[Sephardi]

What do the members of Platonism & Dictatorship feel about increasing military involvement with society? Israel, for example, has mandatory conscription. I think that we can all benefit from either military or militia training and that after ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, people will not really resist. This way, we can defend our nation, society, and our borders. We can have the knowledge and the training to do this even when we're reentered into civilian life.

[Preston Cole]

I think there needs to be a balance between military life and civilian realities. In my ideal society, conscription would be mandatory and you would have to spend at least five years in the military, and children would be forced to join junior scouting/paramilitary activity in patriotic youth organizations. This would instill communitarianism and selflessness from an early age. Children would be required to live by a code in the household and in public, but their private aspirations and personalities wouldn't be muzzled. Military code needs to be extended into civilian life to avoid all the moral degradation of today.

[Daktoria]

Discipline is important.

Survival skills are important.

Military service...

...military service can get out of hand very easily when put in the hands of the wrong people ESPECIALLY when military service becomes the identity of your country. Eventually, it leads to infighting where people provoke each other out of boredom and attention seeking behavior.

That said, fascists usually identify with conflict, so this wouldn't really be a problem unfortunately.

[Fitzcarraldo]

I think that we can all benefit from either military or militia training and that after ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, people will not really resist.

I agree. Aristotle wrote that after the ages of five or so children should go through a rigorous state-mandated athletics training as to create a courageous citizenry. I think that children should go through the education system and when they reach around 16 years old children with a military acumen should be strongly encouraged to join the military as professional soldiers (children with good technical skills should become apprentices, children that excell academically should go to university). Full-scale milita training would only be necessary if you are working with a low population base, like Switzerland and Israel, but not so for us in countries with big populations.

[Marie Rudolph]

The Hitler Youth sound a lot like some of these ideas. Hitler was smart by taking hold of the next generation all he had to do was wit until they reached physical maturity and voting age. Careful planing would be important in such a project. If you wanted to enact a youth military mandatory training program you would have to govern it with the American checks and balances system in order to create a longlasting and focused system of training.

[Lensky1917]

America could definitely use the exercise.....

I don't think the quality of recruits should go down though. You don't want to provide criminals with the skills of professional soldiers.

In my ideal society, conscription would be mandatory and you would have to spend at least five years in the military

Five years is a lot. How about two?

Anyways, I'm not sure if conscription count as a 'militarized state'. I was thinking troops as law enforcement, with a soldier on every block?

[Fasces]

There is no such thing as a civilian. All states are military states.

[Decky]

Would you care to expand on that? It sounds interesting.

[Fasces]

It is self-evident. The totality of society is not independently divided into separate groups - government, economy, or civil society - all are ultimately equal components of the state. When a man works for one, he works for all three, because resources (and scarcity of them), benefits, and dangers are also equally shared. A man producing vehicles in a factory is as much a part of the military complex, in the end, as the sniper in the hill. Even a child paying sales tax on a pack of gum is contributing to the fighting forces of the state. Given this, the idea of 'civilians' and 'soldiers' is a false one. Rather, one can see only combatants and non-combatants: and much as one gains a military benefit shooting down a logistics train, there exists strategic benefit in the eradication of all elements of society when in war against a state.

[starman2003]

Inevitably, a future authoritarian state will be highly militarized, especially if it is hegemonist. But the military shouldn't be the supreme authority. The regime must be based on secular ideology--that's its real raisen d'etre--and its proponents.

[Marie Rudolph]

Not nessisarily it could be lead by something other than the military like a dictator or an emperor. The military never leads itself, it only replaces the existing government as the political tree to climb.

[starman2003]

A dictator would almost certainly need military backing to get power. To retain that backing, he would probably have to give the military high priority.

[Kman]

The draft is a horrendous thing that is basicly slavery, it also gives enormous power to the state since it allows the state to kill its political enemies by drafting them into the army and then sending them to some hellhole where their is a high likelihood of getting killed.

[Fasces]

A state that wants to kill its political enemies, and is willing to do it, doesn't need a draft to form an excuse. This expectation that tyrants will obey the rule of law is naive among the anti-authoritarian liberals.

[starman2003]

Sure, if a State wants to get rid of political enemies, it wouldn't arm them and expect them to fight for it; it would just arrest and kill them itself. Nothing new or unusual about that.

[Kman]

A state that wants to kill its political enemies, and is willing to do it, doesn't need a draft to form an excuse. This expectation that tyrants will obey the rule of law is naive among the anti-authoritarian liberals.

A government openly killing its opponents will very quickly be recognized as evil and totallitarian, if it on the other hand the state disguises its murdering of political enemies by pretending that them being sent to dangerous war zones is just a coincidence makes it much easier for them to get away with this murdering without angering the people.

:lol: Sure, if a State wants to get rid of political enemies, it wouldn't arm them and expect them to fight for it; it would just arrest and kill them itself. Nothing new or unusual about that.

Your imagination sucks.

[Wolfman]

Really, Kman, why are you even in this thread? The people this question was directed at are about as far from your views as you can possibly get. You would actually look less stupid posting in the Communism forum.

[proud communist]

Discipline is important.

Survival skills are important.

Military service...

...military service can get out of hand very easily when put in the hands of the wrong people ESPECIALLY when military service becomes the identity of your country. Eventually, it leads to infighting where people provoke each other out of boredom and attention seeking behavior.

That said, fascists usually identify with conflict, so this wouldn't really be a problem unfortunately.

basically this. A military state never successfully functions "for the good of the people" and, most of the time, end up collapsing or overthrown. A military is necessary for defense and non-imperialistic reasons but never for governing or representing the people through politics and should never be.

[telluro]

Nay... while Fasces is correct in blurring the distinction between "civilian" and "soldier" in theory, in practice one can still see the difference between an overtly-militaristic society such as Nazi Germany and an overtly-civilian society such as contemporary Germany, where the leaders don't wear uniforms, aren't military personnel and the state is not fueled by war.

So the question has to be taken such, should the state be dominated by and run for the military? My answer is no.

[Fasces]

A government openly killing its opponents will very quickly be recognized as evil and totallitarian, if it on the other hand the state disguises its murdering of political enemies by pretending that them being sent to dangerous war zones is just a coincidence makes it much easier for them to get away with this murdering without angering the people.

Constantly waging expensive wars will certainly bode better for the future of that regime.

In any case, once a government actually becomes recognized as willing to use coercive techniques to maintain its power, it paradoxically begins to use less and less of it over time. The regimes with the fewest human rights violations are full-fledged democracies and full-fledged tyrannies - abuse is found most in transitory states.