Reply #63: If I had been alive, I would have. [View All]

[wickerwoman]

Yes, you are required to go to school until you are 16 but you aren't really a legal citizen until you are 18. The state assumes that children are not ready to participate fully in the rights and responsibilities of their citizenship so they require them to attend school until they are ready to guide and discipline themselves. There is a world of difference between requiring an 8 year old to be in a structured environment doing something constructive for 6 hour a day and requiring an adult to do the same. If you want to draft 14 year olds in order to teach them the meaning of citizenship that's a seperate issue. I assume that it is the primary duty of a liberal arts secondary school education to teach children what it means to be a citizen in a democracy. If our schools aren't doing that (and I agree that they aren't) maybe we should look at that instead of jumping to universal conscription.
As for taxes, I am paying for something concrete- roads, schools, defense, emergency services, industrial regulation, etc. If I owe more, raise my taxes- you won't hear a peep out of me. What exactly is it that I need to repay with my enforced labor for the state that I don't pay with taxes over a 20 or 30 year working life? I choose to pay the government with taxes instead of time. If you want to stop taxing soldiers, that's fine with me.
How does this sound: I'm not taking away freedom of speech, I'm only taking it away for two years. I'm not taking away your right to an abortion, I'm only taking it away for two years. I'm not taking away your right to own a home and your own business, I'm only taking it away for two years. Freedom is freedom is freedom. If you want to take it away from a child, it's different from taking it from an adult. If our school are failing to create citizens, fix the schools.