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I've heard this two or three times in the last few months, when people discuss soldiers and morality. It goes something like this: Person A: (some point about how evil the actions of soldiers are) Person B: They were just doing their job. Person A: That's no excuse; they chose to take that job, they chose to join the army. Person B: If they didn't join the army, the government would start drafting people. Two responses come to my mind. 1) If the government was so desperate for soldiers that they had to recruit by force, then (you'd expect them to also be running low on police) they wouldn't have the manpower to force people to be conscripted. I'm not happy with this response, because I don't think they'd need a particularly large amount of manpower. I mean, in the UK there are about 240 non-police and non-army people to every one police or army person. They are hugely outnumbered, but the widespread belief in the righteousness/necessity of the state gives them the incredible amount of power required for people to submit to the government. No other gang facing those odds would manage to get anyone to do anything. 2) Justifying joining the army by saying that it's to prevent conscription does not justify the evil done after having joined. A soldier can avoid doing evil either by refusing orders or by turning their gun against the people giving the orders. While the point is, in my opinion, valid and while it does include the words "joining the army", it avoids the question of whether the government would start drafting people. I think that a lot of people would reject the point due to emotional reaction, and they would still believe that drafting would come into play. What do you think? What would you say to Person B? "If they didn't join the army, the government would start drafting people."

Conscription is a remnant of slavery and it's still going on in Western Europe.