Tag: women

education and schooling First Amendment rights

Girls [sic] Sports Saved

The only thing that should have been required to save the T‑shirt?

An apostrophe.

The T‑shirt boldly proclaimed “Save Girls* Sports.”

But matters were more complicated for students of Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Riverside, California, who wore the shirts to protest their school’s decision to let a boy claiming to be a girl join the girls’ cross-country team.

The school sent students wearing the shirt to detention, allegedly for violating the dress code. Two of the girls who wore it said that school administrators compared the wearing of it to wearing a T‑shirt with a swastika.

Those two students and their families sued the school and school district on constitutional grounds.

Maybe it was the lawsuit, or maybe it was the show of solidarity — but something caused MLK High to cave. And hundreds of other students did show up wearing the “Save Girls Sports” T‑shirt, willing to buck the dress code or thought code, whatever it is, to support their classmates.

Somehow the school failed to place these hundreds of students in detention and has apparently dropped the detention policy.

Students at other schools in the area had also started wearing the T‑shirts.

With regard to the policy of letting boys play on girls’ sports teams, the Riverside Unified School District says that its hands are tied. “RUSD is bound to follow California law,” which requires letting students “participate in sex-segregated” activities in a way “consistent with his or her gender identity.”

Laws are meant to be changed, however, if not through California’s legislature, then through the state’s citizen initiative process.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* We leave the [sic] for the title.

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The Draft

Inclusion on Compulsion

A news article over the weekend explains that certain “lawmakers” are “leading the effort to allow all Americans ages 18 to 25 to be included for registration with the Selective Service System.”

To “allow”? And “to be included”?

The allowance and inclusion mean “at gunpoint” … by force of law: the expansion of compulsory draft registration to women, in addition to men, does not mean that lifelong dreams could finally come true. After all, military jobs are already open to women who want to serve … voluntarily.

Young men have long been required to register for a military draft upon punishment of prison for refusal … even though President Reagan, who enforced the law post-Vietnam, acknowledged “The draft or draft registration destroys the very values our society is committed to defending.”*

After praising “the brave women who have volunteered to serve our country,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R‑Missouri) argues that “volunteering for military service is not the same as being forced into it, and no woman should be compelled to do so.”

He’s right there.

But neither should men be so compelled.

And Senators Ron Wyden (D‑Ore.), Cynthia Lummis (R‑Wyo.), Rand Paul (R‑Ky.), and Patrick Leahy (D‑Vt.) have introduced an amendment to the NDAA that would end draft registration completely for “all Americans.”

“The real question now,” as Jeff Jacoby wrote incisively in The Boston Globe, “is whether anyone should still be required to sign up for the draft.”

The answer is easy: No.

The All-Volunteer Force has been a huge success. Free Americans have and will defend our freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* I know about those precious values as well as about the penalty — 37 years ago today the FBI showed up at my door. And not for coffee. For my refusal to sign a draft form, I spent more than five months in a Federal Correctional Institution (and yet still go around in error from time to time).

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crime and punishment general freedom moral hazard The Draft

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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ideological culture political challengers

Mistaken Misogyny

Tulsi Gabbard, shadow, silhouette, misogyny,

Are Democratic Party women … misogynists?

Last week, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the presidential race after coming in third in her home state and faring no better in any of the first 18 state primaries and caucuses.

“Warren seemed to be the ideal candidate,” informed Erin Templeton, a Dean at Converse College, in The Guardian, but, as the headline explained, “there was only one problem … she was a woman.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi attributed “a certain element of misogyny” to the senator’s defeat.

“For the second time in four years, an exceptionally qualified female candidate lost to her male counterparts — some objectively far less qualified,” argued Ella Nilsen and Li Zhou at Vox.

“Sexism was a big factor in Warren’s loss,” they asserted, concluding: “America apparently isn’t ready for a woman president — at least not yet.”

Yet, it was Democrats, not all Americans, who voted for two white men instead of her. And women constitute a clear majority of Democratic voters.

“She’s female,” Annie Linskey and Amy Wang chorused in The Washington Post, identifying the factor “many believe contributed significantly to her loss.”

Noting that Warren’s “departure came just days after another prominent female senator, Amy Klobuchar, dropped out,” they neglected to discuss why Klobuchar endorsed former Vice-President Joe Biden, a man, and not her homogametic comrade, Senator Warren.

The biggest problem with doling out verbal recriminations against people who did not vote for Warren?

If everything is sexism, nothing is sexism.

Which only makes it harder to fight actual sexism … as the Democratic National Committee changes the rules to keep the only remaining woman in the race, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, off the debate stage.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly ideological culture media and media people Popular

Inclusivity Not Included

women, woman, march, inclusion, in group, out group

The 3rd annual Woman’s March strolled by over the weekend — a tiny fraction of its former self.

Two years ago, close to a million protesters converged on Washington, D.C., while this year’s event “appeared to attract only thousands,” The Washington Post reported, “mirroring lower turnout at marches … across the country.”

“[A] movement that once bragged about its inclusivity,” explained a separate news analysis, “has been roiled by reports of battles over diversity, hate speech and branding.”

In addition to squabbles over corporate ownership of the very name of the “Women’s March,” the leaders of the main organization have been accused of anti-Semitism. “Board members Linda Sarsour, Carmen Perez and Women’s March, Inc., co-president Tamika Mallory, have publicly affiliated with and praised anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan,” notes the Capital Research Center’s Influence Watch website.

March founder Teresa Shook called on them to resign, charging “they have allowed anti-Semitism, anti-LBGTQIA sentiment and hateful, racist rhetoric to become a part of the platform …” The Democratic National Committee and a number of progressive groups have withdrawn their support.

But the “inclusivity” was always fake. As a “women’s” march, it started out excluding half the population. Nothing wrong with women having events or organizations that focus on issues of particular interest to females; it’s just not inclusive.

And let’s not ignore that pro-life women were specifically booted from participating in the original 2017 event.

“Is the Women’s March more inclusive this year?” a USA Today article asked before last year’s pink-hatted festivities.

Apparently not. This year, everyone was excluded fromthe Eureka Women’s March — cancelled because those hoping to participate were “overwhelmingly white.”

With all this inclusion, no wonder we are so divided.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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