International Man: UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently pledged to bring back mandatory national service.
The German government has also mulled reinstating compulsory military service. In Ukraine, it’s not uncommon for government agents to forcibly kidnap civilians off the streets and send them to the front.
These are a few recent examples. There seems to be a clear trend of governments preparing their citizens for some sort of mandatory national service.
Is conscription coming back in the West generally and the US in particular?
Doug Casey: The US is now automatically registering all males between 18 and 26 into the Selective Service databank. I’m no fan of conscription. Or the military in general. Of course, it shocks a lot of people when I say I’m not a fan of the military, although I tend to like soldiers as individuals. Don’t get me wrong; the military can serve a useful purpose. But when you’re in the military, you’re not necessarily fighting for the country or “freedom.” You’re fighting for the government and the people who control it.
Propaganda and jingoism aside, the kind of people who run governments are not the best and the brightest, just the most ambitious and opportunistic. Without exception, they’re power grubbers who like to control other people.
It’s one thing if someone joins voluntarily, but something else entirely if they’re coerced. The draft, or any kind of mandatory service or conscription, should be called what it is: Involuntary servitude. Or, as shocking as it may sound, slavery.
Anyway, this trend towards conscription everywhere in the West is most disturbing. It’s inuring people to the idea that they should serve the State, the government.
International Man: You’re well-known for saying, “Right now, by paying all their taxes, the government uses you as a milk cow. But they may decide to turn you into a beef cow.”
Can you elaborate?
Does conscription have any place in a free society?
Doug Casey: “Survive” is the prime directive of all living things, from amoebas to governments. That means if the government needs your life to survive or the lives of a million people like you, it will take them. To the State, you’re just a resource—notwithstanding all the rhetoric about democracy, the value of life, and blah, blah, blah.
Remember that the government doesn’t really represent the country. The government is a separate entity that has its own interests, much as a church, a corporation, or any other organization does. The problem is that the government is the only institution in society that doesn’t survive by voluntary trade and production. It survives by force, confiscating assets from the people that it rules. People have an entirely backwards view of what the government is. It’s not your friend.
When I say that it treats its subjects as milk cows, I mean that they value you only as a cog in the wheel. As a milk cow, you may be relatively well-treated. But, if push comes to shove, they’ll turn you into a beef cow. That’s what the military does. You’re forced to put your life on the line, not necessarily to defend yourself, family, and friends, but to defend the interests of the government who’ve organized the army.
To answer the second part of the question, there are basically three types of army—volunteer armies, mercenary armies, and slave armies.
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