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11-26-2009

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Joe Galloway
Subject: Thanksgiving: Learning How to Appreciate Your Rights

Joe Galloway is a combat journalist and author of the book "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young". On a recent book tour through Lubbock, TX, he offered his views on military conscription, as reported in this article from Texas Tech:
    "When I was growing up, there was a draft," he said. "We fought World War II, Korea, and Vietnam on the draft, and nobody liked it, but it reached out and pulled in Americans from all walks of life, and that wasn't a bad thing at all.

    "We are a nation of 300 million people and fewer than one percent of us wear the uniform and do all of the serving and sacrificing for all of the other 299 million, and they've been worked pretty hard these last eight years."

    The U.S. dropped the draft system after the Vietnam War, but Galloway said he believes the United States would benefit from some program that compelled young men and women into national service, creating more appreciation for the liberties they enjoy as Americans.

In a video interview attached to the article, Mr. Galloway states:
    "I don't think that's what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they set things up. They thought you had to earn your freedom and democracy"

This got me thinking about the issue of Americans appreciating or failing to appreciate certain aspects of their lives, and I am in agreement with Galloway that many people in the U.S. have no real understanding of the nature of their individual rights, including their liberty, and therefore fail to properly appreciate them. But I cannot agree with Galloway's solution — the same one being proposed by the Obama administration — which is to violate those very rights in an effort to teach people to treasure them!

The "right to life" identifies that each person's life is sacrosanct and may not be violated by another, while the "right to liberty" means that each individual may select their own goals and pursuits in accordance with their will, free from external compulsion. I am sure that it is true that if you conscript a person into national service for a few years against their will, command their every move during that period, and place them in combat situations where their very life is in grave danger, if they survive the experience and are once again freed, most people will come away with a deeper appreciation for their life and their liberty. Of course, the same thing can be said for a survivor of a Siberian Gulag, and, in principle, there is no real difference between these two situations, as both are violations of the rights of the individual.

I also disagree with Galloway's interpretation of the Founding Father's intentions with regards to our rights. The Declaration of Independence states that we possess:
    "certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

which means that these rights are absolute and an indivisible part of our human nature. Quoting from unalienable.com:
    The absolute rights of individuals may be resolved into the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right to acquire and enjoy property. These rights are declared to be natural, inherent, and unalienable.    [Atchison & N. R. Co. v. Baty, 6 Neb. 37, 40, 29 Am. Rep. 356.]

    By the "absolute rights" of individuals is meant those which are so in their primary and strictest sense, such as would belong to their persons merely in a state of nature, and which every man is entitled to enjoy, whether out of society or in it. The rights of personal security, of personal liberty, and private property do not depend upon the Constitution for their existence. They existed before the Constitution was made, or the government was organized. These are what are termed the "absolute rights" of individuals, which belong to them independently of all government, and which all governments which derive their power from the consent of the governed were instituted to protect.    [People v. Berberrich (N. Y.) 20 Barb. 224, 229; McCartee v. Orphan Asylum Soc. (N. Y.) 9 Cow. 437, 511, 513, 18 Am. Dec. 516; People v. Toynbee (N. Y.) 2 Parker, Cr. R. 329, 369, 370 (quoting 1 Bl. Comm. 123).]

Clearly, if our rights are inherent, unalienable and exist outside of the Constitution and any formation of government, then they are not something that need to be earned. As the Declaration of Independence clearly states, governments are not formed in order to dispense rights, but instead:
    "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed"

The original purpose of our government's formation was to protect and defend the individual rights of each citizen. It is some twisted form of Orwellian illogic that concludes that those fundamental rights are protected by their violation! And it is the cruelest perversion when this method is applied to young, developing minds as is currently being done in public school civic classes all across the nation. In the name of "service-learning", school children are forced to perform hours of "community service" work while any discussion of the nature of individual rights and the guarantees of those rights in the U.S. Constitution are buried. And this is after these same children have already been conscripted into forced education.

People's gaps in knowledge, resulting in a corresponding failure to grasp the true value of a thing, is certainly not limited to the abstract concepts of individual rights. If one believes that it is the government's function to determine what is of value for each of us, and that it is the government's further role to educate us to appreciate those values, even if force must be applied to achieve that goal, then, in the spirit of the Thanksgiving holiday, let's consider another program that might be implemented.

I suggest that every American be required to live in an isolated log cabin in northern Minnesota for a period of two years: heating their home with wood that must be cut, hauled and split; getting water from a stream which must then be purified by boiling; using candles or open pit fires for light; butchering their own meat; plowing, planting, growing and harvesting their own crops; and maintaining the structure as required, including building an optional outhouse if desired. Of course, everyone would be encouraged to explore sources of alternative energy, sustainable forestry, organic farming, low-impact waste management, and energy conservation in their spare time. I know with absolute certainty that anyone surviving this wonderful experience would have "earned" a much greater respect and honest appreciation for: the hot dog that they purchase at their grocery store; the gallon of gasoline that they pump into their automobile; the flush of a toilet; the flick of a switch that floods the room with light; the push of a button that raises the room temperature by a few degrees; the convenience of picking up the telephone and calling a roofer when a leak is discovered; the simple pleasure of a conversation with another person; and so much more!

If forced military, national or community-service are good ideas that are justified due to their beneficial effect upon the conscriptee, then I can see no argument against this proposal which would have considerably more beneficial impact. Impact being the operative word!

Of course, I'm kidding. I would never suggest that a program like this was in any way justified in being imposed upon citizens of a free country. I was just making a point about individual rights and why conscription is wrong in principle. However, if someone were to suggest that we make this a requirement for anyone running for political office, then you would have my attention!

Happy Thanksgiving!
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