In a country where almost all 18-21 year olds are in the army, you will have shit like that
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderbund_War
An outcropping of the 30 Years War that ended with Swiss federalization. Helps when you have sharp political divides (in that case, Protestants killing Catholics) and young people driven to pick sides.
Israel is, similarly, experiencing sharp internal religious division between Reform Zionists and Orthodox branches.
Hey, I actually did a dissertation on that, so I am fairly informed to talk about this topic!
So few words, yet so many corrections.
- Not an outcrop of the 30 years war, a consequence of the 1830 french revolution.
- has nothing to do with protestants killing catholics. Was a war between progressive democratic unitarian forces wanting a democratic, united switzerland and conservative oligarchic federalists wanting independent Cantons. The killing of Leu was just the spark that ignited the war. It is really important that you understand that this was NOT a religious conflict but instead a political one. I can explain you why it wasn’t a religious war in more detail in a seperate comment, but I’ll leave it at that for now.
- Not sure how that applies here at all. The soldiers did exactly what they were ordered to do by their corresponding politicians. No soldier behaved in a way that wasn’t expected of him, Whereas here Soldiers defied their respective authority, which is what we are discussing.
and famously, this underlines my point about conscription fostering unity, the Tagsatzung always said that the soldiers of the Sonderbund were “eusi Brüedere” (our brothers), refused to use explosive ammo etc. (I could go on and on: Duffour refused to launch a surprise attack that would have been 100% successful to instead gamble and give them the opportunity to surrender because they didn’t want to hurt their brothers. It went that far that radicals said he cared more about the lives of the Sonderbund than about the lives of the Tagsatzung)
All in all, less than 100 people died during this 3-week war and the country united again very quickly after it was over.
Regarding Israel: Like I said, I am from switzerland. I don’t really know much on Israeli powerstruggles. All I know is: In Israel there are two groups of people.
- Religious Zealots that came there because of religion
- Jews that had to flee because of their religion and found refuge in Israel. Fleeing from their bad past in Germany but also because they were being exiled by all the Arab Countries. Group 1 tends to support Nettanyahu, Group 2 tends not to. Although Group 2 also started electing him after a series of terror-attacks on Israel.
And now before some asshole comes in: I do know a bit more about Israeli politics, but not more about its powerstruggles.
It’s almost like universal conscription is a bad idea that negatively affects people!
Swiss here - no it isn’t
I’d even argue that it is a reason why switzerland is such a stable country.
I am lying in a ditch next to a Person that has the absolute opposite of my political Ideas and job and… you get the Idea
But instead of seeing them as political opponents or whatever, I am lying in a ditch in the strongest rain. That welds together and fosters unity.
Yeah, it’s easy to advocate for conscription in an alpine country that’s famously neutral and hasn’t been known to commit atrocities unrelated to banking.
I’ve participated in various activities with people who don’t share my beliefs and always will and nobody had to force me to go larping in bad weather or murder and torture civilians to accomplish that.
Besides, as far as fostering unity goes, there ARE limits.
I guess I could hang with a right-libertarian as long as we don’t discuss politics and their behavior isn’t as awful as their politics. We couldn’t be close friends, but we could probably hang out. Hell, I probably do already without knowing it.
I don’t want to have anything to do with murderers, torturers and fascists, though, no matter what. Forced conscription would take my choice in that matter from me in most countries.