Ethical Arguments for the Incompatibility of Conscription with a Free Country

This essay shall use the principles of individual rights, negative obligations, and market specialization to demonstrate how forced military service is incompatible with a truly free country.

Draft advocates often claim that a nation of freedom entails certain obligations toward the preservation of its institutions, but this is fallacious rhetoric. The sole responsibilities of every citizen toward a purely free society (but, alas, not the food-poison hybrid of today's mixed economy welfare state) are negative.

A citizen's negative obligations imply that he cannot initiate a private war against the United States government, nor can he enter a criminal rampage, nor undertake acts of theft, vandalism, threat, or fraud. Such deeds are impositions of physical force that inherently conflict with a free system.

Once wanton coercion is removed from a society, free market dynamics enter the scene, or, in the words of classical economist Claude Frederic Bastiat, "work becomes more profitable than plunder", and further regulation and oversight become unnecessary and harmful. If people relate to each other solely within their mutual interests, what threats are there to guard against?

Now consider what the introduction of a fresh threat, such as terrorism, to a laissez-faire society would entail. Because all persons are free to act in their own interest, they will mount a defense of their own volition, without the need of a costly and intrusive conscription apparatus! After all, their lives and property are at stake, their liberties are the ones hanging on the edge of a fanatic's knife.