[throwaway655368]

You can't say "How am I supposed to run a company if I can't catch random people on the street and force them to work at gunpoint?" either.

There is nothing naive or idealistic about his position. Forcefully catching unwilling civilians and sending to slaughter is a human sacrifice going against the very idea of human rights. It is pure evil, there isn't exactly a lot of room for shades of grey.

To be honest, when I see the sophistry designed to justify the relegating of citizens to the role of an animal in the butchery by their own state, it looks like a classic horror material. Scarier than the descriptions of atrocities in the warzone. It's like a a cabal of cannibalistic cultists trying to gaslight normal people into thinking that killing those people is (and always was) absolutely normal and it is their very purpose to be slaughtered and it is you a weird freak for pretending that you have some rights and can decide whether you want to die for something or not.

[Etherlord87]

> There is nothing naive or idealistic about his position.

Assuming you can just ask people to risk their lives to defend the state is both. (Not that it can't work in some circumstances)

> Forcefully catching unwilling civilians and sending to slaughter is a human sacrifice going against the very idea of human rights.

No, and I already explained why not: if you arrest an innocent person (or even sentence an innocent person to life in prison), you're obviously harming that person's freedom, but the alternative is to either:

- be perfect and never make mistakes: here's the naivety and idealism again

- resign from the justice system and have anarchy (that's not an improvement by any stretch of imagination)

Similarly with wars and conscription: without it, most (all?) states are too weak to defend and fall. Guess who defeats those states? Competing states with worse human rights (forced draft) or perhaps much worse human rights.

So Ukraine could just allow everyone to run away and let russia win. I can see some hypothetical back and forth between us, where we would eventually agree on a scenario where russia takes Ukraine and maybe some more states outside of NATO but eventually the NATO border stops the advances, and so I won't make an argument that people will eventually no longer have a place to escape to.

Here's the thing, however: people could easily escape before the war. By staying in the country, they agreed to the rules: everyone knew, that in case of war (that was looming for quite a long while) conscription will happen.

[throwaway655368]

Assuming you can just ask people to risk their lives to defend the state is both.

Only in the cannibalistic belief of men being disposable non-sentient material for blood sacrifices on the state altar rather than real humans with rights. It is a question of priorities, not naivety.

if you arrest an innocent person (or even sentence an innocent person to life in prison), you're obviously harming that person's freedom

This only happens as a mistake, which makes your analogy completely nonsensical. No one in their right mind argues in favor of a false dichotomy like "Yeah, we just imprison random bypassers en masse and hope that some of them happen to be criminals. Do you want complete lawlessness otherwise or what?" Forced conscription is not a mistake, it is intentional and official violation of human rights.

Similarly with wars and conscription: without it, most (all?) states are too weak to defend and fall

This sophistry can be adapted for virtually any crime against humanity.

How states without slavery can defend against states with slavery? They don't have a significant pool of free labor.

How states without death camps can defend against states with death camps? Their traitors/potential collaborators/regime enemies are all alive and roaming free.

etc etc

In reality, however, we don't see complete extinction of states with human rights replaced by the most inhumane regimes possible, not even the prevalence of the latter. The reason of that is very obvious: normal sane people aren't exactly enthusiastic to live in, defend or otherwise support the state that doesn't even consider them humans. Specifically in Ukraine and Russia with strong animal protection laws, stray dogs right now have more rights than male conscripts.

Competing states with worse human rights (forced draft) or perhaps much worse human rights.

Yet another sneaky attempt to minimise the atrocity scale. The state strips you of all human rights and sends you to the slaughter. What much worse human rights can you imagine? The state slaughtering you directly? Is that much worse?

Here's the thing, however: people could easily escape before the war.

That's a nice try at victim blaming but they could not. Before the war Ukraine was a usual third world country and like with most countries moving somewhere else wasn't easy at all. Current refugee programs weren't available for Ukrainians back then.

[Etherlord87]

I'm not a sophist. You're just crazy.

[throwaway655368]

Classic gaslighting.