Young Germans will have to choose between the Bundeswehr (military service) and unpaid social service work. Libertarians to a person, will call this slavery, because that is what it is.
Germany to Re-Introduce Slavery
Please consider the Eurointelligence headline story Germany to Re-Introduce Slavery
The headline might be bordering on the hysterical, but the big idea in German politics right now is to re-introduce the general draft. This is not happening because Germany expects to be at war. It is not about the military at all. Under the plans, young people, male and female, can choose between the Bundeswehr or a year of forced labour in the social services, essentially uncompensated.
The main reason we see is that their fiscal rules have depleted them with the resources to fund the Bundeswehr and critical social services like old-age care. For example, there is a big row going on right now within the coalition currently between Boris Pistorius, the defence minister, and Christian Lindner, over Pistorius’ demands for another €6bn for the Bundeswehr. The discussions on the reintroduction of the draft are at an early stage. They won’t affect the current budget dispute. But it could go some way to fix the Bundeswehr’s budget issues.
The SPD leader Lars Klingbeil sugar-coated the idea as giving young people an opportunity to serve the state at one point in their lives. Another underlying assumption is that young people are infinitely stupid. German high school goes until the age of 19. This is higher than elsewhere because German children do not start school until they are 6. With a year of enforced military or social services, they won’t start their studies or apprenticeship until they are 20. A Bachelor’s degree takes three, but this is usually not sufficient. So they will be 24 or 25 when they hit the labour market. This puts them at a distinct disadvantage to young people elsewhere.
We expect mass emigration as a result. Young Ukrainian men who try to escape the draft often do so at the risk of their lives. Romanian police have discovered bodies of young Ukrainians trying to swim through the Tisa river into Romania. Young Germans won’t have to swim through the Rhine. They can just go anywhere within the Schengen area, and study where they like. For a country that is facing structural labour shortages, the re-introduction of the draft is about the worst policy decision imaginable. The smart people will leave.
The political support is strengthening. The FDP has called for it. The SPD is also now in favour. The CDU says it is open to a discussion. The AfD will naturally support it. The Greens and the Left Party are opposed, but that won’t be enough to stop it.
Not an “Opportunity”
What’s being proposed is not an opportunity. It’s a mandate for servitude.
I don’t know if it would pass, but Eurointelligence knows more about the internals of German politics than anyone else, so I expect forced servitude is on a train for passage at the moment.
Mass emigration would undoubtedly be the result. Who wants to give up four years of their life taking care of immigrants, elderly, or preparing for war?
And the more you prepare for war, the more like it is. Vietnam would not have happened without a draft. Mass protests finally ended it.
Liberty at Stake
I replied to a reader moments ago, about unalienable Rights, before I saw the Eurointelligence story.
In response to Hospitals Turn to Pay In Advance, In Full a reader said there was a “right” to healthcare.
I responded there was no such right.
From the Declaration of Independence “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
I love the wording “unalienable” and “self-evident”. No one can take those rights away.
I oppose the draft and support anyone anywhere, especially Ukrainians, who decides is is their unalienable right to “liberty” and “pursuit of happiness”, no matter what the government of Ukraine says and does.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I seriously cannot understand why many alleged Libertarians support Vivek Ramaswamy.
For example, Vivek Ramaswamy, the youngest GOP presidential candidate, wants civics tests for young voters 18 to 24
Though he’s campaigning as the “young” candidate, Ramaswamy would like to make it a little harder for the nation’s youngest voters to cast a ballot.
He’s proposing a constitutional amendment that would require citizens 18 to 24 to pass a civics test in order to vote — the same one immigrants take to become naturalized U.S. citizens. Under his proposal, young Americans could, as an alternative, perform six months of military or first-responder service. But if none of these requirements are met, they would have to wait until they turn 25 before they could vote in their first election.
The Ramaswamy campaign emphasized that this isn’t a plan to raise the voting age because younger voters would still be able to participate if they met the requirements. But Ramaswamy has previously used language that explicitly stated he would try to raise the voting age.
“People like Vivek Ramaswamy who are using their age as an element to try and stand out to Gen-Z, they’re very obviously wolves in sheep’s clothing,” said Lucas Robinson, a young voter from Texas. “People our age can really see through people like that.”
Savanah Now comments “It’s worth noting that Politico reported this year that even Ramaswamy’s own campaign staff didn’t like the idea. The Washington Post reports that younger conservatives don’t like it.”
Of course, younger voters don’t like it. And if Trump was dumb enough to pick Vivek as his running mate, it could easily cost Trump the election.
From Vivek2024.Com “The United States faces a 25% recruitment deficit in the military and just 16% of Gen Z say they’re proud to be American. The absence of national pride is a serious threat to our Republic’s survival. At a time when young Americans are taught to celebrate their differences, Civic Duty Voting – and in particular the service path – creates a sense of shared purpose and experience. Serving your nation, knowing something about your nation, or at least living in your nation for a short time as an adult isn’t too much to ask. Our lost civic pride won’t reappear automatically. Reviving it will require boldness.”
If that does not sound like support for a draft, what does?
Flashback to the 60s
Also consider Vivek Ramaswamy wants young voters to pass a civics test. These Americans call it a flashback to the 1960s.
Today, some Black Americans say Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s proposal to implement a civics test for voters ages 18 to 24 gives them flashbacks to the hurdles.
Though the 15th amendment guaranteed the right for Black men to vote, some Southern states passed literacy test requirements and offered exemptions for white people after the Civil War, Olga Koulisis, assistant professor of history at Murray State University, explained.
Vivek Could Not Pass His Own Civics Test
AP News comments: Nikki Haley promises to send American special forces into Mexico. Vivek Ramaswamy has accused Mexico’s leader of treating drug cartels as his “sugar daddy” and says that if he is elected president, “there will be a new daddy in town.”
Politico quotes Vivek: Using military force on cartels without Mexico’s permission “would not be the preferred option, but we would absolutely be willing to do it,” entrepreneur and conservative activist Vivek Ramaswamy said in an interview.
Bombing Mexico to stop the drug trade, a clear act of war. It’s not the preferred method, but’s that’s OK, he would do it anyway.
Vivek could not pass his own civics test on who gets to declare war. Notably, his position is close to that of Nikki Haley.
Vivek, Not a Libertarian
Vivek is no Libertarian. He’s a charlatan who all along had a single mission, running for Vice President.
A draft, or forced servitude by any means, is in direct conflict with the unalienable right to liberty. Thus, anyone who says they believe in unalienable rights but supports a draft under any circumstances either does not understand the word unalienable or is a liar,
“Mass emigration would undoubtedly be the result. Who wants to give up four years of their life taking care of immigrants, elderly, or preparing for war?”
I agree with you that draft sucks, anywhere. But unfortunately, many young people probably would shrug and adapt. Young people are impressionable, and presumably the propaganda campaign to accept this will be first-rate. Unless they find an argument better than “I don’t like this”, which will be expected and smothered with arguments along the lines of “it’s good for you and for the country”, any movement against it will be a non-starter.
During WWII, sons were withdrawn from combat if something happened to their brothers, making them only sons. Most Americans have never been willing to sacrifice their only remaining son in distant foreign lands. Today, almost all sons are only sons.
“Who wants to give up four years of their life taking care of immigrants, elderly, or preparing for war?”
Mish you should probably edit that. The article says 1 year, not 4
“The SPD leader Lars Klingbeil sugar-coated the idea as giving young people an opportunity to serve the state at one point in their lives.”
They will serve the state with their tax payments at every opportunity.
Yeah, but it’s selective slavery that excludes too big to fail dynastic family members. And no, the Vietnam War didn’t happen ’cause of the draft anymore than the Korean War or the war of 1812 or Teddy’s liberation of Cuba happened due to the absence of a draft. However British naval impressment did help cause the first colonial civil war starting in 1776, unlike the Bush and Clinton adventures in mission accomplishments without a draft. .
I’ve always been 100% against any form of slavery, be it the draft, stop loss of troops that have done their time, forcing prisoners to make number plates, debtors prisons for those who can’t pay court orders and non voluntary child support payments to unwed mothers.
As for a civics test, I’m ambivalent as yes there are plenty of morons who should not get to vote; but what questions will be asked if the test is written with a bias? Could the woke public servants put in questions that normal people would give an unwoke answer to and fail us? Kids have failed tests for saying that there are 2 genders.
As for changing the voting age I say if someone is 16 years old and in the workforce then they should have more rights to vote than the 35 year old crank addict living on the streets of San Francisco.
“..there are plenty of morons who should not get to vote..”
And no no-morons who should.
50 years of completely unconstrained debasement transfers, have ensured that brains and power are now virtually 100% inversely related. Ensuring any “test” would be written by exactly the very most moronic of all possible morons. Such as Ramaswamy.
In the same way, we could qualify as “slavery” the portion of working time whose product is used to pay taxes of all kinds. But you have to pay taxes, unless you live in complete self-sufficiency. So slavery in this sense is systematic, and cannot be avoided.
“But you have to pay taxes, unless you live in complete self-sufficiency.”
No, you don’t. Not involuntarily.
In anything resembling a civilized society, you’d pay for the government service of protecting your property. If you don’t care to have any protected, don’t pay.
If, OTOH, you do care to have some property protected, registered as yours etc., you; and you only; should be the one paying for that service. All of it: Police; courts; roads to facilitate the workings of the above; military to protect it against Putin; plus all other trappings creating a society sufficiently worth vile for far and away most people, that they have a realistic reason to play along and not simply overrun the whole thing with pitchforks and homemade ropes and guillotines.
No “someone else”, who does not ask government to protect anything for them, would ever be forced to pay for it, in any legitimately governed society. It would always be all voluntary.
Hence: No “cheaters”. No STASI. No rat-out-your-neighbor. No “corporate loopholes”. No millions of people engaged in nothing more productive than “catching” their fellow American, nor other millions doing nothing more productive than trying to find ways to avoid getting “caught.” Noone being shaken down at some jackbooted IRS’ gunpoint. Nor by way of having their money, nor salaries, debased away.
Just straight forward, voluntary, civilized society compatible, pay for service rendered.
This all madness started with US led NATO militarisation expansion to the border of Russia.
Well Elon is finished.
link to the-sun.com
Volkswagen and BMW must be happy
Damn… what’d he do to piss THEM off?
Germany puts the Greens in government, and ends up with coal and lignite power plants, the pulling down of land-based wind turbines, and violent attacks on EV factories. What kind of world do these people want to live in?!
This is all hype. The current German government coalition has barely polling at the level of the main opposition party. They don’t care since some of the parties won’t even make it into the next parliament.
Since only the imported diversity have children, the future German army would be a terrifying sight.
You’re not imagining a horde of Islamist Nazis, are you?
Yes, good idea. Give unmotivated and sceptical people guns. Then expect them to go to war. FUBAR
It’ll end up in a war alright – just not quite the one they were anticipating.
This is a buncha nonsense.
FIRST, Germany has ALWAYS had a conscription / mandatory military service since the 50’s and it’s only been a little over 10 years that they HAVEN’T had it. They only ended military service requirements in 2011.
Now RUSSIA is Invading Eastern Europe. Germany (and ALL of Eastern Europe) has already BEEN through all of this before. Only 30-ish years ago Russia dominated nearly all of Eastern Europe and kept the rest of Europe in Fear of the USSR / Russia.
Germany is NOT the US and doesn’t have anywhere close to its military and isn’t sitting with a pile of its own Nuclear Weapons.
This is a DEFENSIVE action and has been needed for a decade. Military Service was for 18 months, NOT 4 years in Germany.
Old people comparing REAL SLAVERY to serving in the military or Social Service for a few months are clueless. Clearly Old White Dudes that don’t understand what people who have ACTUALLY experienced Slavery went through (or are going through now) in different times and in different countries, where there are REAL slaves / captives being held and abused as we speak.
Get a grip people and cut the hyperbole.
“Now RUSSIA is Invading Eastern Europe. Germany (and ALL of Eastern Europe) has already BEEN through all of this before.”
Your history book is slightly broken. Germany invaded Russia, then known as the Soviet Union. If you want to crab about the Soviets not going home after the war that’s a different issue, but even them look at the number of time Germany/Prussia invaded Russia in the past.
And let’s not forget the Ukrainian fascist regime was attempting ethnic cleansing for about 8 years before Russia intervened to prevent the Donbas from becoming another Bosnia.
“get a grip and cut the hyperbole” is laughable coming from you, hyperbole is all you ever do!
I’m against slavery but I’m 100% for making people work for benefits. If you receive welfare, food stamps, etc you should be required to work 40 hours per week. If you can’t find a job you’ll be required to work for the government doing manual labor (cutting grass, picking up garbage, digging ditches, construction work with manual tools – no driving equipment, cleaning bathrooms, floors and buildings, etc)
And what will the passive income types that don’t produce anything or do any work do to earn their keep.
They show their Mississippi mud-eye on various webcam sites online?
“I’m against slavery but I’m 100% for making people work for benefits. If you receive welfare, food stamps, etc you should be required to work 40 hours per week.”
Including welfare and benefits handed out by way of debasement driven “asset appreciation” mediated wealth transfers. Which is, after all, the sort which has made up at least 90-95+% of all welfare, for the past 50 years.
And continue to do so, at an accelerating rate even, today as well. Hence why those picking up their welfare checks on Wall Street, seemingly get much larger ones than the ones picking them up in poorer neighborhoods.
I know too many Boomers who get their history only from Hollywood movies. These often embellished references have left them clueless. Some of these Boomers have a high level of scholarship, but not an once of common sense or gut feeling. Inculcated for decades through the mass media they think that their only job is to distinguish the truth from the fiction. Not realizing that 90% of media is owned and controlled by six entities and it all contains some level of disinformation.
I would rather see a common sense quiz for voting rights rather than a civics test, but that is an equally preposterous idea. Many of the often criticized younger citizens of this nation have a knowledge that something is not right, and don’t strain to see things through rose colored glasses.
Boomers read books. Later generations play video games.
Many boomers believe everything they read in books or hear on the television. It is often better to be uninformed than misinformed. Jack Welch case in point. Believers in him sold the country down the river.
No. We never believed everything we read nor saw on TV. We never fell for the bull your generation believes.
Once you’ve fallen for nonsense as trivially obvious as central banks, “making money from my home and portfolio”, and governments bigger than Jefferson’s being any sort of useful entity; there is no meaningfully further left to fall.
By that point, all that is left, is the same old, endlessly repeated, mindless regurgitation of logically incoherent; and impossible; totalitarian by-and-for-idiots-and-idiots-only regime apologetic, incoherent pap.
100% true.
BOOMERS _ Brainwashed into ignorance.
I don’t watch TV or movies and I collect nonfiction books from when people could still think and the publishing industry was not consolidated. Books after 1980 are almost all shite.
If the “state enhancing” propaganda in TV, movies and internet is obvious to you, why wouldn’t book creation be equally compromised?
Boomers read books that are written to reinforce the other propaganda they are gorge on.
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who think they are free.”
I don’t suppose anyone reads anymore but here’s a salient book tip for today. Lin Yutang wrote a book in 1942 ish. “Between Laughter and Tears” that explains 80 years later, the tumult of today and in astonishing detail.
He says before WW2 is over, that WW3 will be instigated by Britain against Russia and that it will be triggered when the industrial capacity of Germany unites with the resources of Russia; and that Germany will be destroyed economically in the process; all concurrent with Japan finally being rearmed to help oppose a re-emergent China.
Old books are the last bastion of human intelligence, it’s why the classics are still revered. Modern media is cognitive parasitism. It’s job is to control people.
Conscription is not unconstitutional. You can say you don’t like it but your personal opinion doesn’t matter since the question was legally settled long ago as far back as the Revolutionary War. Slavery is for life. Conscription is only for a couple or years or the duration.
Temporary slavery then?
I remember grade school, middle school and high school. It was slavery because it was mandatory.
Or your parents could of homeschooled you. It isn’t a mandate that you must attend school, just that you get some form of education.
“I remember grade school, middle school and high school. It was slavery because it was mandatory.”
Yes.
That many interpret your constitution as permitting conscription doesn’t make it so. Even if the Supremes rule on the constitution it still doesn’t make it true. Look at how many times courts have restricted the right to bear arms as just an example.
A couple of years or the duration? Plenty of drafted troops had to cool their heels in Europe after the war for months and months and were not free. As for the duration I’d point out that the war in Afghanistan had a duration so long that there were men serving at the end who were not yet born when that war started and men who were not yet fathers when the war started but were grandfathers at the end of that conflict? And for what? Images that looked just like the fall of Saigon when Kabul fell.
They must not have enough poor and desperate joining voluntarily. They just need to shift a few trillion out of the hands of the bottom 80% into the hands of the top .05%, and make joining up lucrative enough that the kids join up before succumbing to drugs or food addiction.
Otherwise, conscription will be necessary, and something terrible could happen: A rich person could be compelled to defend their country.
There will be war.
“No one can take those rights away”.
I’m going to have to disagree with this. Ever since 9/11 they have taken away from the law and constitution.
War powers Resolution completely meaningless and ignored.
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated”
The US government in cahoots with Facebook/Google/Yahoo/Comcast/Verizon/AT&T/etc. stores every single phone conversation (text to speech), every e-mail sent or received, every website visited, GPS data from phones, etc. etc. on every US citizen. Snowden told us what they were doing and everybody shrugged.
Aye, but the regime training and handing people weapons and hoping they don’t point the weapons at the regime, is a risky strategy by the regime.
Germany has (had?) a welfare state. It used to be paid for via heavily subsidized energy costs (thanks to Russia, not Germany) and lopsided exports of high precision machinery (made with subsidized energy).
Whether this law Mish talks about passes or not, Germans must figure out a new way to pay for their welfare state, or they must dismantle their welfare state. The welfare benefits are not free, and they never were.
I’m not sure that working for your welfare benefits constitutes “slavery”. It seems more like a click-bait title for yet another media outlet that is struggling for readership.
Grow up Europe! German exports (really Russian energy) won’t continue to subsidize the EU anymore either
BTW — former US general Stanley McChrystal had a very similar idea, but he called it (and you just can’t make this up) “mandatory volunteerism”. This guy went to West Point and was supposedly near the top of his class; somehow he doesn’t understand the concepts “mandatory” and “volunteer”.
McChrystal’s “English” vocabulary problems aside, the idea was DOA and widely ridiculed.
It does explain why McChrystal, military “surge” in Iraq aside, was so unsuccesful at effecting change in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Image a person who’s native tongue is Arab or Urdu trying to understand this ding bat politician (in milatary fatiques) babbling about something that makes no sense even in English.
Call it “the state”, “the blob”, or whatever label… this corrupt and inefficient group of politicians promising “free” sh!t, are in fact all full of sh!t.
ImagINE a person…
I aint gone to West Point, so I didn’t proof read my comment before clicking 🙂
Basically, Russia has been Germany’s sugar mummy, and America tried to stop this by replacing Russia as Germany’s sugar daddy, except that America didn’t deliver the sugar and has still forbidden Germany from going back to mummy.
You are dead wrong on this issue. Serving one’s country has nothing to do with slavery, and it might rid the host country of those who act contrary to its history as well as culture. I would love to see it return here in the states and stop the appalling immaturity of our nation’s youth which has no clue as to our real history which has nothing to do with slavery……
You are entitled to your massive cognitive dissonance opinion.
It is an unalienable right.
The unalienable right is “no one can own you.” Forced servitude is slavery. No more, no less.
Sorry Mike, you are wrong on this. The Constitution provides Congress the power to “… raise and support armies…”. It has been challenged in the Supreme Court in 1918 and found lawful. This is one of the few things Congress is directly charged to do in the Constitution (unlike most of what it does nowadays by going beyond its designated powers).
I might also add that Liberty has limits on it just as Free Speech does (you can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater.)
What if it’s on fire? Like right now. Let it burn to a crisp.
…but you can always set off a fire alarm to delay a vote in congress.
Mike is NOT wrong. Treating run-away slaves as property was found legal in the Dred Scott case, even though slavery is an obvious abrogation of unalienable rights. The SC can make stupid, yet legal rulings, and have been doing so for over two centuries. As for yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, that is a case of disturbance of the peace, not free speech. Finally, the limits on liberty that you should explore center around negative and positive rights.
Raising an army is like raising campaign funds… putting a gun to someone’s head to do it, is hardly going to make them loyal to you. You want your kids to be forced to fight and die in one of Biden’s wars? I doubt that.
Mish was defining what it means to be libertarian, not what is legal or lawful. Thanks for clarifying that you are not libertarian, that’s fine.
Serving One’s County /= serving degenerate criminals in the federal government and MIC.
The “serve one’s country” notion is rather a recent invention of the industrial age and also historical, now we are in the information age.
For most of human history, soldiers were mercenaries paid with booty, the one being served was not usually a country, but a monarch, or a religion. In the English and US civil wars, was either side, “serving their country”? Or were they fighting for economic power?
False. Conscription was always used to fill the armies even back in Sumerian days.
Notice the pols are never drafted. The draft is for little people who have no means of self defense.
What if your country is CCP China, North Korea, Iran, etc… wanna fight then?
I was drafted in 1968. Its similar to getting raped. The difference is that rape only lasts for a few minutes, draft rape lasts for years. Try it before you pontificate!
Time to bring back the volkssturm.
I used to say that maybe Basic Training, without obligation to serve, would be good for the country, even if some of the people trained instead go to the Black Liberation Army to fight against us. That still might be good for us.
Vivek said “… just 16% of Gen Z say they’re proud to be American. The absence of national pride is a serious threat to our Republic’s survival. ”
That should put a couple of questions to us. First one has been asked many times: If our leaders or their leaders order but the troops refuse to obey, what needs to change? Our leaders? Our foreign policy? Our national purpose? It would be easy enough for us to pull out of NATO and the other mutual defense agreements. Not so easy on Europe, east Asian countries or Israel. But that is their problem. And accepting that other nations could nationalize or take investments American companies made and not compensate for it.
A second question is “What would a nation that >50% of Gen Z and following generations would be proud of -> look like?” That may not be one centralized nation, but a fragmentation such as either still a bit of a center like Spain, or a whole set of independent nations like Austro-Hungary became.
This is foolish. How well did things turn out for Austro-Hungarian nations turn out??
Short version, would NEVER work long term.
Say you’re Out of Touch, without saying it.
This happened many times in the history of the US. The 60’s and 70’s isn’t that long ago, relatively speaking.
Buncha Old farts are running the country (Again) from out of touch political parties and don’t relate to the youth of America. Take as old as the country. It will swing back to the other direction if EITHER party can actually field a competent and NON-Corrupt set of Leaders. Apparently neither party is willing to try that method yet.
here comes the political agitator DavidC to demonstrate a level of left wing stupidity that is turning long time democrats against the democrat party.
F#ck all marxists
You can hide his comments so you’ll never have to read them again.
You didn’t even read or understand what he wrote, you inveterate imbecile.
What would our young people, and many others be proud of? A nation that doesn’t perpetually debase its’ currency by having the Fed monetize the overspending of the Republican and Democrat Congress, administration, etc. But debt and debasement are their way of life that they choose to get campaign financing, so they keep an endless barrage of divisive pandering petty topics running in the news to distract all of the common decent people from the truth and uniting against the wasteful spending and debt.
Vocational or technical school which includes apprenticeship (part study part work) starts at 16 years of age after the basic 10yrs. of schooling are over. For those who want to go to Uni and have the grades, they continue in academic classes until Abitur exams during the 13th yr. of schooling.
Everything is slavery now. The word “slavery” has no meaning because it is used to decribe any constraint on total liberty no matter what the reason. It makes a mockery of what real slavery is.
Yep. A bunch of Old White dudes screaming about “Slavery”, when some of them were alive in the Jim Crow Laws era of the South is possibly one of the most ridiculous things I’ve seen on this forum.
The 60’s, 70’s (and let’s be real…much of the past 50 years in states like Alabama, Mississippi, etc. when REAL Lynchings / Executions and Segregation and Sending People to prison for Work Gangs were still a thing.
And those crappy conditions for minorities were nothing compared to the previous 400 years in the US.
People need to get a grip on reality.
Obviously you are listening to one too many Joe Biden speeches.
Do you happen to know anyone who lives in the Deep South? About as nice and pleasant a group of people as exists in the US.
There is a world outside America, and world outside your mother’s basement, where the word “slavery” has less to do with America’s history, and more to do with the whole world’s history and present.
You are the least fit person to suggest anyone gets a grip on reality.
Scripture says rich person living in a mansion can be a slave to their unrestrained sinful lifestyle while a person in bondage can have a lot of freedom in the mental peace of religious faith and conviction.
That’s a parable. Mish was talking about a legal issue.
He was talking about inalienable rights, but spelt it incorrectly with a “u”. Americans seem to struggle with the letter “u”.
He was talking about his view of what his rights are but his view is not what the Constitution says.
Like the words “racist” and “far right” then?
Same with “genocide” and sundry other words.
History Repeats Itself . . . Europe is cracking up just like it did in the 1930s . . .
Bet you all $1 that Larry Fink has a team working on creating Slaver futures, and then of course an ETF. Would be a big hit.
Maybe a Janissary repo. The Ottoman Turks demanded Christian boys who were raised as well educated and fierce warriors, fanatically dedicated to the Empire and Islam. They formed the first professional standing army in Europe. Now, take Turkish immigrants and turn them into the new German shock troops.
Mexico would not be a war. It would be a special military operation. Open borders teaming with military age males here is not simply to gather more essentially uniparty Dem voters. They are cannon fodder in a large conflict. Draft, boom, hasta luego muchacho. AI in the basement of RAND says the Chinese are worried about their demographics and precious single son society. If the Americans can import enough peons to man the front lines, CCP might be more reluctant to tangle. I think the same is being applied in Germany. Automatic Indentured Servitude. The Leader did it. Be careful of what you wish for kind of thing.
I don’t know why the US doesn’t just annex the whole of Latin America and be done with it.
I’ve said this for years! Imagine all the new states we could divide Mexico into. And we would eliminate most of the illegal immigration problems because the illegal immigrants would already be in the USA and getting all the benefits of being so.
These poor little Colonel Klinks….not hitting the labor market until they are 25. Their life is over at that age.
I think this is an EXCELLENT idea and would like to see it implemented in the USA also.
Love it!!! Two years of military service for all 18 year olds. But a big NO to social service work.
If we force them into the military they will learn to be responsible hence minimizing the need for social service workers.
No, you can’t change the enlistment policy without unintended consequences. History tends to show that when you force everyone into the military, you end up with a lousy military.
Or a civil war, or a guerilla revolution, or increased violent crime.
You clearly know little about Social Service or Lack Therof in the US.
The Veterans alone deserve more Social Services. All the Old Farts on this forum will be sucking up Social Services. Our crumbling infrastructure needs support and so do our communities.
You can have discipline and be taught to be disciplined without the need to shoot a gun or be trained to kill others.
No, the government just needs to stop pissing money away on foreign wars and redirect that stream of cash into your crumbling infrastructure and your communities – how about that for revolutionary!
If doing that got them better or more campaign donations that supporting wars, then they would do it. Bridge builders need to up their game!
How about teaching discipline and all the other virtues that create well adjusted and moral young people in school? Waiting until they are 18 to try and fix the problems of a woke education system by a draft or forced unpaid service will just give you headaches. What can they do to someone like me if they say I have to do a year or 2 of unpaid social service and I turn up late every day, make sure to break things, do a half arsed job, not follow procedure etc. Fire me? Say they are disappointed in my attitude? Then imagine many thousands more just like me, or worse as they might just frag those in charge like happened many times in Vietnam.
A piece of paper guarantees nothing in the real world unless all are willing to accept what is written on that piece of paper. Someone like Putin can and has taken away most of the “rights” of the Russian people. The same could happen in the USA were a dictator able to take over.
You don’t need a dictator you already have an oligarchy . . .
Clearly never lived under a dictatorship and spouting off about something you don’t know about.
Clearly never lived under a dictatorship and spouting off about something you don’t know about too.
Jojo, you’re missing the point. An inalienable right is inherently yours. Whether you’re able to freely exercise that right, or not, doesn’t change the fact that it is a right. An inalienable right doesn’t come to you from someone else, it’s not granted, it’s not a gift, a law or a decree. The paper is irrelevant to what is just or unjust. But when someone is denying your inalienable rights, that is unjust, it is wrong.
Unfortunately, while most people get the “self-evident” part when it comes to their own rights, many disregard the “all men” (or, in modern language, all humans). Many if not most human problems arise when people overlook the implication that others also equal rights (a version of the Golden Rule).
So if we want to retain our rights legally (and not in the abstract), we need to actively defend them against those who tend to trample on others’ rights.
P.S. The problem with most of the socialists’ proposed “rights” is that they only function by denying the rights of others (taking others’ labor). For instance, you have a right to housing (or food) – that you build (or grow) yourself. But you do not have a right to housing (or food) built or grown by someone else – that would make them your slave.
Rights don’t exist. They are a nice-to-have, a recent invention of industrial age states, but let’s be honest, if you have no power of force behind you, you have nothing, no wealth, and no rights, nothing.
Nonsense, go do a little homework. Rights have existed and been legally recognized since the earliest days of humanity. Rights derive from an innate sense of justice which is hardwired into nearly all humans via our primate DNA. Apes and chimps and other social creatures also have systems of rights, although they’re different. For humans, force is sometimes required to enforce rights, but that doesn’t mean that might-makes-right. Everyone understands that enforced injustice is wrong. Humans’ sense of rights has evolved over time but it’s been around for all of known history.
While nobody likes forced servitude, I wonder if there is another reason for doing this.
This link says that 60% of the people on Welfare (Services is the German equivalent) are migrants. That’s 2.5 million people.
This link says unemployment is 5.9% (almost double the US number which is admittedly not exactly correct)
I wonder if this is really intended to force the unemployed and the social services people into doing at least some kind of work for their benefits. If that’s the case, I applaud the idea and think we should do the same here. You’d get an exemption from military or social work if you had an actual job.
Recent data in the UK shows that the vast majority of new immigrants and illegal immigrants are “economically inactive”, and that means they are active in the black market. Some 85% of Middle East, North Africa, Turkish are sponging off the taxpayer.
While nobody likes forced servitude, I wonder if there is another reason for doing this.
This link says that 60% of the people on Welfare (Services is the German equivalent) are migrants. That’s 2.5 million people.
link to europeanconservative.com
This link says unemployment is 5.9% (almost double the US number which is admittedly not exactly correct)
link to tradingeconomics.com
I wonder if this is really intended to force the unemployed and the social services people into doing at least some kind of work for their benefits. If that’s the case, I applaud the idea and think we should do the same here. You’d get an exemption from military or social work if you had an actual job.
Under current civil rights laws, a civics test would clearly be unconstitutional. I have mixed feelings on this. Democracy does not work when you have a dumbed down, corrupted population. between this and Citizens United, all of our elites with their unlimited funds control our elections. Politicians for both parties are selected by the elites and rubberstamped in meaningless elections. Of course, some of you who think Trump is a man of the people, but I disagree with you totally. The evidence that he is a fraud and stooge of the elites is in-has been since at least 2018, but you simply ignore it- or deliberately choose to not be exposed to it. We are screwed as far as 2024 goes. Too late for an awakening. Let’s hope we have another chance in 2028.
I get some of that, but the reference to Citizens United shows you have been gas-lit. Of those who contribute to campaigns (aka buy politicians) .. Citizens United is 15th. The 6 labor unions in the top 10 alone account for over 15 times what CU bribes with. Soros is #1 (not shockingly). So your poster child for elites controlling elections is the 15th worst and does not compare in any way to the labor unions or Soros. So you can continue to call CU the bogeyman … but it’s a complete fiction.
Clueless. Citizens United is a LEGAL Ruling. NOT a Donation Group. It basically allows Unlimited Donations of Money or valuable items to support whatever candidates or causes or legislation.
Go learn something before you sound even MORE foolish.ALL of those organizations you mentioned can us the Citizens United ruling to plow massive amounts of money into the political parties and causes.
Clueless. You are clueless and hyperbolic about everything, and have no grip on reality. Go and learn something before you sound even more foolish.
Regurgitating your sites like NPR, New York Times and CNN that openly say they are not interested in truth.
“Democracy does not work when you have a dumbed down, corrupted population.” This. This is absolutely the problem. At *every* level of government (and most corporations, institutions, etc.). To “fix” anything meaningful (instead of swapping corrupt person A with corrupt person B in perpetuity) in the USA we would need to start with an honest, forthright, responsible, accountable populace. God help us…
Democrat………. or maybe it is DUTY to the country, der Fatherland.
or maybe you’ve just discovered click bait…when did you sell out…?
I bet a simple reading comprehension test would suffice in weeding out those who can or can’t vote.
Perhaps apply that to internet comment sections also.
It is sad to say, but a universal draft would stay the hand of the warmongers. Our “all volunteer” military opened the door to governmental fabrico pro bellum adventurism. Our leaders realized that there could be no more Vietnams with the draft. For myself, I am against both slavery through the draft and war, however, he path to peace may not be what we think.
Good idea. At least these kids will learn how to clean up their room.since that’s what the military mainly does.
I have been repeating over and over again to the young people and all others who don’t know history ….all those who have passionately and irrationally hate coal. The simple fact is that it was the beginning of the use of coal as an energy source which really was responsible for ending slavery. So ending coal really does take civilization backwards…..
It is very expensive if you take into account the very high public subsidies which sustain it, as well as the very significant environmental and health costs, which are real, despite the unbelievable level of special interest propaganda a coming out from “conservative” think tanks funded by the oil and coal lobbies.
This is foolish. Whale OIL was popular too… We’ve moved ON.
Let the dead dinosaurs and plants remain dead in the ground and quit poisoning the air, water and land with Coal, the dirtiest of Fossil fuels.
Is that why the German green party replaced wind farms with lignite and coal?
Actually mandatory service is a great idea. In fact, you actually read Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers” (not the movie, which is a farce & mockery of his ideas), you did not get citizenship & voting rights unless you served. This is a “skin in the game” way to make voting and responsibility the serious matter it is. It is not then slavery, it is a right of passage (you serve or you don’t get a controlling vote in the country). National defense and conscription are not slavery anyway, you aren’t boight & sold like property, you are being required to make a contribution to your country’s defense.
Civics tests are a good idea, if you don’t understand it you shouldn’t be voting on it. There should also be a solvency test, if you aren’t productive in paying your own way, you don’t get to vote yourself a raise fir sitting on your ass.
It invites corruption.
What no one says: We have these jobs that people don’t want to do and we can’t pay them to do so we will require free labor from them or we will put them in prison. This would be a disaster in the US because 70+% are unfit to serve (Pentagon).
By the way, Eric Prince made a great case for disempowering the Neo Con destructoids by using mercenaries and he made the point that it’s strictly Constitutional as Letters of Marque and Reprisal.
Are there online application forms?
I like the idea of a test for voters. The forced servitude is of course a evil idea.
The Constitution grants voting rights only to property owners who in those days were the only taxpayers.
What if that test is written by demagogues, sorry, I mean Democrats?
This is fantastically delicious. Absolutely love seeing these woke tyrannical governments being “forced” to do shit like this because of their mismanagement and horrendous policy. Maybe they should take in more 4th world regugees that are a drain on society and that the U.S/Nato created by invading and destroying soverign nations over and over and over. The U.S will be right behind in the same/similar type of tyrannical policy attempts.
WE DO NOT DESPISE THESE PEOPLE ENOUGH
This !!!!
What’s wrong with a Free ride for everyone says the youth of the West?
No one is charging you to ride in the tank or helicopter! Free Ride!
All part of that you will own nothing and be happy gig.
Owning nothing coming to pass but am waiting on the latter part of it.
Yee hah a Tank ride, sounds like fun.
Imagine sending platoons of brainwashed GenZ into the middle east to intervene… eek…
Which is it in Germany, one year or four? BTW, I agree with Vivek about passing a civics test but I would make it mandatory for everyone.
Will you also call Israel’s mandatory military service slavery as well?
Well that’s what it is so yes.
They get paid and the Orthodox are exempt so it’s not really comparable to slavery
Are the orthodox chicken?
Absolutely – 100%.
It takes “civic brainwashing” by the government to believe otherwise.
Do you understand “unalienable”? Believe in it no matter what governments support?
Demographics is destiny politically, economically and socially. I’ve been saying we’re filling up with too many old people and not enough young people. This imbalance will only result in one thing that’s my cliche, “It’s turtles all the way down and inflation all the way up.”
We’re in the 3rd inning of a 9 inning game here. Europe is in inning 4 and you can expect more of the same spread to the demographic basket cases: Italy, Spain, Portugal.
Russia isn’t far behind, keep reading that they don’t have enough workers for their oil production now because many went off to war and died or came back crippled.
There will be bidding wars for young talent soon enough and few will want the old folks.
Robot workers are the future.
The future? They are needed NOW so where are they? My house needs new plumbing, I’d like to see a robot or AI do the work.
Learn to plumb then, you lazy cont. 😀