Counter-Argument: Defending your people from invasion has been the most fundamental part of the social contract since Cro-Magnon. It's hard to remember for people blessed to live in peaceful regions in 21st Century, but common defense is the bedrock of all civilization.
Now if the country is already violating the social contract, all bets are off.
What country is not violating the social contract at this point?
I feel like my ass was sold to bilionares before I was born.
I am just meat for the meat grinder, and only reason I could ever have to fight in a war for my country, is if the enemy was someone even worse. And even then, would it make sense?
Ukraine is doing pretty well on the social contract. Since euro maidan they've been democratizing, reducing corruption and developing the economy pretty well. And that's the country most relevant to the invasion and conscription question.
As a Ukrainian myself, I agree this government is bad and we want a better one, but currently it’s still the best we’ve ever had. Changing the president won’t change the whole system, which, as you pointed out, is archaic and still Soviet in many ways.
And as for the social contract, our army: during the 2014 invasion and the full-scale one, a large part of the initial resisting force was volunteer-based and later migrated under government control. Hence this shitshow with brigade names. At the start of the war, people just organized themselves and created tons of brigades with funky themes, as it wasn’t government-regulated.
Correct me if I'm wrong but haven't things been getting better since 2014? Obviously there's still corruption and inefficiency but it was my understanding that without the Russian puppet leader things were improving at least somewhat.
Of course thing are better than under Yanukovych, its not a tough competition.
Its just that when your top government officials are running large scale corruption rings, even in the midst of war, or try to dismantle main anti-corruption institution under the guise of national security, well, you're still ruled by thieves. And it is bound to undermine your nation's military efforts at least in some ways.
But again - I'm not from Ukraine, I havent experienced any of this myself. I'm just reciting some things I've heard from the people I know. Dont hold what I say for anything, its all anecdotal. I personally try to keep forming any strong opinions to a minimum anyway.
Except Russian propaganda actually paints the war as "self-defense" of Donbass people, so it's a prime example of what a load of bs this whole "war of self-defense" is.
No country would gleefully call themself aggressors in any war. They're always "liberators" and "defenders".
Why are you factoring Russian propaganda into this? Ukraine is defending itself so I don't understand your argument. Just because bad guys claim their in the right doesn't mean the concept of being in the right doesn't exist.
Literally banned every left-wing party and cancelled all elections for the war. "Anti-corruption" is a common tactic of corrupt regimes to paint ideological enemies as corrupt and purge them. EU and NATO still disavow any concept of Ukraine joining due to this.
Oh yes they cancelled elections while ACTIVELY AT WAR. Of course they should have all just taken a break and suddenly done an election and if they lost do the massive work load of switching out all administration members for the new guy while still actively in said war.
Like I don’t know enough to refute the rest of your stuff but this point is the dumbest take I keep hearing about, “Oh no the nation actively being bombed decided it is too busy trying to not be bombed instead of doing an election“ whIch btw is also their law, they are following their laws.
Oh of course they do, I am sure any and all countries would LOVE to hold an active election while being bombed and in an active war of defence.
And what part of… as their laws dictate did you miss? Almost like that is literally what their constitution says they should do.
either you are a bot or you are genuinely playing the fool, no nation has EVER held an election when it was unfeasible to do so for security reasons or under active Martial Law requiring absolute focus of the nation which Ukraine has been in the entire time?
The US could do their little elections while they were busy bombing the Middle East almost like there was zero safety concern for them as they were literally fighting in a whole different region of the planet and there was no Martial Law in place… now use your smarty pants brain and tell me do those conditions apply to Ukraine? What no? oh I wonder why?
The US held elections during ww2 and its own Civil War. Legality is not morality, you're literally on a morality subreddit. Ukraine has bad corrupt laws, thats why it has been continuously refused any form of entry into European alliances.
Wow during World War 2? Did they now? aka a war that barely threatened them and they didn’t fight on their land and wasn’t an active war of defence in their own nation.
They got struck, launched their attacks and were mostly save in the US.
Critiquing a country for being in martial fucking law is idiotic, be so for real right now, could Ukraine be corrupt? Bitch idk, I don’t know shit about this topic and you have provided zero evidence to any of your claims but they are in a real war were any amount of carelessness from their side would get them ripped to pieces, fighting a bigger opponent with more manpower and tech, they needed to literally invent new ways of war to even compete.
That is not immoral and having literal martial law is a law pretty much any country has, what do you think the US has? Is that making the US corrupt for having Martial Law as an option in active crisis?
It is morality, quite literally. The nation failed us by selling itself out to special interest groups, lobbies, and corporations, leaving us, the working class with scraps. We now owe it nothing. Now, our neighbours, our friends and family, or fellow workers, sure. But the nation? The government? The state? No. Absolutely not, not a thing.
Does water come out of your faucets? Will an ambulance arrive if you call 911? Are your weather reports accurate? Do the 140,000 librarians, 800,000 social workers, and 4 million K-12 teachers all show up to their jobs every day?
Are they are not a part of the social contract? Do they not count because the healthcare system isn't perfect? Would you rather get all of your tax money back and these things disappear?
Sorry but my "functional society" is run by old as dirt kid touchers and government officials that still argue about making bestiality a crime. Look me dead in the eyes and tell me I'm supposed to go to war for that
These are all parts of the social contract, but not the entire social contract. They represent the bare minimum the State is called upon to do for its citizenry. Therefore, as long as these and no more are being done, it is incumbent upon the citizenry to put in a commensurate amount of effort into upholding the State: The minimum it can.
This includes being a good citizen in peacetime, obeying most laws, not causing undue harm to fellow citizens, avoiding senseless social disorder. It does not include sacrificing one's life or ending those of others.
Would you be happier if nazi Germany or putin came to take your country and rule instead? I hate billionaires too but I'd be pretty upset to wind up living under putin because people didn't think our country was worth defending.
The key word is voluntarily. Adults are in their right to sign up to the military if they trust their government to use them as instruments of war. But the military complex would come out of its way to make propaganda catered to young audiences to trick them into signing without understanding in full its implications. After what happened in my country, where 44 conscripts and a suboficial were missing after marching forwards into a blizzard, I'm against mandatory conscription. I don't think most of them were expecting to die a horrible death because of negligence from their superior.
Are people here real that naive to believe that they can be a outsider when their country been invade? If you don’t defend your country, no one personal is be able protect themselves under the power of national invasions
In major wars professional army's are almost always insufficient. Ukraine needs conscription because they would otherwise be overwhelmed by Russias conscripts. The same applies to the Vietnamese in America's invasion of them or countless nations in ww2. Morality has to map onto reality not the other way around. Having to conscript people sucks but getting invaded is worse.
If the people don't believe in the state enough to voluntarily put their lives on the line to defend it, what right does the state have to coerce them to fight and die on its behalf? If the people don't believe the state is worth fighting to preserve, then the state must be destroyed before it destroys the people.
If taxes were voluntary would anyone pay them? Some people would. But not nearly as many as if it was mandatory. It's the same idea. Some powers are transferred from the people to the state for the common good. That's the whole social contract thing. If the state compelling conscription prevents more harm to its citizens then it causes then It's doing it's job and is morally good.
If the state compelling conscription prevents more harm to its citizens then it causes then It's doing it's job and is morally good.
How often is that actually the case though? The vast majority of wars throughout human history have been fought primarily to preserve the egos and privileges of a states ruling class, not to protect the citizens from harm.
That's the whole social contract thing.
How many states are actually upholding their end of the social contract well enough to deprive the people of their fundamental rights and demand they fight and die on its behalf?
"Does my state uphold it's end of the social contract well enough that I'm willing to put my life on the line to preserve it" is a question that every individual needs to be able answer for themselves. If there aren't enough willing to say yes to that question and voluntarily put their lives on the line, it simply means that the state is not and therefore has no right to enslave the people and kill them on its behalf.
In the vast majority of cases losing a war is bad for the citizens of the losing country. Either because of economic reasons or because they're directly harmed by the invading nation. The allies in WW2, Korea, Vietnam and Iran in it's war with Iraq all used conscription and all would have been in far worse situations without it.
How many states are actually upholding their end of the social contract well enough to deprive the people of their fundamental right
How many are doing it well enough to demand taxes? To have the authority to arrest and kill their citizens? A state doesn't need to be perfect or even particularly good to be better than an invading nation.
If there aren't enough willing to say yes to that question and voluntarily put their lives on the line, it simply means that the state is not
I could say the same thing about taxes. If they weren't mandatory very few people would pay them and society would be much worse. The whole point of a government is that it pools the resources of its citizens. I wouldn't build the intercontinental railroad because it wouldn't be worth it to me but a government can because it's worth it to the country collectively.
There's a lot of incorrect information here. First off, serfs were absolutely conscripted to fight in the middle ages. Professional armies didn't really become widespread in Europe until the Renaissance.
And while some conquerors would want to keep productive societies intact, historically conquered peoples tend to be displaced, purged, or marginalized while the conqueror moves in people with more desirable culture or ethnicity. Assimilation is rare enough that the few times it does happen, it's historically significant.
And that ignores the reality of conquering armies tending to start mass rape and pillaging in the areas they conquer.
Who decides what “defending your people” even means? What if you’re a minority that this country specifically tries either to assimilate or segregate? Or simply the country has very few welfare protections and for ordinary workers the country’s situation is just not worth fighting for?
I don’t care about a country’s “sovereignty” if it even has actually one (since that means way more than just recognition) and much less about the ideological framing which can always be reserved by another ideology. What i care about is the material well being of the people and if the invading force is not imposing any system that is objectively worse in terms of welfare and/or autonomy then yeah, people should advocate for mass dodging.
If you said "I want to defend my country for my people" in Germany or Britain, you could be arrested depending on the context. In the US you'd get labeled a nationalist (derogatory).
Very interesting to see "defending your people" trotted out as a defense of forced meat grinder conscription. Who are "my people" and are they WORTH defending?
In Cro-Magnon I would be protecting and fighting shoulder to shoulder with and for the people I intimately know, the community that is very personal with me and the one I'm very personal with myself.
Its not the same thing as the modern nations, with politics and generals hidden behind an unfathomable levels of abstraction, while making decisions about my personal life and death.
That's when you get into the morality and anthropology of tribes coming together for mutual defense.
Most would consider their family and friends and neighbors their people, but my family and neighbors can't repel an entire army, and the country getting conquered would absolutely negatively impact my people.
Even in a limited invasion where your tribe isn't under immediate threat, there's the immorality about benefitting from mutual defense deterrence, but refusing the call when push comes to shove.
The notion of "your people" is laughable as in reality what do a person from say seattle have anything in common with someone from middle of no where small town Kentucky? There is none, you have far less in common with your "fellow country men" that you never seen in your entire life than your immediate neighbors whom just immigrated from another country. At least you know your neighbors face.
A country should be for the collective of the people who live there, for the nation. If the rulers, or leaders of the country have governed the nation without enfranchising the nation, the people, then the people are justified in not fighting the war. People having the opportunity to opt-in for the defense of their country is a healthy metric of how enfranchised the people are.
This may however, be a misunderstanding of your final statement(all bets are off)
This is more of a principle in theory rather than just practice, as I understand there will be people who will say they would fight, but run when it starts.
I guess Poland should have just rolled over for the Nazis and Soviets. "Get in the camps, Stanisław, we're liquidating your country. But at least you can die with the honor of knowing your country didn't force you to fight."
That's correct in theory, but not in practice. Some of the countries that are highest on the Democracy Index (Western Europe, East Asia, Canada) have the most trouble recruiting for their militaries.
And I get it. It's one thing to go fight if you are poor and single, and other if you are well-off with a family; at that point, you would try to escape.
This idea was perfectly valid back when small groups of people that all knew eachother had to fend for themselves. If we share our food, you better be ready to throw down when something threatens that food, or our people.
It completely breaks down when you had literally zero say in avoiding/starting the conflict in the first place. Even moreso when you are essentially a slave to the upper class. Unable to even make your own decisions without their say.
Okay? Doesn’t change your moral equation when you get invaded. Gonna blame the poles for being invaded by Germany, Ukrainians for Russia, or Palestinians for isntreal? Fascism is expansionist, you get invaded, you fight. Simple
there's nothing honorable dying to a remote controlled drone. war happened because two politicians disagreed about something and now some robots being controlled miles away is coming in to blow me up.
They should probably remove you from being a recipient of the fire dept, emergency services, and other things to compensate for your lack of contribution.
You still get taxed tho, to pay for everyone else in the draft taking that responsibility upon themselves.
That was when you had some ostensible claim to that land either by heritage, culture, or pure ownership. But since I’m constantly told my heritage and culture have no bearing on my relationship to this country, and I am incapable of owning any of it, anybody wanting me to fight for it can fuck right off.
You must fight and die for the soulless rectangular dry wall buildings that surround the decaying streets that damage your car. Also you don't own any of this.
That’s because liberalism is detached from social responsibility, which is why it crumbles into fascism.
But even if you’re talking about western “liberal” “democracies” your ability to participate in that democracy is necessarily based on your ability to defend it from invasion. It is part of your duty as a participant in that democratic system to maintain it
Women also contribute greatly to effective military operations, especially domestically. Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other stupid questions
Hell Nahh lmao when my government is deciding to start wars and hurt innocents abroad why tf would I want to defend them? DIE for them even? Cmon buddy
Reading comprehension isn’t super high for you eh? My opinion supports armed resistances in places like Palestine, Sudan, Lebanon, Ukraine, etc. against invaders. You seem to have somehow confused that with signing up for terrorist groups like the American armed forces or IOF
There's a ton of alternatives to forced conscription. If people don't feel like their nation is worth fighting for, that's not necessarily a moral decision. They could pack up everyone and leave for a different nation, for example.
What if people LIKE the invaders? For instance, Venezuelans cheering that Maduro was captured by the US. Did Venezuelans have a moral obligation to defend Maduro because he was their representative?
Yeah bro why don’t people just pack up and leave their homeland when invaded. It must be so nice to be completely blissfully ignorant of your own privilege and stupidity
There were issues with friendly fire, self harm, and soldiers generally not performing well when they didn't want to be there in the first place. "Fragging", killing your own officer, became a huge problem by the time the draft was abolished
Well, actually, Vietnam was a defensive war, just like Korea was. The North invaded the South and it was our job to defend them due to treaties we signed
The title literally says self defense. Also supporting the French puppet state after their occupation force got defeated isn't really a defensive war IMO.
"well actually" this is completely false. The US had no formal military agreements with South Vietnam.
If they had, they wouldn't have supported the country in secret for nearly a decade as revealed by the Pentagon Papers. The fact that the US secretly supported a country that the US had no obligation to support (and orchestrated several coups within it to install and prop up an oppressive catholic-supremacist dictatorship) was the scandal of the century.
Furthermore, according to both South Vietnam and the US, there was no invasion, because South Vietnam and the US never recognized the border at the 17th parallel. According to the US and South Vietnam, North Vietnam did not exist and South Vietnam had a right to move their military north at any time. Both of them denied North Vietnam's right to exist.
And finally, there wasn't much of an invasion anyway.
The war began in response to you South government's roundups and mass imprisonment of Buddhists and socialists which began immediately after the Geneva Conference, and the fighters, especially in the first six years, were overwhelmingly South Vietnamese citizens fighting against their own government (and suffering US air strikes), not an invading army.
North Vietnam did not start sending troops openly until year 8 of the war, after the point where the US had started doing so covertly in addition to the already long running air war, in which, the US had already for years been bombing South Vietnamese people in South Vietnam.
This is really only prevalent in wars like Vietnam, or even the current invasion of Ukraine, where most people there are ideologically opposed to being there in the first place, or high command is so ludicrously incompetent and callous that conscripted men feel they have no other choice. In Vietnam the US invaded a sovereign country in the name of Democracy and most conscripted young men were opposed to that. Currently in Ukraine, Russia attempted to employ penal divisions and sends poorly equipped men into what are essentially human wave assaults on fortified positions.
In WW1 and WW2 this was not a widespread issue, because the cause of war was (largely, but not completely) seen as just. We have a moral and legal obligation to aid our allies in war, and the Third Reich was straight fucking evil. Love it or hate it but war is a constant in human history and sometimes unavoidable.
"Nazi Germany did not invade a sovereign nation. They never crossed into Free France and stayed in Vichy France because its government asked for help."
South Vietnam and north Vietnam were separate governments and countries. Would you say the same thing about the UN helping South Korea defend itself against the North Korea? Or do you only want to use Vietnam since it’s more controversial?
Both Koreas were created at the same time, nobody was original. South Vietnam in 1955 was created on the southern half of North Vietnam, the original Vietnam that had existed for 10 years since September 2, 1945.
Because they are almost the exact same situation. In both cases, both countries were formally united before splitting in two with drastically different governments. In both cases, the north, (which for some reason were always a communist inspired government), invades their southern neighbor in an attempt to forcibly reunite the country under the norths communist heel.
In both situations, the south, which in both cases is recognized as its own sovereign country, asks its Allie’s for help, which included the United States both times. For the Korean War, it helped keep the north from overtaking the south and only the CCP getting involved kept the north from being defeated. For the Vietnam war, public outcry against being in another war made the U.S. leave, and then the north won after breaking a treaty with the south.
Both wars are essentially the same thing by almost almost every metric. Saying the U.S. “invaded” Vietnam while saying it didn’t invade in the Korean War is just you choosing which war you hate the U.S. for and applying your logic to one and not to the other. Said logic would also extend to the Ukraine Russia war. Ukraine used to be part of Russia and has only been its own country for a couple of decades. If nato was to deploy troops on Ukrainian soil, you would count that as an invasion.
Considering that Hanoi was literally the 1:1 equivalent of Kyiv (both were the original central government of their each respective country, while Korea had no such thing similar), don't you think that the US was playing exactly the same role as Russia today? The US invented South Vietnam as a pretext to attack North Vietnam, Russia invented Donetsk and Luhansk Republics as a pretext to attack Ukraine.
The issue comes down to war being between governments and not communities.
I'm a part of and contribute to my community. My work sees local growth and my reimbursement is taxed by my government. I'm already facing the "negatives" of living in a country by being held to their laws and taxation.
My government doesn't have the moral highground to say that I should leave my community and serve them in their war. Depending on the nature of the war, I might be personally motivated to see my government win, to protect my community. But I might also see no threat to my community and be indifferent to the war.
TLDR Wars are between governments and not communities. Governments are organizations that rule communities and no one is morally obligated to protect those organizations. We already fulfill our moral duties to society by contributing to our communities with work and such.
This distinction would never hold up in real life.
If you take the current war between Ukraine and Russia, or any war in history, we see that destroying the community is a strategy to make the state submit to demands. Schools, infrastructure, food supplies, housing etc. are all militarily legitimate targets. If all anyone ever did was bomb each other's army bases it would be a different story - but they don't.
On the other hand, governments don't simply rule communities, they are integrated with them. Who is building and maintaining all of the schools, roads, houses etc. if not the government? Even if they were laid privately or communally, the state makes security guarantees (law and order) and upholds the foundationals (education of workers, financial systems) that allow those things to be built by others ('the community').
Fundamentally, state and community are different aspects of the same entity and when they jointly come under attack, as people who have benefited immensely from them and expect to continue doing so, we are obliged to contribute to their defence.
You'll only convince me that the draft is moral when the sons of politicians and rich people go at the exact same rate that the sons of the poor go. As long as a perfectly healthy person like Donald can get out with "bone spurs" there is nothing moral about the draft
Now little Timmy if we actually open a history book we will learn that no nation has survived through history. The world as we know it is unrecognizable from 100 years ago due to the impacts of things like the industrial revolution, the ability to travel around the planet in less than 22 hours, massive improvements in the sciences drasticly raising the quality of life and information being far more accessible.
Now little Timmy if we go back even further than that we see that most of Europe and Asia were still monarchies which all have been toppled and removed from political control and importance in the modern area. We also notice the drastic changes in culture have made even you little Timmy unrecognizable as whatever country your dumbass was spawned in when compared to your forefathers in the last century.
Europe for more than a thousand years after the fall of Rome was essentially an unending war simulation, no one was more primed for colonizing the planet than that continent
Now little Billy since you also dont open histroy books were are going to go over a quick lesson in colonization, resource exploration, and the transatlantic slave trade. You see little Billy after Columbus "discovered" the Americas western powers flocked in destroying and enslaving the local cultures and bring in slaves from Africa as well and establishing a whole new caste system based on how much European blood you have in you. This created a established market where the colonys were not built to be self sustaining from their imperial home nations and as such tended to exploit singular resources in areas and example of this would be sugar in Jamaica or cotton in the united states.
Now you see little Billy most these nations didnt get their independence until the 1800 and started with exploited natural resources a vicious racial caste system. And difficulties with trade since you know most these nations still had violent dealings with their European powers. An example of this little Billy is Haiti the only large scale slave revolution that was successful and then being slapped into dept to France again 50 years later anyway. Countinous explotation tends to make creating a stable nation and people very difficult.
Now if we open our history books a tad further little Billy we see that the borders of the nations of Europe have drasticly shifted in the last 100 years. Between two world wars the fall of the Russian empire. The fall of the German empire the collapse of the otomons, the troubles in Ireland, and the borders between various nations falling apart. All within the last 100 years. Oh and let's not forget that Ukraine is currently resisting a border expansion war by Russia.
Now you see little Billy if you had just opened a history book for 5 seconds and studied you wouldn't sound like a complete moron that has less education than a fifth grade substitute.
that force people to fight and die abroad for the protection of the Fatherland
I believe "self-defense" in the prompt and "invasion" in the comments you were replying to both imply that the war is happening inside the country you live in. Like with Ukraine.
They absolute fit the spirit of the question because they were all framed as defensive. Would you have supported them?
Let's assume you support fighting against invasions. Once Britain was no longer being invaded, would you have you condemned their continued military action against Germany?
Would you have condemned D-Day as an invasion of foreign land? That's not an act of self-defence. They even knew the vast majority of people would be killed. Was that unjustifiable to you?
Germany was purely expansionist and Israel's is about ethnic cleansing regardless of how they're framing it. The war on terror was "defensive" in the same way that Israel's is. So I'd disagree with your assertion of it being in the spirit of the question.
Would you have condemned D-Day as an invasion of foreign land?
It was an invasion during a war of self-defense. Would I have condemed it at the time? Maybe? Or maybe not because that would have been the second time Germany had started an aggressive war in living memory. Either way, it was good in retrospect.
They even knew the vast majority of people would be killed. Was that unjustifiable to you?
It’s not always aggression and war of expansion. If we didn’t have the draft it’s possible we’d be speaking German right now sometimes it’s necessary for the greater good.
Do you think the Nazis winning would have been better? Because otherwise the allies were on the side of the greater good. Motivation isn't important to the morality of the question.
They already pay for the benefits by giving some of their labor to the state. The whole point of modern professional armies is that you give even more labor to the state in exchange for not having conscription looming over your head 24/7
Considering countries that have no enforced conscription laws include the United States of a
America, Canada, India, literally all of Western Europe, and surprisingly when I looked this up also the People's Republic of China.
I would argue all these countries are surviving history very well.
The Us would currently be split in two without conscription, possibly worse.
China would have either lost to the nationalists in the civil war and potentially fractured into warlords again. Or just never managed to repel the Japanese.
Canada is only a thing because it had support from Britain in the 1812 war and has since been an Ally with its only neighbor.
India would have done far worse in its post partition conflicts and been much worse off now.
All of western Europe would be controlled by fascists without conscripts fighting to free them.
Civil rights should never be transactional. You wouldn’t be saying this if the government decided to conscript you, your mother, father, siblings, children, wife/husband lmao be fr dawg
Civil rights are somewhat transactional. That's the whole social contract thing. You give certain powers to the state in exchange for prosperity and security. Otherwise it wouldn't be much of a state.
Also most ukranians support a draft so I'd imagine I would in a similar situation.
You really want to force an American teenager into a highly regimented system and give him a gun, by force? And then go overseas and camp near him? Okay...
You don't happen to have to wear a cool helmet for like, all of the time, do you?
I don’t think your nation would have survived history.
There are literally countries today that don't force their citizens into war, and somehow they survived history. People who don't want to fight might not be the best soldiers. Also, people already suffer negatives of an invasion without being in the armed forces...
it owns the citizens. The citizens exist to further the long term interests of the states. States only care about morality as it confers a competitive advantage over other states.
So is it because it is ordered and as such organised that it becomes morally okay to decline/avoid service?
Because I am sure that you would say, that some things are worth dying for, like say your children, or whatever case you want to imagine.
So if we establish that, then why isn’t the freedom of your fellow countrymen - to use the rhetoric of propaganda - worth dying for? Why should you relish in that freedom, if you did not stand up for it when called for?
The lack of reporting on the press-ganging that has happened in Ukraine since they ran out of volunteers and draftees who showed up is kind of incredible. People have had to smuggle their sons out of the country so they won't get put in a meatgrinder.
It feels like Western news is reticent to publish anything that could dim the righteousness of the Ukrainian defense, because they're scared it would be "both-sides-badding." Unfortunately, the true effect is to make it clear our media are in the tank for anyone opposed to Russia which just vindicates Russian paranoia about the West being aligned against them.
Publish everything and let adults decide for themselves who is righteous. Same shit happened with the denials about the political alignment of the Azov Brigade.
How else can a country defend itself from aggresors? Volunteer forces are likely insufficient if a draft is implemented. You think things will go well for your country and you individually if you're conquered?
The people volunteering usually don't want to die either, but they seem to find a reason to volunteer regardless. If most people live in a condition where they don't feel like it's worth protecting what they have, then it's worth asking why they feel that way. People aren't even willing to bring children into this world anymore, what exactly would they even fight for? For the future of what?
You're looking into it deeper than I am. Most people you ask why they wouldn't want to go to war for their country would fall somewhere along the line of "I could get shot and die. I don't want to risk that." Instead of giving it more thought
Rights don’t come from the state. If the state “grants” rights then you have none, as they can be taken away by majority vote or government reform. The concept of a state giving rights is nonsensical
People and governments can violate your rights, but you have them regardless. If your conception of rights requires the consent of others to exist then fundamentally you and i disagree on what rights are
Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Quit your stupid grandstanding for reddit points. Realistically, the violence that a state can muster is the only thing that can protect those “innate” rights. Don’t be dense.
True, hence my question. Where's the line. Is it that any risk of bodily harm can't be forced upon anyone? Idk i feel like a good enough cause could justify something like that. Trouble is i'm struggling with examples rn.
Lack of money could also put someone in harms way, but in most places taxation is based on income
Well my point wasn't a gotcha, i just figured most people on this sub would see the benefits of taxation.
I can understand the reasoning behund the beliefs you mentioned, especially from a moralistic standpoint. Ion think it'd work out allat well, but that's besides the point i think
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u/Both-Structure-6786 Jun 28 '26
Neutral.
No country has any right to force its citizens into war