By Nathan Barton

I can hear it now – Nathan, you are speaking nonsense with this headline.  Come on, slavery was abolished years ago.  How can it be a threat?

I point the reader to this column by Paul Jacobs. Conservative though he is, he points out a terrible truth: in 2020, there will be people on the ballot right here in the Fifty States who are advocates of slavery.

And not just tax slavery, either.  Many disagree with those of us who equate taxation to slavery. So lets not deal with that in this commentary. Nor am I writing about sex slavery, or anything like that.

I’m writing about forced labor, involuntary servitude. Exactly what the Fourteenth Amendment supposedly outlaws. Exactly what that war of 1861-1865 was supposedly about.  Slavery.  Where a man or woman is forced to do something that they may or may not want to do, for the benefit of those who control them and their bodies.

Charles Schumer, one of the more scummy members of a select and very scummy group (the esteemed US Senate) has long been an advocate of reinstating the military draft.  Can someone explain to me how slave soldiers (conscripts) are suitable for supposedly defending liberty?  Even the Romans, imperialists that they were, did not conscript Legionnaires.

But now, at least some of the dozens of Democrats seeking to oust Trump next year, have outdone good ole Chuck.  They not only want to draft Johnnie (and Janie) to go for a soldier, they want to draft Billy and Betty, Andy and Anita, for useful public service, for at least a year.  Presumably at age 18 or 19.

I assume that these conscripts would get paid some money (pocket change?) while they are in durance vile.  So that it can be claimed that it really isn’t slavery (just as inmates in prison are paid a few cents an hour for their forced labor).  What, do they think that indentured servants and chattel slaves were not at least paid in food and shelter and clothing?

Americans (well, many Americans) are forced to support the government with the tax money (and therefore, time) that the government steals from them.  This proposal, though, is even more blatantly immoral – obscenely so.

It is precisely what God told Samuel the prophet to warn the people of Israel would happen if they had a king “like the rest of the nations around” them. The message is found in 1st Samuel 8:10-16, and even non-religious folks will appreciate it:

¹⁰ So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. ¹¹ He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots.¹² And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. ¹³ He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. ¹⁴ He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. ¹⁵ He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. ¹⁶ He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men^[a] and your donkeys, and put them to his work.¹⁷ He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. ¹⁸ And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”

Obscene, no?  Actually, what we have today is even worse: the governments (who claim to exercise power over us like ancient kings) take far more than ten percent of our “flocks” and “grain” and “vineyards.”  We’d be happy to just have 10% stolen, instead of the 30-50% that all the governments demand, under threat of violence.

And this Demo/Regressive/Tranzi proposal would outdo anything that old King Saul and David and Solomon did: EVERY young man and woman.  (Except for course for the children of the elites, who already have been trained to be “public servants” and to know their place.)

Because that is the other side of the coin. The effect of servitude on those subjected to it for a year of their lives.  We know, certainly, that they will not be spending that whole year changing bedpans in nursing homes or thinning National Forests or reading to preschoolers.  No, much of that time will be spent in “training” – indoctrination for much of their day, and demonstrating to them their essential roles as cogs in the great democratic machine of society.

Like all the other totalitarian and illiberal and tyrannical proposals of the various candidates (including those challenging Trump from the GOP side), it sounds like they took their ideas from texts like 1984, Brave New World, the Communist Manifesto, and the Protocols of the Elders of Sion.  As one Brit pointed out to their Parliament (greater tyrants than any British monarch in the last half-millennium), “1984 is a warning, not an instruction manual.”

The draft, or conscription, is evil and a stain on any nation, any people, and most especially on any society which claims to value liberty.  People deride our Founding Fathers for tolerating chattel slavery, yet seek to do them one better.

Enough is enough.