No, Mr Hooton. Let's *not* steal years off Young NZers' lives.

The odious Matthew Hooton asks, "If New Zealand really plans to spend billions more on defence, why not invest it in universal military training ...?"

Here's a simple reason why: Because neither nation nor government owns the lives of the young New Zealanders who would be conscripted for universal military training — and whose lives and futures would be put on the block to please and appease the likes of Matthew bloody Hooton.  And however much he tries to smuggle in the idea behind the idea of it as some kind of "Outward Bound" kind of health-giving outdoor programme, in the end what he's talking about it is lining up youngsters to be disposed of by the state.

To "invest" in universal military training is quite simply a vicious abrogation of rights. As Ayn Rand explains:

It negates man's fundamental right—the right to life—and establishes the fundamental principle of statism: that a man's life belongs to the state, and the state may claim it by compelling him to sacrifice it in battle. Once that principle is accepted, the rest is only a matter of time.
    If the state may force a man to risk death or hideous maiming and crippling, in a war declared at the state's discretion, for a cause he may neither approve of nor even understand, if his consent is not required to send him into unspeakable martyrdom—then, in principle, all rights are negated in that state, and its government is not man's protector any longer. What else is there left to protect? ...

But of course, a conservative like Hooton has no interest in an individual's rights.

But nor does he have any genuine interest in young people's lives.

The years from about fifteen to twenty-five are the crucial formative years of a man's life. This is the time when he confirms his impressions of the world, of other men, of the society in which he is to live, when he acquires conscious convictions, defines his moral values, chooses his goals, and plans his future, developing or renouncing ambition. These are the years that mark him for life. And it is these years that an allegedly humanitarian society [would] force him to spend in terror—the terror of knowing that he can plan nothing and count on nothing, that any road he takes can be blocked at any moment by an unpredictable power, that, barring his vision of the future, there stands the gray shape of the barracks, and, perhaps, beyond it, death for some unknown reason in some alien jungle.

What makes Hooton's proposal to steal vital years off young New Zealanders' lives even more repugnant is that he poses his "modest proposal" in the context of fiscal rectitude—an invitation to "think creatively" about how ministers "might spend the extra $10b a year to keep Australia and Nato happy."

What a vile piece of shit.