by Kaz Vorpal

Created on: December 02, 2010   Last Updated: December 03, 2010

What are you, if:

* You are forced to labor for someone against your will

* You are beaten or imprisoned if you refuse

* You are kept on another's property, in a place they require you to sleep, fed what they give you.

* If you try to escape, another shackles and imprisonment are waiting for you.

* Your life is literally owned by others, who can command you to throw it away at their whim.

* You have done nothing to "earn" this imprisonment, forced labor, and potential death...no debt, no contract signed, no conviction of a crime.

Are you a slave...or are you a soldier drafted into the military?

The answer is that you are definitely a slave...whether you are an army conscript, or are working on a cotton plantation.

Conscription is slavery, just a specific kind that oppressive, corrupt governments sometimes condone.

And, of course, slavery is never acceptable.

It is bad enough, that our military is comprised of indentured servants, who voluntarily sign away their rights, submitting themselves to the above conditions...the last thing we need is to force it upon others.

The End Does Not Justify the Means

Of course some people will claim that we NEED this particular kind of slavery, to protect the country from attack.

But that is just Appeal to Cowardice. As Ben Franklin said, "If you are willing to surrender essential liberty for a promise of safety, you deserve neither." And slavery violates the most essential liberty.

The Founders were against conscription, of course. The War of 1812 was fought, in part, over it.

What's more, we don't actually need conscription to defend the country. If it is ever actually attacked, Americans will rush to volunteer, as they always have. Any war that cannot summon enough support does not deserve that support...almost always some voluntary, foreign war like Vietnam.

The real question is whether we should go back to the situation the Founders intended in the first place. We did not have a standing army for the majority of American history, getting it only in 1920, AFTER World War One. Before then, needless foreign wars like Korea and Iraq were nearly unheard-of, and to the extent American war existed, it was tiny.

The advocacy of a draft is a form of cowardice...even if the advocate is former military, himself. He wishes to enslave others, one of the ultimate evils, in order to achieve some goal he fears cannot be obtained honestly and freely. Such tyranny must be opposed at all cost.

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