Reply #21: I am against involuntary conscription in any context, [View All]

but it does not follow that US should have sat out WWII. Even in a good war not everyone should be forced to be a soldier to kill for their country. Some people feel they could not kill in any context.

Its actually a hard issue for me. My great uncle and his brother were pacifists at Antioch in the 1930s and were jailed as conscientious objectors. They were sent to work camps. My great-uncle was then released after about a year when a medical exam revealed he was asthmatic and therefore not eligible for conscription. So they released him but he & his wife were not allowed to live on the east or west coast, so they moved to Chicago and eventually retreated to northern Minnesota. Meanwhile, his brother continued in internment for a couple years.

In the 1960s my father faked mental illness to avoid draft.

Involuntary conscription violates basic human rights, IMHO.