Capitalism Magazine

You Don't Own Me

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 23:17:00 +0000

Statists pleading for the return of the military draft.

Timothy Holt

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:17:33 +0000

-It is interesting that some of our leaders have so much in common ideologically with Adolf Hitler. It has been a while since the last time I read Mein Kamph. I do however remember several passages that allude to "national service". If my memory serves me correctly: if a person wanted to have full citizenship privileges they had to perform some type of "service" to the Reich. Of course this did not include women or non Aryan people who would always be relegated to the position of "subject" regardless of their "services". I don't know if this type of draft was implemented in Nazi Germany, but I do remember reading about the idea in Hitler’s' book. This in itself should serve as a warning. There are no "subjects" in the United States.
-As an Iraq war veteran I know that you don't want to have conscripts fighting beside you. You want professional soldiers, not civilians with guns. The people we are fighting are civilians with guns.

Edward Cline

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:56:27 +0000

Mr. Holt: Thank you for your perceptive comment. Germane to the issue of compulsory national service and Nazism, I recommend two fine movies that dramatize specifically the Nazi brand but which are fundamentally relevant to the kind of national service (military and civilian) proposed by Rangel and other politicians of whatever stripe or party: “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days,” a German movie (with subtitles) from 2005; and “Swing Kids,” an American movie (1993). Both movies attempted to essentialize the conflicts of young people growing up in totalitarian cultures. The lessons drawn from these films can be applied also conflicts of young people maturing in a semi-free country (such as ours) that is sliding in the same direction of statism. Another but older movie is “This Land is Mine” (1943),which focuses on the conflicts faced by adults during the Nazi occupation of France. It stars Charles Laughton as a school teacher who finally stands up to the Nazis. Kent Smith plays a Resistance fighter; he later played Peter Keating in “The Fountainhead.”

You are right that professional, volunteer soldiers should fight a war. But statist governments do not want “professional” soldiers; they seek obedient cannon fodder.

Ed