Conscription in a Neoliberal (and Neoconservative) Age

"There is no such thing as society," snarls the neoliberal--meaning exactly what they sound like they mean, even if they deny it afterward, or others deny it on their behalf.

However, those who talk in such terms are not unknown to suddenly decide that there is such a thing as society after all--when it lets them make demands on the less powerful members of that entity whose very existence they just denied. So does it go with figures like Rishi Sunak proposing bringing back mandatory "National Service" for the young in a fashion that, however much Sunak insists that the proposed program offers "choice," is undeniably intended to press at least a portion of the relevant age cohort toward the armed forces (while, with General Patrick Sanders floating visions of British mass armies for fighting on the continent, the pressing of a few that way is plausibly interpreted as a first step toward much more).

The reaction of the most relevant part of the public--the young from whom the government is intent on exacting this service--is not merely unimpressed with Sunak's talk of "choice" (and "opportunity"!) but hostile to the idea, enough so that it is a reminder that it is one thing for politicians conducting an electoral campaign with such extreme incompetence that they seem determined to lose to shoot their mouths off about such plans, another to actually make such a scheme work. However, national-level political figures these days, in any country, rarely show any understanding of the concept of making things work, or even seem to care to pretend to do so for simple appearance's sake—and get away with it the more easily as their courtiers, and the courtiers of those to whom they really answer, are, as always, highly accommodating of their most brazen stupidity, ever assuring them that they are brilliant even as they consistently prove themselves the extreme opposite of that word in all its senses.