Kalistan

[Doc]

Editorial:  On the National Service Program
It is nothing like the Slavery practiced by fascist degenerates
Eveari Corps Base, Bluegrass Valley Ananto
May 15, 5602


Their Highnesses, Crown Prince Fredrick Ananto-Sandoval and Princess Michelle Ananto-Sandoval together for a portrait in Eveari

His Highness, the Crown Prince Fredrick Ananto-Sandoval will be mustered out of service on June 30 of this year.  And Her Highness, Princess Michelle Ananto-Sandoval has been in National Service for almost a full year already.  As these two young royals take their place among the ranks of all Kalistani Citizens who perform National Service, as a duty of citizenship, it brings into light the question of mandatory National Service.  Why does Kalistan maintain a National Service Program, while it blasts other, lesser nations, for creating forced labor camps and exterminating inmates by working them to death?  Is it not the same thing?

The answer is clearly "No." But why not?  Comparing mandatory National Service to the public sector slavery practiced in fascist States is the same as comparing paying taxes to a violent mugging.  

Let's take a look at the two.  There are a lot of similarities.  In both systems, people are required to supply labor to the state.  Kalistan has had the National Service Program in place, in one form or another for centuries.  In the NSP, young Kalistani citizens join, go through a battery of aptitude evaluations, and then are matched with the needs of the service.  Yes, some conscripts do work in State Industries, but yes, some conscripts do work on maintaining county roads, bridges, or other heavy physical labor.  Her Imperial Majesty, Empress Carolina I Ananto, worked on a road crew, and was a surveyor for that crew that built several bridges.  The Crown Prince has worked in forestry, replanting trees in Neveras and Vrassa for the last three years, and Her Highness, the Princess Michelle works a clerical job as an accountant in the Ananto Corps' S1.  In fascist systems, there is also mandatory work.

The fact that both require mandatory work, however, is where the similarities between National Service and state sponsored slavery of the fascist nations of this planet.  Members of the NSP are paid.  Because they are not inmates.  They have leave and liberty, because they are not inmates.  They have full civil rights and liberties while in the Service, because they are not inmates.  Yes, they are required by law to join the Service, but the law puts restrictions on all people everywhere all the time:  Observing the law the way a safe driver would observe the law, though he wants to speed, is not the same as being arrested specifically so you can be turned into chattel by a fascist state.

Those in the National Service gain skills that will make them better citizens when they are released.  Fascist slaves only gain the skill of fearing torture and violence.  National Service therefore serves two goals:  To supply necessary services to the Nation that the Government would have to contract out for otherwise, and to make better citizens.  The fascist slavery scheme only serves one purpose:  To sacrifice the lives of countless people upon the personal whim of a psychotic tyrant.

National Service also serves the workers of Kalistan:  By keeping excess labor, when it is at its most productive and freest, completely out of the work force, it serves not only to bottleneck the labor market, but also therefore, ensuring both job security and workers' power through forced labor shortage.  The only people who oppose Mandatory National Service in Kalistan are those capitalists who hound the government about "freedom" of labor to be exploited "freely" by capitalists, who want more workers to compete with one another, so capitalists can pocket more of the profit.  In Kalistan, National Service allows us to not only protect the worker who is negotiating with his boss for better pay and better working conditions, but it also provides workers with very important soft skills that they don't just automatically know when they leave school, skills like self-discipline, the ability to dress appropriately for work, the ability to attend work on time, and the ability to complete tasks that are assigned to them.  These are skills that even those workers who don't live in fascist states struggle with.

But most importantly:  National Service ends with the liberty of the Worker.  Conscripts of the NSP eventually almost all leave, though many opt to stay, after which point, the NSP IS their job.  But most do leave.  In the fascist dungeons of our world, the only way workers leave is as a corpse.  Because the goal of NSP is to serve a society that you will then expect to provide for the things you need.  The goal of prison camps in a fascist state is simply to murder as many people as efficiently as possible.  When Kalistanis complete the term of service that they freely enter into, they are completely free.  Inmates in fascist nations have no such hope of ever seeing the day that they will be free.  Instead, they can only expect to be freed by the merciful hand of death--Only Death can liberate them from their conditions as slaves, owned body and soul by their oppressive, tyrannical fascist state.

The fascists of the world know what they are doing, they know who they are.  And they clearly have absolutely no problem with it.  The regimes under fascism are homicidal cults of personality, and nothing more.  Fascism is the most degenerate form of government, and its practitioners' absolute disregard for human life removes them from the category of humanity themselves.  Some have felt brave enough to pull their heads off the ground long enough to attempt to justify their industrial murder system and prison slavery system by comparing it to Kalistan's National Service Program, as if they were in any way the same thing.  

National Service as practiced in Kalistan is ennobling.  State slavery as practiced in fascist states is debasing.  They are not the same thing.

@TheRepublic