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Salvo 10.27.2022 15 minutes

Become Undraftable

U. S. Marines conduct training near At-Tanf Garrison

War: What is it good for? 

Announcement: I am now a single-issue voter. No, it’s not abortion. Reducing abortions to zero would require total victory in the culture wars and my book doesn’t come out until next year (but you should pre-order it now). 

And no, it’s not immigration. Blake Masters will one day win the presidency solely on the magnificence of his line, “the correct amount of illegal immigration is zero,” but that happy day remains far off.  

Even the economic disaster barreling our way is not my single voting issue. Or Covid. Or CRT. Or chemical castration of children. My kids are safe from all of those things, thanks to my stubborn refusal to relinquish my parental authority. Don’t get me wrong: those are things I care about, but they don’t come close to the existential threat that now looms before my family. 

My single issue is this: the reinstatement of the draft. Over the next few years, I’ll have two draftable boys, and more after that. The prospect of committing us to yet another 20-year quagmire on some blasted foreign plain with miserable weather and inedible food is an irresistible bauble to our corrupt government; I fear they cannot resist the intoxicating scent of teenage blood.  

Paging Dr. Strangelove 

We haven’t had a draft in this country since January 27, 1973, when Nixon’s Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird replaced it with our current all-volunteer armed force. 

In 1980, peanut-addled communist and election denier Jimmy Carter re-instated the Selective Service after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. It still exists today. All men ages 18 to 25, including foreign residents and illegal aliens, must register for potential military service in the “unlikely” event of a war. If you refuse to send back your Selective Service card, you can be imprisoned for five years and be fined $250,000. They are very interested in getting young men into their system.  

According to the Selective Service website, “The United States military has been all-volunteer since 1973. But an act of Congress could still reinstate the draft in case of a national emergency.” 

They don’t specify what might constitute a national emergency. I’m going to make a wild guess that a global thermonuclear war, or even a small tactical nuclear exchange near the Donbas, would do the trick nicely.  

“Maintaining the Selective Service System and draft registration provides a hedge against unforeseen threats and a relatively low-cost ‘insurance policy’ against our underestimating the maximum level of threat we expect our Armed Forces to face.” 

Ah, our kids are the insurance policy in case they underestimate a threat! What if, instead, these people are the threat? What if I don’t feel like underwriting their terrible policies with my children’s lives?  

The bad news for me, my sons, and everyone else’s teenage sons, is that the lunatics in charge are doing everything in their power to actually start a really big war. They’re choosing not to do smart, commonsense things like end a border dispute, negotiate a peace settlement, provide an offramp to peace, and generally cool things down. Why would they do any of that stuff? As George Carlin said, there’s no money in peace, folks!  

Hundreds of billions of dollars stopped flowing into the pockets of our all-volunteer Military Industrial Complex when we pratfalled our way out of Afghanistan. The spigot got turned off over there, so it was simply rerouted under the Urals via the Porkstream II and turned on near Kiev, for yet another Vital Foreign Cause. They call this one Saving Democracy Itself! And if you don’t believe in the Cause, yes, you are a traitor. 

Far-left Maryland Representative and election denier Jamie Raskin recently issued a statement articulating why we simply must fight Russia to the death—a declaration of  “progressive holy war,” per Michael Tracey. “Moscow,” Raskin declared, “is a world center of antifeminist, antigay, anti-trans hatred, as well as the homeland of replacement theory for export. In supporting Ukraine, we are opposing these fascist views.” True American patriots? They’re those willing to die in a crusade for trans rights, feminism, and an end to the Great Replacement conspiracy theory.  

Of course, your sons will literally be replaced when they are killed in this war, but they will die heroically with pride knowing it was for Pride. Their coffins will be offloaded at Dover Air Base with the rainbow flag of their choice gently draped over them. Since there are no special peoples’ flags for regular straight males, a gender flag will be assigned to your son at no cost. There won’t be any actual American flags around; those tend to be triggering to the military brass. 

Allow me to paraphrase Cypress Hill: My kids ain’t goin’ out like that. 

Uninformed and uniformed 

The bloodless, robotic General Milley, the Pride Parade Grand Marshal himself, gave an insane speech this week in which he claimed that it’s mission critical to flood the most corrupt nation on Earth—the world’s leading producer of child pornography—with tons of weapons and billions of dollars. Why? Let this sink in: “This fight is not just in Ukraine’s interest. It is in the global interest to protect the rules-based international order.” That “purpose,” he explained, comes courtesy of “our” woke “civilian leadership,” who insist of “our uniformed military” that they “uphold the rules-based international order that was established some 80 years ago.”  

The Milleybot glitched during the speech and had to repeat the thing about the “rules-based” order a couple times there. “Rules-based international order” sounds a lot like the New World Order to me. Their only rule right now seems to be protecting and propping up the money-laundering operation where Hunter Biden washes his filthy lucre, at all costs. Watching the speech, I kept hearing “uniformed” as “uninformed.” Same thing, I guess. 

What rules? What order? Are they the rules and order that got us into Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and all the other stupid wars we lost? Rules like allowing ten million, or maybe twenty million, a virtually endless flood of illegal immigrants, into our country? Rules like making abortion on demand free at all U.S. bases worldwide? Rules like creating dangerous viruses in illicit foreign bioweapons labs in China and Ukraine, and Lord knows where else? Rules like pushing pricey genital mutilations on naive parents to max out a hospital’s revenue? Do I get to see Milley’s list of rules before I agree to let him sacrifice my children for it? 

A few good men 

I would like to believe that in case of war we would not need a draft, because plenty of volunteers would sign up. But we are now facing a tripledemic of a military recruitment catastrophe.  

First, the military is hemorrhaging active-duty soldiers. They are being hounded out because of vaccine mandates and mandatory, constant transgender awareness training. Who wants to stick around when the barracks are full of recent Glee Club members? Who wants to fight when the Generals are less interested in readiness and more interested in gender diversity? 

As Milley said at West Point, “We swear an oath to an idea, and that idea is America . . . every single one of you, it doesn’t matter if you’re male or female or gay or something in between.” Male, female, gay, or . . . something in between? Ah, that must be what the EcoHealth scientists are working on in their lab these days! 

Second, the military can no longer find new recruits. No one is buying what they are selling. Christians and conservatives, America’s traditional cannon fodder, finally figured out that the military now considers them homegrown extremists, so recruiters have had to look elsewhere for marks. They’ve been scouting recruits at gender clinics, monkeypox parties, abortion rights protests, and family-friendly drag queen brunches, to no avail.  

This September, the army announced that it had “only reached about 52 percent of its recruiting goal for the current fiscal year, which ends later this month.” Based on this number, our military will soon be half its customary size. It turns out that when you teach children starting in Kindergarten that America is an evil and racist country, they might not want to put its uniform on when they grow up.  

And third, we forgot to raise children in stable two-parent families, which means that 98% of college-age Americans are not eligible to serve! “Research from the U.S. Department of Defense shows only 2% of Americans ages 17 to 21 are eligible to serve in the military [because] applicants must have a high school diploma, must not be obese, must be of good moral standing and not have a criminal record. Research published in Sage Journals shows that between 40% to 50% of all men have been arrested by the age of 23.” 

Apparently we also forgot how to not feed kids like we’re fattening up prize hogs for the county fair. “A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report says that obesity in America is impacting national security. While each branch of the military has its own requirements, men cannot weigh more than 267 lbs. Women have similar standards, with a weight limit of 184 lbs. for the U.S. Marine Corps and 250 lbs. for the U.S. Air Force. Overweight and obesity among active-duty service members has risen 73% between 2011 and 2015. These individuals are less likely to be medically ready to deploy,’ according to the CDC report.”  

I guess it’s hard to squeeze through the tank hatch when you are the tank. 

You can be 250 pounds and serve in the Air Force? I’m trying to picture the new Top Gun movie with a cast that “looks like America,” as Bill Clinton once bragged of his cabinet. They’d have to change the title to Top Gun: Gigantic. 

(Yes, I know Top Gun is the Navy, and yes, I know pilots have lower weight requirements—it’s a joke, folx!) 

Hide your kids

It feels like just five minutes ago I was gazing in wonder at my firstborn’s little pink face in a hospital delivery room. Today’s he’s driving a car and planning for college. The government cannot have him and will not have him, nor any of his brothers. There is no cause any politician could conjure that I would allow them to die for. There is no part of their bodies I would hand over to satisfy General Milley’s Raytheon contract.  

As Masters said about illegal immigration, the correct amount of American blood we should be willing to sacrifice for a foreign war is zero. I don’t care if it’s Ukraine or Taiwan, or any other of the Regime’s pet causes, the answer is still zero. Not a drop. Not a single fingernail. These “leaders” have taken enough from me and other Americans my age who grew up in the placid ‘70s and ‘80s and ‘90s. All of the riches from that era have been squandered. Our safe neighborhoods, our clean sidewalks, our excellent local public schools, our high-trust communities, our fentanyl-free streets, our ability to find spouses, buy houses, and raise children. Normal stuff, or at least it was within recent memory. My nostalgia for those halcyon days turned to acrid dust in my mouth on September 11th and every day since during our last 20-year Crusade to Nowhere. I’m not doing it again. 

We must become undraftable

You, your family, your kids, your grandkids. Unfortunately for me, my children don’t have any of the military disqualifiers. They are not obese. They will have high school diplomas soon. They’ve never been arrested. They can pass any drug test. I’ve been doing everything wrong! 

To help rectify this oversight, I plan to make my boys undraftable. I am considering a variety of options. Large swastikas tattooed on their foreheads or their behinds may hurt their chances of wooing wives, so that’s out. They could join the seminary, but young men aren’t safe there, either. Maybe they could become women temporarily. Except according to the Selective Service website, transgender women who were born men STILL HAVE TO REGISTER. LOL, sorry ladies!  

Since felons can’t join the military (yet), maybe I can encourage them to become drug dealers and then turn them in. Wait, who am I kidding, they’d be released with no charges in California. I’m pretty sure you can get arrested for tweeting the wrong thing these days, so maybe they can just tweet “there are only two genders!” and do six months in solitary. Hard time, but better than dying in a ditch in Kazahksatan. 

People like me are the only ones left calling for peace. Even the peaceniks in Congress have suddenly located their inner warlord. In a recent letter, the House progressive caucus, who are traditionally part of the anti-war Left, urged Biden to “change strategy on the Russian-Ukraine war and to begin a ‘proactive diplomatic push, redoubling efforts to seek a realistic framework for a ceasefire.’” In reaction, establishment Democrats went ballistic and demanded they retract the letter, which the cowards did immediately. 

The Establishment, on the right and the left, does not want peace. Those suggesting we find a peaceful solution are being forced via struggle session to grovel for admittance back into the warmonger club.  

Coincidentally, this club held its annual meeting a few weeks ago. At the G7, Biden reiterated “our unwavering commitment to hold Russia accountable for its war and support Ukraine for as long as it takes.”  

How delightful. Two of my sons may turn 18 during our “unwavering” commitment as the military ranks are shrinking. What is our objective abroad? Stop asking that. What is the end goal? Shut up. What if my commitment wavers? Hands beyond your back, traitor. 

Silly Milley actually warned the cadets at West Point this past May that a war was heading their way. “The world you are being commissioned into has the potential for a significant international conflict between great powers. And that potential is increasing, not decreasing,” he said, ominously.  

If only General Milley knew someone, anyone with the power to decrease conflicts between great powers! Ah, well. 

Perhaps a new endless foreign war every so often is required to keep our “rules-based order” afloat. Perhaps shedding a few thousand pesky patriotic 19-year-olds from the South and Midwest every year is the real secret to our success as a country. Thin the herds of gun-toting corn-fed country boys and watch the Democrat’s voter base magically increase!  

Over 7,000 U.S. forces died in combat in the Global War on Terror and 50,000 were gravely wounded. 30,000 of the survivors committed suicide. The overwhelming majority are from the Deplorables demographic: white, Christian, conservative-leaning. Kinda makes you think, doesn’t it? Just don’t think too hard about it or you will go mad.  

I shouldn’t really complain about modern war casualties. After all, it could be worse. Recall that during a single month, May 1968, during our last big foreign proxy war, nearly 17,000 young American men were killed. Back then, anti-war hippies successfully turned public opinion, and crucially, the media, against the endless conflict. The pressure worked and the war, and the military draft, eventually fizzled out. We pratfalled home. 

He warned us all

Let’s listen again to General Milley’s commencement speech at West Point this year, when he closed by quoting Bob Dylan, of all people. “As we sit here on the plain at West Point, we can see the storm flags fluttering in the wind. We can hear in the distance the loud clap of thunder. The hard rain is about to fall.” 

Please God, protect our children from whatever our leaders choose to rain down on us next.  

The American Mind presents a range of perspectives. Views are writers’ own and do not necessarily represent those of The Claremont Institute.

The American Mind is a publication of the Claremont Institute, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, dedicated to restoring the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life. Interested in supporting our work? Gifts to the Claremont Institute are tax-deductible.

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