Draft service

[Redalgo]

In my humble, respectful opinion, options A-C are unambiguously authoritarian choices and D is presented in too much of a biased, nastier-than-necessary manner. That having been said, I value individual rights more so than collective duties and value the defense of the People more so than the defense of the state. I believe that option D is the best available in this list. If a war is truly just and worthwhile the masses will rally to arms and enlist. Any government that is prepared to use its citizens as expendable tools in its quarrels against their will is a grave, albeit latent threat to its own people - a looming and potent enemy from within, so to speak.

There are conditions under which I'd probably enlist - putting my life on the line for something greater than myself - and yet there are also conditions under which I would be alright with a foreign power seizing control of my community, would seek to emigrate abroad, or even take up arms against the state. You see, I am not government property and bow unquestioningly to no authority. That is to say, I'm a free man. Call me a wuss if you like. I will not be ashamed. I also frown upon glorification of gender roles. They are social constructs, and I am not made at all insecure by the fact that my personality and habits are both "masculine" and "feminine."

[Redalgo]

It is a legitimate concern, yes, but in such instances I would say the country "deserves" to lose. The People are sovereign - not the state itself (which merely has their consent to borrow power and legitimacy from them) and if folks decide not to uphold their duties to society, they may well need to pay the price for their negligence awhile later. In a country of hundreds of millions, if we cannot marshal at least a handful of millions for the defense it would not be unreasonable for us to presume that most citizens are passive enough to accept the victory of a foreign power. This is a biased position of course, as I have no sense of loyalty whatsoever to the government, but still!

You are right to compare this with the tax issue, yet I see it as a matter of extremes. I am willing to coerce other people to pay money for social programs but am not willing to make other people pay with a severe loss of their individual rights for a prolonged time, and quite possibly with their lives as well, for the ends of the state. A foreign power is probably never going to attack us with the intent of eradicating our people. It is possible for us to retain a large number of our rights and liberties (or later reclaim them via revolution) despite the potential loss of our current government. That is to say, I am willing to demand folks sacrifice some of what they have... but not everything.

Aside from that, volunteers make much better soldiers than conscripts, and no war with a foreign power on U.S. soil threatening to defeat the federal government would end conventionally, yeah?

[Redalgo]

I'm a big believer in the principle of the social contract. Specifically, I believe that in a free society where one can emigrate freely that staying as a citizen and living in your country implies consent to being governed by it. Along with this goes responsibility to defend it.

I am as well, interestingly enough, but I reckon the disconnect there concerns how much binding force the contract ought to have. My position is that any individual can withdraw their consent to be governed at any time, assuming she or he is ready to accept the consequences. Likewise, I think the state is also entitled to terminate the social contract - but in most instances feel such an offense would warrant either a strong electoral or outright revolutionary response on the the part of the People, depending on what sort of events are transpiring. From my perspective, a defense of the state requires that each individual is willing to renew the contract even if their enlistment in the military is tacitly called for in the revised set of terms they are signing off on.

In some instances (and I know I'm not alone in having this attitude) there can easily come a point at which the state's demands in the contract are too steep. In such cases, government can either yield to the People's preferences or accept that many of us will begin to say, "No."

Of course you're entirely right; volunteers are in every way preferable to draftees, but its always possible to consider a scenario where a draft is called for. Heck, a draft would probably call attention to those civil rights issues that you mentioned and galvanize the public into confronting the necessity of the war in the first place.

But that's the thing... I never really consider war to be a necessity. War is an option, without exception. World War II is the only conflict the United States has been a participant in that I can think of where the draft would have seemed tempting. And even then it would have been a temporary authoritarian gesture in combat of the risk of a totalitarian outcome. Then again, I suspect there would have been a helluva lot of volunteers in the event of an Axis landfall in the continental United States - certainly enough to carry the day, I suspect, though perhaps not enough to subsequently take the fight back to the Old World.

That is not to suggest you are not making a decent argument here. The impasse is a lot more values-based than it is a matter of ones analytical thinking or good intentions being in doubt.