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: Re: Military conscription/slavery Message-ID: <308@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP> Date: Wed, 16-Jan-85 14:16:03 EST Article-I.D.: gargoyle.308 Posted: Wed Jan 16 14:16:03 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 17-Jan-85 12:55:27 EST Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science Lines: 37 Jeff Sonntag writes: > You are hereby challenged to provide a definition of slavery which > excludes conscription. Most dictionaries have something like "the condition of being a slave." Not good enough? Here is how the OED defines "slave": One who is the property of, and entirely subject to, another person, whether by capture, purchase, or birth; a servant completely divested of freedom and personal rights. Aristotle defines slavery as the ownership of one person by another as his personal possession. I doubt that even libertarians believe that a commanding officer owns his subordinates and can sell them at the local slave auction. Also, the authority of officers, and even of the Commander- in-Chief, is strictly limited by law and military code under a republican form of government. Your superior cannot order you to marry his daughter, shoot yourself, or buy shares of IBM with your salary. Draftees and other military personnel have well-defined rights in the US armed services, although they are not identical with the rights of civilians. The 1984 Libertarian Party platform declares that conscription is "involuntary servitude"; "servitude" as generally used is a synonym for "slavery." Libertarians believe that conscription is unjust. It is also rhetorically effective to denounce the draft as "slavery"; therefore, by Libertarian Logic, it IS slavery. By the same process of reasoning we can arrive at the conclusion that mandatory seat-belt laws constitute slavery. There was a story in the NYT a few days ago about a New York woman who claimed that the lives of her two sons, who had been in an accident, had been saved by NY's new seat-belt law. They had not used seat belts before, but buckled up this time "because it's the law," they said. In a letter to Gov. Cuomo their mother expressed gratitude, for some peculiar reason, for the seat-belt law. Too bad the lady wasn't a (consistent) libertarian: she would have screamed at the governor for taking away her family's freedom and the story might have made Page One, to the great satisfaction of libertarians no doubt. Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes