Robert A. Taft

Robert Taft, champion of a non-interventionist foreign policy and leader of the Republican resistance to post-FDR foreign policy, gave a stirring speech against conscription in 1946. There is one step now proposed, supported by government propaganda, which seems to me to strike at the very basis of freedom. It is the proposal that we establish compulsory military training in time of peace. The power to take a boy from his home and subject him to complete government discipline is the most serious limitation on freedom that can be imagined. Many who have accepted the idea favor a similar government-controlled training for all girls....Military conscription is essentially totalitarian.

Written in 1951, Taft argued that the freedom of the people of the United States was — as it is now — in serious danger from the foreign and domestic policies of the political class . From the foreword: Today we face threats to our liberty and moral