I find the idea of conscription archaic, and a violation of everything moral.

I say this, if the government wants war, then they can fight in it, and they should. I will not be compelled, coerced, or threatened into conscription, indentured service, and or any other thing that can lead to my untimely demise or the lack of my freedom to live free.

To even suggest that any citizen should be forced into service, is morally abject. There is a special place in hell just for you, provided you believe in that sort of thing.

My response to this whole debate, as simple as it is, why are we even arguing about this when people will die? How liberal is it, that people must die? Hardly liberal at all.

I become fairly passionate about the subject of conscription, but this is an excellent video.

One way to look at it though is that if there were a draft, you can bet your ass we would end our wars a lot quickly. We've lost a lot of people in our recent wars, but if more families were forced to face the burden of sending a loved one off to possibly die, I can almost guarantee you more people would be re-thinking their views on sending troops over there.

I firmly believe there are enough people out there who view the military as indentured servants and that since we still have an all-volunteer army, that means we can afford to get them to do our dirty work, no matter how poorly thought out it is. If more people were forced to send their sons and daughters over there instead of just the ones who chose to serve, I think it would change things for the better.

but then again..a lot more people are going to have to die for that change to occur though.

Go far enough back and we all have the same ancestors. After that, there were a bunch of people and some of them preyed on others. At the same time, there were any number of disasters and windfalls, any amount of luck, good and bad, death, disease, theft, charity, feuds and reconciliations, new ideas and paradigms; all of which affected the society in which we find ourselves and the advantages our parents could pass onto us, what our grandparents could pass on to our parents, our great-grandparents to our grandparents and on. Historical inequality exists, racially driven and, crucially, otherwise, but all of it completely beyond our control so it may as well have been random. Do we consider every bounce of the die in its course, or do we just say it came up six?

Say a millionaire discovered he would have been twice as rich if only his maid's ancestors hadn't ripped his family off 500 years ago, does the maid write him a cheque? History may make for amusing speculation, but it's not a serious study and can never be applied to anything meaningful. For example, I like the idea that black and white were getting along fine until the 1600s when some scheming rich folk invented racism.

>> ^peggedbea:

I may be misunderstanding your point. So, sure, any anthropology class will teach you that race doesn't really exist and is only a cultural construct, like gender (not sex, gender).
But to say that inequality based on who your ancestors were doesn't exist and that how you may be subconsciously perceived by societal institutions is just a "roll of the dice" is a bit of a stretch.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say with that last line. But American society was indeed set up to intentionally draw lines based on "race" and to both create and exploit racial tensions. And it worked fantastically well. Poor whites and white indentured servants were intentionally pitted against black slaves to be a buffer against revolts. The same concept is still being used to day with extravagant success, pit the lower classes against each other on the basis of some arbitrary tribe identification and they won't look too closely at how actively you're fucking them all over.

I may be misunderstanding your point. So, sure, any anthropology class will teach you that race doesn't really exist and is only a cultural construct, like gender (not sex, gender).

But to say that inequality based on who your ancestors were doesn't exist and that how you may be subconsciously perceived by societal institutions is just a "roll of the dice" is a bit of a stretch.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say with that last line. But American society was indeed set up to intentionally draw lines based on "race" and to both create and exploit racial tensions. And it worked fantastically well. Poor whites and white indentured servants were intentionally pitted against black slaves to be a buffer against revolts. The same concept is still being used to day with extravagant success, pit the lower classes against each other on the basis of some arbitrary tribe identification and they won't look too closely at how actively you're fucking them all over.

>> ^gorillaman:

There's no such thing as white privilege; there's no such thing as a white race or a black race. It seems harsh to say this guy spent an hour talking about literally nothing at all, but there it is. He's living in a fantasy world where people are linked in a way that simply doesn't exist in any objective sense.
The world is a collection of individuals, and some of us were born into disadvantageous circumstances and some of us were born into advantageous circumstances. Yes, in the past some more individuals behaved like dicks to some other individuals, for a variety of reasons, and some of us have benefited incidentally from that while others have not. But that's really all it boils down to, the whole history of humanity is just one big roll of the dice, and some of us rolled higher than others.
Now, if we want to talk about correcting those imbalances on an individual basis through whatever social means - progressive taxes, subsidies, culling racists, fine; that could be a conversation worth having, but if we're going to go on pretending we've all been naturally and necessarily divided into these arbitrary tribes based on vague genetic similarities, well, it's just noise.

i'm really starting to think that there is something pathological about a teabagger's world view. the other day, one of my dads told me the solution to poverty was to make kids born into families that need to accept any government assistance whatsoever "work off the debt" as adults... either by joining the military or as sanitation workers. in other words, indentured servitude.

oh and then (i now work with severely disabled adults and special needs kids) the same dad told me that i'm going to have find another line work because obama is going to have all the disabled children aborted/murdered. and he added that it's such a shame too because working with "special people" is my "god calling".

fucking creepy.

"Qu'ils mangent de la brioche!"

Look, if they're coerced into working at the sweatshop, then I'm against it in a big way. My family comes from the early US mill towns where they tricked people into debt, forced people to live in and buy supplies from the mill town, and then used the local sheriff to ensure no one escaped from there under threat of violence. I'm for free markets not indentured servitude, which is what the mill towns effectively were.

Date: April 27th, 2010

The Forgotten Man

By Robert Ringer

Why have the combined mudslinging voices of the media (so called), Congressional Democrats, and the thin-skinned boy wonder who occupies the Oval Office not been able to turn the tide against the tea partiers? If you look at the poll numbers, the answer is obvious: Most Americans are tea partiers.

However, most of them are not yet in enough pain to skip a day at the ball park and stand in a crowd of thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) and listen to tea-party speakers. That’s a shame, but it doesn’t change the fact that they identify with the tea-party movement.

So, what is the common bond with which they identify? Taxes? Healthcare? Financial regulation? I thought about this question as I was rereading Amity Shlaes’ landmark book, The Forgotten Man. In it, she quotes Yale philosopher William Graham Sumner, who, clear back in 1883, explained the crux of the moral problem with progressivism as follows:

”As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine … what A, B, and C shall do for X.”

Shlaes goes on to add: ”But what about C? There was nothing wrong with A and B helping X. What was wrong was the law, and the indenturing of C to the cause. C was the forgotten man, the man who paid, ‘the man who never is thought of.”’

In other words, C is the guy who isn’t bothering anyone, but is forced to supply the funds to help the X’s of the world, those whom power holders unilaterally decide have been treated unfairly and must be compensated.

FDR, however, did a switcheroo on Sumner’s point by removing the moniker of ”the forgotten man” from C and giving it to X – ”the poor man, the old man, labor, or any other recipient of government help.” Very clever … very Obamanistic. As I recall, FDR originally used the phrase the forgotten man to refer to the victims of the dust bowl in the 1930s. Zap! Just like that, Sumner’s forgotten man was transformed into the opposite of what he was meant to be.

Today, I believe it is the tea-party people who represent Sumner’s Forgotten Man. They are taxed and told what they must do and what they must give up in the way of freedom and personal wealth every time a new law is passed. I believe it is this reality that bonds the tea-party people together.

Put another way, it is not healthcare or any other single issue the tea-party people are most angry about. It is all of the issues combined that have to do with impinging on their individual liberty. Above all, they are outraged by the fact that immoral politicians and bureaucrats not only violate their God-given right to live their lives as they please, they dismiss them as ”extremists.” Collectively, the tea-party people are today’s Forgotten Man.

In his essay (http://mises.org/books/forgottenman.pdf), Sumner went on to say:

”All history is only one long story to this effect: men have struggled for power over their fellow-men in order that they might win the joys of earth at the expense of others and might shift the burdens of life from their own shoulders upon those of others. It is true that, until this time, the proletariat, the mass of mankind, have rarely had the power and they have not made such a record as kings and nobles and priests have made of the abuses they would perpetrate against their fellow-men when they could and dared.

”But what folly it is to think that vice and passion are limited by classes, that liberty consists only in taking power away from nobles and priests and giving it to artisans and peasants and that these latter will never abuse it! They will abuse it just as all others have done unless they are put under checks and guarantees, and there can be no civil liberty anywhere unless rights are guaranteed against all abuses, as well from proletarians as from generals, aristocrats, and ecclesiastics.”

Sumner was a man of great insight. He saw the absurdity of assuming that the poor man is morally superior to the rich man. This is where I believe that sincere revolutionaries go wrong. While their initial intentions (to help ”the poor”) may, at least in their own minds, be well-meant, they begin with a false premise (that the misfortunes of those at the bottom of the economic ladder are a result of the evil actions of those who are more successful) and, from there, leap from one false conclusion to another.

Which is why politicians who pose as conservatives to get elected so often take the Mush McCain-Lindsey Graham-Charlie Crist route and continually rush to the aid of their progressive Democratic pals. I believe that these philosophically lost souls do the bidding of the intimidating left because they have never given any serious thought to the possibility that the very premise of progressivism is morally wrong.

As a result, they have no feeling for the (perceived) rich man. In plotting their do-gooder schemes, he is easy to forget. They see nothing whatsoever wrong with society’s sacrificing his liberty for the ”public good.” Bring out the guillotine! As Montaigne said, ”Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.”

What gave birth to the tea parties is that the Forgotten Man syndrome is like a metastasizing disease. As politicians long ago realized, there aren’t enough rich people to support all of the X’s. As the number of X’s (i.e., those who live off the surpluses of others) increases, a lot of A’s and B’s must, by necessity, be reclassified as C’s. And that is when they become candidates for joining the tea-party movement.

Put simply: When A’s and B’s are transformed into C’s, they mysteriously lose their enthusiasm for new laws to help out X. Put even more simply, they suddenly realize that they are now the Forgotten Man. And that realization is what automatically qualifies them as tea-party people. No recruitment necessary, thank you.

Haggle, barter, trade for drugs or sex, indentured servery, what would you pay for "health care" if the already available options were not available?

Stay healthy, stay fit, eat right....the cost for emergency and trauma care could be supplemented greatly without a nation of unhealthy blobs, slobs, clods, and frauds....doctors, pharmy companies, included.

The problem is not reasonable cost and availability to all, the problem is unhealthy minions by design and discipline....The fat, unhealthy, and otherwise anemic thinkers have sold their souls to the lowest common denominator as well. Convenience.

>> ^bmacs27:
Do you trust rich individuals?


I trust individuals better than collections of people, whether they be rich or poor. I think government has allowed corporations to become a collection of rich people, and I fear them more than a single rich person.

My family comes from southern mill towns where rich landowners would place debts on less intelligent common folk and basically they became indentured servants. The mill town owner would work it out so the debt would compound faster than they'd be able to feasibly make the payments. The owners would also force them to shop at his general store (hugely marked up prices) and not leave the grounds. When someone tried to leave town, the owners typically paid off the sheriff who would round them up (after a good beating to discourage that kind of behavior).

They were typically rich landowners (individuals). But, they were colluding with the hired gun of the land: the government. Sheriffs tend to be elected, too.

>> ^blankfist:
"he lives in a paranoid little bubble the requires him to be armed with deadly weapons to feel safe"

If owning a weapon means you're paranoid, then what do you think having a police force says about everyone?

It's entirely different levels from having a police force who you can call on to uphold the laws of the land when need be vs. always carrying a loaded, deadly weapon with you.

"taxes go towards all the necessary services and infrastructure you wish for in a civilized society"
Like war, maintaining hegemony, prison industrial complex, etc.? Compulsory taxation is indentured servitude. It doesn't matter if you agree with how the stolen money is to be spent. Some probably think we should steal more from people to pay for more wars.

I did say that you can disagree with how it's spent, that's hardly the point. The idea is that you lobby and protest and vote in people that spend the money in a way that you think will better the country, not just remove all money going to the government.


And, infrastructure is a good point. But it's paid for voluntarily by all of us who buy gasoline. The more you drive, the more you fill up your tank, and therefore the more you pay for infrastructure. Voluntary taxation isn't theft and it's very moral.
Except that the fuel tax starts going away as you increase bio cars, especially if they are ones that are electric and are charged from your house that's powered by solar panels. Sure, they are a stupendously tiny minority at the moment, and for the time being they deserve to not have to pay for the roads for all the good they're doing, but once more and more cars stop needing petrol, you start losing that money stream and it needs to come from somewhere.

And what about public transport? You can say that the cost to run it should be entirely in the price of the tickets, but to run a GOOD public transport system is almost impossible to do at a profit or breaking even, so you need to provide more money into, which everyone should give to as it's a benefit to all. (less pollution, less congestion etc.) It's a case where the people who don't use the service ALSO benefit from those that do, so they should foot up some of the bill also.

Also, the whole idea of voluntary taxation falls over when you get to social security. As the very time you NEED it is when you're not in a position TO pay for it. Hence everyone should pay a little to ensure that if they DO need it, it's there. Just having any service be 'user pays' just doesn't work


"Gee, where were THESE people when the billions of dollars were/are being spent on Iraq and Afghanistan."
I agree. There seemed to be less outrage over going to war and the trillions in bailouts.

Agreed

"he lives in a paranoid little bubble the requires him to be armed with deadly weapons to feel safe"

If owning a weapon means you're paranoid, then what do you think having a police force says about everyone?


"taxes go towards all the necessary services and infrastructure you wish for in a civilized society"

Like war, maintaining hegemony, prison industrial complex, etc.? Compulsory taxation is indentured servitude. It doesn't matter if you agree with how the stolen money is to be spent. Some probably think we should steal more from people to pay for more wars.

And, infrastructure is a good point. But it's paid for voluntarily by all of us who buy gasoline. The more you drive, the more you fill up your tank, and therefore the more you pay for infrastructure. Voluntary taxation isn't theft and it's very moral.


"Gee, where were THESE people when the billions of dollars were/are being spent on Iraq and Afghanistan."

I agree. There seemed to be less outrage over going to war and the trillions in bailouts.

"Who's going to keep the children?"
The state.
"Who's going to pay for that?"
The parents.
"How are the parents going to pay the state for keeping their kids when they can't afford to do it with them living at home?"
Garnishment of wages, confiscation of assets and a lifelong debt with interest exceeding inflation. Failing that, indentured servitude. You can earn a lot more money in an entire working life than you can just during your kids' childhood.

"Being poor does not equal being bad you fucking idiot."
Being poor and choosing to have children anyway makes you a bad person. Bad people are bad parents.

Actually, it would be pretty easy to support a child on minimum wage with a combination of modest living and home schooling. It wouldn't be a fun life, but that's their choice. Unfortunately, so many people are incapable of matching their lifestyle to their means, which is where the state needs to step in to prevent them from failing their children or burdening honest taxpayers.

Usury and indentured servitude are quite similar.

18th century indentured servitude (abolished): You sign a contract that makes you a slave for X years in exchange for safe passage to America.

21st century usury: You sign a contract that puts you in such massive debt that you are a defacto slave because nearly everything you earn will go to the creditor (or else they can reposess your home and let you starve to death on the street)

Fortunately most states have limits on wage garnishment and debtors can escape by declaring bankruptcy (although Bush has tried to restrict bankruptcy as much as Congress will let him). If they ever tried to completely eliminate the notion of bankruptcy, that could probably be overturned on 13th amendment grounds.

*promote. I have a lot of Liberal friends (from Dems to Anarchists), and the general consensus for their beef (especially with Anarchists!) with the "Securing of borders" tends to come from their detest of Capitalism. I always thought it had more to do with racism, because no one seemed to give two shits if Canadians were over here, only Mexicans. But, the more I speak with friends it seems they just want to fight the Capitalist "man".

My friends dislike the idea of private property. The stauncher of the Liberals think every person deserves the right to ALL property without it being divided. In other words, your property line is the same to them as the borders: they shouldn't exist. You're probably asking, "But, genius of geniuses blankfist, how does this have anything to do with Capitalism?" It has everything to do with the few and rich being able to purchase more land (more money = more land) than those with less money, therefore the Capitalist system affords them more entitlement and power. There's also the argument of Capitalists using debt to create a form of indentured servitude with workers. It all comes back to social and worker's rights versus the rights of the individual and entrepreneur. That's why you hear so many arguments being made that this country was "built on the backs of cheap Mexican labor." Labor being the operative word here, as if to denote that Capitalists are abusing them somehow. I don't mean to pick on you, Dag.

I know this is heavily generalized here, but to say "they're illegal and need to be sent back" pisses off people who do not think in terms of individual right to property. This is just my opinion on the matter, so I could be completely off base here.

The new indentured servitude.