Quote:
Originally Posted by Liber
"The king-men choose to not fight against the Lamanites. Moroni gets mad and submits his own petition (which is passed by popular vote) basically instituting a draft with the death penalty for dodging. The problem I have with this is that this draft ONLY applies to a single ethic (hee hee) minority. The same draft requirement does not apply to the People of Ammon who covenanted never to take up arms again. I imagine it something like if GW Bush instituted a draft for the war in Iraq that only drafted Democrats. How is this right? How is this fair? And how does this preserve the liberty of these (apparently peaceful) dissenters?"
First of all, I can see how this could possibly be seen as a sticky matter, but there are a few details that you seem to be confused on:
First, the king men are not an ethnic minority, but a political minority. Kind of like the American Nazi Party rather than African Americans, Hispanics or any other genuine ethnic group. In the USA, political affiliation does not effect whether you can be drafted.
Secondly, The core ideas of the Nation/State that we have now did not exist in pre-colonial meso-america. Were the Ammonites refugies? Or where they consisidered a teritory or reservation? As the Book of Mormon is not a treatise on political philosophy, I am not sure. I do know that the Nephites took in the Ammonites specifically because the Ammonites would not fight for themselves. Their pacifisim was a precondition of their entry into Nephite lands.
Finally, the Kingmen, who seemed to be so antiwar when it came to fighting Laminites, seemed not to have the same problem when it came to their own country and people. The instant the draft is put into place, the Kingmen have a large battle agenst Moroni. And, latter down the road, the Kingmen capture the city of Zarahemla and try to hand it over to the Laminites. If you didn't know, treason is punishible by death in the USA too! It is the only crime specifically mentioned in the US Constitution.
|
First off all, I used the word ethic, not ethNic. It was meant as a play on words but I think the intented meaning is clear.
And you're absolutely right, there simply isn't enough information given to us to make a proper judgement, but the information that is given simply doesn't look good to me. At the time that Moroni's draft was instituted, the king-men were behaving peacably. They had not rebelled at that point and had not done anything contrary to law. Only when their deaths were mandated by law, did they choose to defy the law.
I see them looking at the situation as so: "I don't want to fight, but I'm being forced to do so. I can fight the Lamanites (who I like) and die, or I can fight the Nephites (who are forcing this upon me) and die." If I were a conscientious objector and my government told me that I had a choice between Iraq and lethal injection, I'd probably take Iraq, but I can certainly sympathize and even empathize with someone who would take the injection.
And yes, I know about the death penalty for treason. But I don't think the king-men committed treason until Moroni came after them with a big ol' petition and a sword. I'm not saying that their reasons are just, I certainly think that they were not. But I think that they had the right to have those reasons and act on them in any way they saw fit.