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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