The draft is a totalitarian institution that is based on the idea that the government owns you and can dispose of your life as it wishes. Republican Senator Taft said the draft was “far more typical of totalitarian nations than of democratic nations. It is absolutely opposed to the principles of individual liberty, which have always been considered a part of American democracy.” Conservative thinker Russell Kirk referred to the draft as “slavery”. Military conscription, said Ronald Reagan in 1979, “rests on the assumption that your kids belong to the state…. That assumption isn’t a new one. The Nazis thought it was a great idea.” The following year, in a speech at Louisiana State University, Reagan added:
Originally Posted by
Ronald Reagan
I oppose registration for the draft … because I believe the security of freedom can best be achieved by security through freedom. The all-voluntary force is based on the sound and historic American principle of voluntary commitment to the defense of freedom. …The United State of American believes a free people do not have to be coerced in defending their country or their values and that the principle of freedom is the best and only foundation upon which a defense of freedom can be made. My vision of a secure America is based on my belief that freedom call forth the best in the human spirit and that the denser of freedom can and will best me made out of love of country, a love that needs no coercion. Out of such a love, a real security will develop, because in the final analysis, the free human and spirit are the best and most reliable defense.
In late 1814, fearing that conscription was about to come to America, Daniel Webster delivered a stirring speech against it on the House floor. (Webster served for many years in both the House and the Senate, and he held the office of secretary of state in both the early 1840s and early 1850s.) Webster’s belief in a strong central government made his words against the draft all the more striking. “Where is it written in the Constitution,” he demanded, “in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any way, in which the folly or the wickedness of Government may engage it?” The draft was irreconcilable with both the the principles of a free society and the provisions of the Constitution. “In granting Congress the power to raise armies,” Webster explained, “the people have granted all the means which are ordinary and usual, and which are consistent with the liberties and security of the people themselves, and they have granted no others. …A free government with arbitrary means to administer it is a contradiction; a free government without adequate provisions for personal security is an absurdity; a free government, with an uncontrolled power of military conscription, is a solecism, at once the most ridiculous and abominable that ever entered into the head of man.”
Webster was right both morally and constitutionally. Nowhere in the Constitution is the federal government given the power to conscript citizens. The power to raise armies is not a power to force people into the army. As Webster put it,
Originally Posted by
Daniel Webster
I almost disdain to go to quotations and references to prove that such an abominable doctrine has no foundation in the Constitution of the country. It is enough to know that that instrument was intended as the basis of a free government, and that the power contended for is incompatible with any notion of personal liberty. An attempt to maintain this doctrine upon the provision of the Constitution is an exercise of perverse ingenuity to extract slavery from substance of a free government.
He continued:
Originally Posted by
Daniel Webster
Congress having, by the Constitution, a power to raise armies, the Secretary [of War] contends that no restrain is to be imposed on the exercise of this power, except such as is expressly stated in the written letter of the instrument. In other words, that Congress may execute its powers, by any means it chooses, unless such means are particularly prohibited. But the general nature and object of the Constitution impose as rigid a restriction on the means of exercising power as could be done by the most explicit injunctions. It is the first principle applicable to such a case, that no construction shall be admitted which impairs the general nature and character of the instrument. A free constitution of government is to be construed upon free principles, and every branch of its provisions is to receive such an interpretation as if full of its general spirit. No means are to be taken by implication which would strike us absurdly if expressed. And what would have been more absurd than for this Constitution to have said that to secure the great blessings of liberty it gave to government uncontrolled power of military conscription? Yet such is the absurdity which it is made to exhibit, under the commentary of the Secretary of War.
Lesser forms of the draft, such as compulsory “national service,” are based on the same unacceptable premise. Young people are not raw material to be employed by the political class on behalf of whatever fashionable political, military, or social cause catches its fancy. In a free society, their lives are not the playthings of government.
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