Why are we still talking about the draft? Abolish Selective Service.

Baby boomers were the last generation to be drafted. Generation X and Millennials are now too old to be drafted. I have a young Zoomer friend who is too disabled to be of use to a modern military, but he still had to register at the Selective Service website just so he could be eligible for a driver's license. A very minor inconvenience to be sure, but let's go ahead and have this conversation about forcing future generations to fight for dubious causes.

The ACLU is arguing that the male-only draft is unconstitutional. I would agree. But the ACLU is arguing that only requiring men to register violates the 5th Amendment's equal protection clause. I would argue that drafting anybody violates the 13th Amendment's ban on involuntary servitude.

You can't even claim that there is a compelling state interest for Selective Service. In this age of drones, cruise missiles, and nuclear weapons, no foreign country wants to attack the US. Foreign terror groups are still out there, but they are never able to muster up more than a few volunteers to die for their cause. As of this writing, the chief security threat to the US is domestic terror groups and domestic insurrection. Our top notch military wants only the best men and women to serve. People who lack the will to serve voluntarily won't perform as well.

Right now, the Pentagon is trying to screen out right-wing extremists from it's own ranks. A draft would risk drawing in more of the extremists that the military is trying to get rid of. There are policies are in place to keep neo-Nazis and other fashholes from enlisting, so it might make sense to make them ineligible for the draft. Except that a draft might boost the recruitment numbers of these hate groups: just get a 1488 tattoo and you get to stay home while all your liberal peers have to go through boot camp.

In fact, the first time the draft was employed on a national scale was during the Civil War. The Confederacy tried it first. Slaveowners themselves were exempt from the draft, and poor white men were justifiable resentful of being forced to right for the "right" of wealthy men to own slaves. The Union attempted their own draft, and this led to the New York Draft Riots. Union troops had to be pulled from the front to restore order. The Confederacy lost the war anyway, but the Union suffered a net loss in manpower as a result of the draft.

"But Robert, if young men have to register for the draft, isn't it unfair to exclude women from the draft?" If this country lacks the political will to abolish Selective Service, reforming the obsolete institution serves no purpose either. I wish I was excluded from the draft myself. It would have been one less form for me to fill out, and one less thing to worry about. Life is unfair to men and women in different ways, but on the whole life is more unfair to women. Adding this extra burden to young women is an insult at best. To their credit, women have been more inclined to protest wars than to fight in wars. If women are subjected to the draft, many states would force them to either register for Selective Service, or forfeit their driver's license. Even in the absence of an actual war or an actual draft, this can impact their quality of life if they follow their conscience and refuse to register. There are many men who are suffering consequences for failure to register right now, and extending the draft to women would likely more than double the number of people who experience these hardships.