Tag: selective service

general freedom national politics & policies

Dizzying Utopian Vortex

national service, the draft, slavery, involuntary servitude, freedom

“We are all, regardless of where we sit on the political spectrum,” Dr. Jonathan Holloway wrote in The New York Times last week, “caught in a vortex of intoxication.”

Holloway, president of Rutgers University as well as an author and historian, blames social media for encouraging us not “to see and respect one another.” But have no fear, he offers a solution to all or most of our nation’s problems.

“The time has come,” he argues, “for compulsory national service for all young people — with no exceptions.”*

He references FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps, LBJ’s Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) and today’s “domestic civilian service” programs such as AmeriCorps, asserting, sans evidence, that these “have been enormously successful.”

Effectiveness aside, does this academician see no significant difference between the programs mentioned, which were offered freely to young people who wanted to participate, and a program forced upon young people against their will?

Regardless, Dr. Holloway declares “it is easy to imagine” this one-year governmental control and use of millions of young people as “a vehicle to provide necessary support to underserved urban and rural communities, help eliminate food deserts, contribute to rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, enrich our arts and culture, and bolster our community health clinics, classrooms and preschools.”

In his utopia, mandatory national service would also

“put young people in the wilderness repairing the ravages of environmental destruction”;
“dispatch young Americans to distant lands where they would understand the challenges of poor countries”;
“force all of our young people to better know one another”;
“shore up our fragile communities”; and
even unify “America’s races, religions and social classes.”

Ah, the Rutgers president: terminally delusional . . . or only temporarily “caught in a vortex of intoxication”?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The “no exceptions” stance is designed to silence questions of fairness and “equity” . . . even though just a few moments of thought will convince anyone that exceptions must and will be made.

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Draft Mom or Not?

draft, registration, selective service, woman, women, female, barbed wire,

“The biggest piece of opposition” to extending draft registration to women, former Nevada Congressman Joe Heck told The New York Times, “was, we are not going to draft our mother and daughters, our sisters and aunts to fight in hand-to-hand combat.”

Yet, that seems precisely what the National Commission on Military, National and Public Service, chaired by Heck, called for in its just released report, urging Congress to make our daughters sign up for the military draft and to be equally conscripted in any call-up.

Or in a new compulsory military will draftees be able to say, “No thanks, I don’t feel like engaging in hand-to-hand combat”?

Today, women comprise nearly 19 percent of 1.2 million active-duty soldiers. They rightly have all combat jobs open to them — the very positions a draft has traditionally been used to fill.

So, in the name of equal rights are we forcing mom into a foxhole or not?

It seems . . . complicated.

“Women bring a whole host of different perspectives, different experiences,” offered Debra Wada, a commission member and former assistant secretary for the Army.

Since when does the military conscript people for their “perspective”?

“[B]eing drafted does not necessarily mean serving in combat,” The Times paraphrased Wada. “In a time of national crisis, the government could draft people to a variety of positions, from clerical work to cybersecurity.”

This doesn’t seem to be about actual equality of service —or equality of risk — at all, but instead about a bigger pool of possible forced labor.

“If the threat is to our very existence,” Wada rhetorically inquired, “wouldn’t you want women as part of that group?”

Yes! Certainly.

Of course.

But as volunteers, not as conscripts — and the same for men.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom The Draft

A Policy Misadventure

draft registration, women, female, soldier, selective service, draft,

The National Commission on Military, National and Public Service released its report today, advocating that Congress should force our daughters to register for the military draft.

“The commission recommended that the United States keep a draft option in place,” explains The New York Times. Commission chair and former Nevada Congressman Joe Heck called it a “low-cost insurance policy against an existential national security threat.”

But that flies in the face of former Selective Service Commissioner Bernard Rostker’s testimony: “there is no need to continue to register people for a draft that will not come; no need to fight the battle over registering women, and no military need to retain the MSSA [Military Selective Service Act].”

And speaking of “an existential national security threat,” the scenario Heck put forth at one hearing was a simultaneous invasion from both Canada and Mexico.

Puh-leeze.

“This is a necessary and fair step,” states the 255-page report, according to Politico, “making it possible to draw on the talent of a unified Nation in a time of national emergency.”

It has always been possible to draw on the talents of the American people — both men and women. Just not to draft folks against their will.

Legitimate arguments for fairness and equality* must not obscure what we are talking about: A step closer to using force to fill the military’s ranks.

There is only one reason for a military draft: the inability of a nation to persuade citizens to voluntarily defend their country. Yet, as I told the commission last year, never have Americans failed to rise to their country’s defense.

Conversely, too often our “leaders” have substituted foreign misadventures for actual national defense.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* More soon on the sort of “equality” being envisioned in the next military draft.

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social media The Draft

Terrible Twisted Tweet

selective service, twitter, tweet, handcuffs, the draft,

Close your eyes and imagine a young American.

Got a picture in your mind? Does the youngster have his or her hands cuffed behind his or her back?

No?

Well, clearly, you’re not the Selective Service System (SSS).

“When the threat of force is your first argument that somebody should do something,” James Leroy Wilson wrote at Medium.com, “you have no other.”

Wilson added, “And there is no reason for Selective Service to exist, as exemplified by” the agency’s “threatening, bullying” (and since deleted) tweet:

Some people don’t want to register because they think ‘laws and government suck.’ But truth be told, failure to register is punishable by a fine up to $250,000 and imprisonment up to 5 years. Also, failure to register results in a lifetime of denied benefits. #MythBusters

And what a compelling picture of coercion!

Is that supposed to be your kid?

Let’s start with some myth-busting of Selective Service’s so-called #MythBusting. For all their threats of imprisoning young men who don’t register, no one has been prosecuted in over 30 years.

I know because I remember those handcuffs quite well. Exactly 35 years ago today, three FBI agents arrested me at my home in North Little Rock, Arkansas, for my unwillingness to present myself and submit to signing a draft registration card.

My reasons — like those of only 13 others convicted of disobeying this unconstitutional demand — were more clearly articulated than the SSS tweet suggests: namely, a respect for the higher law of the Thirteenth Amendment and basic human rights, a desire to inform my government that I wouldn’t fight an unjust war, and an understanding that conscription was the way unfree countries fill their armies — anathema to the values that make America worth defending.

Today, non-registration continues to be massive. Admittedly, only half of young men in urban Washington, DC, and barely 60 percent in more rural North Dakota have complied with draft registration.

Moreover, most registrations are now passive, meaning men are registered while getting a driver’s license or applying for student aid — often without their knowledge.

Not exactly oozing with patriotism.

Last year, the agency did send over 110,000 names to the Justice Department for prosecution, but there were no prosecutions . . . which would spark public opposition to the program.

For now, draft registration continues even though former Selective Service Director Bernard Rostker contends, “My bottom line is there is no need to continue to register people for a draft that will not come; no need to fight the battle over registering women, and no military need to retain the [Military Selective Service Act].”

But Congress has empaneled the National Commission on Military, National and Public Service to investigate and provide a report: (1) whether to extend draft registration to women, in keeping with a federal court ruling, or to end the registration program altogether, as it should; and (2) whether there should be a compulsory military draft or civilian national service program.

I believe the draft violates individual freedom and makes our country less safe. We shouldn’t force young women to register or be drafted into combat along with men; we should end this conscription program for everyone.

I fought the draft 35 years ago when it was about me. I plan to double-down now that it is about my kids. And grandkids. And yours.

What say you? Please go tell the National Commission on Military, National and Public Service — HERE — to listen to your Common Sense today.

Thank you. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies The Draft

No Exceptions

John Delaney, conscription, selective service, slavery, involuntary, freedom,

“It’s time to bring the country together,” says Rep. John Delaney (D-Maryland), aspiring to be our next commandeer-in-chief, “restore our sense of shared purpose and a common and inclusive national destiny.”

How?

Forcibly: “John Delaney’s Plan for National Service” stat e s that “Every American will complete a minimum of one year and a maximum of two years of mandatory national service when they graduate high school, or turn 18.”

Delaney joins other glassy-eyed statists in hallucinating that “mandating national service” will “build a future where young people begin their adult lives serving their country and working alongside people from different backgrounds.”

That is, he explains, “Where people . . . who grew up in the suburbs, in farm towns, in coal country, in urban communities get to know each other, get to learn from each other, and get to see firsthand that we still have a lot in common.”

Except that young people won’t “get to,” they’ll “have to.”

As a Delaney news release emphatically emphasizes about his forced national conscription: “No exceptions.”

If you’re a LeBron James type NBA prospect, forget that multi-million dollar contract for a year or two. You have streets to sweep.

If you’re pregnant? Have a terminal disease? This time isn’t yours but the government’s.

And why is it always young people who “get to” be shanghaied?

Never the politicians.

No matter how many fifty-something politicians such as Delaney find their fellow middle-aged cohort to be disunited and non-cohesive, no one ever suggests that his own age group — that he himself — be enslaved into government service.

For their own good, of course.

And the nation’s destiny.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom national politics & policies The Draft

Hypothetical Cowardice?

Congressman Joe Heck, draft, selective service, volunteers, national service

We must treat real threats realistically.

But what to do with bizarrely hypothetical ones?

Last week, former Congressman Joe Heck (R-Nev.), chairman of the National Commission on Military, National and Public Service, addressed witnesses at a hearing in Washington: “So I want to pose a hypothetical scenario and ask your response.”

“We are in the Red Dawn scenario being attacked from both Canada and Mexico,” he related. “There is no Selective Service System. The All Volunteer Force is insufficient. There’s been a presidential and congressional call for volunteers, for people to step up. However, the response has not been enough to meet the threat, the actual threat to our homeland.”

“How would you propose to meet the demand?” inquired the chairman.

Seriously? We must prepare for military conscription because of the likelihood that Canada and Mexico will launch a joint invasion?

Leaving one ridiculous supposition, during the public comment period, I confronted the other: hypothetical American cowardice.

“This is really all about trust,” I told the commission.

“Do you trust the American people to step up in times of crisis — from Pearl Harbor to 9/11 — or do you not? I submit that all evidence points to the fact that they will, because they have.

“Or should we trust Congress with the awesome power to take our sons and daughters away because they choose to, because there’s a ‘big emergency’ or maybe just because we figure it will help with ‘social cohesion’? I submit that all evidence points to the fact that we cannot trust Congress.”

I urged commissioners “to tell Congress: trust the American people — end draft registration, don’t extend it to women, and do not force any sort of national service.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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