The Senate is apparently ready to approve the inclusion of women in any future draft. There has not been a draft since the Vietnam War but all men aged between 18 and 25 are still required to register for the Selective Service System so that the United States is prepared should the draft ever return. Now the Senate has voted to make women register as well in a new and somewhat ghoulish appeal to the leftist pursuit of perfect equality in all things.
Senate to make women eligible to be drafted
The Supreme Court last month declined to take up a case regarding the status of the all-male draft, which was being challenged by a “men’s rights group.”
Now the Senate has approved language in the National Defense Authorization Act which will require women to register for the Selective Service System.
The United States has relied on an exclusively volunteer military for decades but the Selective Service System is maintained so that a draft could quickly be carried out if it became necessary.
Many countries worldwide still rely on conscription to fill the ranks of their militaries; almost all countries maintain the infrastructure needed to draft their citizens if necessary.
A draft is not an immediate possibility for the United States but it is certainly possible that it could return someday. The Senate may have assumed otherwise and hoped that this would be a purely symbolic victory.
Even as an exclusively symbolic decision the move should be disturbing to the millions of Americans who might one day find themselves or their children affected by it.
Sisters and daughters eligible to become cannon fodder
Historically the motivation for drafting men to fight was to ensure that wives, sisters, and daughters at home were defended from the horrors of war.
Now the Senate is willing to intentionally throw those wives, sisters, and daughters directly into the line of fire while they, all safely out of the age range, remain at home.
Even the most militaristic of states in history would likely recoil in horror at the barbarity of using their own daughters as human shields. One hopes that none of the “men’s rights activists” who agitated for this have families of their own.
In Thomas Babington Macaulay’s famous poem “Horatius at the Bridge” the protagonist declares that he is prepared to die in defense of ” the tender mother who dandled him to rest, and for the wife who nurses his baby at her breast.” The Roman Senate then treats Horatius as a heroic example for all men to follow.
The American Senate asks why Horatius did not forcibly drag his family off to the front line with him. The decision is a grotesque inversion of Western values and masculinity.
No doubt there will be some even on the right who claim that the insanity of drafting women is actually a patriotic choice which is worthy of conservative support. There are few things which could possibly be less conservative than allowing our future daughters to be unwillingly thrown into mortal danger.
