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Should you join the military?
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Great article today on The Rock by Laurence Vance, who shares a letter he wrote to a young Christian acquaintance in the attempt to dissuade others from joining the military. Mr. Vance's letter is largely founded upon a religious opposition to war, but he includes many other practical objections to enlisting one's service to the state.
I know my comments may not go over well with some of my friends and family who have either retired from the military or serve currently. But whereas I once wrote in support of the U.S. military, I can no longer do so now that I finally understand the true nature of the state -- which is to exploit advocates and dissenters alike for its own advancement of power and authority over both foreign and domestic subjects.
I believe the majority of people who enlist in the military do so for what they believe to be noble reasons, whether it be expressing love for their country and wanting to protect it, or even taking advantage of education and health benefits that are paid for with tax dollars that are extracted without consent but nevertheless given to others anyway.
Given that I'm a radical anti-state libertarian, it's easy for me to simply say I oppose all things government. But I should at least attempt to lend some details in explaining my aversion to a standing military.
While I understand why many people think a government military is more practical than private defense forces -- after all, national defense is constitutional, right? -- it is the state's monopoly on coercion that makes a government military (like any other statist entity) impractical if the goal is the protection of liberty.
Thomas Jefferson was generally opposed to a standing army and navy during peacetime, but even where he assented to nationalized service he was adamantly opposed to an interventionist foreign policy and empirialistic wars of conquest. However, this is merely an ideal when the state reserves the legal authority to tax without consent and otherwise establish monopolies on the use of force.
Despite the so-called good intentions of the Constitution, it should be remembered that there were more than a handful of outspoken critics, most prominently Patrick Henry, who warned that it would usher in a return to monarchy, which the country had just fought a war to eliminate. Indeed, the federal government has not devolved to its current state despite the Constitution, but because of it. Whereas the Constitution requires a congressional declaration of war, presidents dispatch military forces despite this provision by exploiting a loophole the framers provided. In short, it is the almighty Constitution itself that places such tyrannical privilege in the hands of one man.
Therefore, whenever a country embraces a dictator, no one is safe -- least of all the men and women expected to do the bidding of their totalitarian master. Quite literally, some of the most productive members of society trade their services in the private sector for the opportunity to serve a single commander -- who will not hesitate to sell them out at the earliest opportunity if it provides cover for his own war crimes and immorality.
Moreover, while the U.S. technically retains an all-volunteer military, servicemen and women are at the mercy of the state. Mr. Vance writes to his friend, "Please remember that if you join the military, there is no getting out until your enlistment period is up." Would that this were actually the case. In reality, the Pentagon retains ultimate authority on service obligations and is notorious for manipulating its own contracts, which includes extending deployment periods and suspending discharges during conflicts.
A friend of mine once received deployment orders to Iraq despite satisfying the obligations set forth in his service agreement allowing him to resign his command. And while he was able to overcome this overreach, it still doesn't prevent him and others in his position from being ridiculed by the brainwashed masses in the military and civilian sectors, who like to wrap themselves in the flag as they endorse government without limit.
And this isn't even considering the very scary possibility that the Obama administration will implement a compulsory "national service" requirement for America's youth or even bring back the draft, both of which would amount to a return to legalized slavery of human beings in the "land of the free."
My son is only a year old, but one of my greatest fears is that he'll one day be used as a pawn of the state, shipped off to an unnecessary war and sacrificed at the altar of the American Empire. My biggest fear, however, is that he'll have no choice in matter.
Perhaps if enough people begin to understand the true machinations of the state, more and more brave, proud citizens will refuse to join or consent to the government's war machine.
What then, you ask? Well, maybe then the military would weaken to the point of irrelevance, where old men could not use the young to fight and die on their behalf; where foreign hatred would not be the result of political expediency; where our best warriors would be here at home in the unlikely event of an invasion, where they could join with other defenders of liberty to ensure their country remained free of the parasites for whom they initially refused to deploy.
