The Voluntary Service of Citizens in the Armed Forces - Essay Example

The Voluntary Service of Citizens in the Armed Forces The military draft, otherwise known as conscription, refers to the involuntary labor of individuals on behalf of the state, to fight for reasons that the state sees fit. Government policies enacted in conjunction with conscription require an individual to serve, in some capacity, as an active member in the armed forces. While most nations, including the United States at the present moment, rely on the voluntary service of citizens in the armed forces, during times of crisis or times of shortage of voluntary service, the government has relied on conscription to fill the ranks. Many nations, including the United States, although reliant on voluntary service still do reserve the right to impose a draft. The debate on whether a draft should, at some time, be reinstated is often a discussion drawn between positive (“what is”) and normative (“what ought to be”) considerations: the distinction between whether it is economically feasible, objectively necessary, or ultimately practical and whether it is morally justifiable, philosophically contradictory (for a country committed to freedom like the United States), or politically oppressive. To make the argument for or against the draft, a discussant must address both aspects of the issue. Put in this context, the practice of conscription is at once positively and normatively unjustifiable: not only does it create an inferior fighting force, making it ineffective at accomplishing its goals, but it is a severe violation of the individual’s freedom that a government exists to protect. On the normative side, the military draft (or conscription) is a defining feature of totalitarian regimes, having been imposed by and large in the totalitarian countries and their dictators throughout history. Napoleon and Bismarck serve as two examples of despots willing to sacrifice individuals for the state. Having been instituted by these aggressive leaders and countries, the military draft carries with it aggressive force. By “aggressive force”, one means force applied to countries other than one’s own, and not in self-defense. It is doubtful, after all, that in the event of a large-scale invasion of a country, that the country will have to force its citizens to fight to save their own lives, unless of course it is ruled by a dictatorial regime unworthy of its citizens’ defense. One cannot consistently hold that individuals have rights to self-determination and individual liberties and yet that the state has the right to make them null and void. Such rights and liberties exist only until the individual himself forfeits them on his own accord, not until the state decide that they stand in the way of its own ends. Although the military draft may very well be unconstitutional, that argument should not be taken seriously; the issue, instead, lies with the fundamental fact that every American is entitled to rights and freedoms which run perpendicular to the motives and goals of conscription. Concluding his argument against the draft, the American Senator Robert A. Taft says, “If adopted, it [the draft] will color our whole future. We shall have fought to abolish totalitarianism in the world, only to set it up in the United States.” The issue of conscription is ultimately equivalent in nature to the issue of socialism and communism in terms of the individual’s relation to state power. Military training is, of course, the regimentation of a person’s entire life: forcing him to conform to a strict pattern of action firmly set by an unseen and unknown power under the threat of force. If the state is capable and allowed to do so, the dangerous thing is that we cannot define a point where conscription becomes slavery. The ethics of good intentions (to ensure the welfare of the state) is not enough to justify such servitude insofar as my good intentions to ensure the welfare of my family and community does not give me rights to enslave certain other segments of human populations. The military draft argues otherwise, and upholds that “right” to force others to serve oneself selflessly and without rewarding them in return. In the words of Taft, “If we admit that in peacetime we can deprive a man of all liberty and voice and freedom of action, if we can take him from his family and his home, then we can do the same with labor, we can order the farmer to produce and we can take over any business.” In other words, conscription is an omen: it is a slippery slope toward the ultimate destruction of individual liberty and freedom. Military drafts come about invariably because of the rhetoric of crisis and the politics of fear. Wars, after all, threaten the existence of the state and therefore must be won at all costs. Conscription comes about when few wish to fight; that is, when the end of the war is not seen in the eyes of the public as necessary. Thus, question becomes why, if the public does not see a war as necessary, a democratic state would force individuals to fight it, contrary to public demand. Instead of raising rewards for volunteers, states force people to take guns and fight in the name of patriotism. When a corporation wants better applicants for a position, it does not take guns and hire at gunpoint. Instead, they raise the compensation as an incentive. Thus, we arrive once again at the issue of individualism v. statism, of capitalism v. communism. The question arises once again of whether the individual really has rights to self-determination or whether he has duties to serve the institution actually under threat of death. If the failure of socialism and communism in the 20th century has taught mankind anything, it is that in the absence of incentivization, labor structures collapse under the weight of apathy and the prevalence of serfdom. The Soviet Union, a nation that practiced conscription notoriously, disintegrated because of large-scale technological and intellectual decay. It survived decade after decade clinging to the delusion that labor without its just compensation is sustainable and that men live to serve others. The most effective labor, after all, comes through motivation by just compensation. In the absence of a fair price for one’s contributions, those contributions will not be made. The failure of communism correlates to the inevitable failure of drafted military service in the event that it is reinstated. The draft violates fundamental principles of economics, assigning roles to individuals not drawn by their self-interest to a certain action or role. Non-normatively, we can accurately conclude that by military service brought about by individuals that were conscripted will be far less effective than that achieved by volunteers. Although the last American draft was conducted in 1973, those committed to the principles of statism have been advocating for it ever since—seeing it as simply another means of forcing individuals to kill, to maim, and to violate the rights of other victims abroad and at home in the name of “patriotism” and the state. Normatively, we can see the primacy of the moral problem with forced labor. As President Ronald Reagan once said, “the most fundamental objection to draft registration is moral. A draft or draft registration destroys the very values that our society is committed to defending.” Congressman Ron Paul once mirrored this sentiment, saying, “Not only is the notion of involuntary servitude at odds with our system of law and tradition of liberty, but it is not in keeping with the needs and demands of a 21st Century defense program.” As such, Congressman Paul clearly recognizes the fact that normatively or non-normatively evaluated, military conscription is just as evil as any instance of state oppression witnessed throughout history, whether in Stalinist Russia, Maoist China or Nazi Germany. The apotheosis of a government’s power is war. Randolph Bourne wrote quite succinctly that “War is the health of the State”. War has been, throughout the ages, the perfect opportunity for the state to expand its power, particularly by manipulating individuals’ senses of patriotism and arousing hatred for other collectives. Conscription is simply another means of expanding state power in times of war, often at the consequence of creating an ineffective fighting force, putting individuals under strict control, aggressing against people in foreign lands, and starting nations in a slippery slope toward peacetime serfdom, otherwise known as socialism. Identified either as normative or non-normative, the objections against the draft are many and varied, giving us no reason whatsoever to even consider reinstituting a draft in a country founded on individualism. Read More