Ok, I thought about this some more. I thought he made a decision and performed an action. It was his free choice, which is virtuous, to hand in his paperwork on being a conscientious objector. That’s a courageous move indeed.
I’m thrilled at such a lively discussion, and of course, I want to chime in as well. Essentially I’m copying my latest blog from my website as it addresses what I think was at issue throughout yesterday’s back-and-forth exchange. My most direct response is that I agree with the perspective voiced by Wilderness that I have both made a decision and taken action by turning in my request to be classified as a conscientious objector. As to how much this action should be lauded, I don’t know, as it’s ultimately an attempt at undoing what was the originally ignorant mistake of enlisting. Natalie is correct in stating that I “was perfectly fine with living tax payers’ money until (I) changed my mind,” guilty as charged.
However, I wonder what more advanced “kinds of trouble” she would consider than the requirement to continue laboring against my will.
First, I wish to unequivocally establish as fact that I, being of sound mind, did enlist into the Navy by my own choice and not as the result of the coercion of any person or group. An equally true statement is that I no longer wish to remain employed by the Navy, yet I’m unable to quit this job without the potential penalty of imprisonment.
I admit and accept that my desire to no longer fulfill the terms to which I agreed may rightly call into question the trustworthiness of my word. I have weighed this potential cost to my reputation, and I’ve found it definitively lacking in comparison with the price required to support an organization and a cause that I believe is unjustified in its termination of countless human lives.
In my own mind, I’ve considered the question of which mistake I would rather confess to any children I may one day have. Would I rather tell them how I failed to live up to the specified number of years that I had promised to labor for a given employer, or that I continued to work for an organization even after I came to believe that it existed for an immoral purpose?
To me the choice is easy, and so I acknowledge that I personally, and no one else, am to blame for my decision to have enlisted in the Navy, just as I individually bear the responsibility for the fact that I wish to break my word and end my employment. That I have no intent to deny accountability for my desire does not mean that I think the government is justified in holding me to my promise under the threat of imprisonment.
In summary, although I haven’t broken my word, I have definitively expressed that I do not wish to live up to my promised tenure. This expression has been in the form of a request to be released from the terms to which I originally agreed.
Although I no longer desire to do so, each morning I report for duty as ordered, and I complete my assignments without protest. This, however, doesn’t equate to truly being there by choice. A person choosing between prison and work cannot be said to have freely chosen to work. I was not conscripted, but since I now remain employed against my will, is there really any difference?
First of all, he was not forced into a contract. He signed the contract voluntarily. Therefore, he was not forced into anything.
Second of all, why can liberty not be a part of a contract? If I signed a contract to play for a baseball team for 3 years unless I am legitimately injured, would I not be losing part of my liberty? What If I decided not to play for that team anymore? If I could simply walk away without any repercussions, what would the point of the contract be?
No organization, military or otherwise, can using the argument of natural rights contract your inalienable rights of life (person) and liberty Your life and liberty can not be transferred in a contract. It is impossible according to Natural Law. So you signed a contract to work, but not for them to enslave you and to coerce your life and liberty.
This, by the way, is the argument for a free market when it comes to labor. You can go to a job, sign all the forms, but if you can’t or don’t want to go on, then you can, by free-will, leave. Of course there are social consequences (which is different than natural law and thus rights), but I have a hard time believing you will not be able to find a job somewhere outside of the military simply due to you being a conscientious objector.
No difference. I agree with you.
I didn’t say he was forced into it.
Who said there would not be repercussions in a contract? I didn’t. Usually in terms of baseball the player they sit at a table and go over the terms of dissolving the contract. The player pays a certain amount back to the organization, maybe the League jumps in (for some odd reason), and says the player can’t play on a team for two years. That’s the way contracts go. It has nothing to do with liberty or life. It’s his baseball ability (labor) that signed on. You don’t sign on and lose all free-will and become a slave and do their bidding against your will.
You do understand what liberty is correct? It means no physical coercion, threat or enacted, against a person. Are you trying to say a baseball player signs a contract to be beaten by the wooden bats and not to actually hit these round balls with the wooden bat instead? Surely not. And are you saying a baseball player signs a contract and loses their right of person therefore the baseball organization can do gene manipulation, force the player to eat and drink anything, and cut out his or her organs and sell them cause they own the player due to signing a baseball contract? Surely not.
He does admit he was not forced.
What do you think should be the repercussions for quitting the military, if you signed an 8 year contract? What would stop people from simply signing on to go through the training, and then quitting?
Also, it is impossible to give up your liberty in a contract, because no matter what you sign to, you signed to it without being forced. You signed the contract via your own liberty.
Could you sign a contract for someone to murder you? What about signing a contract that puts you in a position where you may get killed? What is the difference? Apparently you believe that “life” cannot be transferred via a contract. Why not? What if I want to sign a contract with someone to fight to the death?
What if a contract does not list an repercussions, should the person who signed it not follow through with the contract. What should the repercussions be?
I didn’t say there had to be repercussions. That’s a social issue and falls not into any universal definition.
Ask the people… I couldn’t possibly know.
So you signed it in your own liberty… free will, and?
What’s this have to do with the current topic? Strawman I presume…
huh? Again what’s the point of this tangent?
If you want to stop and not die, then you can. A contract has no force on your liberty, and if it does, then it is a contract that doesn’t recognize liberty in the first place and is coercive in the first place. I don’t really get your point about a contract somehow having magical power against somebody’s free will. Contracts of this kind of coercive nature wouldn’t care about ones liberty in the first place and are a violation of Natural Law. So contract null and void in this case from the beginning in a society of people that recognize coercion leads to the end of human flourishing and thus existence. Are you trying to kill us all or something?
That’s a social issue. There are no universal laws of repercussions that I’m aware of. Maybe instead of asking these questions, unless you’re really trying to learn something here but I think instead you’re being rhetorical, so, instead of asking think for yourself on how you want to live life instead of trying to mold scenarios that coerce everybody. But I hold out hope you’re asking to learn…
I was merely asking some specific questions in order to see where you stand. You refused to answer most of my questions, so, I am done here.
I answered all the relevant questions. You see it otherwise. It probably has to do with your stance on trying to justify coercion. I mean that’s all the scenario’s you threw out there to see if coercion is possible, correct? Well, to coerce is to violate liberty. Where do you stand is the more appropriate question for yourself - liberty or not?
Since you cannot be released from your contract and are unjustly being withheld and imprisoned I wish to impart onto common sense that you already know but can never falter in constantly reminding yourself.
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Do your part, no more no less.
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Do not be a hero, don’t fall for the collectivist bullshit of your life for the general good.
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Remember that no one’s rights were ensured or protected because a soldier or sailor died.
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Don’t drop the soap…the Navy only gives you one and you don’t want to get germs all over it.
Repercussions for quitting? A fee for the training. After a certain amount of time, though, I would thing the stoppage of wages would be enough.
Indeed, and I also have the right to change my mind. I like your baseball analogy, so I’ll stick with that. I can sign with a baseball team for a four year contract. That just means that they agree to pay me the agreed upon amount for a period of four years, and I agree to both play baseball for that team and to refrain from playing baseball for another team in that league, for a period of four years. I’m sure penalties for early termination (for both sides) would be included. Even if they’re not, say I only play one year and then retire. The owner will simply not pay me for the remaining three, and possibly demand a fee if I play for another team (though let’s be honest, no other team would hire me after a walk out like that). Either way, I’m quite sure jail time or execution are not included in the penalties.
Possibly, but you could change your mind and (hopefully) inform the would-be assassin before the deed is done.
Like a construction job? Look, if you sign the contract to do a job, and then don’t do it, the customer or employer is not going to pay you, and may seek some addional fee from you (wasted time, wasted materials, etc.) They are NOT going to jail you. Except the military.
Correct. Apparently, you believe you shouldn’t be allowed to back out of a contract, even if you release the other party from his or her obligations, as well. Hell, marriage is a life contract, but even without a prenup, there’s still divorce.
Go ahead. but if you cange your mind before the fight starts, does the other party have the right to hunt you down?
That’s a really hard question, as it depends on the type of contract, and if one or both side’s obligations were partially or wholely fufilled. For example, if you hire me to build you a fence around your yard, the reprecussions for my not completeing the job would depend on a variety of factors. Did you pay me for the job up front, or a partial payment, or none at all? Did I even start the job or did I just not show up? Did I back out when i was x% done? If so, can someone else pick up where I left off, or will it need to be restarted? How much time has gone by?
In general, I would say the reprcussions for breaking a contract would be that the other party has no obligation to fufill his side of the contract, and should be compensated if he already did.
It is not coercion if you consent to it.
He is not consenting. He turned in the papers to leave. Contracts that advocate coercion, meaning he can’t leave, are just that - coercive. Liberty or not?
He consented to the contract when it was signed. If you sign a contract to work for the military for 8 years, and it explicitly states that a failure to uphold the contract may result in a fine not to exceed X dollars or imprisonment not to exceed X years (note: this is a hypothetical scenario), is that not an acceptable contract?
The issue is this: If you consent to a contract (that restricts your autonomy) at the time that you signed it, does the contract become a breach of your liberty if you change your mind?
“He” is not consented to any contract. You fail to realize that no contract can coerce a person and thus violate their liberty, their free-will. Unless you don’t like liberty and believe in slavery. I will eventually think you advocate coercion and want to enslave people if you don’t answer this question: liberty or not?
Yes the contract breaches your liberty according to somebody that thinks a contract can enslave a person, in other words, only a criminal would breach liberty. Do you believe in slavery? Are you a criminal? There really is no fine line on this issue. It’s quite clear. And you need to make a choice. Liberty or not?
I. Ryan,
I would think about this for a moment. It is a rights issue, but at the heart of any rights issue is a value issue.
What you are arguing is the value of a contract is higher than the value of a life. Coercion against a person and thus liberty happens at the point of a gun. So put another way, do you value a contract more than a person’s life?
I don’t think that I could summarize it more concisely, so I have included Murray Rothbard’s definition of contract as set forth on the first page of Chapter 19 in his book Ethics of Liberty. Available free from Mises here. I accept this definition as my own, and I have been using it as the basis for denying the legitimacy of the current contract by which the government claims to bind me to the Navy.
“Unfortunately, many libertarians devoted to the right to make contracts, hold the contract itself to be an absolute, and therefore maintain that any voluntary contract whatever must be legally enforceable in the free society. Their error is a failure to realize that the right to contract is strictly derivable from the right of private property, and therefore that the only enforceable contracts (i.e., those backed by the sanction of legal coercion) should be those where the failure of one party to abide by the contract implies the theft of property from the other party. In short, a contract should only be enforceable when the failure to fulfill it is an implicit theft of property. But this can only be true if we hold that validly enforceable contracts only exist where title to property has already been transferred, and therefore where the failure to abide by the contract means that the other party’s property is retained by the delinquent party, without the consent of the former (implicit theft). Hence, this proper libertarian theory of enforceable contracts has been termed the “title-transfer” theory of contracts.”
From this, I believe that if I were to break my contract with the Navy, something I don’t intend to do, it would not result in the implicit theft of any property. The Navy has not given me bonuses, advanced pay, or any fringe benefits such as a car, or a vacation home in the Hamptons, which could rightly be considered property and understood to be in exchange for my agreed upon future labor.
Each month I work, I get paid. It’s no longer a voluntary exchange, but it does occur in the present. Hypothetically, if I were to fail in fulfilling my contract by no longer laboring or reporting for duty, there would not only be a lack of moral or ethical grounds for imprisonment, but there would be no legitimate reason to attempt to extract any type of repayment for my failure. As to the pragmatic question of how such a society would operate, one’s reputation would become immensely more important. As a baseball player who failed to live up to your contract, you would legitimately have to return any property that had already been transferred to you in exchange for your future labor, in addition to facing the extremely forbidding prospect of trying to convince another ball team to extend you an offer that you really would keep this time.
Personally, I am little concerned about having problems finding future employment as a result of a tarnished reputation. Any party with whom I would truly want to be exchanging my labor for their property, would be of such character that they would acknowledge that it is definitely better not to persevere in wrongdoing, merely for the sake of keeping one’s word.
Secondly, although I personally feel that it’s largely irrelevant to any moral or ethical understanding of just contract, let me explain this all within the framework that the Navy considers legitimate. The Navy doesn’t recognize me as having any ability to break or modify the existing contract apart from going AWOL. If I am discharged as a conscientious objector I will not have broken or even failed to fulfill the terms of my contract. Rather, the Navy will give me an honorable discharge and send me on my way as a result of the “convenience of the government.”
Again, I appreciate all the respectful exchange of ideas that it is taking place about a topic that is very applicable and emotionally tied to my daily life.
Daniel J. Lakemacher
http://www.warisimmoral.com
warisimmoral@gmail.com
Excellent points Daniel!
Yes restitution of any kind is not necessary due to no theft is involved, great points you brought up here!
Hmm, interesting viewpoint on the Navy’s position as well. So they would even recognize that you never broke a contract under the terms of conscientious objector. I would like to repeat that - the Navy would even recognize that you never broke a contract.
At least the Navy may recognize the moral agent in each person, all the mechanisms are available. That the Navy may indeed identify the virtuous nature of a human is actually very reassuring and would be immensely positive and beautiful of the Navy. In other words, let’s see if the Navy still recognizes virtue. I would very much be gladdened to know that they do. I guess we’ll see.
[Y]
Excellent post.