UFriday said:
So the parliament of my country (Slovakia) has recently been discussing whether or not to bring back national service. I feel sort of divided over this: on the one hand, I quietly support national service (because in my opnion it helps with breaking down class and race barriers and introduces a sense of discipline that doesn't go away easily), but on the other, Slovakia's government is legendarily adept at fucking things over, and the last time national service was introduced, there were several casualties, ranging from hazing induced suicide to just plain being hazed to death.
So, yeah. National service, yay or nay?
In the United States military service is largely class-based - poor people serve in the military in order to get wealthier at the cost of possible death/injury as well as possibly having to kill other people while wealthier people don't have to (and therefore rarely do) dehumanize themselves for money.
War is the male equivalent of prostitution - selling the sanctity of one's body. Most prostitutes are poor for the same reason that most soldiers are poor - they wouldn't do what they do otherwise.
Compulsory military service would never be accepted in wealthy countries unless they became virtual fascist states, like Israel. Even in less powerful countries compulsory military service doesn't make a lot of sense, since one of the primary enemies of the state is it's own population, so compulsory military service would be asking the population to dominate itself, a bit of a stretch even in the current feudal world.