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May 20, 2002
Dave Marsh
Music Monopolies
Jordy Cummings
Israel, Jews and the Left
Francis Boyle
In Defense
of a Divestment
Campaign Against Israel
Christian Salmon
The Bulldozer War
Edward Said
Crisis for
American Jews
May 19, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Where's Twain's Protector Government
Now?
Norman Madarasz
Canada,
NAFTA and Kyoto
May 18, 2002
M.G. Piety
Economic Fiction:
From Here to Annuity?
Michael Colby
Bush Fiddled
While
New York Burned
May 17, 2002
Wayne Madsen
Fox News Flashback:
Defending McKinney
James T. Phillips
Ceasefires
and Terrorists
Phillipe Dambournet
The Truth at Last:
Bush as the Energizer Bunny
Lori Berenson
In Defense
of Political Prisoners
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Terrorist Warnings
Hussein Ibish
Clarifying
the Obstacles
to Peace in Palestine
Alexander Cockburn
Israel and "Anti-Semitism"
May 16, 2002
Marylin Robinson
A Garden
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Paul de Rooij
Worse than CNN?
The BBC and Israel
David Krieger
The Bush/Putin
Agreement:
Nuclear Dangers Remain
Steve Perry
Unsafe at Any Speed:
Youth, Sex and the Heresies
of Judith Levine
May 15, 2002
Ahmad Faruqui
Revisiting
Camp David
Rick Giombetti
Spiderman v. Pentagon:
Working Class Hero Battles Corrupt Defense Contractors
Stanton / Madsen
When the
War Hits Home:
Planning for Martial Law, Telegovernance and Suspension of Elections
May 14, 2002
Jacob Levich
Leaving the Truth Out?
Alternative Online Publication
Tells the Big Lie about Palestine
Michael Colby
Bush's
Cuba Blunder
Dave Marsh
Scapegoats: the Music Industry's War
on Cassettes
Jensen / Mahajan
US Power
Mideast Power Plays
May 13, 2002
Robert Fisk
Why Does John Malkovich
Want to Kill Me?
Mokhiber / Weissman
IMF
and World Bank:
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Dean Baker
Will Darth Vader do Time?
The Enron Saga Continues
Nelson Valdés
American
Democracy:
A Lesson for Cubans
May 12, 2002
Bernard Weiner
Why Is America Acting Like This? A
Letter to European Friends
John Patrick Leary
Aiding Colombia
Kathleen Christison
Israel
and Ethics
May 11, 2002
Joady Guthrie
The Holy Lands:
A Peace Vision
Patrick Cockburn
Bombing
Iraq:
the Pentagon Prepares a Prolonged Campaign
George Sunderland
CounterPunch Special
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The New Crusade:
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May
20, 2002
Say No to Conscription
by Rep. Ron Paul
I hope my colleagues who believe that the current
war on terrorism justifies violating the liberty of millions
of young men by reinstating a military draft will consider the
eloquent argument against conscription in the attached speech
by Daniel Webster. Then-representative Webster delivered his
remarks on the floor of the House in opposition to a proposal
to institute a draft during the War of 1812. Webster's speech
remains one of the best statements of the Constitutional and
moral case against conscription.
Despite the threat posed to the very
existence of the young republic by the invading British Empire,
Congress ultimately rejected the proposal to institute a draft.
If the new nation of America could defeat what was then the most
powerful military empire in the world without a draft, there
is no reason why we cannot address our current military needs
with a voluntary military.
Webster was among the first of a long
line of prominent Americans, including former President Ronald
Reagan and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, to recognize
that a draft violates the fundamental principles of liberty this
country was founded upon.
In order to reaffirm support for individual
liberty and an effective military, I have introduced H. Con.
Res. 368, which expresses the sense of Congress against reinstating
a military draft. I urge my colleagues to read Daniel Webster's
explanation of why the draft is incompatible with liberty government
and cosponsor H. Con. Res. 368.
ON CONSCRIPTION (By Daniel Webster)
During America's first great war, waged
against Great Britain, the Madison Administration tried to introduce
a conscription bill into Congress. This bill called forth one
of Daniel Webster's most eloquent efforts, in a powerful opposition
to conscription. The speech was delivered in the House of Representatives
on December 9, 1814; the following is a condensation:
"This bill indeed is less undisguised
in its object, and less direct in its means, than some of the
measures proposed. It is an attempt to exercise the power of
forcing the free men of this country into the ranks of an army,
for the general purposes of war, under color of a military service.
It is a distinct system, introduced for new purposes, and not
connected with any power, which the Constitution has conferred
on Congress.
But, Sir, there is another consideration.
The services of the men to be raised under this act are not limited
to those cases in which alone this Government is entitled to
the aid of the militia of the States. These cases are particularly
stated in the Constitution - 'to repel invasion, suppress insurrection,
or execute the laws.'
The question is nothing less, than whether
the most essential rights of personal liberty shall be surrendered,
and despotism embraced in its worst form. When the present generation
of men shall be swept away, and that this Government ever existed
shall be a matter of history only, I desire that it may then
be known, that you have not proceeded in your course unadmonished
and unforewarned. Let it then be known, that there were those,
who would have stopped you, in the career of your measures, and
held you back, as by the skirts of your garments, from the precipice,
over which you are plunging, and drawing after you the Government
of your Country.
Conscription is chosen as the most promising
instrument, both of overcoming reluctance to the Service, and
of subduing the difficulties which arise from the deficiencies
of the Exchequer. The administration asserts the right to fill
the ranks of the regular army by compulsion. It contends that
it may now take one out of every twenty-five men, and any part
or the whole of the rest, whenever its occasions require. Persons
thus taken by force, and put into an army, may be compelled to
serve there, during the war, or for life. They may be put on
any service, at home or abroad, for defense or for invasion,
according to the will and pleasure of Government. This power
does not grow out of any invasion of the country, or even out
of a state of war. It belongs to Government at all times, in
peace as well as in war, and is to be exercised under all circumstances,
according to its mere discretion. This, Sir, is the amount of
the principle contended for by the Secretary of War (James Monroe).
Is this, Sir, consistent with the character
of a free Government? Is this civil liberty? Is this the real
character of our Constitution? No, Sir, indeed it is not. The
Constitution is libeled, foully libeled. The people of this country
have not established for themselves such a fabric of despotism.
They have not purchased at a vast expense of their own treasure
and their own blood a Magna Carta to be slaves. Where is it written
in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained,
that you may take children from their parents, and parents from
their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war,
in which the folly or the wickedness of Government may engage
it? Under what concealment has this power lain hidden, which
now for the first time comes forth, with a tremendous and baleful
aspect, to trample down and destroy the dearest rights of personal
liberty? Sir, I almost disdain to go to quotations and references
to prove that such an abominable doctrine has no foundation in
the Constitution of the country. It is enough to know that that
instrument was intended as the basis of a free Government, and
that the power contended for is incompatible with any notion
of personal liberty. An attempt to maintain this doctrine upon
the provisions of the Constitution is an exercise of perverse
ingenuity to extract slavery from the substance of a free Government.
It is an attempt to show, by proof and argument, that we ourselves
are subjects of despotism, and that we have a right to chains
and bondage, firmly secured to us and our children, by the provisions
of our Government.
The supporters of the measures before
us act on the principle that it is their task to raise arbitrary
powers, by construction, out of a plain written charter of National
Liberty. It is their pleasing duty to free us of the delusion,
which we have fondly cherished, that we are the subjects of a
mild, free and limited Government, and to demonstrate by a regular
chain of premises and conclusions, that Government possesses
over us a power more tyrannical, more arbitrary, more dangerous,
more allied to blood and murder, more full of every form of mischief,
more productive of every sort and degree of misery, than has
been exercised by any civilized Government in modern times.
But it is said, that it might happen
that any army would not be raised by voluntary enlistment, in
which case the power to raise armies would be granted in vain,
unless they might be raised by compulsion. If this reasoning
could prove any thing, it would equally show, that whenever the
legitimate powers of the Constitution should be so badly administered
as to cease to answer the great ends intended by them, such new
powers may be assumed or usurped, as any existing administration
may deem expedient. This is a result of his own reasoning, to
which the Secretary does not profess to go. But it is a true
result. For if it is to be assumed, that all powers were granted,
which might by possibility become necessary, and that Government
itself is the judge of this possible necessity, then the powers
of Government are precisely what it chooses they should be.
The tyranny of Arbitrary Government consists
as much in its means as in its end; and it would be a ridiculous
and absurd constitution which should be less cautious to guard
against abuses in the one case than in the other. All the means
and instruments which a free Government exercises, as well as
the ends and objects which it pursues, are to partake of its
own essential character, and to be conformed to its genuine spirit.
A free Government with arbitrary means to administer it is a
contradiction; a free Government without adequate provision for
personal security is an absurdity; a free Government, with an
uncontrolled power of military conscription, is a solecism, at
once the most ridiculous and abominable that ever entered into
the head of man.
Into the paradise of domestic life you
enter, not indeed by temptations and sorceries, but by open force
and violence.
Nor is it, Sir, for the defense of his
own house and home, that he who is the subject of military draft
is to perform the task allotted to him. You will put him upon
a service equally foreign to his interests and abhorrent to his
feelings. With his aid you are to push your purposes of conquest.
The battles which he is to fight are the battles of invasion;
battles which he detests perhaps and abhors, less from the danger
and the death that gather over them, and the blood with which
they drench the plain, than from the principles in which they
have their origin. If, Sir, in this strife he fall--if, while
ready to obey every rightful command of Government, he is forced
from home against right, not to contend for the defense of his
country, but to prosecute a miserable and detestable project
of invasion, and in that strife he fall, 'tis murder. It may
stalk above the cognizance of human law, but in the sight of
Heaven it is murder; and though millions of years may roll away,
while his ashes and yours lie mingled together in the earth,
the day will yet come, when his spirit and the spirits of his
children must be met at the bar of omnipotent justice. May God,
in his compassion, shield me from any participation in the enormity
of this guilt.
A military force cannot be raised, in
this manner, but by the means of a military force. If administration
has found that it can not form an army without conscription,
it will find, if it venture on these experiments, that it can
not enforce conscription without an army. The Government was
not constituted for such purposes. Framed in the spirit of liberty,
and in the love of peace, it has no powers which render it able
to enforce such laws. The attempt, if we rashly make it, will
fail; and having already thrown away our peace, we may thereby
throw away our Government.
I express these sentiments here, Sir,
because I shall express them to my constituents. Both they and
myself live under a Constitution which teaches us, that 'the
doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression,
is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness
of mankind.''' With the same earnestness with which I now exhort
you to forbear from these measures, I shall exhort them to exercise
their unquestionable right of providing for the security of their
own liberties.
Ron Paul,
M.D., represents the 14th Congressional District of Texas in
the United States House of Representatives.
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