Tag: The Draft

Why We Fight

A recent Senate hearing addressed a big problem facing America’s All-Volunteer Force (AVF): recruitment.

The Army fell 25 percent short of its 2022 goal; the Air Force is 10 percent below; the Navy met its target for enlisted folks but not officers; and the Marines hit their mark but said “never before” has it been so challenging.

“The Pentagon has attributed its difficulties to a variety of factors,” reports The Washington Post, “including the nation’s low unemployment rate, school closings during the coronavirus pandemic that limited recruiters’ access to high school students and faculty, and a shifting culture in which more teens gravitate to jobs with work-life balance.”

As The Post paraphrased Army Undersecretary Gabe O. Camarillo, “the most significant barriers to service [include] fears of death or injury, suffering psychological harm, and leaving behind friends and family.”

Indeed, what with possibility of overseas deployment and combat, the job of soldier certainly does not score well in the “work-life balance” category. While a sense of mission — and the country’s need — has helped spark interest in the past, that need has been blurred by a long string of misguided military adventures in recent decades.

Sure, President Joe has repeatedly promised American military force in defense of Taiwan against repeated Chinese threats to invade.* But do young Americans perceive this as anything to them? Has the wokeness mission, stressed by the administration and the Pentagon and interrogated during the Senate hearings, occluded the more traditional sense of mission upon which the AVF has relied?

It’s time for Mr. Biden to speak to the people on the military’s core mission — including his promises, and those of other politicians. Asking them to keep his word.

Plus, a personal presidential request might add an element of responsibility and accountability from the commander-in-chief to the soldiers recruited.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Draft

Slaves to “Equality”

“This will light up the right.”

So Rollcall, the Capitol Hill newspaper, quoted an unnamed Republican aide.

At issue? Last week’s Senate Armed Services Committee vote to force young women to register for the military draft. That provision is contained in the gargantuan National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Only five senators voted against mandating draft registration for women — all Republicans.

Two hawks, Senators Tom Cotton (R‑Ark.) and Josh Hawley (R‑Mo.), so opposed the change that they joined the beer-swilling Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D‑Mass.) in voting against the overall NDAA.

“Our military has welcomed women for decades and are stronger for it,” Cotton explained on Friday. “But America’s daughters shouldn’t be drafted against their will.”

“It’s one thing to allow American women to choose this service, but it’s quite another to force it upon our daughters, sisters, and wives,” said Sen. Hawley, adding “compelling women to fight our wars is wrong.”

As is conscripting men.

This Wednesday, the issue will come before the House Armed Services Military Personnel Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Jackie Speier (D‑Calif.). “I actually think if we want equality in this country …” Speier has argued, “we should be willing to support a universal conscription.”

Speier’s empty homage to “equality” does nothing for women, of course … or national defense.

“It’s time to end military draft registration altogether,” tweeted Rep. Peter DeFazio (D‑Ore.), “not extend it.” He joined a bipartisan group — Rep. Rodney Davis (R‑Ill.) and Sens. Rand Paul (R‑Ky.) and Ron Wyden (D‑Ore.) — in a letter calling draft registration “expensive, wasteful, outdated, punitive, and unnecessary” and urging support for their legislation to end it.

Finally, some common sense.

I’m Paul Jacob.

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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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The Other Other

“How would you characterize this moment?” CNN’s Fareed Zakaria asked Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian (and occasional Biden advisor) Jon Meacham.

“I think you have a dedicated minority of the population — it was the secessionist slave-holding interests in the 1850s,” responded Meacham. “Today, it is this vast swath of people who have found a home in the Republican Party, who are no longer part of a coherent and constructive and good-intentioned conversation about the future of the country.”

Meacham then posited that “a democracy fundamentally depends on our capacity to see each other not as adversaries — or heathen — but as neighbors.”

Wait … did the tenured television expert say our whole system relies on not considering those you disagree with politically as “the other,” just mere seconds after comparing a “vast swath” of Republicans to slaveholders and essentially accusing them of being incoherent, destructive, and evil?

While Meacham bemoaned “these” otherwise undefined Republicans, CNN flashed pictures of the January 6th rioters on the screen. Hmmm. Obviously with the best of intentions.

Next, Zakaria sought the input of another Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin … also a well-known plagiarist.

“The answer” to seeing folks as this “other,” according to Goodwin? “I believe it’s national service,” she argued. “You get people from the city to the country, country to the city, you begin to create a new generation that has shared values.”

She’s delusional, but serious.*

Notice that her Pulitzer Prize-winning psychopathy would force millions of young (read: less powerful) citizens into government make-work, to be directed and “re-educated” by Washington-based experts … like Goodwin (and Meacham).

The other thing? Ironically, the program aired on Independence Day.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Last week, in a New York Times op-ed, Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway urged “compulsory national service for all young people — with no exceptions.” He contends forcing young people out of their chosen life paths will “build bridges between people” and “shore up our fragile communities.”

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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

The Draft Goes Hollywood?

“Whether you’re able to recall the last military draft or not, if you watch the show This Is Us, then you may have some familiarity,” says a column at Medium.com apparently authored by the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service.

The commission was set up by Congress to explore the idea of extending draft registration to young women, as a federal judge has ruled, or ending it altogether, as should be done — or even go all the way to impose a one- or two-year compulsory national service requirement for every young high school grad.

According to the piece, headlined, “This Is Us and the Military Draft,” the “one thing” the commission, the military draft, and the October 21, 2019 episode of this NBC television program, “Nicky’s Number Is Called,” have “in common” is “the Selective Service System.”

Today, the agency threatens young men to register, keeping, at great expense, a badly out-of-date registration list that could be used to conscript those young men into the military. Back in 1970, Selective Service held a draft lottery live on TV whereby young men whose birthdates were picked first got involuntarily shipped off to Vietnam.

A This Is Us 1970 flashback “gives us a glimpse of what that was like in one powerful scene.” Two brothers are at a bar waiting to learn their fate. The commission explains that one brother “is adamant that his birthday will be called.” Drinking heavily, he is more terrified than “adamant.”

His birthdate is picked fifth out of 365 — making it a certainty he will be drafted. Immediately, his brother comforts him with, “We’ll get you to Canada.”

Is the commission signaling its support for my position?

The draft is unconstitutional, unjust and unnecessary.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Action Item: Go HERE to instruct the commission to tell Congress: Don’t extend draft registration to women, end it for everyone. No draft and no forced national service program.

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