The Moral Case for Conscientious Objection
*This article is excerpted from a talk I delivered at the LP Ohio regional conference July 2023.
Most people follow me on Twitter for my tweets. I’m not much of a speaker. But when I was offered to talk to you all today I figured I couldn’t be any worse than Biden on a normal day. So here I am. (setting a low bar, I know)
For those of you who don’t know me from my crazy Twitter account. My name is Natalie Danelishen and I have been in liberty circles for around 17 years now. I worked for the Mises Institute as a contractor for 11 of those years and helped countless other liberty organizations in that time. I currently work for the Free Cities Foundation and I’m also a homeschooling mother of three.
I would like to start off today by proposing a question. “If we have freedom: are we not responsible for what we do and what we fail to do”
Many say we have very few freedoms today however like it or not…America is still one of the freest countries in the world.
We fought hard for that freedom. History is littered with stories about valor and bravery on the battlefield. Men who went off to war, who fought, and died.
But what about the men who refused to fight?
The World War II draft operated between 1940 — and 1946 and inducted some 10 million men into forced military service. Of those 10 million men, approximately 72,000 were conscientious objectors, of which 25,000 entered the military in noncombatant roles, another 12,000 went to civilian work camps, and as Robert Higgs points out in the book, The Cost of War :
The government also imprisoned nearly 6,000 conscientious objectors- three-fourths of them Jehovah’s Witnesses- who would not comply with the service requirements of the draft laws.
One of those American conscientious objectors was Desmond Doss (There is actually a great movie about him called Hacksaw Ridge, I highly recommend watching it). During World War II Desmond Doss refused to carry a weapon and kill the enemy. You could say he took a hard stance on the non-aggression principle. Opting to be a medic instead.
Despite this, he is credited with saving 75 of his fellow soldiers during the Battle of Okinawa by carrying the wounded to safety under enemy fire and he did it without a single weapon to protect himself.
To this day he is the only conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor for his actions on the battlefield.
Franz Jägerstätter was not as lucky as Desmond Doss. During World War II, he was an Austrian conscientious objector who refused to fight for Nazi Germany. On February 23, 1943, he was drafted to serve and on March 1, 1943, upon entering the Wehrmacht garrison, he declared his Conscientious Objector status and offered to serve as a paramedic instead (very much like what Desmond Doss did.) His offer to serve as a paramedic however was ignored and he was arrested and later executed for refusing to fight and swear loyalty to Hitler. He left behind a wife and three children.
These were men who dared to say no to war and murder at the risk of their reputations and their lives; these are just two examples out of 1,000’s men during that war.
Why did these men oppose war? People may profit from studying their examples. For, As Lew Rockwell once pointed out :
“We don’t oppose the state’s wars because they’ll be counterproductive or overextend the state’s forces. We oppose them because mass murder based on lies can never be morally acceptable. So, we don’t beg for scraps from the imperial table, and we don’t seek a seat at that table. We want to knock the table over.”
Conscientious Objectors refused to be pawns and knew that war was morally unacceptable, with some paying the ultimate price. Sadly, in a sense, there is a case to be made that these Conscientious Objectors were the only ones who truly did their job and upheld their oath. For all members of the military are instructed: they have a duty to obey all lawful orders, and conversely, they also have a duty to disobey unlawful orders. This principle is embedded in the precedent of the Nuremberg Trials whereby Nazi war criminals invoked the “just following superior orders defense” and were nevertheless found guilty as the orders were found to be illegal. It is worth noting at this point, that illegal orders can happen at any time, wartime or peacetime, civilian or military.
Does ‘Conscientious Objection’ relate only to war and military personnel?
Or are there other circumstances to which this term may be applied to everyone in every aspect of life?
I contend that conscientious objection can and should apply to a variety of circumstances other than war, for example whenever morality and ethics are at play. Objections based on one’s conscience may arise in numerous and more mundane circumstances as we saw the last three years with COVID mandates when the government wanted to dictate every aspect of our lives.
Consider this, the category of human action can refer to either an action, or an inaction.
Both actions and inactions potentially have value, as Ludwig von Mises noted:
“For to do nothing and to be idle are also action, they too determine the course of events.”
So how can we consciously object to what the government does today? Well, one solid way is to break free from the government itself. You know I saw a meme on Twitter the other day that said “125 years ago, you didn’t need permission from the government to:
Collect rainwater
Go fishing
Own a property
Start a business
Build a home
Get married
Hunt
Own a weapon
Cut hair
Sell a product
Protest
Sell food
You can do virtually nothing without being extorted by the government and obtaining their permission first. You’re a free-range human living on a tax farm.”
That meme is 100% correct.
So what are some solutions to avoid being a free-range human on a tax farm and still object to the government?
I am now working on this with the Free Cities Foundation. The Free Cities Foundation is a not-for-profit organization that is helping to develop a new kind of autonomous jurisdiction called a “Free City”. Free Cities are self-governing territories that have a focus on upholding individual rights and freedoms. They are small parts of countries that have been able to gain some autonomy and are using it to create communities based on the principles of voluntarism, peaceful cooperation, and free exchange. Examples of emerging Free Cities include Próspera and Ciudad two autonomous zones in Honduras that have their own independent legal system, tax, and business environment. There are also other projects featured in the Foundation’s Free Communities Directory that span the Americas, Europe, and Africa.
Now imagine for a moment living in a city with a contract. (I’m not talking about the mysterious social contract we have all never seen or signed) an actual contract. One where you can’t be forced to go to war, there is no central bank, you’re free to have a lemonade stand and collect rainwater. Sounds like a Utopia, huh? Those cities are already out there and growing. We even have one in America with the New Hampshire Free State Project.
But not all of you may be ready to pack up your life and move to another country or state to be free. That is understandable. If free cities are not for you another way you can object is to start pushing back right here at home. And we have to start pushing back because even if you’re not interested in more government, the government is interested in you.
So where do we start pushing back? Step one would be abolishing the Federal Reserve. One of the biggest issues facing us all today is the Federal Reserve. Why does it need to be abolished? Well as Ron Paul points out:
“First reason is, it’s not authorized in the Constitution, it’s an illegal institution. The second reason, it’s an immoral institution, because we have delivered to a secretive body the privilege of creating money out of thin air; if you or I did it, we’d be called counterfeiters, so why have we legalized counterfeiting? But the economic reasons are overwhelming: the Federal Reserve is the creature that destroys value.”
Central Banks enslave us all. It’s a soul-sucking monster that is incompatible with a free society. Even more so now that they wish to start CBDC. As soon as that happens there will be no stopping the government from tracking you and your every transaction. So it needs to go.
Central banks enslaving us all aside the government enslaves men as well under the guise of conscription and “fighting for your country.”
So step two would be abolishing the draft.
My son will be 18 next year. I am absolutely terrified that he may be drafted into war in the coming years. As Murray Rothbard noted:
“Every youth is forced to register with the selective service system when he turns eighteen. He is compelled to carry his draft card at all times, and, at whatever time the federal government deems fit, he is seized by the authorities and inducted into the armed forces. There his body and will are no longer his own; he is subject to the dictates of the government, and he can be forced to kill and to place his own life in jeopardy if the authorities so decree. What else is involuntary servitude if not the draft?”
Murray Rothbard continues:
“While conscription into the armed forces is a blatant and aggravated form of involuntary servitude, there is another, far more subtle and therefore less detectable form: the structure of the army itself. Consider this: in what other occupations in the country are there severe penalties, including prison and in some cases execution, for “desertion,”….. If someone quits General Motors, is he shot at sunrise?”
Execution has happened for refusing to comply with forced military service in World War II (As I noted with Franz Jägerstätter.) If war is murder, what does this mean for a silently objecting person’s soul to become part of a killing machine rather than consciously objecting? Even if their job is removed from the front lines, at the end of the day the war rages, people are murdered, and they played their part in contributing to the war/murder effort.
But we can see the very real consequences of not following the government’s dictates these last three years with “the war on COVID.” People were fired for refusing to comply with COVID mandates and calls for the unvaccinated to be put in camps and restrictions on our movements. Now imagine if we were in an actual war and they wanted our children as cannon fodder.
War itself is another way we can consciously object even as civilians. Jeff Deist once said
“War, the ultimate rejection of reason as a means of navigating human society, reduces our capacity for compassion and makes us complacent about atrocities. Worst of all, it emboldens and strengthens the domestic state — encouraging us to accept absurdities like TSA theater and heavily militarized SWAT teams operating in peaceful small towns.”
We have to start objecting to every attempt at taking us to war.
In the words of the late Justin Raimondo,
“We have to show the American People that war is not patriotic.”
War aside, Another big way to push back is to simply connect to people. Not just like-minded people, not just with libertarians, but to everyone. On Twitter I have people on the left, right, and center who follow me. Even had Elon Musk reply to me a couple of times. If I can reach the richest man in the world from an apartment tucked away in Ohio…. So can you….You can reach anyone. I have always said this but we must understand that connections are currency and a path to freedom. No one can do this task alone and we need to build our numbers, so grow your following. You will get hate along the way. I get death threats often, people have called me names… I keep going because I want a better future for my children and their children.
Speaking of children homeschooling is another fantastic way to consciously object to the government’s dictates. I believe it is one of the true resistance movements in America today. As Lew Rockwell once said:
“It isn’t a coincidence that governments everywhere want to educate children. Government education, in turn, is supposed to be evidence of the state’s goodness and its concern for our well-being. The real explanation is less flattering. If the government’s propaganda can take root as children grow up, those kids will be no threat to the state apparatus. They’ll fasten the chains to their own ankles.”
Public schools are tools to indoctrinate, It’s as simple as that.
I homeschool my 3 children and just last year my 16-year-old son told me he was ready to graduate. There are two ways kids can graduate from being homeschooled in the state of Ohio (keep in mind these are different from state to state). One is just handing them a diploma, another is the GED. My son opted for the GED so he can see how he rates among his peers. He passed…at college level at 16 years old. They may want you to believe that you’re not intelligent enough to teach your children. But you’re more than capable of providing them an education.
People may say “If you homeschool your child they won’t fit in with society.” Well, that’s kind of the point…. Isn’t it? We don’t need more NPC’s, we need free thinkers.
Those are just a few examples of ways we can consciously object.
In closing, I believe the world would be a much better place if the principles of conscientious objection were more universally applied, and daily. Let’s ask ourselves: Is Patriotism defined as blind obedience to governmental authority? Can saying ‘no’ be more heroic than saying ‘yes’, when your conscience tells you it is wrong that the Government requires you to go to war, take your money, inject a non-FDA approved vaccine, and control your life in ways unimaginable to the men and women who fought against the British crown in the revolutionary war.
As Tom Woods has pointed out :
“There have been three episodes in the 21st century when we’ve been told that we certainly can’t be a Libertarian and that who would want to be a libertarian under these conditions?…. The first was 9/11, the second was the 2008 crisis, and the third is COVID, and, as it turns out, the libertarians were the best people on all of these.”
Libertarians have been consistently right objecting to this government overreach time and time again. We must keep objecting. So once again I ask, If we have freedom are we not responsible for what we do and what we fail to do? Thank you!
