We Want You

Libertarian thinker, former Republican congressman from the State of Texas, and two time presidential candidate, Ron Paul, issued a scary warning to all Americans this week:

Democrats and Republicans think that we are slaves. They want you.

Prominent authoritarian figures from both statist political parties are beating the statist drum once again for government imposed national service. 

Democrat Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, and current Arizona Republican Senator, John McCain, are both calling for federal legislation which would force some citizens to either serve two years of their lives in the military or perform other mandatory government directed community service.

Statists of every stripe believe that people – especially young people – have a moral obligation to give something back to society. Mr. Paul correctly points out that giving the government power to decide our moral obligations is an invitation to totalitarianism.

We know that the government already has the power to determine our legal obligations. So if Uncle Sam can ultimately turn what it believes to be our moral obligations into legal obligations surely liberty for all will be tossed out the window.

Mandatory national service is not just anti-liberty, it’s un-American observes Mr. Paul. Statists don’t believe that individuals have “inalienable rights.” They think our rights are gifts from the government, and as such can be taken from us at the will of Congress.

Ron Paul is absolutely right, and I applaud him for warning us, but somehow he neglected to mention what the 13^th Amendment to the United States Constitution has to say about this. Not that Constitutional rights matter all that much to statists like Robert Reich and John McCain.  

The 13^th Amendment provides in no uncertain terms: 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.

The highest law of the land says that no one, including government thugs, may enslave anyone or force anyone into involuntary servitude unless the person has been duly convicted, i.e., by due process of law, of a crime. One might be tempted to think that this constitutionally enshrined law of the land settles the matter, but not so fast. 

Sadly, however, our so-called “inalienable rights” – particularly the rights guaranteed by the 13^th Amendment, which was ratified after the Civil War in 1865 -- have been ignored time and time again by government statists since then.  Uncle Sam got away with the forced conscription of young men on a mass scale in WWI, WWII, the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

That was government imposed involuntary servitude, slavery if you will, by any definition, and many thousands of those hapless victims of government statism paid the ultimate price for it with their lives. All of it was rubber stamped legitimate by the United States Supreme Court; no conviction of a crime by due process of law necessary.

Today, millions of American school aged children in their formative years and their parents are still forced to participate whether they like it or not in government mandated compulsory education schemes in which the government decides when they must attend, how they will be indoctrinated, and to whom they must pledge their allegiance. These kids haven’t been convicted of any crime.

If the government can conscript people into forced national service – involuntary servitude -- for the benefit of the state regardless of the 13^th Amendment prohibitions, then there is no limit to what it can to for the purpose of enslaving us all.

Uncle Sam is beckoning once more: “We want you.”