I believe there’s an important distinction to be made between drafting, which relates to how the needs for manpower are met, and doctrine, which stipulates how that manpower is used.

There’s nothing to say the US couldn’t (or doesn’t) have a similar doctrine since totalförsvar at its core relates to keeping society functioning during wartime and for most civilians means a legal obligation to just keep going to work as usual. If need should arise there’s nothing to say that additional civilians wouldn’t be drafted into the armed forces since everyone between 16 and 70 years has an obligation to contribute to the defense of the country according to the current needs.

That said, military doctrine differs severely between the countries; whereas Swedish doctrine has been focused more on defense and parted from the possibility of allied intervention, the US has a doctrine focused on projection of power and pre-emptive strikes (or overtly meddling in international affairs if you will). Accordingly, the needs and underlying structures of the military differ as well, including practices for drafting and training of personnel. As long as the US can’t conceive of war arriving at their own doorstep, and believe themselves to nip every threat by the bud, they won’t see any need to pivot to a defensive doctrine, and doing so anyway without any apparent need would only project weakness.

This is the equivalent of making ski slopes in cheese

Sure, life is imperfect, but is that really a reason to espouse something as radical as nonexistence? I find that the imperfection and thereby dualism of existence is part of what makes it beautiful; we get to experience both the good and the bad, pleasure and pain.

I guess in some sense what I understand you’re saying is that to you, being thrust into the pain inherent of becoming and being alive, is the consequence of a bad moral or ethical (selfish) action and therefore wrong even if the children are able to adapt, because there is always more potential suffering throughout the course of a life. I get that, I think most of us would love to be in situations where we could have no-suffering-guarantees for our children.

Maybe the point of friction is that it seems to me like you believe that there should be no suffering at all for it to be ethically permissible to have children (lest it be selfish) while many of us believe that the “base level” of suffering inherent to life (eg. death of parents, the setbacks of infancy, social interaction, etc.) is permissible, and it then falls on us as parents to make sure that there is no or as little additional or unnecessary suffering as possible by means of safe environment, education and tools to cope and overcome so that what could potentially be suffering doesn’t become so. When it comes to that I believe it to be more reasonable to discuss who ought and who oughtn’t be a parent than whether it’s ethical or not to have kids.

As far as I’ve understood, that is precisely one of the reasons the current pope has such a strong base in Latin America and so many in that part of the world wanted to see him as pope.

The Jesuit University System (SUJ) actively promotes liberation theology through curriculum in Mexico, and I would expect the Jesuits have similar structures and programs in other countries and parts of the world.

In my experience we can often tell roughly where someone is from going only by speech and use of slang. While I can only speak for a Mexican perspective, I imagine the same is true for people from most of the Latin American countries, and I imagine the same could be said for people from different states in the US of A. No idea if that’s what they meant, but it’s not necessarily based on racism.

Just wanted to say I appreciate you including the link. I found it an oddly touching read and it made me think about people in my life who might be dealing with similar experiences.