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Robert Higgs’s unpublished letter to the
War Street Journal
To
the Editor
The Wall
Street Journal
Charles
Moskos frets that owing to a diminished public tolerance for casualties,
U.S. leaders "might put casualty avoidance over mission accomplishment,"
and he avers that only "when the privileged classes perform
military service does the country define the cause as worth young
people’s blood" ("Our Will to Fight Depends on Who Is
Willing to Die," March 20). By this curious argument, Moskos
once again expresses his yearning for a wide-reaching national conscription
of young men for military service.
The
social levelers remain, it seems, a bloody-minded lot. They disdain
a reasoned judgment of whether we the people – separate and apart
from those "national leaders" Moskos seems all too ready
to follow – have a genuinely vital interest in going to war. So long
as the slaughter drags all classes into its maw, it is in his view
ipso facto worthwhile.
Those
who find Moskos’s argument appealing need to be reminded that the
ideal on which this country was founded was not a craving for self-sacrifice
to the state, nor a willingness to be conscripted for any and all
foreign military adventures, but a desire to enforce everyone’s – even
young men’s – rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Policies that fail to respect that great ideal should be opposed,
and conscription stands high among the proposals that cry out for
a free people’s opposition.
Robert
Higgs
April
2, 2002
Robert
Higgs [send him mail] is
the editor of The
Independent Review.
Copyright
© 2002 LewRockwell.com
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