I am no pacifist. I definitely subscribe to the non-aggression principle, but a defensive war is always justified. I'd die for certain things I believe in, too. I just wanna decide that for myself and serve when I want. How dare the state make this decision for me.
And it's one more reason not to comply with conscription and sabotaging this authoritarian practice.
So, yeah, opposing a state is always a good idea. States are not your friends.
Really? If a foreign power intervened in, say, ethnic cleansing, defense would be justified?
While recognising the differences in our attitudes towards life, this evoked from me a very big WTF.
Not just because your life is all you have while honor is basically someone's opinion, but also because it's not even as much as one whole step away from being prepared to kill people for your own honor.
"I wouldn't quite mind dying for things like my language to be dominant in my home and spoken by my leaders"
I wonder if the parent poster's language is currently the dominant language or a minority language. There are people who already kill and die for their culture to become dominant.
I regret not making an effort to do it. I chose to underperform in my test because I believed all is better than war. But as an adult I've changed, and realised I wouldn't quite mind dying for things like my language to be dominant in my home and spoken by my leaders, as well as dying to not lose honor. Things I would at the time had considered naive. I now consider by old stance naive, as it implied my own life as the most important thing in the world.
The only conclusion I can draw from this is that I'll likely be of another stance at 40, just like I'm thinking along the same ideals as at 18. If anyone older than me remember thinking these things at 25 I'd be love to hear.