Thursday, March 26, 2009

Mandatory Service (Youth Chain Gangs?) is a Crime Against Liberty

There's some talk that the President believes we can do good in the world by conscripting our youth and forcing them to do good for us. That is, using the power of the state, we old folks force younger folks to spend years of their lives - after the age of majority when they SHOULD have all the right and priviledges which they were endowed by their creator - doing that which we judge to be a better use of their lives than what they would choose on their own.

I hope this idea gets the reception it deserves. "National Service," or whatever they will choose to brand it as, is so repugnant to liberty as to be beneath comtempt.

There's simply no deed that we can compel these age slaves to do that will justify this assault on liberty - and there's absolutely NO reason to believe that we they may be compelled to do will be of significant value. I see this as a frontal assault on liberty compounded by what is likely to be a massive loss in productivity - that is, these people would accomplish more working in their own interest for the same period of time compared to what they will complish when they are compelled to work against it.

The military has long since figured out that compulsory service is a loser's game. I have been in combat zones in the desert, in the air, and on a flight deck dodging jet exhaust and intakes - each time my life was literally in the hands of highly trained, technically competent and very responsible professional enlisted Sailors and Soldiers. My soft pink body is still here today because of their ability to manage immense responsibility OF THEIR OWN CHOOSING! In fact, they had to perform with distinction at lower levels of responsibility to earn the chance to keep me (and each other) alive by their performance at higher levels of responsibility. That is why 78% of US kids are not eligible to serve in the military - the standards are high and they should be high.

So assuming we go down the path to tyranny with some "Nation Service" or indentured servitude or youth slavery or conscripted chain gangs - what's the difference in a name? - what will they do with the ones that don't get up and go to work? What about the ones that cuss out or punch their supervisors? What about drug testing? How about the folks with 'personality disorders' who are simply unable (unwilling?) to perform? How will excellence be rewarded and lazyness, incompetence and inability to perform be disincentivized? The entire idea of using force to create anything of value - holy cow people, have they just never read anything about history?! We can't crush them under massive granite blocks to scare them into a good day's work - or can we??

I remember an argument being made that we could conscript the best and brightest and send them to inner city schools as teachers to make schools better ... what better argument could be made for the complete failure of the Coercive Government Monopoly School system than to say that we have to enslave people to save the schools!

This concept is too bizzarre to consider. What are these people thinking? I can't only assume they have been thinking around the concept of how to use government to solve life's problems for so long that they forgot that freedom has a value, and creates solutions to the most significant of life's problems - we spent all of modern history (the recorded part) trying to get ourselves to the point of being able to run our own lives, and now are rushing headlong to to abandon that same freedom. Well, most of us will have to abandon freedom for the sake of the 'common good' or 'social contract' (did you ever sign that contract, by the way? I've never even been asked to) or for 'equality' or some other buzz word that means "I'm justified in forcing you to do what I think is right." And while you and I abandon freedom for the good of the whole, the political class - take a look at places where this bill of goods has been sold, the political class still has the good stuff. The sacrifice little for the common good. As was written, 'some are more equal than others.'

I'm conceptually offended even by the talk of "National Service" but the outrage will be universal once folks see what a complete train wreck they've commissioned if the thing is ever born. I'm wondering what will be the best country to escape to when that day comes, so I can protect my progeny from this madness.

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