We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Civilian conscription in the US – could it happen in the UK? Diana Hsieh, amongst others, is justifiably outraged at the move in the US Congress to move towards an expansion of the Americorps programme, making it compulsory for all young people in the US to participate in it. It is a form of conscription, which while it may not involve an explicit military role, is nevertheless a form of draft.
Ideas, either good or very bad, have a habit of travelling across the Atlantic to the UK. I’d be willing to bet that if, say, David Cameron is the next prime minister, he will look favourably upon such ideas. It fits in well with his dreary, authortarian/paternalist version of conservatism. In fact, the worse the economic situation gets, the more likely that states will try such ideas out. And no doubt the social alarmists will latch on to such ideas as a way to address problems of violent youths and so forth.
Timothy Sandefur says the US legislation is clearly unconstitutional.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
One possible scenario that could arise from such a development is well described in the book ‘Starship Troopers’ by Robert Heinlein.
Regards,
TonyQ
90% of what the US government does is unconstitutional, but that has never stopped them before. Why should it now?
I am sure I remember Obama blurting this out in the past and then backpedalling to diffuse the storm.
I think it will be a race as to who will propose it first out of the main three parties.
If you’re a young guy who is considering joining the military, what will your response be when Obama and Co present you with this easier – but still “patriotic” – option? Wouldn’t there be a fall in military recruitment if this scheme is enacted?
I read Starship Troopers years ago but I have no idea what you mean TonyQ. Can you elaborate?
In Starship Troopers only veterans had the right to vote. Not an entirely bad idea . . . .
Oh, and I agree with Sandefur. If this isn’t unconstitutional than the 13th Amendment has no meaning. Of course, that is entirely possible given a compliant Supreme Court, which could afford it the same respect that it does the 10th Amendment. And by the time the bill passes, is implemented and challenged, and the challenge makes its way through the appeal process up to the Supremes, enough vacancies could have occurred that The One will have remade the Court over to his liking.
Wouldn’t there be a fall in military recruitment if this scheme is enacted?
Not necessarily- most of the veterans I know considered ‘I get paid to play with firearms and other things that go BOOM’ to be a significant perk.
The ****size wars between the guys who were infantry and the guys who delivered ordnance can be entertaining (if you’ve had enough to drink).
Do not be fooled by the “non-military” meme. This is explicitly a paramilitary force with uniforms, command centers, and “campuses” [they were originally called “camps” in the bill and the title was changed to sound less threatening] and periods of drill in the text of HR-1388. This is NOT a WPA type program. This is a political force, Federally funded, under the control of the Democratic Party. There are lists of Leftist indoctrination in the bill that will be mandatory for those going to the “campuses”.
For the benefit of the Brits here; our military swears an Oath to “Preserve, Protect, and Defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign or domestic”. It is expected that the Obama-Jugend will be forced to swear loyalty and obedience to the President.
There are provisions in the bill for making participation a condition of receiving any future Federal benefits [rations?, health care?] and for expanding what the bill refers to, literally, as “Mandatory Volunteer Service” to all ages.
It will impact military recruiting, in that service to this regime will seem less desirable. However those who would volunteer for this new goon squad are not the types who would volunteer for the armed forces, preferring power to service to the nation. They are more like those who would have joined the Sturm Abteilung or Komsolmol to avoid the more strenuous service. It is expected that there will be a large urban gang contingent.
While my children are over the prime age group they are after, they all have passports and they will not be taken. We have discussed plans. Indeed, if they come to conscript people by force around the country, it may be the trigger that pushes things over the edge.
There are creepy ads, half and full page which costs a bunch of Federal money, running in newspapers asking for volunteers, even in my small town.
It will be an interesting race. Will either economic collapse or foreign attack bring down Hussein Pasha before he consolidates his power permanently?
I suspect that those appearing in public in whatever color shirts is chosen by the regime will not get an adulatory response, except from our captive media.
I am not sure that it will be extended to the UK. If only because a) Brits are not into mass movements or large public involvement in politics. Y’all tend to take orders rather than argue, and b) your law enforcement and bureaucracy tends to do the same things that the Obama-Jugend would be doing, just lower key. It would be superfluous.
Subotai Bahadur
“In Starship Troopers only veterans had the right to vote. Not an entirely bad idea . . . .”
I’m sure the framers of the Constitution, whom I seem to remember weren’t even big fans of a standing army in general, would disagree.
The idea was already in circulation in the technocratic salons that our government pays attention to:
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10625
Extending the vote only to veterans is fine, as long as non-voters also do not have to pay for the things the state does as well. Works for me.
Does anyone really think this will be mandatory? Are there custodial sentences for non-participants? Any penalties?
Of course not.
Subotai Bahadur, you are terrified that people paid to sweep the streets will swear an oath to the president. Your family is ready to escape at any time in case this goes down. However, your lifestyle of paranoia and internet hyperbole may be rescued by foreign invasion instead.
I have a secret patriot mission for you: get a library card; check out and read any book on US history; return it. There, now you’ll see we don’t have fascist or socialist coups here. But if you wanted to “escape” America, I’m pretty sure you could be our guest.
Michiganny
You have more faith in the resilience of our institutions under internal attack than I do. Or it may be, although this is admittedly a conjecture on my part, that you favor the direction we are going. I suspect that one or the other of us will be proven right in fairly short order.
Subotai Bahadur.
Michiganny:
I’m sure you meant to type my guest, as you wouldn’t be as presumptions as to be speaking for anyone but yourself, would you.
Am I the only person who finds it ironic that our first Black President, who represents the culmination of the liberation of black slavery in America, would be one one to bring about the introduction of nationwide slavery-lite?
Actually, Subotai, the last 230 years prove quite a bit as well. We are not a nation subject to coups or plots.
I’d bet very few citizens want some dystopian future in America. Where is a guy who obviously doesn’t have the stomach to nationalize the banks going to get the guts to overturn centuries of representative democracy?
Alisa, anyone contemplating the benefits of foreign invasion of his country would be better off leaving it. And I’m guessing the average guy “left behind” would probably greet his departure with the New Jersey State Bird. That is, if the average guy ever cared SB was here in the first place.
Speaking of presumptions, if you think I’ve got them, try reading oh, say, all the other posts here about limiting the vote to people attending the weekly fish fry at the VFW.
Besides, trotting out Starship Troopers to explain American politics? Isn’t that like quoting Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” during a discussion on Chinese politics with a bunch of Chinese and thinking it means very much at all?
Hmmmmmm.
I regret I am no longer young enough to tell them where they can stick their Hitler Youth program.
Ah Michigany, it turns out you are only guessing what the average guy would feel. That’s OK, keep guessing.
IIRC veterans of Federal Service had the vote in Starship Troopers. This didn’t necessarily mean the armed forces.
It’s too bad the discussion thread degenerated so quickly into a discussion of crappy sci-fi. :-p
Seriously, the last time I saw Obama’s national service plan come up, the way it was going to be made “mandatory” was to tie federal aid to schools to it: if your school district doesn’t make community service a requirement for graduation, it doesn’t get the federal funds. And we shouldn’t have any illusions that what constitutes appropriate “service” won’t be politicized. (I argued the last time it came up that teens who actually hold a job bagging groceries for little old ladies are providing just as much a community service as the people working for quangos.)
Transportation funding has been used to nationalize state policies, notably with the 55 MPH speed limit introduced after the 1973 oil embargo, and later with the raising of the drinking age to 21.
As I keep trying to convince people, progressivism is primarily an imposition of a strict moral code, which comes from its anglospheric roots. People expecting marxism-leninism are missing the point. It’s not communism with lots of people in soldiers’ hats marching about. It’s a stultifying moral crusade. And the strongest roots of that moral crusade are in the anglosphere, as opposed to the orientalism of communism. This is the social gospel, imposed by a post-marxist revolutionary technic. The methodology is marxist. The objective is methodist.
The USA leads the world in state moralism, with the UK playing mini-me. There is no intention to create a communist regime. There is every intention to create an absolutist moralist, corporatist regime. We’re up against the dour, miserablist philisophy of New England puritanism, and Olde England methodism.
The purpose of the Obama-jugend and whatever equivalent we get here in Ukay isn’t a military force. It’s a moral force. Millions of young minds converted to a state in which they’ll snatch the beer from our hands and beat us in the streets for not buying FairTrade coffee and report us to the Office Of Moral Correction for turning the heating above 17C. That’s far more frightening.
Ian B, the New Deal was a coup?
And Alisa, do you also think a foreign power should invade and sort out this whole democracy business for us?
These heroic stands for counterfactuals and just plain bad scholarship may make you seem heroic to some Samizdatans. Just remember that the rest of the world thinks you are kooks.
And so this is all about high school kids doing community service as a graduation requirement? You have got to be kidding me that you equate this with conscription.
Is anyone here aware of how teenagers cleaning up the local parks for an hour a day is going to lead to revolution?
Gulag Archipelago was samizdat, writing for the drawer. This silly stuff is writing for the water closet.
Michiganny, I think it’s fair to say you haven’t much of a clue what is being discussed here.
Of course forcing people to work for the state is conscription. By definition.
If you’re in favour of forced labour by the state, you’re welcome to that opinion. But you’re probably going to find that libertarian-leaning discussion forums aren’t really somewhere you’ll fit in terribly well. You might like to seek somewhere more socialist.
Picking up bottles on the overpass an hour a day is not quite the same thing as fighting the battle of Stalingrad. Sure, you can say it is all conscription, but do you appreciate the difference?
My grandparents met as forced laborers courtesy of the German state. That you actually think that a semester or two of “class” in community service should be described with the same term is a hoot.
Here is the point you miss completely: You are mistaking small beer for something important.
I grumbled my way through community service in high school and grumble my way through two afternoons a year at a food bank my employer “encourages” me to attend.
Shelving dented cans is a long chalk from what the world understands to be “conscription” and “forced labor.”
So why are posters so wedded to strong language for such a mild situation? I’d guess it is either because you lack nuance or because you like to twist any issue, no matter how insignificant, to support your pet cause.
Michiganny, you are attacking a straw man there, as I’m sure you know very well. Then you went straight from straw to ad-hominem, but I’m sure SB can address that himself, if he even cares. As to the rest of it: you are entirely entitled to your disagreement with/dislike of anyone here or elsewhere. And we may well turn out to be kooks, only time will tell. The only reason I interjected your comment to SB is the way you used the word “we” when expressing your disagreement with him. The way you used it sounded as if everyone in the US outside the small libertarian circle represented here and a few other places is of the same mind as you are, and to me that sounded presumptuous. It seems much more reasonable to me to speak for yourself and people you know, especially when welcoming someone to leave.
So you are arguing that conceding the principle that the state can conscript people is consequence free? You think that accepting the state can use impressed labour for picking up bottles, or whatever, does not move it a huge step closer to using impressed labour for whatever it wishes? In truth there is no difference in the principle underpinning conscription between sending people to fight or making them pick up bottles… and that principle is that people do not own themselves, the state does.
I think a ‘kook’ to you is just someone who has actually thought this through.
I’m surprised that in the states already imposing involuntary community-servitude requirements for schooling no one has challenged the requirements in court. Perhaps the brainwashing has succeeded to such an extent that no one cares, or judges have been corrupted to such an extent that prospects for a successful challenge would be bleak.
The hijacking of valuable time and energy by ignorant, dystopian politicians is ultimately a self-liquidating process. In perhaps even a short enough run for him to complete it in person, Obama is Jim Jones writ large.
But the process is more likely to take the slow and deadly path of Castro’s takeover of Cuba, as described in Against All Hope by Armando Valladares, by which a first-and-second-world country became a third-world country. After the revolution in which Cubans were unaware they’d placed a Communist in power, the process of subjugation began with the persecution of people, such as Armando, who refused to allow pro-Communist, pro-Castro propaganda to be placed in their personal space. The imprisonment, starvation, and murder of political prisoners was merely a step on the way.
Or perhaps it will take the dreary, stumbling path of Russia’s descent into the USSR, with its (Che-Ka) Emergency Commission simply dragging people off in the middle of the night. A Komsomol could be a means of suppressing opposition, rather than following the Khmer Rouge or Red Guard’s active participation in slaughter.
It is ironic that the decisive transition in the enslavement of the US was the administration of the worst US President by far, Woodrow Wilson, an incompetent man with no real-world experience, with merely the group-think (yeah, oxymoron) that had infested academia to guide him. IMHO 2013, the centennial of that disgrace, should be a national year of mourning.
Ian B makes the following astute observation, which deserves to be expanded upon:
Yep. First of all, I think it was said by the late Marxist historian, EP Thompson, that the history of the UK labour movement owed more to Methodism than Marxism. Also, in the book “Albion’s Seed”, chronicling the cultural influences on the US by the early settlers, it draws out the differences between the Puritanical Christian traditions of New England, the more relaxed, Quaker traditions that influenced some of the Founders, the Anglican tradition, and the Baptists, Presbyterian traditions that took hold in the Old South, and across to Texas, etc.
I think what, as Ian B says, we are seeing is the ascendancy of the New England puritanical strain, comoing at the expense of the Quakerite, more tolerant strains of culture that influenced some if not all of the Founders. The strain we now see driving things has responsible for things like the New Deal, Prohibition, the anti-communist hysteria, speech codes on university campuses, etc. The US has in fact had waves of moral panics, as wonderfully lampooned by journalists such as H.L. Mencken.
I think a lot of people in the US are currently experiencing “buyer’s remorse”.
Ian, you are right in that right now the moralistic angle is the most prominent one, but I don’t see any contradiction you are seeing between that and communism-Leninism. The Soviet regime was just as moralistic. There was always much loud talk about Western Decadence, which when I was growing up was supposedly manifesting itself in long hair and bell-bottoms worn by kids a bit older than myself. There was no legal porn, gay-hobbit or otherwise (I’m sure there was plenty underground), drugs were illegal (ditto), etc. (And BTW: why is communism supposed to be orientalist?) Now, I am not saying that we in the West are headed towards the exact same version of totalitarianism the Soviet bloc had, but whatever the differences might be, I have not seen anyone identify them yet with any degree of plausibility.
Alisa, a good point. I think it’s a matter of emphasis. All totalitarian regimes have a moralist component, but I’d argue that the primary (declared) focus of marxism-leninism type communism is class struggle and economic control (with a side order of moralism) whereas the primary (declared) focus of what I’ve called in a thread up above “Anglosocialism” is moral, with a side order of economics. There isn’t a hard line between the two and all these socialisms conflate ideas and ideologies from one another. But one way of looking at it was that IMV communism used these moral strictures in support of its class-struggle and economic ideology, whereas Anglosocialism interferes in the economy to support its moral goals.
Class struggle is just an excuse (just like struggle against non-Arians). It’s a mere tool, and so is moralism. It’s always about power, and economic control belongs in that category.
Here’s the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, which passed in 1865:
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Please, I am begging–a cartoonist needs to draw the famous statue of Abraham Lincoln, but jumping out of his chair with a shocked look on his face.
Protest idea – shredding the Constitution.
And most seriously of all – all members of the House and Senate who voted for this bill should be accused of treason. They violated their oath of office to defend the constitution.
My niece, in high school is visiting. I asked her if she has studied or read the Constitution, and she said no.
So the forced child labor will not even be educated by the government schools what his/her own Constitution says…and the government schools will be in on the conspiracy to protect their funding.
Court cases say state imposed involuntary servitude isn’t legal, and you cannot impose it on minors. It’s doubly unconstitutional.
Why are the sheeple not pouring into the streets?
Oh yeah. MSM silence.
The revolution will not be televised.
Ian B, your summary in your recent “its a matter of emphasis” post seems pretty accurate, but I think you came down on the wrong side. If the Christian Right had ascended to power you might have been correct, but they didn’t. Obama and the Radical Left have donned the purple, and their agenda is strictly economic and political power. Moralism (including the pseudo-moralism of rabid environmentalism) is just another tool in their arsenal. There are plenty of “useful idiots” to go around.
These people are focused, long-term strategic thinkers. If we’re to compete we need to use some of their tools. We should all be reading Alinsky and, for that matter, Lenin and Mao. This is going to be a long fight, and we’re already seriously on the defensive.