Your position on mandatory government service

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Joseph

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I was going through the test over at the Libertarian Party to help you figure out who you are (all that money to shrinks wasted!), and one of their questions was whether one supported mandatory government service, such as military or civilian tasks, for every person. They do it in Israel and Switzerland (men only, I believe).

What are ya'll's thoughts? I personally think it's a good idea.

Roon
 
The only constitutional mandatory government service is the militia. Anything else is depriving citizens of their freedom without due process.

I know where you are coming from. I've read STARSHIP TROOPERS and A MATTER FOR MEN. I would love to see REAL civics taught in high school, where it would do the most good. There is no question that the IDF is the glue that holds Israel together. There is no question that Switzerland is a rich country that is too expensive to invade. But we are the United States for good and ill. Make it the 28th amendment and I'm there.
 
I'm a Navy veteran, and from my frame of reference I would support a military draft only in a time of national emergency. Define that as meaning in response to a specific act of aggression upon this country (i.e., Pearl Harbor).

No more peace keeping missions. No more operations to protect another country's oil supplies. No more service under the UN command, that is for d*mn sure! All this is nothing more than political aggression on our part.

Beyond that very narrow circumstance in which I believe mandatory military service should be required, ALL ELSE IS SIMPLY LEGALIZED SLAVERY.

Ongoing national defense can be served by volunteers employed at a competitive wage rate. Those wages should be such that the military can attract quality personnel.
 
I think if more people (liberals in particular) had to spend some time actually working hands-on for a lot of these welfare programs that they're so adamant about funding it would turn a lot of people's heads in the right direction.

I was very much pro-welfare, pro-public housing, pro-government assistance until I went to work in juvenile corrections. Now that I see what all of that free money got these kids -- no work ethic, learned helplessness and a sense of entitlement to more free money -- I know different. If more people actually had to work in the programs they support instead of just checking the box to give more tax money for it, things would change.



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*quack*
 
I would support it if...

There were no wacko liberals.

No welfare.

I got to keep a Sig rifle and free practice ammo after my service like the Swiss. :cool:
 
I guess I have always been one to figure that if you want the rights and priviliges of being an American, you had better spend a bit of your life earning those rights. No sense in sending someone else out to do your fighting and dying so you can hide behind your momma's skirt if you're not willing to be there on the line next to the other guy. If this country wasn't getting so screwed up with liberal politics, I would still hold fast to that idea. However, now I see kids that dont' want to serve, get sent to various UN meals on wheels campaigns in areas that we have no interest in other than being the world's policeman and social service worker, I guess I can't fault them either.
 
Mandatory service = indentured servitude.

Now, if there was a genuine need for military manpower to serve our nation (as opposed to some "world policeman" interventionist nonsense), there'd be more volunteers than the nation could handle. And I'd be one if they'd take someone my age. People will be willing to stand up and serve when there's a genuine need. Taking sides in Somalian clan wars doesn't qualify as a genuine need.
 
if there's one thing we've learned over the last 100 years, it is that markets form for all quantities of exchange, including labor. if its simplest form, military service is a labor market.

the reason why markets tend to improve efficiency is that they have a self-correction mechanism (rational self-interest). in a labor market, if wages or conditions are poor, you get less workers to show up. if folks are *forced* to supply labor, systematic abuses *will* occur because there will be no self-correction.

since we are *citizens* and not *subjects* we should never be treated like chattel. forced labor is just that, regardless of whatever window dressing is put on it ("service," "compulsory volunteerism" etc).
 
The simple fact is that freedom is free. The belief that you are not required to do anything you don't want, has already been disproved by the government. How many (other than democrats) really want to pay so many taxes or serve on jury duty. The concept of universal military service provided the nation with a more rounded individual, who unlike today has a concept of how the government works. An additional strong point is since most parents today cannot provide discipline the military can.

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God truly fights on the side with the best artillery
 
I spent 6 weeks in Singapore last year where after high school all the males go into the military. I asked some questions and the best I could find out this service was where they trained the populous how to follow orders and how to learn that the government will do what is best for them. They have very little freedoms in Singapore compaired to the USA. I was glad to get home.
 
I believe it was right for me to serve, but I don't think it best to have a draft except for emergencies. Not everyone is geared physically or mentally for the military. Of course there is always peace corps and the like, but I really don't like the thought of conscription.
I just have a problem with the fact that the 'government' schools are not allowing our kids to learn some of the ideals with which the majority of us seem to have been reared.
I'd serve again, if called, to protect the USA, even if Bozo in D.C. ordered it. Why? This is my country.
 
For MDs who skip out on their student loans, mandatory service would be an excellant way to compel them to pay their debt off and ensure the health care of our troops.

Call me a facist, but I pay my bills and my education is paid for.
 
FWIW, I enlisted during the Vietnam "thing".
It goes like this..
I graduated in 1972, should have been 1971, but that's another story. My draft number in 1971 was somewhere in the low teens, need I say more. But, since I was still in school, I was perdoned for another year.
Well, Nixon "nixed" the draft, so I slipped through the draft then.
Enter 1973, and the gas "shortage"(souns familiar folks??), and the economy slipped into oblivion, and so did all the jobs I kept getting and losing.

So, one alternative left. After getting a different AFSC in life, I came out and practiced what I'd learned in the other sector. Many TDY's, and advantages my chronys back home were being denied.

Putting it simple. I think some mandatory service wouldn't be a bad thing, if it were left out of UN influence. I think that tomorrows contributors, and workers could sure use a little experience abroad so that they know what the hell is really going on in this world. They could see, firsthand, what kind of sh!t other governments have to offer for their citizens(?). They could see firsthand, what it's like "over there", and not get it from a virtual experience sponsored by media/mind control types. There's nothing to replace cold, hard experience when teaching lessons.

How's the song go, "This world turns on lessons learned".

Best Regards,
Don

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The most foolish mistake we could make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms; history shows that all conquerers who have allowed their subjected people to carry arms have prepared their own fall.
Adolf Hitler
 
A confession; I think I was stupid for not joining the national guard and getting all that training and being paid for it.

While I am mostly libertarian in my beliefs, I realize that national defense can't be done by subscription ("We're going to protect every house from invaders, except those who haven't paid their national defense bills"). Also, universal service means universal training in gun handling and marksmanship, with the resultant decrease in ignorance (and fear) of firearms we see today. As part of payment for service, you could keep your rifle and kit and it would be a federal offense for a state or city to deny you to do so. Those of us too old for active duty can volunteer as cooks, remedial instructors etc., to recieve the same benefits (but we would be limited to the rank of private, forever).

And think how it would be if the sons of politicians and reporters faced being sent to police the world. I don't think we would be in all these hotspots, do you?
 
National Service - Hmm
I tend to agree with the people who say that forced service = slavery. I really don't like what is being done with the military today, And I think that the problems the military is having reflect on poor choices by the civilian government. But, trying to be the devils advocate. If service was mandatory, would citizens be less inclined to support half-baked ideas like kosovo and the like? Would citizens be more concerned with what choices were made if they knew that their kids would suffer for the stupidity? Just a thought. I don't know the answers.

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Rob
From the Committee to Use Proffesional Politicians as Lab Animals
 
National service is okay as long as it's strictly voluntary. The minute it becomes mandatory, it's wrong.

Politicians, by their very nature, are sick little men who are not fit for much of anything but politics (could you imagine a slug like Clinton actually working in the private sector? I'm using him as an example, but he's only the tip of the iceberg). Giving pols. a vast pool of manpower via a draft tends to cause intrusion into other countries' affairs that have no real bearing on any American's interest.

If this country was in danger of being harmed by an outside aggressor--by a REAL threat that even the most simple American could recognize, not one trumped up by politicians--I believe there would be plenty of volunteers to defend our soil. This is where rational self-interest applies.

I understand some people's desire for a national service idea. I think it stems from too many little punks today thinking that they are owed a living. But who gave them this idea? For the most part, Government itself
DAL

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Reading "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal," by Ayn Rand, should be required of every politician and in every high school.
GOA, JPFO, PPFC, CSSA, LP, NRA

[This message has been edited by DAL (edited March 18, 2000).]
 
I registered, and I like Heinlein, but the Constitution should be the ultimate law in this country.

"Where is it written in the Constitution, in what section or clause is it contained, that you may take children from their parents and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battle in any war in which the folly or the wickedness of government may engage it?"

Daniel Webster
 
What is meant by the saying "freedom isn't free" is that time and again you will have to fight for your freedom against those that would take it from you.

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.
P.J. O'Rourke
Address at the Cato Institute, 1993

Mandatory service disregards a person's basic right to do as they damn well please. Those that interfere with this right will have to accept the consequences.
 
I see little wrong with every adult knowing basic combat (infantry) skills. In time of emergency they are a lot easier to train and integrate into the active & reserve force structure.

To protect against Washington "adventurism" overseas, there could be a law prohibiting their use overseas except in time of war. The French have such a law. They also have a foreign legion so some other country's sons can fight and die in French military adventures in other lands.

I would accept a criteria of successful completion of universal military service as qualification to hold public office. Perhaps even to bear arms in public without having to jump through the hoops of obtaining a CCW.
 
having the military teach morals is like having colleges teach calculus to illiterates; its applying a solution too late in the process. if morals are not taught by the parents, then it must come from religion, youth centers, etc. the ages from 5 to 10 are the critical ones.

I agree with DAL; give *any* politician a fifty division Army (and if we required an 18 month stint of all 18 year old males, we'd have at least that many divisions) and America would give a whole new meaning to the term "military adventurism". not to mention the effect on the economy of putting that much more of the GDP into the federal government.

I think it might be a good idea to require previous or public service from those receiving government-funded scholarships and loans, though not necessarily military (plenty of other things to do, including teacher's aide, field work assistance for science researchers, etc).
 
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