We should be proud of the military not because of the job they do but rather in spite of whet they are told to do. Not all soldiers “kill innocent people”, just like not all soldiers are “virtuous”.
At my university orientation week there was an Army Recruitment Stand where you could sign up (yes, even the college bound enlist). One day the Socialist Alternative Society decided it would be a good idea to protest the military’s presence. The socialists all bound and blindfolded themselves and proceeded to shower themselves in ‘blood’ and pretended to ‘die’ in a macabre spectacle.
All this from a group of college students whose idea of hardship constitutes getting out of bed before noon.
Can’t they advertise like any other organisation? Who else would you arbitrarily ban from campus? After all, it’s our choice who we work for, ain’t it.
Of course the haters have not. Plus, you’re useless to libertarianism, because in order to be a ideologue, you can’t have any broader knowledge or life experience. That totally ruins fanaticism. If you’re not going to be absolutely fanatical and radical, then you might accidentally increase the power of the state, and we can’t have that.
The great irony of anarchism, is that Rothbard was a right winger at the beginning and end. Like SEK3, it’s more important to talk about what he wrote, than how he lived.
Frankly, there is no reason in 2008 for any branch of the military to have recruiters. Each branch has a website, for example goarmy.com . If somebody wants to join up they can fill out the necessary paperwork online, go to a local VA facility for the medical exam, submit their stuff online for any necessary background checks. If they pass all that, then they can go to their local reception facility for final checkout and induction. Keeping military recruiters in every town is nothing but unneccesary military pork and these recruiters would be better used on actual military duty.
Anyhow, everybody knows how to tell when a military recruiter is lying anyway. His lips are moving. Sorry, had to put that jab in there.
I do believe the military should have the right to leave literature on campus. They have as much right to speak as the Socialist Alternative Society.
By the way, to the youngin thinking of signing up. Don’t do it. I did four years in the Army out of high school. I lucked out and never experienced combat. But even so, it ain’t worth it. Your better off flipping hamburgers at McDonalds between college classes.
The point is that universities (property owners) are the ones who decide who is and who isn’t allowed to recruit on university property. Not the student body (the customers).
The armed forces are just another employment opportunity and should be treated that way.
You’re living in a fatasy world man. Most of my friends are vets who have served in either Iraq or Afghanistan. All of them were and still are good men but most of them have told me stories of what they have done once they got over there. Being a “good” man and being a “living” man are two different things once you have bullets and rockets flying at you. I’m not knocking soliders. I’m the first in my family to have NOT served (not because I didn’t want to but because I couldn’t). Most of my friends are vets or are still in and the stories I’ve heard seem to be pretty common. Under the pressure you tend to do things you might not have done otherwise. When your life and the lives of your friends are on the line you don’t care what happens to the people you are occupying. Property rights don’t count, personal rights don’t count. Staying alive is all that counts.
Think about it: You say you are an anarchist yet you are going to voluntarily sign up for the Marines to occupy another nation. Don’t you see how crazy that sounds? The college money sounds nice but once the bullets start flying you are going to start wishing you were back at home accruing debt instead of Purple Hearts.
Buy a rifle, buy some ammo and go to the range. There are always plenty of people at a gun range who know what they are talking about can are more than happy to help you out if you need to learn to shoot.
As is the mafia. The mafia too offers employment, the mafia too has virtuous, family-oriented employees who are doing it for positive values. So the mafia is just another employment opportunity and should be treated that way.
Now, on your first point about customers and owners - you are a customer (student) too, are you not? So if the opinion of the SA students is irrelevant, why isn’t your opinion irrelevant too? What entitles you to maintain that the military should be allowed to recruit at the school (at my expense) but does not entitle the other students to maintain that the military should not be allowed to recruit at the school? The final decision belongs to the property owner, but it would be a silly business owner who paid no attention to customer preferences, would it not? “Yes, the customers like lobster and will pay for it, but gosh darn it, this is my store, not theirs! The customers don’t get to decide what I’ll stock, and I’m going to continue to stock rocks!” Of course, the customer cannot force the store to start stocking lobsters and not rocks, but neither can the store owner force the customer to keep him in business. So why shouldn’t the property owner take into account what the students desire? The students in your story were not forcibly preventing access, they were making their opinions known. Do you deny the right to free speech, or to make property owners aware of the desires of their customers? Again, if so, why are you entitled to do so?
Further, I’m not sure just who the property owners are. Is the school government owned, or is it private? If it is private, does it receive public funds? Government ownership, though, is based on money taken by taxation from its rightful owners, so in some sense the taxpayers own the school, or in the case of a private school, some portion thereof. Pacifists are taxed too, are they not?
How does your ‘theory’ about property rights explain the mass murdering routinely done by the military ?
Give me a break.
Excuse me ‘sir’ but your first post in this thread was a thuggish defense of militarism. You don’t seem to have changed your ways much.
Haha. This is really sick. It turns out that people who should be hanged for their crimes have the high moral ground while folks who point out that militarism is the opposite of libertarianism are haters
(I know, I know war is peace and ignorance is strength)
The military is bullshit. What exactly does the military do besides start wars? I’m hard pressed to find out where all that food and equipment comes from. It robs everyone involved in peaceful exchange and then ruins this peaceful exchange by going to war.
The military is nothing but a glorified mob. Why is it that most people are so against elite/congressman robbing people, but( in all situations I have encountered) usually uneducated or economically lazy person joins a group and gives up any will of his own is praised.
If you want to end your self rule, go ahead, just don’t do it on my expense. Anyone who joins the military after they are persuaded to a libertarian position is no Anarchist. The military is the only tool of power the State has, they have no legitimate authority. Anyone who actively joins the military is, by a moral standpoint, enslaving the people and causes them strife by using war as a tool to gain more power, even if they just get the general his coffee.
" Every raindrop says it is not responsible for the flood."
Your argument seems to be focussing on “opinion” and “desire” rather than concrete “demand”.
In your example the business owner will happily switch from proving rocks to providing lobster because there is no market demand for rock. When the army rocks up at your college they are there because there are a number of consenting adults who wish to join. There is a demand. If no student shows an interest, the men with guns won’t bother showing up. It is after all, just a small wooden stall among many others.
The ‘opinions’ of me and my fellow students indeed don’t matter, especially when it comes to voluntary arrangements between other people. If some students think that multinationals are unethical, exploitative and evil, does that imply WalMart/McDonalds/JPMorgan shouldn’t be allowed to advertise to prospective employees or potential buyers?
As to ownership, if it is a private institution (perhaps like Mises U. I suppose), the committee of owners of the university campus would have to give permission for any advertising to take place. If it is a public institution then the government owns it and will no doubt allow all “cross promotion advertising” activities. Army, police force, whatever. I am well aware that public schooling’s function is to promote and perpetuate the state itself. Anarchists are taxed too, you know.
And no, I do not deny the right to free speech. I never suggested I did.
This point is questionable - the normal laws of supply and demand don’t quite apply to the military. It may be far from cost-effective to send recruiters somewhere where no one is interested, but so what? It isn’t their money anyway.
Now, you say that the store will stop selling rocks and start selling lobsters, in good time, as profit signals direct. Fine - but what is wrong with the customers also mentioning to the owner “Hey, we’d probably be a lot more likely to shop here if you had lobsters and not rocks”? That is, price signals are important and relevant, but there’s no requirement that they be the only kind of signals. If the store owner has a policy - as the university does - that allows customers to walk around the store with signs saying what they want, then why not have signs that say “Lobsters not rocks”?
This ignoes the fact that critics of multinationals are largely wrong, while critics of the military are correct in their assertions. But yes, I’d expect students who believe that to advocate that the school also not allow those companies, and that other students would argue the opposite side, and the property owner would eventually decide - exactly as is the case for the military.
Yes, that is a good description of how things stand. My question was whether or not this was correct, given that the school is largely funded anyway by tax money.
Yes, anarchists are taxed too. That’s why taxation is evil, and this paragraph is no defense of the current situation, whereby a group steals money to build a school, then attracts students to the school through the promise of getting something for nothing, only to then use the opportunity to recruit them as killers working for the original group.
You still haven’t said if you would be outraged if students protested against allowing the mafia to recruit on campus. In fact, why aren’t you advocating for that, if they don’t presently recruit at your school?
Ok, good. Then what do you suppose should be done about these students whose protests you dislike?
I was a former member who became a libertarian. In my case I was a paleo-conservative when I join the Army out of high school back in 1986. I left active duty in 1990. Thankfully I saw no combat.
I started drifting towards Libertarianism in the couple of years after I left active duty, particularly with the events of the Bush administration in 1991 and 1992. But I didn’t really become a full fledged libertarian until the very late 1990’s.
Today of course, I am extremely opposed to the military. Back then, I lacked the understandings that I have now.
