Conscription

Don't worry about the late reply, Aurigae54. I set the amount of time each of us has to complete a round to the maximum (3 days) for a reason. Take as long as you need, so long as you respond within the 3 days. :) My opponent has quoted some phrases from the Constitution, which state that Congress has the power to declare war, raise and support armies, and provide and maintain a navy. My opponent has also quoted a sentence from the Constitution, which states that the USA shall give every state in the Union a Republican form of government and protect each state in the Union from invasion. My opponent has claimed that these parts of the Constitution demonstrate that the federal government of the USA has the authority to form a military and use said military to protect its national security, which means that conscription is constitutional. However, these parts of the Constitution give Congress the right to form militaries, but it does not give Congress the right to force citizens of the United States to join said militaries. If citizens voluntarily joined militaries, then that would be constitutional, as the government would be able to use the military for the sake of national security, but nobody would be forced to join the military. I assure you that some people would voluntarily join the military. People do it today. My opponent has defined involuntary servitude as "a person laboring against that person's will to benefit another, under some form of coercion other than the worker's financial needs." However, I argue that even if the form of coercion involves the worker's financial needs, it's still involuntary servitude. Servitude means working for someone, and involuntary means mandatory. Therefore, all labour that is done without the consent of the worker is involuntary servitude by definition. Conscription isn't mandated, or even allowed, by the Constitution. The Constitution does allow a military, but only voluntary military service is Constitutional. My opponent has claimed that since an income tax, a form of involuntary servitude, is constitutional since it's stated in the Constitution, conscription is also constitutional, since it's stated in the Constitution. I assume that this income tax which my opponent has mentioned is referring to the 16th Amendment (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution), which gave us the income tax, but I ask for my opponent to correct me if that's not what they were referring to. Regardless, the only reason that the income tax is constitutional is that it's allowed by the 16th Amendment. If it weren't for the 16th Amendment, then an income tax would be unconstitutional as per the 13th Amendment. Any form of involuntary servitude that's not used as punishment for a crime is unconstitutional unless it's allowed by a constitutional amendment. In this case, an income tax would've been unconstitutional, but the 16th Amendment overrode that. My opponent has also claimed that the 13th Amendment was written to protect black rights, and therefore doesn't forbid conscription. However, while racial equality was the basis for the 13th Amendment, the 13th Amendment makes no mention of race in its text, so its meaning applies to all involuntary servitude (with the exception of when it's being used as a punishment for a crime). I did not realize that students called for conscription can postpone it for the sake of education, so I retract the statement that I made about education. I also did not consider the fact that conscription would only be used again in wartime, which could be much more damaging to the economy than conscription, so I also retract the statement that I made about the economy. While the soldiers are paid, meaning that conscription is not technically slavery, it is still tantamount to it. It might be a nation's obligation to defend the homeland and win the war, but that doesn't mean that the government should force its citizens to assist in that cause.