Memorial Day is a day to pay respects and grieve for the loss of the US military members who died fighting America’s wars. Defenders of freedom. Liberators of the oppressed. And it is not just on Memorial Day that the lives and deaths of these heroes are memorialized. It is every day that we are reminded of the prestige of the American soldier. It is almost universally accepted in the US that military service is unequivocally the most important and sacred position in our society. Freedom itself is said to depend upon it. Stories detailing battles and the deaths of soldiers are glorified and dramatized. They are immortalized and idolized in almost every part of our culture. This reverence is pervasive in our music, our social media, our movies, our books, our news, and our radio broadcasts. Anyone caught questioning this narrative is condemned as a traitor and the greatest of heretics. This topic often evokes an incredibly powerful emotional responses in Americans, and on Memorial Day it reaches a climax. All loss of military life is tragic and awful. But are there some losses which were beyond unconscionable?
Memorial Day is probably the saddest and most painful federal holiday for many Americans, and understandably so. More than one million loved ones died or never returned. And sadly these were not quiet, peaceful departures at the end of long satisfying lives; most of these deaths were violent. They were painful. They were indescribably horrifying. They were premature. The worst part might be that almost all of these deaths were totally unnecessary and preventable.
The sad truth is that there were only a couple of US conflicts which were even remotely justifiable. Nearly all of America’s wars were political wars which were waged against people who posed no direct threat to the United States. These wars had nothing to do with defense. These were offensive wars. They were aggressive and imperialistic. They resulted in less freedom and more danger to nearly everyone in the world, including American citizens. They were very costly in both economic terms as well as in terms of loss of human life. But, for the sake of argument, suppose we say that these wars were virtuous, or at the very least that the public and these service members were deceived. Perhaps there is at least one silver lining. These service members all volunteered to take on these risks, didn’t they? Didn’t all of these people willingly accept the possibility of such terrible death? They were not forced or coerced in any way to fight for the freest country on earth, right? Sadly, this is not true. Some estimates put the number of service members who were compelled to face these fatal odds at over 16 million people. 16 million draftees.
16 million conscripts did not want to fight, kill, or risk death. 16 million Americans were literally enslaved by their own government to do the evil bidding of politicians. Roughly 30% of the Americans who died during the Vietnam War were draftees. More than 11 million service members during WWII were drafted and had less than a 1:1000 chance of even surviving the war. Americans were drafted during the American Revolution, The Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. Today the selective service still forcibly registers American men from the ages of 18-25 and has a database of over 16 million. All in the name of freedom. Just in case there is a sudden shortage of people willing to defend their own liberty. There has even been a recent political push to greatly expand this number by including women in this wretched slave-army registration database. All in the name of equality.
Let’s ask ourselves, why do we need a defense agency in the first place? What are we defending? Freedom? Freedom to do what? Freedom from what?
Freedom means we have the ability to use our private property the way we see fit. Liberty means we can do anything we want (as long as we don’t harm others or their property, of course). Freedom is the very antithesis of slavery. American soldiers are supposed to be defending our property from being damaged or stolen and yet soldiers are subjected to the ultimate damage and theft. We are supposedly fighting a foreign power which could allegedly enslave us by enslaving people. Considering that freedom is the opposite of conscription, is conscription the best way to fight the threat of enslavement or theft?
The truth is the draft is needed to fight primarily unpopular and unjustifiable wars. Drafted armies are weaker and less effective and lead to greater loss of life. Conscription is literal enslavement and is perhaps the worst form of slavery imaginable. Think about that. These slaves had to kill nameless people in order to even have a chance at survival. This barbaric policy has no place in American politics or culture. It is despicable and destructive to the ends of liberty it supposedly protects.
This Memorial Day, let’s remember the people who were enslaved by their own government to kill people who were no threat to liberty. Remember those who fought as slaves for criminal politicians, all in the name of “freedom” from slavery and oppression.
Ungoverned Radio 