From Sheldon Richman at antiwar.com:
This past week demonstrated with blinding clarity that 1) Republicans, contrary to their rhetoric, oppose individual liberty, and 2) the establishment news media really couldn’t care less about the presidential candidates’ views.
After the last Republican debate, the media continued its obsession with the reality-TV and horse-race sides of the election. News readers, correspondents, and “analysts” droned on about Marco Rubio’s robotic repetition during the debate and the insult swaps by Donald Trump and Jeb Bush. You had to read the cable channels’ “news tickers” running right to left along the bottom of the screen to find out that at least some Republican candidates think young women should have to register with Selective Service in case the military draft is reinstituted. On CNN, at least, this story was not deemed worthy of further attention.
Which is more important? Rubio’s short-term memory problem, the Trump-Bush mud-wrestling match, or registration for the draft?
Here’s a clue: the draft is slavery. It is short-term slavery at best, but it’s possibly debilitating and even fatal. Thus registration with Selective Service is – surprise! – registration for possible enslavement. Anyone who supports individual liberty against state power would oppose conscription. This is no close call.
The draft ended in 1973 during the Nixon administration. (Classical-liberal economist Milton Friedman played a key role in its demise.) In 1980, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter signed a proclamation requiring 18-26-year-old men – but not women – to register with Selective Service, supposedly as a signal to the Russians that Carter had noticed their invasion. But the draft was not revived. (We later learned that the Carter administration helped to provoke the invasion by aiding jihadis, hoping Afghanistan would be the Soviets’ “Vietnam.” The 9/11 attacks were blowback from Carter’s operation, and Afghanistan would become America’s second “Vietnam.”)
Ronald Reagan, Carter’s opponent in 1980, criticized draft registration on grounds that it “destroys the very values that our society is committed to defending,” but in office Reagan changed his mind because “we live in a dangerous world.”
To continue reading: End, Don’t Extend, Draft Registration
