Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes From: carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Military conscription/slavery Message-ID: <303@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP> Date: Mon, 14-Jan-85 16:34:06 EST Article-I.D.: gargoyle.303 Posted: Mon Jan 14 16:34:06 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 15-Jan-85 02:21:21 EST Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science Lines: 67 Cliff Matthews writes: >Again, I have stated that I doubt this medium can be used to convince you >of the boons of libertarianism. Let's discuss a smaller issue in depth. >How about the issue of conscription. I guess you think it is wise for a >country to allow slavery. I don't. Shall we volley the issue a few times? Let me serve by quoting John Locke, in the _Second Treatise on Government_. Please note Locke's distinction, sure to discombooberate libertarians, between man's natural liberty and his liberty in society. _______________ 21. The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of Nature for his rule. The liberty of man in society is to be under no other legislative power but that established by consent in the commonwealth, nor under the dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact according to the trust put in it. Freedom, then, is not what Sir Robert Filmer tells us: "A liberty for every one to do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws"; but freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it. A liberty to follow my own will in all things where that rule prescribes not, not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man, as freedom of nature is to be under no other restraint but the law of Nature. 22. This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power is so necessary to, and closely joined with, a man's preservation, that he cannot part with it but by what forfeits his preservation and life together. For a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot by compact or his own consent enslave himself to any one, nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another to take away his life when he pleases. Nobody can give more power than he has himself, and he that cannot take away his own life cannot give another power over it. Indeed, having by his fault forfeited his own life by some act that deserves death, he to whom he has forfeited it may, when he has him in his power, delay to take it, and make use of him to his own service; and he does him no injury by it. For, whenever he finds the hardship of his slavery outweigh the value of his life, it is in his power, by resisting the will of his master, to draw on himself the death he desires. 23. This is the perfect condition of slavery, which is nothing else but the state of war continued between a lawful conqueror and a captive, for if once compact enter between them, and make an agreement for a limited power on the one side, and obedience on the other, the state of war and slavery ceases as long as the compact endures; for, as has been said, no man can by agreement pass over to another that which he hath not in himself--a power over his own life. ________________ I don't consider conscription to be slavery. Neither did Locke, although he justified slavery under some circumstances (he was an administrator of slave-holding colonies in America). Neither did Abraham Lincoln when he abolished slavery, established the nation's first military draft (militia service had been compulsory since colonial times), and made a speech about government of the people, by the people, and for the people, all in the same year. Neither does anyone else, as far as I know, except libertarians. The state of Israel has had conscription during its entire existence. I read the papers but I have not noticed any great outcry from Israelis against this form of "slavery", or any great agitation for an all-volunteer force. How do libertarians explain this rather striking fact? Perhaps there are not many Israelis who agree with libertarians that individual liberty, in the sense of freedom from coercion, is the highest good. It would be an interesting experiment from numerous points of view to establish a Nozickian minarchy or an anarchocapitalist non-state in Israel and see what happens next. How about it, Israel? Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes