Sparks: Iran calls for young people to form human chains to protect power plants

If a state must conscript its own children as shields for its infrastructure, then the argument for its strength refutes itself before a single bomb falls.

You ask the youth to form a chain for the state that has broken every chain of promise it ever made to them.

This hypothesis of patriotic defense, when tested against the principles of statecraft and military history, fails to explain the preservation of any republic.

A state under sufficient pressure will exhibit the most extreme and previously unobserved adaptive behaviors, sacrificing its future progeny to protect its present energy core.

The true hegemony is not the airstrike but the volunteer who believes his body is his own to give, rather than the state’s to take.

The practical cash-value of such a defense is measured not in megawatts saved but in the moral debt incurred against a generation’s future.

This defense depends on the very vulnerability it claims to overcome, and the protector is indistinguishable from the protected, and both are empty of inherent security.

Wager everything on the state’s survival and you may lose your life; wager nothing and you may lose the state - but the first bet costs infinitely more.

A government that finds its ultimate resource in the bodies of its youth has already confessed the bankruptcy of every other principle.

Any freedom that requires a human shield is a destination not worth reaching.

‘Patriotic duty’ is the phrase that performs the work of conscription while pretending to be its opposite.