leichter (11/05/82)
The "the draft is the same as slavery" arguments all miss an important point: Support of the government is by "involuntary servitude" for ALL of us. Do you have an option about paying taxes? For the averat \\\average taxpayer, the first 5 months of so of the year are needed to earn enough to pay all he owes; you could call THAT involuntary servitude if you liked. Let's be a bit historical - on a broarder scale than some previous submissions. Communities originally had a simple way of getting needed work done - everyone in the community was expected to devote labor to the community. If you didn't contribute, you got kicked out. (The communes of the 60's were organized on exactly the same principle. They argued that this brought everyone together in the community.) As societies grew and also as the nature of work changed, so that "general labor" was no longer good enough to get societies job done - only specialists can run societies buses and schools and computers - a new method evolved: Rather than having people contribute labor, you have them contribute the equivalent in dollars (taxes), which society then uses to buy the specialized labor it needs. Now, there are still some jobs - like being in the Army - that essentially anyone can do; so it is PRACTICAL to ask people to submit labor rather than its equivalent in cash. It's also: Fairer: The rich will avoid the army by contributing cash; the poor will have to contribute labor. Often the only alternative: Suppose not enough people are willing to take the job of fighting that society agrees must be done? -- Jerry decvax!yale-comix!leichter leichter@yale
CSvax:mab (11/06/82)
All this flaming about the draft and one's obligation to society poses
the question, "What if what society demands is unconscionable to the one of
which it is demanded?" There are a lot of people who object, on religious
grounds (or grounds of conscience -- it's the same thing in the law), to
entering the military; does this mean that they have absolutely no right to
live in this society? It seems to me that communities which obligate
service from its members in exchange for living in them have a greater
obligation to respect the demands of conscience of the individual.
One or two other comments. The claim that a society can demand one's
service sounds very bogus to me. Laudable as the idea is, you can't force
people to do it, and trying to do so by law is questionable. The problem
is that you can't legislate morality -- look at the "great failed
experiment" (as one historian called it) Prohibition. There, people tried
to prevent immorality (drinking); not only was that law the laughingstock
of the country, the mobs' business took off when that law was on the books.
Even worse, who decides what "serves society"? A society's values
change and what one day is seen as a traitorous act may later be considered
service above and beyond the call of duty later on (look at the writing of
the US Constitution -- certainly treason against the government then [read
the Articles of Confederation sometime] but now seen as a great service to
our society.) Legislators and presidents are not endowed with infinite
wisdom, and particularly in our society, one must be free to serve one's
country as one believes best, not as the governors (legislators, president)
feel best. Unfortunately, the draft does not give one that option
(conscientious objector status, contrary to popular opinion, was VERY hard
to get, because you had to base your request on religious beliefs or
"beliefs which are as controlling a factor in the way you live as God is in
the life of a conventionally religious person" -- try proving THAT to a
draft board!). Universal service may be a bit more palatable, but still,
who says that one person has met his obligation and another hasn't? Indeed,
who says what the obligation is in the first place?
Quivering about whether or not to sign my name...
Matt Bishop
mab@purdue, {decvax|ucbvax}!pur-ee!purdue!mab
PS: About Jerry Leichter's comment (yale-com.232) that the draft is ...
Often the only alternative: Suppose not enough people are willing to
take the job of fighting that society agrees must be done?
Seems to me that if this is the case, "society" hasn't agreed the fighting
must be done. Remember, "society" is not some abstraction -- it's made up
of people, and if these individuals agree fighting is necessary, they MUST
be willing to do it; they have no right (moral, ethical, or any other kind
except -- possibly -- legal) to force those who do not agree it's necessary
to do it.
Sorry, but I just couldn't resist answering that one.leichter (11/09/82)
Several people have made the same comment about my statement concerning not getting enough people to "take the job" of serving in the Army. The succinct version of this argument is the old "Suppose they gave a war...and no one came?" I think this is a naive argument (though valid in certain cases). First of all, no one wants a sewage plant or a highway build next door to their home, although everyone wants to use such facilities. It is exactly because of this fact of human nature that societies find themselves having to enforce the rights of the group above the rights of the individual IN SOME CASES. (Note that a libertarian approach provides no solution to this problem, it simply disguises it. It makes no difference to me whether it is the state or a private business putting up that sewage plant; and a libertarian state, if it expects private businesses to build sewage plants, somehow must allow my wishes to get overridden - by defining property rights that stop my inter- ference, for example.) Now, war is a little different. We have to distinguish two cases. If there is actually an active war going on, I would certainly worry about its morali- ty if many were unwilling to serve. (How many of you will argue, though, that the Civil War was immoral because a draft was used?) One would certainly hope that in time of need, volunteers would appear; but experience shows that it takes a HUGE stimulus to get people to volunteer. There is a continuous gradations from "unwilling to serve" to "will serve if called" to "will volunteer", and the last is rarely reached. (Be honest, now: If you KNEW you wouldn't get caught, would you pay ALL your income tax? Are you a volunteer or something weaker?) Anyway, when the situation calls for preparedness, not an active war, it is a fact that few will volunteer. What we have today is not so much a volunteer army as a hired army. Why do we need anything at all? At one time, it was reasonable to put together an army from scratch in a short time. Given the marvelous sophistication that years of military technology has brought us, this is no longer practical. To have an army at all implies a commitment to maintain a certain level of professional service that can become the backbone of a full army in times of need. Many countries operate on this system - Israel, Switzerland - but, interestingly enough, they also have universal conscription, since they have learned that even with the professional backbone, building an army from "totally raw" recruits is just too time-consuming. -- Jerry decvax!yale-comix!leichter leichter@yale
swatt (11/10/82)
Have you ever noticed in conversation that you end up on a certain subject and then are totally unable to figure out HOW you got there from where you started? Given the delays in USENET, net discussions exhibit this characteristic in spades. The current discussion on the draft started as a side comment by someone that perhaps the government should just draft medical people instead of trading education loans for some service time. The current discussion on taxes got started the same way. Now the discussion on financing education ITSELF started as a reponse to someone's article on something else which used the phrase "education as a right". That article was part of a discussion about schools requiring incoming freshmen to by personal computers to hook into a campus network. THAT discussion got started when someone posted a news release about a joint vendor-university effort to develop such a network. I think that one was not in response to anything. Mark Twain once said: "Science is wonderful. You get such an incredible return in speculation for such a trivial investment of fact." Netnews seems to be an exception to the general phenomenon of attenuation, to wit: "you get such an incredible amount of feedback for such a trivial amount of input." All of this seems so bland and obvious that it probably won't provoke much response, except for those people who feel compelled to reply that it is all very bland and obvious ... However, for all the rest, I will close with a quote from Ambrose Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary": Army: noun. A class of non-producers which protects a nation by depriving it of everything likely to tempt an enemy to invade. - Alan S. Watt