Machan's Little Libertarian Encyclopedia
Chapter 6: Conscription
Conscription is coerced military service, the draft. It requires from young people, mostly men, under penalty of law, the giving up of a portion of one's life, for rudimentary compensation and some reasonably good benefits. In time of military conflict this could amount to requiring someone to sacrifice his life on terms other than his own.
During the presidency of Richard Nixon the draft had been abolished in the USA, with only a feint shadow of it lingering on the law books, the requirement of registration. But instead of championing the completion of the job, namely abolishing registration, some politicians — and Republicans, to boot, such as Senator Strom Thurmond — are enthusiastically and self-righteously favoring bringing back the draft.
The reasoning is not unlike all those in defense of this institution, namely, that "our nation faces a critical problem of manning our Armed Forces...." Actually, however, no such need could ever justify coercing another person to serve anyone. Sensing that this is going to be a difficult sell, another approach to justifying the draft has been advanced: "The obligation of mandatory service forces the alignment of self-defense and national defense, of self-interest and national interest."
No doubt there is much to be said for aligning self-interest and national interest — indeed, any bona fide national interest has also to be in one's self-interest, given how one is a citizen of the nation! But there is a huge flaw in the equivocation between military conscription and the moral responsibility to defend oneself.
No moral obligation may justifiably be forced on a person. One cannot be made to do the right thing, one must do it of one's own free will. The only exception to this is when the right thing involves not violating other people's rights. Then these other people may resist, which is why the criminal law is largely justifiable and why it is also justifiable to force people to refrain from aggression.
In general, a free society is distinguished by virtue of the establishment of a legal system that protects everyone's right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. These rights — which the US Declaration of Independence calls "unalienable," meaning, "incapable of being lost by anyone" — are nothing if not a major moral obstacle against such measures as military conscription. Such a public policy would be nothing short of enslaving young men and women for portions of their lives. That means their rights to life and liberty would be violated head on.
So in a free society the defense of the country, as any other professional service, must rest on a volunteer military. That is almost a defining attribute of such a community, namely, that its various good deeds must be pursued through consent and by means of coercion, "mandatory service."
Politicians who champion conscription need to come to grips with this fact: one may not achieve good ends by evil means. And it would be evil to defend the freedom of American citizens by means of robbing some of those citizens of their freedom. That, as Sherlock Holmes would put it, is elementary.
The trouble is that recruiting young people for the military in times of relative peace is difficult, especially when government spends its resources on thousands of projects it shouldn't embark upon at all. It requires vigilance on the part of those who believe in military readiness. Given that the vigilance with which a country must be defended should not include making laws to impose involuntary servitude upon US citizens but of the effective advocacy of and ample support for those who would provide defense readiness.
Moreover, as with most professional services, this one, too, can be secured via the free exchange. Government often needs to have things built for it, such as court houses or police stations, and to do this it hires people from the free market and pays them to do the task at hand. Without court houses the legal system would suffer, yet the skilled labor required to build those building may not be conscripted. The talent and work needed are hired to do that important job.
Citizens in a free society must secure services they value without violating the rights of others. In such a society, the most civilized of human communities ever conceived, worthy goals must be achieved by means of argument, not coercion, however impatient one might be about going about things that way. Another person's having basic rights to his or her life, liberty and pursuit of happiness means, in part, that if one wishes to enlist that person's support for some task, one needs to be convincing in one's arguments, meet the terms set by potential service personnel and refrain from bullying people to follow one's lead.
This may appear to be contradicted by such legal instruments as the subpoena. Arguably, however, the only valid use of subpoena is when the pursuit of justice in court cannot continue without a particular person's or organization's input. Since everyone in a civil society is committed, by definition, to the pursuit of justice, to withhold oneself from testifying under such circumstances would be to go back on one's own word or oath of citizenship. However, when a vital service can be obtained from anyone and without even the hint of coercion, that is the alternative that is appropriate for a community of free men and women. No one in particular is needed to defend a country from foreign aggression. Any able person fits the job description.
There are, furthermore, certain practical benefits to banning conscription: the case for going into some military operation must be made more convincingly than otherwise, lest the conflict be pursued without a military. It is little wonder, then, that some politicians do not favor the volunteer approach to securing military service. They do not like it that ordinary citizens would have a significant say about whether a military operation or war ought to be conducted.
Furthermore, if a country is as just as it can be, the probability of making the case for its proper defense to its citizens should be considerable, unless those citizens are in some respect perverse, in which case not being defended against outside aggression is the consequence they must live with.
In a free society patriotism is a matter not of blind habit and simple familiarity but of commitment to principle. That commitment is not some empty slogan, not a case of "my country right or wrong," but a concrete devotion to act justly and to insist that all elements of society comply with the principle in question. In a free society that means, clearly, that in the very pursuit of justice, justice itself must be deployed. No one's rights may be violated in defense of a community that sees the respect and protection of rights as indeed the paragon of justice.
It is also important to keep in mind that a free society has very little for government to embark upon, military defense of the community being perhaps the most important function. There would be little to consume whatever resource government can secure to fund its various (but by comparison to existing systems very few) activities. Thus, having rid itself of a great many expensive projects, the vital service provided by the military would not be difficult to pay for.
It is interesting that no one ever advocates conscripting police officers, yet, it seems to be analogous to the idea that military personnel ought to be forced to offer their services. Part of this problem may be one of communication, of course: it is a bit more difficult to sell people the idea that their work may be needed in some foreign country than selling them on the idea that local crime conditions must be addressed.
No such obstacles serve, however, to justify anything like coercing young men and women into the military. Those who are convinced that a military operation is needed or that a stand by military is vital to the safety and security of the citizenry must come up with good, convincing reasons to achieve their goals. No shortcuts in this effort, involving the violation of the basic rights the military is sworn to protect, must be tolerated.
In the context of contemporary understanding of how government functions, the points raised against invoking conscription might best be put in terms of the requirement of due process. Just as police officers must not deploy unnecessary force in fighting crime, just as courts must obey principles of justice as they conduct trials, just as prison wardens need to make certain that the inmate's rights are protected, so the more general body politic must not lose sight of the fact that it is the securing the basic rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that government, including the military is all about, a process that must itself do justice to that objective.