The House passed a major defense bill Friday night that included a provision that would automatically sign up young people ages 18 to 25 for Selective Service.
The National Chamber’s version Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which would authorize $895 billion in military spending, passed 217 votes to 199. It is unlikely to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate due to numerous amendments regarding abortion, diversity efforts and medical treatments for transgender people. The provision of Selective Service, however, is part of an enduring bipartisan effort to keep the framework for military conscription in place, despite conscription ending in 1975.
Automatic registration would replace the coming-of-age tradition that all 18-year-old male U.S. citizens experience when they receive a card from Uncle Sam in the mail informing them that they are required, under threat of criminal penalties, to register with the Selective Service.
Proponents of the legislation framed it as a more efficient and cost-effective method.
“By using available federal databases, the [Selective Service] agency will be able to register all necessary individuals and thus help ensure that any future military enlistment is fair and equitable,” Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D–Pa.) he said on the floor of the Chamber. “This will also allow us to re-dedicate resources – basically that means money – to reading readiness and mobilization…rather than to education and advertising campaigns aimed at registering people.”
The other tacit effect would be to eliminate young people’s choice to engage in civil disobedience. As ReasonMatt Welch he wroteThe Selective Service is not a proud part of America’s civic fabric, but an intermittent tool of the Pentagon:
The Selective Service System was founded in 1917 to fuel the United States’ efforts in World War I. It was disbanded in 1920, reactivated in 1940, reformatted in 1948, and then terminated in 1975 as part of Washington’s decisive shift to an all-volunteer army. Then, in 1980, a panicked President Jimmy Carter, alarmed by the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, reinstituted military registration as a rite of passage for young men to complete within 30 days of their 18th birthday, under theoretical penalty. five years in prison. and (eventually) up to $250,000 in fines.
Although there have been only 14 convictions of Selective Service refuseniks, and none since 1986, those roughly 100,000 young men a year who disobey Washington’s marching orders are typically barred from working government jobs, receiving student loans, and (in about 40 states) to obtain a driver’s license.
Recruiting is a hobby for Houlahan, an Air Force veteran. She also led a House bill in 2021 to require women to register with the Selective Service, effectively doubling the draft pool.
There is a growing centrist consensus among liberals and aggressive conservatives about expanding the Selective Service. The American Civil Liberties Union, for example, is fighting for women’s right to be recruited and argues that the Selective Service is an example of overt sexual discrimination.
But equality in the service of broader disenfranchisement is not a virtue, and conscription remains an immoral institution at its core.
“Conscription of any kind violates any constitution that professes to guarantee individual liberties,” Fred Etcheverry he wrote in Reason in 1972, when conscription continued to be an active threat to young people. “Otherwise, what will stop the draft from being the twelve months Senator Taft feared or the two years we have now, the four years of the National Service Act, or forever? If the draft is limited to an emergency, then Who decides what is an emergency? Is ten percent unemployment enough of an emergency to justify conscription?
Mandatory national service in one form or another is a perennial bad idea put forward by nationalists and technocrats concerned about “unity”, but America’s all-volunteer military is not a self-inflicted weakness. It is a sign of strength – the confidence of a free citizen that he will know when to fight. Selective Service is a vestige of fear. It should be abolished, not made more equitable and efficient.
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