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LadyEllen -> RE: Obligation to Serve? (8/12/2007 4:27:32 AM)
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I am personally all for some form of obligatory national service - not necessarily in the armed forces.
However there are certain pre-requisites - the first of which is that there is utility in having young people spend a couple of years serving the community; not, as was often the case when we last had conscription, wasting two years of their lives because the forces had nothing for them to do.
The second though, lies in the whole notion of serving the community, the issue being there is no community, no common culture and no nation to serve - and in the absence of this, we would simply be serving the government which in turn serves the business interests upon which parties rely for election funding. In the case of war, we would be sending our children to conscription to die for the profits of some wanker in some boardroom.
The problem with it all I believe, is that we are just far too large as nations to have any idea of who we are as a nation, and/or far too diverse as populations to have any idea of who we are culturally. There is nothing to serve and still less of anything worth fighting for. The only motivating factors I see to crystallise these are common threats from without, which may be real or not, which tend to bring people together and define us much better by what we dont share as by anything we do.
E
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