“A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”
For years, the Selective Service System — the friendly folks who bring us the military draft — used the above slogan to portray registering for the draft as a rite of manhood.
If macho draft registration is now expanded to women, perhaps the slogan will change to: “Men and women have to do what they’re told — equally.” That’s where the issue is headed: to equality. Equality before the law is important, sure — but we don’t want equal servitude. Equal freedom is better.
“It appears that, for the most part, expanding registration for the draft to include women would enhance further the benefits presently associated with the Selective Service System,” stated a Pentagon report to Congress recommending the mandatory registration of women.
What benefits are those?
Spending $25 million each year on a Washington bureaucracy to keep a woefully inaccurate and incomplete list of young people between 18 and 25 years of age for a possible future military draft doesn’t hold any benefit for me.
If a draft were conducted, many observers believe the Selective Service would throw away its coerced list of young people (gathered by threatening and punishing and imprisoning young people*) and simply purchase a list or lists on the open list market.
But there is no need for conscription. Never has been. Citizens in these United States have always stepped forward. Today, the All Volunteer Force is the best military in the world.
Most of all, conscription is anathema to the idea of individual liberty. We can and will defend ourselves, but without registering or forcing our daughters into the military.
Or our sons.
Ending registration, forswearing conscription, that’s equal freedom.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* I know, I was one of those prosecuted back in the 1980s.
Additional Reading:
Common Sense: For Genderless Freedom
Common Sense: Needless List?
Townhall: Obama’s New Rite
Common Sense: Equal or Free?
Common Sense: Junk the Law
Townhall: Draft the Congress and Leave My Kid Alone
Townhall: Americans Gung-Ho to Draft Congress
2 replies on “Daughter Draft”
While I agree that conscription is certainly involuntary servitude, and another example of the government’s exemption from common morality to accomplish its goal, I must offer that if there was conscription and there was a chance that every child was subject to being an involuntary combatant that the electorate’s taste for military adventurism would be substantially reduced.
I am for Drafting!! I want my daughter “drafted”
Drafted into the the mothers hall of fame !
She belongs there with so many others!
All volunteers
Opps
Her mother too please