10-10-2009
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Slaying Leviathan
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Subject: Involuntary Servitude for All
Reader Leslie Carbone, the author of
Slaying Leviathan: The Moral Case for Tax Reform, brought to
my attention an interesting article that she wrote back in November
2008 titled,
Emanuel Proposes Slavery. In this piece she
discusses Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama's call for the creation of
a "Civilian National Security Force" that would conscript every
American into a mandatory period of national service for the purpose
of:
"basic training, civil defense preparation and community
service."
With terms like "basic training" and "community service",
it's duces wild as to what the government could do with – or to
you during your period of conscription.
Now Rahm is a nice guy, and he is only proposing a three month period
of mandatory service. And if you buy that, then you must think
that the top income tax rate is 7%
and that your Social Security number will never be used as a
means of identification.
A program like this is always proposed as a small thing, which then
quickly expands to feed the bottomless pit that is our federal, state
and local governments.
There were a few issues raised in the comments section to Leslie's
article that I would like to address here.
A couple of the readers complained about the use of the term
"slavery" being applied to this proposal, when it was simply
"temporary compulsory service" and, as one reader put it,
"that's all." . Well, this sort of semantic argument is about
as interesting as calculating the number of angel dancing on the head
of a pin. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution states:
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place
subject to their jurisdiction."
Emanuel's plan certainly qualifies as involuntary servitude,
so it is clearly unconstitutional. And as far as I am concerned,
every form of involuntary servitude is a form of slavery and
vice versa. The duration of the servitude is immaterial because we
each possess an unalienable right to our lives - and that is an
absolute. And so long as we refrain from violating the rights of
others, no entity, whether they be another individual, a group or
a government, may morally lay claim to one one moment of your life.
Some of Leslie's readers also commented on the fact that we have
had compulsory military service in this country, on and off,
throughout our history, and what Emanuel is proposing is nothing
different. Of course, these arguments were meant to defend this
new form of conscription on the grounds of "tradition".
But that argument doesn't hold water if you read the 13th Amendment.
It contains no exception to the ban on involuntary servitude, other
than as punishment for a crime. The truth is that military
conscription or a "draft" is unconstitutional as well. As one
of the commentators put it: "Compulsory military service IS
involuntary servitude, which IS slavery". The use of conscription
in this country has been a travesty to our rights and any future
attempt to reinstate a draft must be opposed on constitutional
grounds.
Now, I am a huge supporter of our military as an absolutely essential
institution, required to protect our lives, rights and freedom, and I
have deep respect for anyone who commits themselves to that job. But
the fact that I see this function as important, does not somehow grant
me the special privilege of then being able to force someone else to
provide that service against their will. The only proper way for a
free people to interact with one another is voluntarily, with the
initiation of force prohibited. And this is especially true when
dealing with the government, which is charged as the repository of
retaliatory force, to be used strictly in service of our
protection. When the government steps over that bright line, as ours
did long ago, and begins to initiate force against its citizens,
then it is time to do what our forefathers once proclaimed in the
Declaration
of Independence:
"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive
of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to
abolish it, and to institute new Government"
Whether our current form of government can be salvaged, or whether
it has become so corrupted that it must be replaced, is something
worth carefully considering.
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