets, not carriers, because he thought that would be a more devastating blow against American morale. The attack and the entire war plan was designed around the idea that decadent and weak Americans would choose to negotiate rather than fight.
Yamamoto was against the war. He had studied at Harvard and knew America.
Yes, but he promised to run wild for six months or a year, and expressly made battleships the primary target because he believed it was the best way to attack Americans' morale and make them negotiate.
If people didn't want the draft, they could have repealed it in the middle of the war.
If people didn't want to be drafted there were options to avoid it or even openly accept the punishment (which wasn't that bad).
Some democratic countries have even introduced drafts mid-war (see England ww1).
Typically when a countries draft has little legitimacy you see a lot of draft dodging and draconian enforcement mechanisms.
I despise the draft and I'm glad its gone, but I can see the logic behind it.
1) Enemy invader has more people because of the draft.
2) We need a draft to match their draft.
3) We all know this is a job that needs to be done, but individually we would prefer to free ride. We can't bring ourselves to enlist, but we are willing to pre-commit to a statistically equal likelihood of having to serve if our fellow citizens agree to the same likelihood.
When these three things hold, when people believe the war is legitimate, they usually comply with the draft without much difficulty.
Conscription is slavery, and slavery offers nothing that raising pay can't offer, except the sadistic joy of coercion. Compliance comes not from believing a war is just, but because people don't want to be one of the few prosecuted pour encourager les autres.
Yes, it’s slavery. Of course, when you lose the war the invading power can enslave you too!
At least speaking in the modern American context including the world wars, conscientious objector status is granted to anyone who wants it. Tens of thousands of people accepted this status. They either served in non combat roles for the military for their length of service, could do civilian corp of engineers volunteer service stateside, or if they objected even to doing public works they could serve in prison, which very few did. Emigration is also allowed for anyone that wants to avoid the draft.
In the Vietnam war there were 570,000 draft dodgers. Only 0.5% of them ever served a penalty.
Today several countries require mandatory military training services in peacetime. Including Singapore, South Korea, and Israel. Nobody considers these slave societies. South Koreans understand that North Korea is what an actual slave society looks like and mandatory military training is the cost of not being invaded and enslaved.
Conscription as used by totalitarian societies is evil. Free societies have often have to respond to the threat that mass conscription armies fielded by invading totalitarians by utilizing their own draft. The draft is a law passed by the legislature and can be unpassed by the people at any time. In response to the unpopular use of the draft during Vietnam we now have an all volunteer army.
What makes the draft work in non-totalitarian societies is largely voluntary compliance and the voting public supporting it. If these things aren’t present the draft doesn’t work.
Two quotes come to mind.
“In the course of his [Westmoreland's] testimony, he made the statement that he did not want to command an army of mercenaries. I [Milton Friedman] stopped him and said, 'General, would you rather command an army of slaves?'“ -- Milton Friedman
“I also think there are prices too high to pay to save the United States. Conscription is one of them. Conscription is slavery, and I don't think that any people or nation has a right to save itself at the price of slavery for anyone, no matter what name it is called. We have had the draft for twenty years now; I think this is shameful. If a country can't save itself through the volunteer service of its own free people, then I say: Let the damned thing go down the drain!” -- Robert A. Heinlein
I’m sure house slaves were greatly relieved that they weren’t field slaves. But they were still slaves.
You haven’t addressed the issues I raised at all.
1) Milton freedmen won his debate. The American people decided they wanted an all volunteer force. They decided it because we weren’t fighting an existential war versus a peer competitor and they didn’t want a draft for wars of choice like Vietnam.
2) Do you actually believe a country that can’t save itself with an all volunteer army should stop existing? Do you think South Korea should stop existing and be swallowed by North Korea?
Is that your actual opinion?
I’ve made my stance quite clear. There have been several examples of free societies faced with invasion by totalitarian slave societies who use conscription to overwhelm the free. In these instances, where free peoples choose it through their legislator, I believe that using a draft can bring more freedom and less slavery to the world.
0) Wrong. I addressed your issues.
0a) Conscientous objector status and working stateside or working in non-combat roles is still slavery; that's why I compared them to house slaves. You used the oxymoronic "volunteer service" as an alternative to conscription, even prison as some sort of non-conscription alternative. What the dickens do you think slavery is, if it's none of those?
0b) Only 0.5% of draft dodgers "served" a penalty. Served! Oh, no coercion there! And if 0.5% is acceptable odds to you, that's nice; who put you in charge? Most people, if you said the goons were coming to town and would enslave every 200th person just for shits and giggles, and only for 2 or 4 years, would they find that acceptable?
0c) You name countries with conscription (Singapore, South Korea, Israel) and yet deny that is slavery, after your very first words in your comment were "Yes, it's slavery." That's one reason for the Milton Friedman quote. Then you tried to distinguish South Korean and North Korean slavery, again why I commented on house slaves vs field slaves. Slavery is slavery; if the worker is not free to quit, it is slavery.
0d) You excuse conscription as being passed by the legislature. News you can use: slavery was also legal before the 13th Amendment.
0e) You excuse the draft in non-totalitarian societies because of voluntary compliance. "Voluntary compliance", that's rich. All those ante-bellum slaves also compled voluntarily, but not because they preferred slavery.
1) Some blather about Milton Friedman, showing you did read my quote, but your complaint that I addressed none of your issues shows that you didn't understand anything I wrote.
2) You brought up a strawman which shows you noted Robert Heinlein's quote but again without understanding it. He said a country whose people don't care to defend it voluntarily is not worth saving by slavery. Government is supposed to serve the people, not the other way around. If the people don't want to save the government, let the damned thing go down the drain!
Your biggest mistake runs through all your comments: you conflate government and country.
0a) I described the actual term that's used. The labor and conditions were similar to those for volunteers in the civil service corp (was in fact run by them).
The article I found the description in featured a Mennonite farmer's who refused combat and his father was aghast that his son would only have to do eight hours a day of labor instead of the fourteen he was used to, afraid his son would come back lazy.
0b) Being taken over by totalitarians (if they don't outright shoot you) is a lot worse.
0c) Yes, its temporary and conditioned slavery (where people still have many rights*) meant as a last resort to prevent complete slavery or execution by invading powers.
Do a lot of chattel slaves have defense lawyers?
https://jagdefense.com/your-rights/
0d) Selective service is passed by the legislature and has been repealed before.
0e) They had to be tortured constantly, roving salve catcher gangs patrolled the countryside, and slaves occasionally had to be executed. Ultimately the confederacy had to fight a war it lost in an effort to force free peoples into supporting this system.
By contrast with essentially no penalty beyond a small chance of having to do eight hours of common labor while being provided with adequate living conditions, the vast majority of people complied with their draft call.
If your position is that it would be better for South Korea to be conquered by North Korea then for 18 year olds South Korean's do 18 months of military training, I just think you're insane. Luckily South Koreans agree your insane.
The US hasn't fought a "legitimate" war since the 18th Century at latest. Maybe not even then.