The Case Against The Case Against National Service
I probably wouldn’t support any actually existing proposal for national service, whether in the US or in France.
There are plenty of good practical arguments against national service: it’s expensive; it’s social engineering with a low likelihood of success; it’s feel-good paternalism; it’s a waste of time. If your idea of national service is military service, you can add that good 21st century militaries are highly professional outfits, not mass conscript armies, that social engineering is not the military’s job, and so on.
Those are all good arguments. They are also not the arguments that most libertarians make. And the libertarian arguments are not only ridiculous, and not only as ridiculous as they are strongly-held, they are ridiculous in a specifically pernicious way that perfectly encapsulates why I’m not a libertarian.
I remember being so shocked that I committed the event to memory: many many years ago Rep Rangel introduced a bill to reinstate the military draft as a protest against the Iraq War. One of the writers at the Volokh Conspiracy wrote (and this so shocked me that I committed this quote to memory) that military service is “a heinous institution that presupposes that people are the property of the state.”
I don’t remember which of the Volokh writers wrote this but if I’m not mistaken all of them are legal scholars, and this idea which ought to embarrass a first-year law student shows the extent to which libertarian brains shut down with a mention of the draft. The state is entitled to demand military service of you for the same reason that it’s entitled to demand that you pay a portion of your wages: military service is a form of taxation paid in kind. Military service is like slavery in the same way that taxation is theft. (And if you read this and pumped up your fist and went “Well, yeah!” you need to read more books.)
I’m the most quasi-libertarian non-libertarian you’ll ever meet. Milton Friedman is one of my all-time personal heroes—I even named my cat after him! Free to Choose will be mandatory (gasp!) viewing for my kids.
Here’s the thing, though.
My great-grandfather was a major in the French Army. When the Battle of France was lost he was one of only a handful of battalion commanders who managed to keep his unit together in the debacle, and was decorated as one of the final acts of the legitimate government of France. He was a public school teacher and administrator, because he had grown up as a stableman’s son and a public school teacher’s detection and encouragement of his precocity (something forbidden nowadays) was the only reason he was able to pursue education, and out of gratitude he dedicated his life to public service, at the end of his life watching impotently as the French public school system he loved was destroyed from the inside by Sixties radicals, and taking his granddaughter out of public schools and putting her in a private parochial school. For him serving his country entailed working in schools, but also serving in the French Army reserves, and he went to fight for his country when she needed it. After the armistice, he went home but did not stop fighting. He joined the French Resistance and ended up building and leading one of the most important maquis networks in Burgundy, which was occupied territory. He became a wanted man and his house was taken by the Nazis. If he had been found, he would almost certainly have been tortured to death as an important asset. And I shudder even more to think of what would have happened to his little daughter, also in hiding, my grandmother.
One of the greatest men of the past century, André Malraux gave this homage to one of his fellow Résistants, Jean Moulin, head of the Resistance tortured to death by the Gestapo.
You Head of the Resitance, martyred in hideous cellars, look with your blinded eyes all those black women standing watch over our companions: they mourn for France, and for you. Look as under the small oaks of Quercy, with a flag made of knotted rags, slip by the maquis that the Gestapo will never find because it only believes in tall trees. Look at the prisoner who enteers a luxurious villa and wonders why he has a bathroom—he hasn’t heard of bathtub torture. Poor tortured king of shadows, look as your people of shadows rises up in a night of June pierced by torture. Hear the rumble of German tanks rolling towards Normandy: thanks to you, the tanks will not make it in time. And when the Allied troops break through, look, Prefect, as in every town of France the Commissaries of the Republic rise up—except when they were killed. Like us, you envied Leclerc’s epic bums : look, fighter, your bums crawl out of their maquis. Their peasant hands have been trained to use bazookas, and they stop one of the foremost tank divisions of Hitler’s Empire, Das Reich. (…)
Enter here, Jean Moulin, with your terrible cohort. With those who died in basements without talking, like you; and even, which may be more awful, having talked. With the striped and shaved figures of the concentration camps. With the last stumbling, beaten body of the awful lines of Night And Fog. With the eight thousand French women who never returned from the prisons. With the last woman who died in Ravensbrück for giving asylum to one of ours. Enter here with the people born of shadows and gone with it—our brothers in the order of the night.
My ancestor risked torture and death and worse. What for? So that his children, and his countrymen’s children—so that I could enjoy a free and prosperous life.
If you won the sperm lottery and were born in a wealthy, democratic nation, you have a life whose charm is simply incommensurable and incomparable with the lived existence of the vast, vast majority of human beings who have ever lived on Earth.
You have the privilege of not dying of hunger and easily preventable disease. You have the privilege of having attended schools that, yeah, could be much better, but still taught you how to read. You have the privilege of access to technology and a standard of living that would have been simply unimaginable even to most kings of old. You have the privilege of not having to keep a spare set of clothes under your bed in case the secret police knock in the middle of the night. You have the privilege of being able to spout off whatever nonsense on the internet and not get thrown in jail for your opinions. You have the privilege of medicine which cures most ailments and is relatively available to you. You have the privilege of a relatively much much higher likelihood of having work that is not back-breaking and awful, and perhaps even meaningful and fulfilling. You have the privilege of having a life expectancy which is basically twice the life expectancy of most of the people who came before you. That’s right: you basically have A WHOLE OTHER LIFE on top of your “natural” life, as a reward for the hard work and toil of being born in the right place and the right time.
And the simple fact of the matter is that if your sperm was lucky and you were born in one of those countries, the only reason you enjoy this incredible, unimaginable privilege is because people who lived before you sacrificed, and toiled, and gave their lives so that you would have it. They fought wars and they gave their blood and their lives so that a certain political community to which you belong shall not perish from the Earth so that you could enjoy this.
We owe this incredibly charmed modern life not just to scientific progress and capitalism. We also owe it to the stubborn fact that many of our forefathers were willing to put on a uniform, swear an oath, and lay down their lives, for us, their children and their children’s children. Your blessed life is built on the blood and bones of your forefathers.
You can tell me that war is bad, and I agree. You can tell me that nationalism is bad, and I agree. You can tell me that militarism is bad, and I agree. But none of that changes the stubborn actual facts of history that wars, some of them just, were fought by your forefathers, and that your forefathers died, so that you could enjoy the positively mind-boggling privilege you do enjoy. Freedom is never free. Government is often a threat to freedom, yes, but it is also a bulwark for freedom. Maybe it doesn’t have to be this way, but it’s the way it has been.
In this context, the idea that your political community which has given you so much does not have the right to ask you to contribute just a little something back to the effort of national defense strikes me as the height of solipsistic adolescent egotism. It is spitting in your father’s face.
Through no effort of your own, being born in the right political community basically gave you forty extra years of expected life, and giving back just one or two is too much?
“Oh, but that’s slavery.” You know what’s slavery? ACTUAL SLAVERY. And you know where slavery exists? Not where you live. Slavery still exists—in places you were lucky enough not to be born in. Instead you were born into a place of unimaginable freedom, wealth and wonder which you did nothing to earn. And so yes, that place just may ask you to spend a year wearing ugly green fatigues which don’t compliment your eyes, crawling around in the muck and getting yelled at by a guy who didn’t even go to a good college. The horror.
Tell me national service is too expensive. Tell me it won’t work. Tell me you want smart ways to deal with true conscientious objectors. Tell me it’s wankery, even. Heck, tell me why as a Christian you refuse to take up arms against anybody. Tell me all these things—really.
But don’t tell me that there’s no social contract. Don’t tell me that you don’t owe anything to your country.
In the end, that’s why I’m not a libertarian. I am pro-libertarian in that I believe the libertarian critique of state overreach is critically important. I want libertarian ideas to have more purchase in our societies. I probably agree with the Cato Institute on 90% of issues. But following the logic of libertarianism leads to denying the social contract, to denying that political communities have value. Nations exist. In all of human history, people have formed political associations. It seems to me self-evident that this is necessary and good. Through a painful and long process of trial and error, we’ve stumbled upon a form of political association, the liberal democratic nation state, which is uniquely good at protecting people’s natural rights and encouraging their flourishing. But for these political associations to be successful, they require us to give as well as take, and for us to affiliate in a powerful way, and to view our destiny, at least a little bit, as a common endeavor and not just an individual one.
As Jim Manzi wrote in his book, every successful institution relies not just on the well-understood personal interest of its members but also on an emotional attachment to that institution and its well-being at the expense of our narrow personal interests. The liberal democratic nation state is the most successful, good and important institution we’ve come up with. It deserves and needs that we defend it—with words, with deeds, and sometimes, yes, with service. And it has the right to ask that of us.
The characterization of what libertarians think in this post is highly dubious to me. The closest we get to attribution is that one of numerous authors at the Volokh Conspiracy said something like this? I suspect that the exercise of having to link libertarians who advance this view, or views like it, would result in grappling with thinkers whose logic is not cartoonish and obviously flawed (though I am sure there are, somewhere out there, marginal libertarians with cartoonish views).
Personally, I’d say that a draft can be a legitimate use of state power or a great evil, depending on the war. Set aside law. We’re talking moral legitimacy here. Is it legitimate to compel a 22 year old man to take his spot alongside everyone else at the city wall as the barbarian hoards rush the city?
Sure.
Was it legitimate for the US government to force its young to go die in Vietnam?
I don’t think so.
As a matter of law, perhaps there is no way to distinguish between this cases, but as a matter of political philosophy there surely is.
As for national service, I won’t tell you there’s no social contract at all — I’ll just tell you there’s no social contract that should include “national service.” If the barbarians are at the gate, the state has a legitimate demand on my person. Does the state act legitimately when it decides that it’s better for me, at 18, to spend a year painting over graffiti or working in a soup kitchen than to spend a year, I don’t know, starting a competitor to Bit-coin or a Christian bookstore or touring with a band?
It does not.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 25, 08:50 AM · #
Conor: Thanks.
The idea that I’m caricaturing libertarians is wrong—I wish it weren’t. I think you know me well enough to know I’m not likely to do this. I’ve debated this with libertarians on Twitter countless times, including the smart ones whom I respect. Slavery, fascism, etc. are brought up quickly and reliably.
Why is it legitimate for the state to ask you to give 20% of your income in perpetuity but not to give 1.25% of your expected life expectancy?
— PEG · Jun 25, 09:00 AM · #
You paint national service duties as kinda hokey—painting graffiti, serving in soup kitchens—but in my tax analogy, disputing what your money is used for is not the same thing as denying the legitimacy of taxation.
Also—genuine question—what should we make in this debate of the fact that literally every person I know who went through national service (military/non; in France, Germany, Israel…) views the experience positively? Should it be relevant? If so why, if not, why not?
My father had serious asthma and he lied about it to be eligible for national service and gave himself cortisone shots in secrets to not have asthma attacks in the military.
My grandfather met all his best friends through military service. They’ve known each other and been as close to each other as friends can be for 60 years now.
— PEG · Jun 25, 09:05 AM · #
Also: a problem with the “barbarians at the gate” framing is that you really want to have a situation where the barbarians don’t get to the gate.
This is why the Founding Fathers of the US believed that citizens should belong to militias, as a lesser evil relative to a standing army. This is why Switzerland has not only conscription but mandatory reserve duty and ownership of firearms, as a deterrent against invaders. Switzerland judges its military success by how few wars it fights, and the way to do that is to be very militarized.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
— PEG · Jun 25, 09:17 AM · #
PEG,
I know you wouldn’t deliberately caricature libertarian views, and I’m sorry I didn’t state that more clearly. But I still wish you’d link to some examples.
And if my examples are too hokey, try this one: why is it the government’s place to force me to spend a year researching a cure for cancer, and judging that a better use of my time than painting over graffiti in my neighborhood?
The defense of the nation is a necessity. Paying for government is a necessity. The coercion is unfortunate, but legitimate, because it is a necessity.
National service is not a necessity. It is needless coercion, and implied in that coercion is that the state knows better than the individual how best to spend their time.
As for the implications for this debate of everyone in other countries loving national service, it sounds like an excellent data point that could be used to persuade people to participate voluntarily. I have no objection to that.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 25, 09:19 AM · #
Well, we don’t just have taxes because we think they’re necessary. We also have taxes to fulfill other objectives. For example, it’s not, strictly speaking, necessary to tax someone who makes $200/hour at a higher rate than someone who makes $20/hour. We do it because we feel it’s just that someone who makes more money should contribute more to the general welfare, quite independently of considerations of economic efficiency (these considerations are in the picture, but realistically, at the margin). Is that illegitimate? Should we just have a flat tax with absolutely no deductions or exemptions whatsoever? And should we do so not simply because it’s more efficient but because to do it any other way would be illegitimate?
— PEG · Jun 25, 09:27 AM · #
PS Yes the state thinks it knows better than you how to spend your time. For example, it mandates that from a certain age to a certain age you should be in education. Is that also illegitimate, even if education can be defined as home/unschooling?
— PEG · Jun 25, 09:29 AM · #
What strikes me about the libertarian “conscription is slavery” thing is that it’s a profoundly ahistorical argument. Historically, compulsory military service is associated with citizenship and/or elites. Militia duty goes much further back than taxation, especially modern taxes like income and sales/VAT. (Ancient taxes tended to be tariffs and property/estate taxes). This is part of why I’d draw a distinction between conscription and civilian national service — there is a long tradition behind citizenship being associated with compulsory DOD type stuff, not so much with citizenship and HHS type stuff. Of course, like PEG I think national service is a stupid idea on practical grounds and the kind of people who advocate it in this country give me the creeps. (I recently hung up on a push poll for national service).
I’d also add that this argument is a good illustration of Haidt’s moral foundations thesis since it basically contrasts liberty vs loyalty & authority with the result that people are arguing past each other.
— Gabriel · Jun 25, 06:43 PM · #
Surely the most famous example of the service=slavery argument is by the man himself, Milton Friedman. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2912728/posts
I would add that I’m in tenuous agreement with him on this. We can talk about the experience of the Greatest Generation all day, but the fact remains, for anyone under, say, 60, the relevant service would’ve been in Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. These events were, bluntly, moral horrors. To conscript men and women into these wars would not be slavery—on that I think you’re right—but…that really doesn’t say much for the idea, does it?
I would argue, in fact, that it’s much worse. To force someone to kill and maim in the name of injustice—and, despite your reluctance to mention that the last half-century of American foreign policy has been a complete horror show, this is the more relevant frame for discussing conscription—is precisely the sort of moral evil social contract theory was designed to combat.
— Brandon Turner · Jun 26, 01:03 AM · #
libertarians are absolutist armchair philosophers, news at 10
— plebe · Jun 26, 02:55 AM · #
The idea that governmental coercion is illegitimate merely because it is wrong is, if you will permit the outlandish hyperbole, the very essense of what is wrong with the boomers and every generation they’ve corrupted with their influence since. A liberal state permits many conceptions of the good and leaves you free to pursue them, but not to the exclusion of the common good, with no exception for you happening to disagree on a particular point. At some point, you pay your dues to the common good. How could it be that the government can nearly always ask you how to spend your capital (in the collective) but never how to spend your labor?
— K Chen · Jun 26, 03:02 AM · #
I just want to say that I really like The American Scene, used to read it all of the time back in its glory days, and am glad to see that it’s back to getting at least semi-regular posts. I hope this keeps up.
— Nick · Jun 26, 03:40 AM · #
Just one question, PEG:
How can you be against compulsory public schooling but in favor of a mandatory national service program?
Isn’t the chance for abuse and waste of the best years of one’s life just about the same?
— MC · Jun 26, 06:30 AM · #
I can’t believe any of the commenters are advancing the argument that conscription is OK if the barbarians are at the gate, but not OK in the case of a “moral horror” like Vietnam. Look, a draft is our best protection against beginning or prolonging immoral wars. Ground troops landed in Vietnam in 1965 and by 1968 the mainstream media had recognized that Vietnam was a quagmire with no victory in sight. Peace talks started that year and troops started being drawn down. It took an unconscionable amount of time to leave, but the decision was taken to get out three years after the major commitment. And that was because the middle class was on the hook — the young men, the sons, the boyfriends. We all cared and we all stayed active on this issue. If we had had a draft and taxation equal to the cost of the wars, we would never have been in Iraq for 10 years and Afghanistan going on 15. A draft appears to be the only way to constrain war-making, because as a society we have a shameful ability to ignore a war that doesn’t touch people of influence directly.
— marcia · Jun 27, 01:10 AM · #
You have proven that the state benefits us in many ways. Does that show that we have turned it into a useful tool, or that we have some deep obligations to it? In the former case, the goal is to wring the greatest benefit out of it for the least cost. Conscription would be justified in Friedersdorf’s barbarians at the gates scenario, but not to satisfy the whims of some social do-gooder group that happens to capture the state.
We can imagine that soon most of the world, not just in the liberal, democratic nation-state, will some day have life expectancies higher than any people until recent history. This will be through no merit of their own, but will that prove they owe anybody anything? China’s government points out that Tibet’s people live vastly better than they did under self-rule, in order to justify the state’s destroying that political community. Ancient Athens, meanwhile, had all sorts of civic virtue, but obviously not material wealth by today’s standards.
So your political community arguments are co-opting broad worldwide trends of institutional and technological advances from which they are easily conceptually separable. Political community is, by your account, natural, but our modern privileges are not. Saying we need loyalty to the political community to maintain our institutions only gets us back where we started- let’s try to see how little loyalty and obligation we can get away with and make it work.
You rely on the concepts of political community and social contract in distinguishing forced labor for the state from slavery, but you underdefine these concepts. What conception of the social contract are we talking about, and why? You liken the political community to a parent, but even there our obligation is limited- or should we go back to arranged marriages?
…
“Disputing what your money is used for is not the same as disputing the legitimacy of taxation.” People argue all the time about what is and is not the legitimate role of government, not just what is a “waste of money.” You can indeed hold the draft to be legitimate for one purpose and not others.
— Aaron · Jun 27, 06:28 AM · #
Gabriel: Excellent points all, ones that need to be pointed out more. Thank you.
Brandon Turner:
It’s interesting that you lump Afghanistan together with Vietnam and Iraq. Surely you can disagree with the management of the war, its duration, the broadening of its aims, etc. while still acknowledge that the original rationale for the war was correct, no? If your opposition to the draft is due to pacifism, well, that’s fair enough, but no actually existing nation state is pacifist. If you agree that non-pacifist liberal democratic nation states are good (as I do, as you may not), the question arises of how these entities will provide for their defense, and of what the rights and duties of individual citizens within the context of national defense are.
W/r/t the idea that social contract theory was designed to combat conscription, I would point out with Gabriel that this view is, at the very least, ahistorical. Traditionally (Rome, Greece, Switzerland, France, Founding-era America…) some form of military duty was the province of the free man. It was understood that “freedom isn’t free” and that for a republic of free men to function those free men had to be able to fight for it.
And re: Friedman’s argument against conscription, yes, I’m familiar with it. As I said, Friedman is one of my greatest personal heroes. I just happen to strongly disagree with him on this.
plebe: Ha!
K Chen: Fair points all. Thanks.
MC:
Excellent question. The schooling/conscription comparison is a very instructive one, but I don’t think it cuts in quite the way you think.
If national service is wrong because the state can’t command young people’s time, then why should primary and secondary education be mandatory, as they are in every single advanced country I’m aware of?
I think mandatory public schooling is wrong, but I don’t think mandatory education is. I think it’s fine and proper for the state to mandate that all children from the ages of X to Y should be involved in some form of education, and it’s also fine and proper for the state to check in on you if you homeschool/unschool your kids and even impose some requirements (with devils lurking in those details, obviously, as some “requirements” on homeschoolers in some jurisdictions are really designed to deter it—but in principle I have no objection).
One way to view it is that homeschoolers/unschoolers/private school entrepreneurs are “conscientious objectors” to the public school system. Just as I wouldn’t support a national service that didn’t make allowances for (true) conscientious/religious objectors, I support the right of people to opt-out of the public school system under certain guidelines.
By the way, the contradiction inherent in the question I asked above was not lost on that great slayer of conscription, Milton Friedman, as he also opposed mandatory education. Suffice it to say, that’s not the social contract that prevails today in America, or anywhere else for that matter.
marcia: Thank you. I think that argument has a lot of merit. I think governments would be much more careful about foreign encroachments with citizen militaries.
Aaron: “Saying we need loyalty to the political community to maintain our institutions only gets us back where we started- let’s try to see how little loyalty and obligation we can get away with and make it work.” I guess this is what separates us. I don’t approach institutions that I affiliate with with a mentality of “let’s try to see how little loyalty and obligation I can get away with and make it work.” And I don’t think other people should, either.
(“Let’s try to see how little faithfulness and obligation I can get away with and make this marriage work.”)
— PEG · Jun 27, 09:46 AM · #
Me: “Saying we need loyalty to the political community to maintain our institutions only gets us back where we started- let’s try to see how little loyalty and obligation we can get away with and make it work.”
You: “I don’t approach institutions that I affiliate with with a mentality of ‘let’s try to see how little loyalty and obligation I can get away with and make it work.’ And I don’t think other people should, either.”
Remember, the above was a response to the portions of your argument that argued that loyalty is good on the grounds that it is necessary to uphold institutions that bring material benefits. My response naturally employed the same cost/benefit standard.
Our disagreement isn’t about whether we should treat all “institutions we affiliate with” with a certain attitude. It’s about what kind of institution the state is, whether it is a tool we create for our benefit or…something else (I don’t want to put words in your mouth.)
If you think a high level of obligation to the state is good intrinsically, then it may be natural that you find the draft legitimate (and somewhat surprising that you think “paternalism” and “social engineering” are valid arguments against the draft.) However, I don’t quite know how “a certain attitude on the individual’s part is intrinsically good” to “the state ought to force the individual to act according to that attitude.” Is this a Rousseauian forcing us to be free thing? I prefer to claim my soul for myself, and let the state take a bit of my money.
— Aaron · Jun 28, 05:11 AM · #
Aaron:
My point was that institutions like the liberal democratic nation state (which I view as a very good and precious institution) cannot long endure if we only view our affiliation with it through a narrow, self-interested, cost-benefit way.
Allow me to quote from Jim Manzi’s book (p. 219), where he puts it most eloquently:
I believe that the liberal democratic nation state brings superior material benefits and is a morally worthy enterprise, but also that if you only care about the material benefits, then you should still not view your affiliation with it through a narrow cost-benefit way, for the reasons Jim sets out. To be a successful enterprise over the long term, the liberal democratic nation state requires, well, patriotism, from its members, and not a mentality of “let’s try to see how little loyalty and obligation we can get away with and make it work.” And this is true whether or not the state is, as you put it, “a tool we create for our benefit” (which is fair enough—nations and states are different things).
Thankfully for all of us, more Americans take my view than take your view, and I hope it continues to be that way for a very long time.
— PEG · Jun 28, 08:01 AM · #
PS: Oh, and on why I view “social engineering” and “paternalism” as arguments against national service—well, again, this is pretty much why I’m a conservative and neither a liberal or a libertarian. As a conservative I think we should be highly skeptical of social engineering and paternalism, unlike liberals, but I also don’t think that social engineering and paternalism are always and everywhere bad, unlike libertarians.
— PEG · Jun 28, 08:23 AM · #
Your framing of the argument allows you to argue on a cost-benefit standard, while not allowing me to. It also yields a paradox: I ought to take on obligations to the state that go beyond cost-benefit reasoning; and the reason I am doing so is that it is beneficial on cost-benefit grounds, which means I am not taking on obligations that go beyond cost-benefit reasoning…
Similarly, if you hold that the attitude toward the state which you desire may require biochemical illusion, then you aren’t operating under said illusion. (Perhaps it’s good for us to think the state has the right to force us into service, but it doesn’t really? I thought this discussion was about what the state can legitimately do.) And how dare you be highly skeptical of social engineering and paternalism- skepticism may reveal the illusion, and it is wrong to even ask how much obligation to the state is necessary.
You don’t want to constrain yourself to any particular view of the social contract and our relationship to the state, but until you do you will be begging the whole question of what our obligation consists of. Is it merely to be honest and avoid stealing even when it is in our interest to, to vote and serve on juries and that sort of thing? Or are we to use the state to create some transcendent project that will give purpose or meaning to our lives?
It seems possible under your conception for a political community to make liberty, in the sense of individual liberty, its transcendent ideal- so why shouldn’t we just do that if we need a transcendent ideal? Your former people, the French, with their Rousseauian notions, seem to be forever fighting about which transcendent ideal should rule them, and are bad at creating institutions. In America, we’re good at creating institutions, and our founding triad involves “pursuit of happiness,” and does not involve “fraternity.”
— Aaron · Jun 28, 03:40 PM · #
“One way to view it is that homeschoolers/unschoolers/private school entrepreneurs are “conscientious objectors” to the public school system. Just as I wouldn’t support a national service that didn’t make allowances for (true) conscientious/religious objectors, I support the right of people to opt-out of the public school system under certain guidelines.”
My point was less philosophical than practical. Public schools are a boondoggle. You don’t want your kid in there. Why would a huge centralized national service organization be any different? Why give the state more years of everyone’s life when it can’t do any good with the years we already give to it? Isn’t the great thing about homeschool that families can make the best decisions for themselves, rather than obeying some bureaucratic diktat? Your idea just seems like more government crowding out of civil society.
— MC · Jun 29, 07:23 AM · #
MC:
All very fair! As I said, I view practical arguments against national service as much more salient than philosophical ones.
Aaron:
I think you’re just twisting your brain into knots at this point. You say I’m begging the question and not allowing you to do cost-benefit analysis. Or maybe I am using a different cost-benefit formula than you are.
This is a fair point, except that one of America’s founding institutions was “the militia” which was the collective of able-bodied men, presumed to be armed, trained and ready to mobilize for war against enemies of liberty.
— PEG · Jul 5, 10:05 AM · #