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Slavery in Modern America |
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I worked alongside slaves in my youth. No, I'm not talking about illegal slavery nor am I using nonsensical double talk like 'wage slaves'. I'm talking about lawful and very real slavery. The kind where human beings are forced to do work for a master. Many of them were forced to die for the master.
And no, I'm not incredibly old. The slaves I knew were young men forced into captivity and made to fight in a foreign war in southeast asia in the early 1970's.
Why, you may be wondering, would we maintain slavery in the USA after having a horrific war and 'abolishing' it in the 19th century? Now, as then, slavery is about economics. It's cheaper to force someone into dangerous and unpleasant work than it is to entice them to freely agree to do such work.
Slavery, in the modern form of a military draft, is simply a way for most people to avoid the cost of war. And the highest cost of war is paid in the lives of the men who fight them.
We maintain the selective service system to this very day to ensure that when volunteerism drops off in a long, bloody, or unpopular conflict, we won't run out of bodies. We won't have to do the politically difficult thing of raising taxes to pay soldiers enough to keep long lines at the recruiting offices.
The military draft makes a mockery of the phrase, 'the land of the free', and has no place in our country. |
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| | mail this link | -Ray Yeargin, October 1, 2008 |
(Contact: root at this domain)
© 2008-2009, Ray Yeargin
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