Now Is the Time to Teach Your Children That Conscription Is Slavery

Last week, a senior Biden administration official anonymously reported to the Associated Press that the administration was pressing Ukraine to lower the conscription age from 25 to 18. Days later, Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed this, stating, “Look, these are very hard decisions, and I fully understand and respect that.  But for example, getting younger people into the fight, we think, many of us think is necessary.  Right now, 18- to 25-year-olds are not in the fight.  And making sure that people are there – not just the weapons, not just the munitions, not just the money, but mobilized forces – is also essential to success.”

The reason for this push is something that has been clear for many months and is now being admitted by even the most staunchly pro-Ukrainian outlets: Ukraine is simply running out of men. The implications of this ought to be horrifying. The size of their armed forces started at around 200,000 men in active duty, supported by 900,000 reservists. Since then, they’ve drafted more than 1,000,000 men, and they’ve already lowered the draft age from 27 to 25. Also stark, the average age of the Ukrainian fighter went from low 30’s to over 40 in 2023. Further admissions on both morale and manpower have seeped through the propaganda. Kyiv has admitted that over 100,000 soldiers have been charged with desertion since the beginning of the war, and that troops are grappling with exceedingly low morale.

Then there’s simply the fact that, according to the UN, more than 7 million people have fled the country, many of which will never return. This doesn’t even include the millions of Russian-speaking Ukrainians who fled into Russia (which the mainstream media completely ignored). We can all agree it will take years to figure it all out, but nonetheless the demographics of Ukraine are terrifying. In 2014, the country had more than 45 million people. Now, between the millions who have fled westward out of Ukraine, the millions in the East who fled into Russia, the hundreds of thousands dead, and the millions more in the Donbas who will be, like it or not, under a different country’s flag when all is said and done, the diminished population of the leftover rump state with devastated infrastructure will be many millions less, very possibly in the low 20’s. If Ukrainian leadership had paid attention to any of the US’s disastrous proxy wars over the last century, they might have questioned what becoming a US proxy might mean for their country.

All of this points to an obvious truth which anyone being honest can tell: Ukraine cannot win this war. The sooner they recognize this, the sooner the death can stop and a settlement can be made. kidnapping teenagers and shipping them to the front will not change the outcome, it will only devastate the next generation of men. To his credit, Zelensky has publicly pushed back against lowering the conscription age even further, expressing concerns about future demographics, emphasizing the importance of preserving the nation’s youth for future reconstruction. Nonetheless, I can only imagine living outside of Kyiv with a 17-year-old son just weeks from his 18^th birthday. Like the majority of Ukrainians, I doubt I’d want the war to continue and would be wishing for a negotiated peace deal.

Watching these events unfold has also made me reflect on our own country’s history with conscription. While the circumstances differ, the fundamental principle remains the same: a government claiming ownership over its citizens’ lives for war. Not that long ago I thought the idea of conscription in America was a fantasy, but I now think that was quite naïve. I’ve met people who were part of the 2 million men conscripted for Vietnam. Ironically, they were ages 18-25, the inverse of the situation in Ukraine.

Make no mistake, our government absolutely believes it reserves the right to kidnap our sons for war. Many politicians even believe that they should own our daughters, too. Earlier this year, congress once again floated the idea of including women in the draft. Among them was Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) who said, “Women are doing a remarkable job in our forces today, and if we were in a situation requiring a draft, I think we would need all able-bodied citizens 18 and above.”

Politicians are not alone in this mindset. Just the other day I saw some liberal friends comment how Hegseth is a bad pick for Secretary of Defense, not because he’s too pro-war, but because he doesn’t think women should be in combat roles. And apparently, he doesn’t support “equality” because he doesn’t think women should be in the draft! How progressive, to believe in “equality” so much that you believe both teenage boys and teenage girls should be subject to slavery by the government.

People can claim conscription isn’t slavery. They can defend the idea all they want. They can argue it’s necessary to “defend freedom”, but as I see it, it’s incompatible with freedom. When a government takes you by force and ships you off to fight its wars because it was incapable of negotiating or making peace, that’s the antithesis of freedom. One can argue it’s necessary slavery, but it is, by definition, still slavery. If a war was actually necessary and just, if we were actually being threatened with invasion by some foreign entity trying to steal our homeland, then plenty of good men and women would sign up to defend our land. But here’s the thing: no foreign army is invading us. No foreign country is actually threatening our sovereignty. China is not going to land on the coast of California and try to take Los Angeles. Russia is not trying to take Alaska by force. Iran is not going to send the IRGC to invade New York. I would not want to live in any of those countries, but maybe part of their “aggression” is in response to the US consistently staging weapons on their doorstep, staging coups against their neighbors, or bullying them with its monetary hegemony – a hegemony DC has overused, overplayed, and abused.

So as the world continues to lose its mind, pushing us closer to a completely unnecessary world war against militaries that now have millions of members, know that this war would not be in defense of our homeland, but once again waged on the other side of the world. And if it escalates and goes nuclear, literally everyone you know could die. On the world stage, it’s time for serious statesmen with cool heads to make peace, and at home it’s time for us to teach our children that the government doesn’t own them.

My oldest will be 12 next year, and to think that many in our government proclaim that in 6 years they should reserve the right to enslave her for some stupid war makes my blood boil. It’s time to not only abolish all of our foreign proxy wars, and to eliminate all of our foreign coup attempts, and to stop interfering in other countries’ elections, and to cease bullying the world with ruthless sanctions, and to stop treasonously backing terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda, but it’s also time to also abolish the draft. And it’s time for you to teach your children that the government doesn’t own them.

We’re up against a lot. I’m fully aware that most people assume a draft is normal and necessary for societies. And even though almost every military engagement the US enters turns out to be based on lies, it seems we never learn. Our corporate media is drenched with pro-war propaganda, our schools teach that obedience to the state is patriotism, and our government is full of people like Linsdey Graham who criticize our proxies for not lowering their conscription age further. It follows that Graham – who’s never married and has no children – is the largest war hawk in DC and perfectly willing to send other people’s children to war by the hundreds of thousands.

There is a famous quote from J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye: “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.” Well, I have one more line to add: the mark of the monster is that he wishes other people’s children to die for his lost cause.

So, give your children the strength they may very well need one day to defend themselves from the monster’s cause. Teach them to strive to be the mature one that lives humbly for a noble cause. Teach them humility, patience, generosity, and the courage to be peacemakers. Model for them what it means to be slow to anger.

Then, teach them to think critically. Teach them to be honest about the motives of those with which they have disagreements. Teach them to question why wars happen and who benefits. Encourage them to study history with an eye for the human cost of conflict, analyzing causes rather than glorifying battles or simply memorizing the names of generals and the dates of wars.

Then they might understand why you taught them that no government, no matter how powerful, has the right to own them.

Jonathan Grotefendt was a 1^st Class Petty Officer, Nuclear-Trained Electrician’s Mate on the USS Nevada, an Ohio-Class Submarine. After his 6 years in the Navy, he moved his family to Central Texas where they built a house and homeschool their 4 beautiful children. You can read his other pieces here and here.