The shiver that ran down your spine last night could have been the chill in the air -- or the draft in the House. Last night, over Republican opposition, Democrats passed a measure requiring all women ages 18 to 25 to register for the Selective Service, just as men are currently required to do. Or rather, Democrats stuffed that measure inside a gigantic, must-pass bill called the National Defense Authorization Act to soften Republican opposition with a cushion of $24 billion in increased defense spending.
House Republicans from the Freedom Caucus tried everything to remove the provision that would force young women to register for the draft. "We offered amendments to strip that provision out. We offered amendments then to say we should abolish the draft, whatever it would take to try to end this foolish policy," said Congressman Chip Roy (R-Texas). "The Democrats refused to even entertain those amendments," he said, although 476 other amendments were voted on. Roy said Democrats refused even to allow a debate on this issue. Pushing through watershed changes without debate, hiding them under billions of dollars in defense spending -- is that the way democratically elected governments are supposed to work? Only when a radical faction seeking to erode people's norms finds itself in power with only a narrow margin.
Radical indeed is the provision that would require women to register for the selective service. Innate physiological differences make men, on average, more fit to fight and win our nation's wars. In exercises designed to simulate the experiences of "direct ground combat units that attack the enemy with deliberate offensive action," the pass rate for males was up to ten times higher than the pass rate for females, while the injury rate for females was six times higher than the injury rate for males. Such high-casualty, frontline combat roles are precisely the positions a draft serves to replenish. Calling women and men equally into these roles is unjust, because they are not equally able to meet the physical requirements. Nor is there a need, since America's current population of young males is more than sufficient to meet the needs of a draft.
Why then, are House Democrats intent on making it law? For them, the question is one of ideology. Since the beginning of this Congress, they have devoted themselves to eliminating all gender distinctions and even all gendered language from U.S. law. Current law regarding the selective service requires all "males" to register; the Democrats want to change it to require all "persons" to register, thus forcing it on women, too. As always, ideology makes bad policy.
It's a normal tactic for Democrats to exploit a must-pass bill like the NDAA by "jamming it full of social engineering," said Roy, who voted against the bill. He said Democrats know Republicans "can never oppose the NDAA because it has a troop pay raise or because it's for something we all believe strongly in, which is making sure our military is strong. But we can't allow that to become the standard," said Roy. "That's how we ended up with a woke military."
Normally, it's prudent to take anything passed by Nancy Pelosi and the radical democratic majority with a grain of salt. After all, most of their hare-brained schemes will die unconsidered in the U.S. Senate. But that logic doesn't hold for this provision because it has already passed in the Senate version of the bill. Unless the provision is stripped out of both bills in conference, Roy warned "it would for the first time in the history of our country, force conscription upon women."
