> Behalf Of William T Goodall
> on 30/5/01 9:10 PM, Gautam Mukunda at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >> Behalf Of William T Goodall
> >> on 30/5/01 2:21 AM, Gautam Mukunda at
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >>>> Behalf Of William T Goodall
> >>>> William T Goodall
> >>> Conscription, of course, is not slavery.
> >>
> >> Yes it is.
> >
> > And saying so makes it true, of course. Here's the thing about
> > slavery - you don't get paid. You have no rights. You
> can be bought
> > and sold.
>
> Slavery has existed in many forms in most societies through most of
history.
> Slaves don't necessarily not get paid - in some societies slaves
could own
> property and make money. Freedom through self-purchase was sometimes
> possible. (And people could sell themselves (or be sold) into fixed
terms of
> slavery to pay debts (termed indenture in the USA to distinguish it
from the
> harsher slavery of the blacks.)) Slaves frequently had rights
(lesser rights
> than freemen, but rights nonetheless.) As for being bought and
sold - see
> below.
Indentured servitude, just to correct a historical point, was
something very different from what you are describing. It was,
usually, a person selling themselves into the service of someone in
the United States for a fixed span of time, usually in return for
passage to the United States, and also usually with the condition that
they be given a significant amount of property at the end of their
indentured period. The critical difference, of course, is consent.
Even if it were debt indebiture - not a situation that had much
existence in the US, to my knowledge - the debts would have been
assumed with the implied threat of that status. Again, consensual.
Slavery is distinguished from all of these states by the fact that it
is _not_ consensual.
> Not valid points as shown above. And conscripts have lesser rights
since
> they are subject to military law.
Actually, they are valid, as I think I've shown. Conscripts have
_different_ rights, yes. They don't have _no_ rights, however. They
are not property. A very different situation indeed.
[snipping]
> These people can't be sold either but it still looks like
> slavery to me.
And they are not the conscripts of a democratically elected
government, either.
>
> > They aren't owned by anyone. They are citizens,
> > engaged in the ultimate duty of citizenship - protecting the
existence
> > of their society by risking their own lives in its defence.
>
> I think it is up to *me* to decide when and where I risk my life,
and anyone
> who acts otherwise needs some ungentle re-education.
>
> --
> William T Goodall
Libertarian, is, I sometimes believe, the philosophy that upholds free
riding as a virtue. The ideal libertarian citizen seems, to me, to be
someone who wants all of the benefits of a free society without being
willing to do anything to sustain them. No? Then propose an
alternative to conscription. Without conscription, every democratic
government in the West would have been destroyed by its enemies.
That's an historical fact that is essentially uncontrovertible. We
are not unencumbered selves, nor do we have the right to make all of
our own choices. That's not slavery, it's not evil, it's just
reality. When society needs to be defended, someone must do it or
society dies. Conscription is a vital ingredient to the defense of
society. A libertarianism that doesn't accept that is a
libertarianism that believes that wishing makes it so - that if you
_want_ the world to be some way then it must, in fact, be that way.
The world is not so accomodating. By accepting the benefits of living
in society you consent to the demands that society places upon you,
and one of those demands may, in fact, be that you risk your life to
protect that society. If you _don't_ wish to consent to that demand,
then free states provide you with an option. Renounce your
citizenship and leave for a place that does not make that demand upon
you. By staying, you consent, and are thus no slave.
********************Gautam "Ulysses" Mukunda**********************
* Harvard College Class of '01 *He either fears his fate too much*
* www.fas.harvard.edu/~mukunda * Or his deserts are small, *
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] *Who dares not put it to the touch*
* "Freedom is not Free" * To win or lose it all. *
******************************************************************
