For one thing, the government doesn’t own us. We’re not things to be deployed as they see fit. We own them. We pay for them, and their jobs come and go at our discretion.
They don’t see it that way any more.
As someone who has been through military training and national service, I do think that everyone could benefit from it, but I’m strongly opposed to making adults do things they don’t want to do. The government isn’t mommy and daddy, and adults are not children, beholden to an authority.
I’m strongly opposed to controlling minors too. 18 is an arbitrary age to suddenly give people autonomy.
Children are emotional creatures without fully developed brains. They cannot process the long term ramifications of their actions because that part of their brain literally hasn’t finished developing yet. Sometimes you need to make children do things. If they won’t put the bleach bottle down that they pulled out from under the sink, you need to make them do it, no matter how badly they want to drink the bleach.
I feel like if we want national service just make it part of scouts… in fact the UK already has a scout summer camp thing thats basically kiddies first army training. Its just rather expensive. If instead we made it free and maybe even incentivized (Army scouts = summer camp + your first part time job?) it’d firstly be voluntary and secondly we’d have a way better recruiting pool for the actual army when people get older. The lack of commitment would also mean people maybe not interested in the army but curious can give it a try and at the very least the people who went would come back moderately fitter and able to serve in a militia in the unlikely event the UK mainland is ever invaded.
The USA has a program between the Army and the Boy Scouts of America, or whatever they’re calling themselves these days. When I was younger you could enlist into the Army at the rank of E3 if you obtained Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts. That’s the equivalent of a couple years worth of non-war-time promotions, so that was a pretty cool benefit.
