Conscription Persuasive Essay

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Conscription, also known as drafting, is a practice that requires mandatory enlisting into any of the branches of the armed forces. This practice has been adopted by the United States at the very least two times before and from what I can remember during World War II and the Civil War conscription was being practiced. Nowadays conscription is not practiced in the United States because there isn’t a need for it. Now, if you want to join the army you can do so by volunteering. However, there are people who believe conscription should be brought back. Some people believe that the drafting of younger people might help these young people develop useful skills and cultivate a sense of unity and national pride. Although all of these are valid reasons, …show more content…

Democracy is about choices, and conscription gives us no room to make a choice. Scientists have proven that teenagers haven’t fully develop their mental capacities and brains. If you ever wonder why something you couldn’t fully comprehend in sixth grade, “suddenly” made sense in 10th grade it might be because your brain was and still is developing. You see, there is a region in the brain called the frontal cortex, and it controls reasoning. This area doesn’t develop until later on. This is actually known as one of the reasons as to why teenagers are usually more impulsive than adults. Teenagers tend to act before they think (since the frontal cortex is in charge of this!). Where am I going with this? What effects could the experience of war have in such young undeveloped brains? How can we send these young minds out onto a battlefield when they can’t fully grasp the concept of war and its effects? If they aren’t reasoning and having an idea of what killing another person does to a human being, then they will not be able to understand the …show more content…

If you want to go to war, go ahead. I will not stop you from doing something that is obviously keeping our nation as safe as possible but that’s a long way from what conscription is. No teenager is ready for war, including myself. Is anyone really ever ready for war? No, of course not. However, it should at least be your own choice. America is supposed to be the land of the free and brave. You can’t be free if you don’t have the liberty to choose whether you will join the armed forces or not. Conscription eradicates our basic human rights while simultaneously disregarding the importance of education, free will, and child development and for these reasons I strongly disagree with

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