Military Conscription - Page 4

On July 27 2008 11:57 Mindcrime wrote:
You're failing miserably at it.

ahrara LD is a debate that is based in philosophy. I don't agree with all of your arguments, but I could use some I suppose. The point of the debate is to show whether the concept of military conscription is morally correct or not.

On July 27 2008 12:58 micronesia wrote:
You claim that society does not have to say 'all right if you want to leave we'll pay for a ticket and you can go' but you do not provide any rebuttal for my claim in the prior post. How can you be responsible for having agreed to give up your freedoms by doing nothing? We aren't talking about a special situation you were placed in, such as when you get arrested. We are talking about being born and surviving in a specific place, which you have no control over. The most they can reasonably expect of you is to make a choice as to whether or not to give up your additional freedoms (and the government telling you 'feel free to figure out some way to leave the country' isn't an acceptable means of offering you a choice). I'm not saying the government has to do that though, so long as they don't force you to do things like serve in the military.

In a non-democratic society (which arguably the US is becoming, but that's another topic), one might have absolutely no say. The social contract argument just doesn't apply.

On July 27 2008 18:35 BottleAbuser wrote:
ahrara, you're making an appeal to "common sense" when you say

As long as your definition of justice is reasonable (ie it's not "murder is just!") ....

Common sense does not apply when one is questioning the foundations of ethics. As time and location changes, you get a whole spectrum of "reasonable" definitions of justice, many of them contradictory. For example, although the term "murder" has a moral implication that the killing is not just, if one ignores that and says "killing is just," I'm sure there are situations in which even you will agree with that statement.

If you support the social contract argument, you better read up on Foucault. His views on power relations and bio-politics will really deconstruct that argument and it probably won't be rare to see a bio-power argument in an LD round on this topic.

On July 27 2008 14:30 Caller wrote:
You don't have to say that military conscription is "good"

you just have to say that it's just, in the sense that people of all races, backgrounds, etc. all serve in the military in the event of so-and-so. As such, it's really just a sampling of American society, as all things should be, therefore it is just. although tbh its a pretty shitty topic.

On July 27 2008 17:47 ahrara_ wrote:

best argument in this thread. read my post above yours.


A lot of my points can be used as value contentions depending on how you interpret justice. As long as your definition of justice is reasonable (ie it's not "murder is just!"), people will accept your definition and argue the opposite. I mean this is how it's done in a policy round, but I'm sure value has somethign similar.

If you're going by justice=utilitarianism, "policy" advantages can be very useful. Also, I do parliamentary debate but 90% of our resolutions are interpreted as policy, to the point where a lot of teams (myself included) never really learn value structure. I talk moderately fast, although spreading happens sometimes in parli, because we don't use evidence there's not as much of it.

Hey I could use some help with value tho, mind if I pm you some questions later?

Another thing, I think you have to be careful how you define the scope of conscription. Are we talking about conscription for every country on earth, or conscription in general? Because conscription for one country may not be just, but it may be just for a disadvantaged country, or for all countries in a region in order to acquire mutual security. You seem stuck in this mindset that we're talking about conscription for just one country, particularly a western country. This could easily be construed by aff or the judge as referring to all countries. I've seen it happen a lot in parli rounds. A newbie gov team will be going along happily arguing how policy x is so beneficial to the US, and opp will tear apart their case entirely by contesting their criterion and turning their solvency entirely.


Micronesia's point is very good. In my mind he's arguing that the social contract itself is not just, so you can't justify something using the social contract. It is injust to impose the social contract on people if the cost of opting out is restrictively high. However, when Locke wrote about the social contract, he argued that it was only valid when it is not being abused. When the sovereign entity violates the contract, the signees have an obligation to replace it with another sovereign. Thus the social contract guarantees a positive outcome. The social contract, when correctly observed, is naturally just. It is just to ask of all to sacrifice if the outcome for everyone is positive.

Micronesia's story is a perfect example of why this is true. He may have a different take on it, but I don't see why I shouldn't expect some kind of small sacrifice on your part if I just kept your house from being robbed. It is just intuitively, but also from a utilitarian perspective: rewarding positive behavior reinforces it in the future.

I know you guys have talked about this already, but I just wanted to iterate my take on it. Anyway, it is possible to argue that conscription is injust simply because it allows for the possibility of abuse. You'll have to be able to respond to that as well.


Hobbes' "The Leviathan" actually argues for a social contract granting power to a non-elected sovereign. Namely, a monarchy. He argues that such rule still requires the consent of the governed (iirc...) So the social contract does apply to a nondemocratic government.

On July 28 2008 02:47 ahrara_ wrote:

I wasn't talking about ethics there. I was saying that in debate, the other team will not likely contest the definition of justice if it allows for reasonably fair debate.


Ya, I've had biopower run on me, but I never really got it. We didn't get to Foucault in my last poli-theory class. Would you mind explaining it some?

On July 28 2008 06:20 7c.nEptuNe wrote:
Bare-bone outline of biopower is that the government controls every aspect of our lives. We can see this in our education system (government run), our health system (once again, government run), our safety (yay once again..), etc. It is this power relation between the governed and the government that is completely out of hand; not only do the governed BELIEVE that the government is a necessity (due to complete control of the education system), but the government is allowed to subjugate its victims without having any blame placed on it. You can see why this would severely undermine the social contract because it completely changes the relationship between the government and its subjects; instead of a mutual agreement to conform to society and to relinquish some rights, the governed are instead under the complete dominance of the government without even thinking about it. The reason that a biopower argument would outweigh the social contract is because it not only has a competing framework for the definition of the government-governed relationship, but Foucault also offers various impact cards that link to nuke war, genocide, etc. etc. that can be described as "unjust" (this is generally evidenced by the government's power over LIFE, which justifies the government eradicating anything that opposes life). I actually have never run a biopower K or any biopower argument in policy debate so you might not want to trust my judgement, but I have seen it run on many of my LD teamates =b. For a better background, wikipedia biopower.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biopower

On July 28 2008 07:27 7c.nEptuNe wrote:
Do all governments have biopower? Foucault would probably argue that many governments today do exert biopower in some sense or another. It really depends on how the government runs. In Autocracies, governments are just more powerful in that they can kill you at any time if you don't obey, so you are threatened into obedience; this is very different from biopower because biopower is an influence apparatus, not a threat. The central focus isn't really about school, but it's more like the control the government exerts on ALL aspects of life. For example, why do you look at a stop sign and immediately know what it is? Government implementation. Even if school wasn't a government apparatus, the Federal Government still owns the essentials you need to survive i.e. economy, protection, medicare, etc. Changing the education system won't necessarily solve the biopolitical control of the government on its subjects.

You can look up a biopower file probably... although I know my friend made his own because he cut cards directly from Foucault's books. You should try to find a biopower shell to give you an understanding of how Foucault is used in debate. I do policy debate, and have only done it for one year xP so i'm not too experienced, but I take stabs at K's a lot because I'm interested in Philosophy (I'm really only experienced with Nietzsche Kant and Marx; my friend's a Foucault hack though =D). Don't trust my judgement on Foucault, that's just how I interpreted it from watching LD rounds.

EDIT: I know Incontrol debates, so maybe pm him for clarification? He should probably know more about Foucault than I do and can clear up any misconstrued views that I have.