Military conscription is justified.

I negate. Resolved: "Military conscription is justified" I will offer some definitions: Rights: that which is due to anyone by just claim, legal guarantees, moral principles Military conscription: compulsory enrollment of persons for military or naval service Justified: to show a satisfactory reason or excuse for something done. Freedom: exemption from external control, interference, regulation, etc. Social contract: the voluntary agreement among individuals by which, according to any of various theories, as of Hobbes, Locke, or Rousseau, organized society is brought into being and invested with the right to secure mutual protection and welfare or to regulate the relations among its members. (Definitions given by the american heritage dictionary) I value morality. Morality is what keeps us separate from animals and it keeps society in order and keeps it from crumbling. Humans must always try to do the right thing. We can achieve the stated value, morality, by upholding the social contract. The government has an obligation to uphold human rights because it is their half of the social contract. If the government takes away our rights, they are not upholding their side and they are not acting morally. I will now proceed to offer some contentions as to why military conscription is detrimental to upholding the social contract, and therefore morality, and why military conscription is unjust. Contention 1: Part of upholding the social contract is upholding individual freedom.. Military conscription is forcing people to fight when they may not want to. Warrant/Claim: With military conscription, soldiers are forced to fight, even if they don"t want to. Families suffer as a result of their men leaving. If you take people, it forces them against their will. The government is taking away the basic right of freedom to choice. This is a slippery slope and eventually the government will not be serving its function. Impact: When you take away one right, you put all rights in jeopardy, because when you desecrate one value, what is so different about desecrating all values? Contention 2: Military conscription is not effective. "Suppose a million men were to be taken each year for a one-year term and then released. If they could have earned an average of $3,000 during that year as civilians, the total opportunity cost of their service would be $3 billion a year. To this must be added the cost of the personnel and equipment used in training, which (say) comes to about $1 billion per year; adding together these costs gives a yearly cost of $4 billion. The total cost of this program depends on the date at which war begins; if 10 years elapse the total cost (ignoring discounting) is $40 billion; if 20 years elapse the total cost rises to $80 billion." (www.Hoover.org) Warrant/Claim Among the teenagers and young adults today old enough for military service, 75 percent of them would be considered unfit for duty due to the rising obesity rates. It would cost more to train and get these young adults into shape than manufacturing supplies greatly needed on and off the battlefield. (20committee.com/2013/12/25/on-conscription-and-military-effectiveness/) The government has an obligation to protect the people under the social contract. It"s not worth fighting a war if the government doesn"t uphold the social contract. The government"s first obligation is to protect its people, and if military conscription doesn"t do that, we should find an alternative. Contention 3: Under the social contract, the government has an obligation to avoid hindering economic production, because when the government becomes a hindrance to economic production, it is actively becoming a detriment to the people, and it is not upholding its side of the social contract.When the government takes away husbands and mothers to fight a war in a foreign land, they are directly interfering with that person"s employment, and thus, hindering economic production. As a result, the overall prosperity of this country is significantly harmed due to the sudden absence of labor, as all the workers have gone to fight the war! Also, according to the CBPP, the center on budget and policy priorities, when the war is over and these conscripted veterans come back, wages will drop significantly, due to the sudden influx of labor, as per the basic laws of supply and demand. This creates economic upheaval.. Contention 4: Another element of upholding the social contract is having an effective government. According to John Locke, if a government does not serve its function, the people have the right to rebel. Part of having the government serve its function and be effective is applying the law fairly, across spans of rich or poor, white or black, short or tall, young or old. Military conscription cannot achieve this, therefore, it should cease to be a part of our government. Evidence: Major General Robert Scales, U.S. Army once stated that," National service sounds like a utopian concept for social leveling, and it might be if it were applied fairly. It might be applied fairly during peacetime. But this is America. When the bullets start to fly Mom and Dad from the middle and upper classes will find a nice internship for their child in a soup kitchen or a Congressman"s office. But the less well connected will, as always, go to war poorly prepared, untrained and resentful. " This proves that military conscription makes those who are drafted bitter and angry, thus making them ineffective and a hindrance to military strikes, campaigns, and operations. You cannot expect the forced to fight well when all they want is to go home. Impact: According to research at the Appalachian State University, during World War 2, just 1.2 percent of Harvard and Yale students, who typically represented a rich class, were drafted as compared to a 60-70 percent conscription rate at UC Berkeley! This is a clear breach of the social contract. Not only are you making rules that force people to fight a war, but you are not even applying this rule equitably! If people do not want to fight, then forcing them into military service will obviously not be the best choice... Precious resources will be wasted, leading to losing the war and killing more civilians in the process. "Research on the effects of Vietnam military service suggests that Vietnam veterans experienced significantly higher mortality than the civilian population at large." (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...) Contention 6: Conscription is useless with today"s technology. "A reserve force would be almost useless in all-out thermonuclear war as the outcome of such a war would depend on the quality of the fighting force in being; the quality of this force would be better if it were an experienced professional force than if it were an inexperienced drafted one." (http://www.hoover.org...) In conclusion, military conscription would be detrimental to the social contract and morality, and therefore, unjust.