Cameron conscription is a national disservice
Since becoming its leader, David Cameron has changed the Conservative Party beyond almost all recognition. Focusing on so-called ’social justice’, he has embarked on a wide-ranging reform programme. In a major policy announcement, Cameron today unveiled plans for the conscription of teenagers into what he calls the ‘National Citizen Service’. This bold action marks the completion of the Conservatives’ metamorphosis: not to acceptable and laudable electability, but to irredeemable statism, socialism, and suicide.
The New Tory plan is for all 16-year olds to take part in a six-week social engineering programme at the end of compulsory education, which the Tories rightly believe should end at 16, and not 18 as Labour intends to make it. During the programme, the participants would be forced to do rather pointless things like paint community centres and mow grass verges in a vain attempt to gain ‘inspiration’ and ‘respect for others’.
Cameron hasn’t done much to mask the collectivist ideology underpinning and undermining the new policy. Its name says it all really; ‘National Citizen Service’ combins connotations of the socialism of the National Health Serice with the nationalism of national service conscription, adulterated only by submission to the state for participants, and submission to second-class citizenship for those that deign to argue.
The policy has been heavily promoted by today’s Sun, which congratulates Cameron and itself for succumbing to the populism that the Sun has long espoused. Big government, nationalism, and slave labour in the guise of preserving law and order are the Sun’s favourite cocktail.
It will mix people from different backgrounds. North and south, black and white, rich and poor. They will be putting something back into the community.
And if they want to put something back into the community, they’ll do just that, by working through charities, the Scouts, religious groups, or other similar volunteer programmes. This method intrudes on people’s lives, forcing them to do the bidding of the state, regardless of circumstances, regardless of choice. Cameron’s message is, no matter where you live, no matter what your skin colour, no matter what your parents income, you can’t hide from Big Brother.
It will be away of learning respect for our country and each other, just like national service was.
National service was about forcing people to do what the people with guns said: a way to get cheap meat for the grinder of the expected apocalyptic war with the Soviet Union. If you think that’s a fair comparison, Mr Cameron, you dig your own grave.
Whether individuals are leaving school, moving on from their GCSEs to another qualification, or have dropped out of the system altogether, our national programme would take them out of their comfort zone, provide them with a chance to mix with others away from home.
Take people of ouf the comfort zone? So the New Tories think that it’s the role and responsibility of the state to make people’s lives uncomfortable? Misery may be the currency of oppression, but it certainly shouldn’t be the raison d’etre for it.
The Sun picks up where Dave leaves off.
Bookish swots will be shown there is more to life than just exams.
The dangerous intellectuals must learn the values of national solidarity and service to the greater ideal that they can’t learn in books. Well, except in books that were banned during the Second World War. In fact, let’s just burn all the books to prevent subversive decadent ideas like ‘liberty’, ‘education’, and ‘personal betterment’ spreading.
Teenagers will not be forced by law to take part in the NCS. … Instead, it will become so attractive it will become a natural part of growing up.
So the state will force people using ’soft’ power. It’s already been implied that employers will be forced to give preference to participants. They’d probably ban all non-participants going into higher education. They might increase the tax rate for those that refuse to bow to their demands. Or they might just make it compulsory further down the line when people have stopped caring. I wonder who it was that did that…
Der Stürmer’s own editorial urges us to ‘give it a chance’.
The Boy Scouts offered this sort of community training for more than half a century. The Duke of Edinburgh scheme and Outward Bound courses have been amazingly successful.
And, despite the Sun’s ignorant use of the past tense, they continue to be. For a century, the Scouts have done all that Dave wants to accomplish. And they’ve achieved it all without the heavy hand of the state forcing them.
… not all youngsters are tearaways looking for someone to mug. The vast majority are decent, considerate, and appalled by bad behaviour.
After a two-page spread of belligerent idiocy on the part of the world’s favourite newspaper, we get some sense. Not everyone is a tearaway. Most aren’t. So why does the government think it’s its responsibility to employ this one-size-fits-all national service? By forcing teenagers to work, they do nothing but alienate and belittle them: telling them that their libery is a luxury that the state won’t afford them, and that their future will be a future of compulsion, slavery, and misery. When the outlook’s that bleak, no wonder we have so much under-age drinking.
When Cameron told the world, “There is such a thing as society. It’s not just the same thing as the state”, I rejoiced. Not that I disagreed with Thatcher’s assessment to begin with, but it was refreshing to hear that a politician whose very value comes from his centrism was espousing a fundamentally libertarian argument.
This monstrosity of a policy undermines that. It is a concession by Cameron that individualism is dead, and that liberty has lost. It is a surrender of the big citizen to big government. It’s sad that this leaves no major party’s leadership willing to stand up for rights. Fortunately, it matters not one jot to the friends of freedom that Cameron has thrown in the towel. To us, it only proves that we can’t rely on others to make the case for so long as we have voices ourselves.
Categories: charity, teenagers, newspapers, conscription, David Cameron, stupidity, fisking, Conservative Party
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Winston said,
September 7, 2007 @ 3:48 pm
“David Cameron has changed the Conservative Party beyond almost all recognition.” No - still the right-wing, arrogant, dissociated-with-everyday-British-society Etonians to me..
“The New Tory plan is for all 16-year olds to take part in a six-week social engineering programme at the end of compulsory education”
Cameroon plans on making this a voluntary scheme, which undermines the policy as the youngsters he is trying to reach won’t be the ones ‘volunteering’ for this scheme.
You have to wonder just how Cameroon plans to finance such a grand national scheme, oh wait, i see.. he admits himself that he hasn’t worked out the costs … http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/michael_white/2007/09/unwilling_volunteers.html
And finally a great many schemes of this nature already exist, Duke of Edinburgh / Cubs anyone ? There’s no need for this National August Sex-Fest; It’s simply a piece of reactionary policy devised on a whim to appease the Daily-Mail-Reader heartland of the Conservative party; an attempt to remind them that though their great leader has been pictured frolicking with the ethnics he’s still at heart the right-wing, snubby Etonian he always was and always will be.
Oli Cooper said,
September 7, 2007 @ 7:51 pm
You are right to lambast David Cameron’s approach to this issue, but your choice of objections are indicative of a gross misprioritisation.
The policy’s very flaw is the fact that it is not based upon consent. As David Cameron makes clear, he wants it to be compulsory. The only reason we receive respite is that he implicitly agrees with Michael White that it would be impossible to promote a policy based upon complete compulsion at this moment of time. Nonetheless, he does explicitly regard subsidy (i.e. theft from others) as a proper means of encouragement, as well as employing regulation to impose ’soft’ pressure on those that may deign to opt out. If participation is contingent upon the state initiating any form of force - including taxation and regulation as well as compulsion - that participation is not voluntary.
The question of how it is to be funded is similarly flawed. It is a matter of deprivation of liberty and the enforcement of unpaid labour against the individual’s wishes. That, by definition, is slavery. And no matter how economically-viable slavery is, or how cheap it is, for the slave-driver, it is still a fundamentally immoral act and an unforgivable policy. Just because the state isn’t forcing the participants to do productive labour doesn’t make it any less laborious.
I couldn’t possibly agree that it makes one bit of different where he went to school. So-called ‘class warriors’, that pour scorn on the Eton Rifles for no reason but jealousy, are an anachronism, and a by-product of a social system that punishes success and rewards failure.
Winston said,
September 8, 2007 @ 2:41 am
Are you suggesting that a child that goes to a state school has the same opportunity as one at a private school? Clearly not true, one only needs to look at the admissions statistics of our own UCL. It is undeniable that within private schools Eton indoctrinates it’s pupils with a specific character; you might argue it unfair for me to dismiss Cameron as an Etonian, however when a good proportion of his cabinet are Etonites and post-Bullingdon Club members clearly Eton is something that links Cameroon’s ‘modern’ Conservatives and thus all that they stand for.
I’m not sure that I agree with you when you identify this scheme as a form of slavery. For me at least, slavery is only apparent when the task at hand isn’t to the benefit of the individual involved. I believe that the state must make some sort of decision as to who is capable of making rational decisions, as in the young (here) or mentally ill or elderly.
Oli Cooper said,
September 12, 2007 @ 12:18 am
Slavery is only defined thusly by authoritarians: people that see no difference between what they think and what’s best, and people that see no reason not to destroy other people’s lives just because they have a right to ruin their own. Slavery is any compulsion and enforced labour against the wishes of the person involved. Wikipedia pithily defines slavery as “a social-economic system under which certain persons - known as slaves - are deprived of personal freedom and compelled to perform labour or services.” That, clearly, involves people on this jaunt.
Your comparison of the young and the elderly to the mentally ill is quite disturbing. Such was the fundamental moral justification for slavery: “These wretched creatures would be starving in the jungle in Africa were it not for us; they should be thankful we give them four walls and discipline.” That was a fundamentally abhorrent position, and so is that which says that they lack the mental capacity to decide whether they ought to be slaves or not.
Children that go to state schools get just the same opportunities as those that go to independent school. There are no tax cuts for Etonians. There are no bars to jobs for comprehensive kids. The only guarantee is the fact that state schools are shite - which is a criticism of the state, and a credit to the individualism that independent schools represent. I have no idea that the New Tories represent. I only know that their education represents a triumph of individuality over conformity. To criticise them for their school having done a better job in educating them is to criticise someone for doing a better job than you, and that’s far more abhorrent than the least recommendable aspect of David Cameron.
Winston said,
September 12, 2007 @ 7:10 pm
Oli have you ever been to a state school? Of course there is not equal opportunity between both. Of course bars exist to employment: having a degree is much more likely to get you a job, going to an independent school your much more likely to go to University. For you to say “the only guarantee is the fact that state schools are shite” merely contradicts your previous statements. Independent schools reflect individualism no more than state schools; Independent schools pander to the demands of their market as much as state schools do. You seem to have ignored my point which was that Etonians have a unique character and so to refer to them as a brand is more than justified. There are plenty of opportunities for excellent schooling in the independent sector beyond Eton; if you send your child to Eton you want to instill a certain character in them.
I think want is more abhorrent is to compare black people to the young, elderly and those unable to make rational decisions concerning their own safety. You ignore a fundamental difference between these two types of group, the fact that discrimination against black people is based on ignorance and mental apathy whilst discrimination against the young, elderly and mentally disabled is based on rationality and a genuine desire to do what is best for the individuals concerned, of course some sense of societal consensus must be used.
Whilst I’m grateful for the quotation, wikipedia is not the most trustworthy of sources and I must say your stance seems to suggest that even children are held under slavery by their parents, genuinely trying to do what is best for them. This stance is completely unsustainable.
Oli Cooper said,
September 18, 2007 @ 1:39 am
I went to a state school. Somehow, I came out with an attitude that persuaded you that I went to an independent school. If I’m being facetious, I may say that that disproves your argument on the evil Etonians front. Of course, the fact that you couldn’t tell is perhaps because, unlike most people that are pushed through the grinder of state schooling, I am well-educated (well, I claim to be - I got 7 As at A-Level, despite being suspended four times: all at a state school).
Parents may well sent their children to Eton for all sorts of reasons. The ‘unique character’ may be one thing, which I do not deny exists. However, the best school results in the country (http://news.excite.co.uk/education/42186) may be another factor. Perhaps, therefore, it is a good thing that they went to that school, rather than a comprehensive. To discriminate against people because they went to the best school in the country is a trifle absurd.
Parents don’t have the right to force their children to work. That’s illegal, and rightly so. The UN International Labour Organisation holds that one of the “worst forms of child labour” is “forced or compulsory labour”. Huh. Your argument falls apart around your belief that to initiate force against someone, with the intention to force that person to do something against their wishes, is a moral action. Virtually everyone is agreed that that is called ’slavery’, and slavery belongs to the past, as does David Cameron’s policy.
Oliver Smith said,
January 19, 2008 @ 1:24 am
You’re extremist liberalism is the self same selfish source of all the ruin of this country. You put yourselves above the country and use whatever means you can concoct to justify it to yourself. A society is a collaboration of people working together that they all may prosper, to claim too much liberty is to deprive others. You should be awfully ashamed of yourself.
You seem to think that the law can be used to prevent Parliament from doing something, but if you are half as educated as you profess, you’ll know that Parliament is sovereign and so if a law prevents Parliament from doing what it believes to be the best for its people, it can repeal the law. You seem to confuse “legal” with “right”.
Liberals are the reason the world is in ruin. I hope when it burns you can content yourself on your professed theoretical victories.
Oliver Cooper said,
January 22, 2008 @ 12:27 am
“To claim too much liberty is to deprive others” is the most collectivist claptrap I’ve ever heard. Heck, it’s worse than socialism. It’s simply contempt for humanity in all its forms (whatever the difference between that and socialism is). It’s not even a matter of plucking feathers from a peacock, but breaking its legs because you fear it could get away.
Society is a collaboration of people that choose to work together. It is because they choose to work together, on an issue by issue basis, that it prospers. There are numerous societies built upon coercion of individuals to meet ‘collaborative’ ends, from Ancient Sparta to the Soviet Union, that did not prosper.
To argue that there is a social contract that requires everyone to go along with the wishes of Parliament is to say that there’s nothing wrong with the insubordination of one man to another: that there’s nothing wrong with theft, with murder, or with slavery, provided it has the sanction of 51% of one’s peers. We are free men, and no matter how the state pretends to acquire unbridled legitimacy, it is fraudulent, and undermines the basis upon which our society does prosper, unlike so many others.
I don’t quite understand on what you base any of your second paragraph. I’d suggest that you re-read what I wrote.