Mandatory Conscription
Allow Me to Be Responsible
-------------------------------------
Yesterday I snapped. I hadn't been so livid in a long time, and it's
still affecting me today although I feel I'm handling it better than I
have in the past. I'm deconstructing my anger now in the hopes of
producing a constructive byproduct. When it happened I was not wise. I
wasn't even intelligent because I didn't think about what I was doing,
I just reacted, without giving myself time to reflect or even consider
consequence. I said some very hateful things to someone I've known for
a little while now. Although I believe firmly that hurtful acts can be
justified by positive ideals (I use John Brown and the Harpers Ferry
raid as one example), such acts need to be thoughtful and separated
from provocation. Provocation doesn't justify a hateful response. I
realized when this happened that I had become not merely hurtful, but
hateful. I had become a person I don't like. I decided to change.
There is a book on my shelf titled "It's Never About What It's About".
I've come to realize that this is valuable insight. In the book, the
author explains how he and his significant other have come to use the
phrase frequently to remind themselves that anger about something
happening now is usually if not always fuelled by if not entirely an
effect of anger about something that's happened to you in the past.
This is certainly the case with me. An event reminds me of the feeling
of helplessness or impotence or hurt usually in childhood. I make this
statement not as an excuse, but in reflection, because it describes
how as people we tend to become trapped in our own self-sabotaging
patterns. Some of us sabotage our jobs, others sabotage our romantic
relationships, but it happens ultimately to all of us. If I want to
change myself, if I want to be a better person, the only way I can
accomplish that goal is to find the source of this pattern so that I
can understand it. Once I understand the pattern, once I see it, then
I can change it.
I've realized that some of the things I've said to people on mailing
lists recently have been out of character for me. Thinking back I can
attribute this in part to several things unrelated to yesterday's
anger, which collectively produce an undesirable result. These things
are an internalization of the idea that all things serve god ("it's
all good"), an acceptance of anger as a mechanism for defending the
ideals I hold in highest regard, and lulling myself into the same
state that I've read about and noticed in others of behaving
differently in an electronic medium than I would in person. I'm
certain the latest of these has been talked about quite a bit,
particularly on the various mailing lists where such things occur.
Maybe someone else has already found a good strategy for avoiding this
trap. The first two lead to the latter being worse than it would
otherwise. You might think that, having spent a lot of time thinking
about the first two, they would seem to be good things. I still
believe they are. Even a good thing can be used unwisely. In this case
I'd accepted the idea that anger serves god (irrespective of its use)
and that I can use it to serve myself (as a means of maintaining what
I believe to be important ideals). I then applied that in conversation
and by lulling myself into an insular thought process in electronic
conversations I allowed it to completely erode the tact I've learned
as an adult (because there was no example of tact in the home in which
I was raised).
These are however merely functional contributors. While they may be
good things to remember in the future, they do not help me to see or
understand the source of my anger and as a result can not help me
change my patterns. They can not help me to become a better person. To
do that I need not merely history but depth. To get depth I need to
examine the details of the event.
The events of yesterday centered around a conversation of the merits
of mandatory military conscription for all citizens of the United
States at age 18 (we could call it "adulthood", the definition of
which may change) followed by two years of military service. This
eventually lead to abusive language (on my part), followed by personal
threats of physical violence, attempts to ruin my career and the
dragging-in of my significant other. I didn't engage in any of the
latter because I don't feel these are appropriate responses to verbal
abuse and personally have no interest in hurting others in these ways,
regardless of how I may feel about them personally. It is having been
verbally abusive that I realized in retrospect I do not like about
myself. I also mentally associated this abusiveness in myself with a
couple of other recent events in which I had been similarly abusive,
which is why I didn't simply dismiss it as having a bad day.
::The Debate::
I need to deconstruct my feelings on the subject of mandatory military
service (specifically in the context of its being a rite of passage)
in order to ensure that I separate these thoughts and feelings from
thoughts and feelings about my anger and the source of my anger
because I don't believe they are specifically linked.
The framers of the United States Constitution had a lot of good ideas,
one of the most important among them being liberty -- the new concept
of a secular nation in which all people are peers, irrespective of
their beliefs or the nature of their birth. These are apparent in some
of the most famous (and precedent) passages from the Constitution and
Declaration of Independance. The Declaration of Independance says: "We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness." The Constitution says: "We the People of the United
States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice,
insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote
the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves
and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
United States of America." Note the use of the word "Liberty" in both
of these passages and the context in which it's used. What they are
saying is that it is vitally important that we as people are peers and
free to make our own decisions about the shape of our lives. Freedom
of choice is paramount.
Subsequent passages of the Constitution make mention of the nation's
militia. Article I Section 8 describes the power of Congress to
collect taxes for the purpose of funding the militia, using the
phrase, "To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the Laws
of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;" (followed
by some elaboration of the means by which the funding should be
distributed). Article II Section 2 describes the President of the
United States as the "Commander in Chief" of the armed forces (Army,
Navy and militia - with the Air Force necessarily being a later
addition). The fact that the Army is described separately from the
militia in this latter passage leads me to believe (because the
document doesn't explicitly declare) that the framers held a commonly
understood distinction between a standing army (I assume those
enlisted by choice) and a militia (unenlisted individuals, forced to
fight to defend their country and their rights). Personally I would
assume that even when calling the militia into service, a man has the
right to choose to give up his home and move away from the fight in
such case as his beliefs dictate such action, although this assumption
isn't particularly germane to the issue in question. Even in the
amendments to the constitution there is very little information about
the country's militia. The word militia doesn't appear in them,
leaving only the word "military" used in Article XIV Section 3 when
declaring that traitors may not hold either military or political
office (without consent of 2/3rds of both houses of Congress).
It is only in the fourth article of the Bill of Rights in which the
right to bear arms is described as a result of the expressed desire of
several states at the time of their ratification of the constitution
to have clarification of its tenets in order to prevent
"misconstruction or abuse of its powers". This article continues to be
a source of contention between the National Rifle Association (NRA)
who believe it was intended to allow unrestricted access to all forms
of firearms and the Supreme Court who have continued to uphold a
ruling that the article only applies to a standing militia which no
State in the Union has maintained for many years (more evidence that
the militia is distinct from the Army).
Although it could be argued that the framers of the Constitution
intended for every person in the country to be an active part of our
military services, I think the argument is tenuous. Supporting this
argument would require some unusual interpretation (or ignorance) of
what few passages exist pertaining to the militia in the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights. Further it would require strong support of the
collected writings of the framers outside of these documents.
Meanwhile the ideas considered to be in highest regard such as
"Liberty" appear prominently in all these documents in spite of being
described as "self-evident", leaving no question as to their being
considered essential. Thus in order to support the argument that the
Constitution demands military service from all citizens, it must also
be explained why this concept was not considered important enough to
be included in the document, particularly when the framers did include
conceivably less vital aspects of organization such as how to
distribute taxes intended to fund the military.
I won't argue that many people, including the framers of the
Constitution considered military service a responsibility of the
citizens of a free society, or that this belief was widely held until
the Viet Nam conflict. I find it also unsurprising that this belief
became collectively less popular during and after the Viet Nam
conflict because military actions in Viet Nam were the first
"unpopular war" in the nation's history. By the end of the conflict
and barring the civil war, Viet Nam represented the first military
actions entered into by the United States which drew ideological
dissent from a large body of the country's population. For the first
time in our history, soldiers returning from the war many of whom had
been drafted came home to be ridiculed and spit on as though they had
been personally responsible for the decision to bomb Cambodia. After
Viet Nam many draftees came home broken and traumatized by events
which they felt were out of their control as a result of the draft and
the nation spat on them for decisions which weren't theirs to make.
Life is not fair. If life were fair, people would be punished only for
their own actions, contrary to the experience of many Viet Nam
veterans. It is also true that the framers of the Constitution spent
much of their lives in an attempt to bring what little of life we can
control into a state of justice through the careful application of
laws to defend what they perceived to be "unalienable rights"
including chiefly "life, liberty and the persuit of happiness".
Knowing that military service at time of conflict carries with it the
significant chance to lose one of these rights (life) to defend
another (liberty), it is reasonable to presume that the framers would
prefer (if possible) that Viet Nam veterans had either been treated
with respect, or not have served, particularly given the divided state
of the nation after the conflict and the perceived tenuousness of the
arguments for military action (arguments for or against slavery were
not tenuous in spite of disagreement). Any government, whether it is
the government of the framers or the US government of today or any
other government can not change the beliefs of its citizens (and
should not even if it could). This eliminates giving back the respect
of a nation to viet Nam veterans. There is however something a
government can do and that's to give back to our citizens the liberty
of their right to choose military service and with it their right to
be responsible (more on this later).
The fact that no State in the Union has maintained an active militia
for many years now is also not surprising to me. The framers of the
constitution lived in a very different world than the world of today
and their laws often declared methods of dealing with very different
problems as a result. In a nuclear age the need for a militia is
significantly diminished. The modern world is a world in which
military objectives are increasingly achieved through intelligence and
technology, not sheer numbers. As such the concept of a militia no
longer has the tactical vitality it once had.
Now let me assume for a minute that I had come to a very different
conclusion about the nature of military service according to the
framers of the Constitution. I'll put asside everything I've
previously postulated on the subject and make the assumption instead
that the framers of the Constitution did in fact intend for every
person to enter military service upon reaching adulthood (currently
defined as age 18) and that they wrote very specific declarations of
this in the Constitution. In this scenario I would say the
Constitution is wrong. Why not? The framers had been wrong about lots
of other things, or at least that's been the nation's concensus in the
intervening years. You need go no further than the abolitionist
movement and civil war or women's sufferage for evidence of this. The
framers stated that "all men are created equal" but apparently, since
several of the framers owned slaves (including Jefferson), their
definition of the word "men" was considerably subjective. According to
the framers of the constitution only white males were created equal,
and all other people were created somewhat less equal.
Although to date we've done a good job of deflating both racism and
sexism in this country (in spite of their continued presence), there
is still a class of citizens in the United States who are not
considered equal, even according to the law. In this country even
today there are still no great movements to bring equality to these
citizens. You might think at first that I'm talking about illegal
immigrants, except that such subject has recently been in considerable
contention. I'm talking about children. I never said that I wanted to
bring equality to this class of citizens, I only said that they are
not considered equal.
Children are not considered equal to adults in this country because
they lack both physical and mental faculties which adults posess and
as a result need the support and protection of their parents and other
adults until they are old enough to make their own informed decisions
about life and to accept responsibility for those decisions. In fact
the social class of children is a relatively new concept in our
culture, so the inequality of children has actually been instated
after the fact as a result of our decisions regarding the fairness of
such things as child labor (in particular) and pedofilia.
Although the laws regarding children may not be constitutional
amendments, I would contend that the citizens of this country consider
them to be equally as necessary as any constitutional amendment. These
laws reinforce the social decision that children should not be held to
the same standard as adults because they are not informed enough or
capable enough to make the same decisions as adults. As such we've
also declared that they should not be held to the same standard of
responsibility as adults (except in very rare and extreme
circumstances such as murder and even that is still in contention).
Children are born to a set of parents and their life until they are
legally declared adults is almost entirely out of their control. They
have no control over their parents or where they live and almost
always have no control over their education.
Here is the crux of the problem with mandatory military service for
all citizens at the age of 18 (or adulthood); doing this removes the
unalienable right of an adult to make one of their first and possibly
most vitally important life decisions, and to take responsibility for
that choice. By making this vital decision for them, forcing military
service on this new adult in effect reduces the adult to the status of
a child, whom we've already declared is unfit to make their own
decisions. So which is it? Is an 18 year old an adult with the right
and responsibility to vote and make their own decision about military
service, or are they an unresponsible child who should vote and serve
our military? I personally do not want children in the military.
For the same reason that mandatory military service is a contradiction
to the equality and liberty of free citizens it also makes cheap the
courage and honor of many noble individuals, many of whom have given
their lives or worse to defend these rights and beliefs, reaching all
the way back to the framers of the Constitution. A commentator named
Stanley Kurtz in response to changes in Canada's marriage laws has
said this, "The way to abolish marriage, without seeming to abolish
it, is to redefine the institution out of existence. If everything can
be marriage, pretty soon nothing will be marriage." The same principal
in action when attributed to the context of military service explains
how mandating service for all new adults abolishes the nobility and
responsibility of all enlisted soldiers. If all people are given no
choice but to be responsible, then no person is responsible. That lack
of responsibility in addition to leading people to resent military
service (and as a result perform poorly and be a detriment rather than
an aid to the military), also ensures that children will feel no
significant demand to understand the purpose of military service. Why
bother to study the history and the philosophy of freedom? Why make a
conscious choice to be responsible for defending the liberty of a
nation, when the choice is taken from you anyway? The noble soldier
says "I believe in liberty and I choose to defend it with my life".
The conscripted citizen says "So what? You didn't have any choice,
just like the rest of us". The conscripted citizen is correct -- so
what?
In practical terms it is also critically important that a person who
chooses to enlist makes that choice with the belief that they are
joining a military service which they trust. If a person is
conscripted into a service they distrust, what good are they? I would
contend that asside from this being an immoral decision to make for
that person (choosing for them to whom they should entrust their life
- civilian police not withstanding), that a person who is conscripted
into a service they do not trust is a liability to that service.
::the Reaction::
Now that I feel I've adequately expressed my thoughts on the subject
of military service, I can put it asside to address the purpose of my
introspection - the emotional source of my reaction. To do this I need
to again examine specifics, this time individual words. Within the
context of the conversation I had expressed my belief that mandatory
military service at age 18 (or adulthood) is equivalent to forcing
children into the armed forces, although the description was
significantly less thorough. The comment to which I reacted is
"Payback for the free ride they had for the previous 18+ years in my
eyes. There isn't a better place in the world they could have been
born."
I reject the second sentence out of hand, and in honesty it had
nothing to do with my reaction. I debunk it entirely with one word:
Canada. Of course the one word doesn't necessarily need to be Canada,
it could be Australia or a few others. The point being made is that
there is more than one country in this world where the quality of life
for a child (or anyone else) is slightly better than the abysmal,
torturous horror of an existance to which the author seems to believe
the rest of the world is subjected.
This leaves "payback for the free ride they had for the previous 18+
years", with the phrase "in my eyes" being key. My eyes allow me to
see things from my perspective, not the perspective of god.
Why it is that this evokes such a torrent of anger in me is
particularly challenging for me to examine and express because it
requires me to think back to my childhood. This is a task I reserve
for special occasions because my comparatively "easy" childhood
resulted in my having suppressed most of my childhood memories. To
this day events which remind me of my childhood or which evoke a
feeling of being like a child are excruciatingly painful for me in
part because of the sense of impotence they evoke. Although I don't
know much about the details of my childhood I do know that my father
beat my mother while myself and my sister were helpless in that
situation. In turn my mother beat me for making the innocuous comments
that children make and we were both helpless in that situation as
well. My sister ultimately became more of a protector and a provider
for me than either of my parents (although she began severing that
relationship when we were teenagers). The fact that the person I was
most able to depend on in these situations was also helpless in all
likelyhood contributed significantly to this sense of impotence.
In spite of these events, or perhaps because of them, I can remember
having a very strong sense of justice even in early childhood. I
wasn't a boyscout. In fourth grade I threw tables and chairs across
the room at other children, at the risk of seriously injuring them
(metal chairs are dangerous to kids, even when thrown by other
children), in response to simple and meaningless name calling. As
overreactionary as my response was, it was my sense of having been
maligned, my sense of the need for retribution that prompted my
reaction. It's interesting to note that memories of fights at school
are among the things I do remember from my childhood. I suspect I
started a lot of fights in school because I wasn't so impotent or
powerless amongst my peers. While I stood no hope of winning a fight
against my mother who beat me about the head and neck with heaping
handfulls of random kitchen utensils that may or may not have been
sharp, a fight with another kid in school gave me some control. And
why shouldn't I fight them? This is exactly the behavior both of my
role models exhibited (a significant lack of other role models was
attributable to my father's extreme dissociativeness).
In the intervening years I've learned that there is no gain from
simply escalating a disagreement to physical violence for the sake of
trying to achieve retribution. Apparently not everyone has learned
this, and I'm told that government defense contractors get a good
laugh when one of their co-workers threatens someone with physical
violence in response to a verbal disagreement. It's good to know tax
dollars are being well spent. Moreover I've learned that appropriate
responses to injustice must be thoughtful. In some cases an
appropriate response is in kind. In other cases an appropriate
response is completely separate from the injustice (leaving an abusive
relationship for example). In some cases, when no response can produce
a positive result, then it is appropriate to provide no response.
Finally and perhaps most importantly because I exhibit the quality
(which many say separates humans from animals) of being able to
consider what my response might be to someone else's situation, I've
come to apply this outrage about injustices to all the people around
me, not just myself or my friends. In truth I began noticing and being
outraged by injustices to others even before high-school.
Although I've learned to change my response to injustice, it remains
an emotional issue for me. In a sense it defines me. Issues that evoke
the most anger from me usually stem from either some form of hipocrisy
(which is ultimately unavoidable, but which should be avoided whenever
possible), or some form of indiscriminate disrespect or contempt, such
as racism or sexism (which I consider to be equivalent). It's
indiscriminate disrespect which I feel to be ultimately the worst
forms of hipocrisy. A person who exhibits indiscriminate disrespect
believes they know others without bothering to hear them, yet demands
to be heard. They've broken the golden rule "do unto others as you
would have them do unto you" (stated in the wholy writ of nearly if
not every religion in the world). They condemn people they don't know
on the basis of a lack of information and as a result punish them for
things they haven't done. It's this punishment for imaginary crimes
that is I think at the crux of my disgust for this behavior. A person
who's been accused of a crime in our legal system must be given an
opportunity to defend their actions and is offered appeal even after
judgement is passed. These are ideas our nations founders cherished as
being the only way to preserve our liberties, but a person who applies
indiscriminate disrespect doesn't offer such defense, prefering to
pass judgement with no trial, and usually without hope of appeal.
At this point I return to the words "payback for the free ride they
had for the previous 18+ years". This is not merely indiscriminate
disrespect, but indiscriminate contempt. It implies that the speaker
knows what god knows about all people and is therefore qualified to
judge all of them in the way that only god can. Further it implies
that simply being born is somehow a debt that must be repaid, in spite
of the fact that this is none of the child's decision. It then seeks
retribution from the child whom we've decided as a culture (and I
think rightly so) is not responsible and therefore has done nothing
wrong. The debt that is owed is not from the child to their parents or
even to their nation, but from the parents to the child. It is the
parents' often selfish decision to have children which creates a debt
which the parents must then repay to the child who is both helpless
and unresponsible (a debt which often goes unpaid).
There are some who would say that a person who's had a difficult life,
who's been abused by their parents and who's overcome their challenges
and has served in the military is somehow more entitled to judge other
people. To this I say bullshit. A person who considers their own life
to have been particularly difficult is not more entitled to judge (or
even talk shit) about people indiscriminately. On the contrary they
should be held to a higher standard and expected to pass less
judgement on the relative difficulties of another person's life
because while they don't know the judged, they should know very well
how hurtful and how hateful it is to be judged in this way.
s. isaac dealey 434.293.6201
new epoch : isn't it time for a change?
add features without fixtures with
the onTap open source framework
http://www.fusiontap.com
http://coldfusion.sys-con.com/author/4806Dealey.htm
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