Oh, I see now. People should be able to beg off during a time of war AND still expect a person who's worked harder to pay for their healthcare. Got it.
. --- Tried looking up "equality of the sexes" in a medical textbook, couldn't seem to find it. --- Yes you have me, we do fight for "love of country" or nationalism, which I'm sure many of your professors have told you is a bad word. But it isn't. We fight to ensure that there continues to be a country to love. And we fight to maintain our liberties too. --- That would be under "fighting for sovereignty", so that foreign persons (you qualify there) can't take Americans away to fight. I believe historically that is call a "Janissary". Maybe not in your culture, but the culture of the terrorists has that term. Maybe you should look it up. --- And I may even agree with you. . Equality of the sexes is a legal pretty thing, great for the courts and the work place. But in the real world, the physical world, the average man is stronger then the average woman, possesses more endurance, better spacial awareness. The young can take more physical punishment, built muscle faster, need less sleep. The average age a combat soldier during WWII was twenty-six years, that what I mean by young. . What I seem to be picking up from you Deranged Nasat is that your belief goes beyond simply not wanting a draft, you don't want soldiers period! So let us play a little thought experiment shall we, I'm sure you've done these at Cambridge. Let strip Britain of all it's military. Nuclear and conventional. Everything above policeman's weapons. No British navy, army, Royal marines, SAS, and also your NATO alliance. No MI-6 as well. You would continue to possess all UK civil law, all thousand years plus. With no military there would no need for any uncivilized mutual defense pacts with the barbaric Americans. All other nations still possess all their current forces. Ready? Here's the question, from the word go, how many days do you think you'd last. . How many days until France and Germany start sniffing around your fishing grounds, until the Norwegians take away your north seas oil and gas fields. Might be a good time for Scotland to declared independance. Just did a fast google your country imports FAT. In fact you import a lot of things, things other friendly nations might want. Things you can no longer protect. Like inbound supertankers. May be the perfect time to go green. What effect on the fragile UK economy having 425,000 soldiers out of work over night. And how many brits work in your defense industry? You remember the aren't actual terrorist people, coming to pay you a visit. Have you looked up the word "janissary" yet? But don't worry - you have laws. And I'm out. T'girl
From what I'm picking up from him is that his belief is that he'd prefer there were no soldiers, but since militaries exist, that they stick to being purely voluntary.
It's the logical consequence of your argument. That you don't wish to acknowledge that by placing the survival of the state ahead of the life and freedom of the individual that you've laid the groundwork for slavery, genocide, and indeed any other injustice - of course, it apparently can't be considered such if not labelled so by the state - within the imagination of the majority is hardly surprising, but nonetheless true. It is a horrifying word that has caused more human suffering and misery than any of the various but equally objectionable forms of othering that serve to divide the species into "my people" and "other people, whom my people can kill and exploit at will".
But it is, in a sense. Besides - what right does a democratically elected government have to impose unpopular laws? I'm not speaking of taxes or traffic laws - I'm speaking of a military draft, which is inherently different. And yes - taxes should be voluntarily paid, not forcibly removed from our paychecks. Unpopular laws should be ignored. A government that imposes unpopular laws is inherently illegitimate and should be ignored at best and opposed at need. When laws are imposed against the will of the people, tyranny ensues. Tyranny must be opposed. The only exception I can think of to this rule is when the popular consensus is to unjustly limit the freedoms of a minority - segregation in the south, gay rights, etc.
I did say I'd avoid this in future, so first off I apologize for turning 180 on that, but this is just brief. No, T'Girl, I am not saying "get rid of all militaries". It would be nice if we could, but of course we can't. We can, however, lessen the need for them by behaving in a co-operative manner, recognizing the importance of each and every one of us, rather than hiding behind a wall of guns pre-emptively pointed at anyone who you encounter. My family in fact has a history of military service. It's not my fault if an argument against a draft or the attitude that young men are automatically seen as a resource for war is taken to mean "scrap the military". No, what I'm saying is "scrap the attitude that your sons have some sort of obligation to be soldiers and that they should fight for their nation". These ideas lead only to conflict. The only things worth fighting for are safety and freedom, your own and others. Because humanity is the only universal. Nations mean nothing. Nations, cultures, religions, governments- they all come and go, they fall and split and are assimilated into one another, like shifting sands. The only universal is people. Yet, in every one of those transitory nations and cultures, young men have been conditioned into believing their purpose is to fight for those nations, to legitimate and justify something that in the long run means little. Militaries are a necessary evil, but turn the military into a way of life-which you do if you begin to see your sons in terms of breeding future soldiers- and you provoke the very conditions that boost the need for a military. Someone has to make a stand and step back from this. This doesn't mean "no military", it means "no promoting the military as an obligation and as the solution to all our problems". I have no problem with the idea of my fuiture children becoming soldiers- if that's what they truly want, and they are following the calling of their heart rather than submitting to someone elses' idea of what they should be and who they are. Humans are a warrior race. A great many will and do find the calling of their heart leads to military work. However, such work should be to ensure the freedoms and protection of the people, not be systematically removing those freedoms and protections. Thomas Paine wrote in his "Rights of Man" that the enlisted soldier lives under a double oppression- that of being forced to obey his superiors and submit to their whims, and of being ostracized from the community. Here's something else you militiaristic types have yet to learn; true strength comes from co-operation, from alliance and mutual care and empathy. "Run around pointing guns lest those filthy French and Germans and despicable Norwegians and traitorous Scots steal all our booty" is not the point of the army. If this sort of active competition were the point, we might as well launch an invasion of France right now and do some pillaging. Here's the thing- in previous centuries that was the point, because we Europeans were a militiaristic, warlike people concerned not with true strength but with selfish, competitive resource- and territory-grabbing. Our young men had a "duty" to be warriors if we decided they should be. The eventual result of all this was, more or less, the First World War, and the fallout of this led, more or less, into the Second World War. The problem isn't "having a military". The problem is "living and breathing the military and constructing a concept of our sons as nothing but a resource for that military". Do you realize how many boys and young men have suffered, died, been arbritarily tortured or murdered in vast quantities worldwide due to this idea that "young man=soldier"? If all young men and boys are potential soldiers, they can never enjoy true civilian status in your eyes. Why not go into, say, Iran and cut down any young male you see? Plenty of militaries and governments do just that. They are nothing but enemy soldiers, and a threat to you. Your sons are nothing but enemy soldiers in their eyes. And so it goes on, conflict after conflict, death after death, and those of us who say "no. My son is not a tool in your constant conflicts. He is something precious" are condemned for refusing to participate. Here's something else, T'Girl. If your young men have a "duty" to enlist to protect America, the young men of countries you invade must obviously have the same "duty" to enlist and defend their nation against you. Surely that is only logical. So the more you attack and kill these "threat" organizations in their own countries, the more their young men will answer, or be told and forced to answer, the call of "duty" and fight against you. The more of each other's sons you kill, the more will have to enlist to fight the threat posed by the other. The more aggressive you are, the more other nations will insist that their sons do their "duty" by picking up weapons and protecting against you. The more of them pick up weapons and prepare to fight you, the bigger the threat grows and the more you turn to your sons and say "we're under threat! Do your duty, young men, by enlisting!" The more your army swells, the bigger a threat you become to them, and so on and so forth. You become mired in continuous conflict and both your nation's sons suffer. Unless someone takes a stand and displays the strength and courage to say "no".
Quite true, Rii. My people were the kings of nationalism back in the day, and the ideology was used to justify our conquest and exploitation of a quarter of the planet. Other European nations were doing the same. There is barely a part of the planet not touched by war, exploitation and suffering resulting from nationalism. It is an ideology to be resisted wherever it takes root. So, yes, T'Girl, we are told it's a bad thing, because many of us fear making the errors of our ancestors all over again.
I agree, but in the hypothetical situation I am proposing, an international conflict that poses no threat to us, I don't believe it would be right for a government to demand that we lay down our lives for the welfare of those who's welfare has no bearing at all on our own. That's up to our individual consciences. As I say though, that's a hypothetical. It's never as black and white as that.
---Every chance I get and "God Bless America" is a nice song too. . --- And what constitutes a "intelligent" american? Putting aside your opinion of their intelligence in general what do americans say on this subject? My conversations reveal increasingly people are becoming convinced that what we already have to better than the replacement proposed. --- Then perhaps you should immigrate to america where the citizens control the government. ... ---There's no reason to acknowledge the path you're suggesting. Service in the military is not a form of slavery, whether a nation employs a draft or not has no connection to incidents of genocide, the gestopo was volunteer not draft, Pol Pot's forces was a mixure, the WWII allies soldiers who ended the holocaust were a mixure. The American and British forces that ended the cold wars were both volunteer. Far from enslaving one nation after another American soldiers free people. The best of two viable options T'Girl
Lol. What about US interference in South America? Or in Cambodia? Do you genuinely believe the Iraq was about freedom and not about oil? Remember Rumsfeld originally remarked that Saddam was I quote "our sonofabitch." Or the fact that Bin Laden was trained by the CIA. The mulitple assinations of democratically elected leaders across the globe because the US didn't "like them"? America is the dominant power because it does just that, it exercises control over freedom to secure its ideological and economic interests.
You are quite right, but they don't want to think about that. The indoctrination and conditioning runs too deep. As far as many of its inhabitants are concerned, America = "freedom", their own and the world's. Yet their history is one slap in the face to the world's freedom and liberty after another. They refuse to acknowledge it and refuse to learn from their past- and others' past. They wave the flag and it all goes away, all "justified" in the name of the very freedom they've just gone and torn to pieces. It took a long time, and much suffering across the globe, for the British to learn that, despite what we claimed over and over again, and despite what we truly believed, we were not a force of civilization and morality but instead self-serving, aggressive and liable to tear the planet to pieces in our dumb nationalism. It's taking the Americans just as long. By the way, T'Girl, some of the quotes you attribute to me above were not in fact from me.
Those must only be those university types who don't have real world jobs, get free housing and sit around talking all the time.
Study and scholarship not promoted very highly in your mind, then? And, yes, actually, most of the Americans I've interacted with for any length of time- many of whom I admire deeply- have been students, professors, doctors and others associated with scholarship. It's not my fault if their own people don't value them because it's not a "real world job". And talking! Why, they shouldn't be doing that! Talking never solves anything or provides any answers...
Typical attitude to take. To make assumptions that since I said that, I must not promote scholarship or study. On the contrary, I've got 4 years of college, 3 years of professional school and many years more of real life experience. Sorry I don't sit around in my ivy league office with my leather elbow patches jawing away about buffy and whoever else...
Like it or not, acknowledge it or not, your comment was dismissive of the worth of people who I have found to bring great service and honour to our people.
Oh please, and your assumption that the only people who want UHC are Ivy League professors is less ridiculous? That is absurd hypocrisy.
To be fair I've seen plenty of smart enough looking americans who question UHC. Not saying i necessarily agree with them, but: saying the smarties are all in favour is just an opening for the kind of anti intellecual ivory towers blah blah bollocks that some subset of america likes to rant about.
I wasn't suggesting a causal relationship, I'm suggesting that the same logic used by RJ to justify the draft - that the state's right to defend itself trumps the rights of its individual constituent citizens - can be used to justify any conceivable crime against minority subsets of its citizenry in service of its interests as defined by the majority.
And indeed is and has been. "State security" has been the justification for countless atrocities directed against vulnerable social groups in many nations. Also, to anyone familiar with the treatment of adolescent and young adult males in many of these countries and regions historically, the draft and associated young man= soldier attitude is in fact no different. The mass imprisonment, torture and "liquidation" of adolescent boys and young men due to their status as "threats" and "enemy operatives" has always been endemic in many regions. Ethnic cleansing due to their men and boys being "threats to state security" is directly attributable to the idea that young men and boys in a community have an obligation to fight. Place the state above the individual and sooner or later anything becomes "justified".