You may have only recently heard: As of this coming December, all American males will find themselves \u201cautomatically registered,\u201d upon the occasion of their 18th birthdays, for a prospective military draft.<\/p>\n
Given current events, that prospect understandably gives off sinister vibes \u2014 \u201cbut without a draft, who would do the necessary work of murdering Iranian elementary school students and Venezuelan fisherme \u2026 er, \u2018narco-terrorists?’\u201d \u2014 so you might be surprised to learn that it\u2019s old news.<\/p>\n
On December 30, 2024, then US president Joe Biden (or maybe his autopen?) signed the National Defense [sic] Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025, which included the relevant provision.<\/p>\n
Reaction from the general public: Yawn \u2026 hey, the Chargers clinched a wild card playoff berth! OMG, Jimmy Carter died! NDAA? Whazzat?<\/p>\n
War has a way of retroactively refocusing the mind, doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n
In reality, \u201cautomatic registration\u201d is even older news, though.<\/p>\n
By the time Biden signed that NDAA, 44 states and US territories already \u201cautomatically registered\u201d young males with the Selective Service System when they applied for driver\u2019s licenses or state ID cards.<\/p>\n
But wait! It\u2019s even older!<\/p>\n
For nearly a century, the Social Security Administration has issued identification numbers to nearly every American (these days, that usually happens at birth).<\/p>\n
Those numbers are linked to birth years, and the databases associated with those numbers include information on employment so as to track tax payments into an associated Ponzi scheme\u2019s accounts.<\/p>\n
In other words, a second \u201cregistration\u201d with the Selective Service System has never been necessary for, nor these days would it really even represent an inconvenience to, implementation of a military draft. I\u2019m not an especially skilled computer programmer, but even I could probably figure out how to make a database produce a list of names and likely addresses within a given age range.<\/p>\n
\u201cDraft registration,\u201d it seems to me, has always been about something else.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not a matter of \u201cmilitary necessity.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a power play.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a way to remind us who\u2019s in charge.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a threat.<\/p>\n
At any moment, the threat implies, our lords and masters can change our status from \u201ctax serf\u201d \u2014 generously allowed to make a living (so long as we hand over a substantial cut of every dollar earned), travel (so long as we \u201cshow our papers\u201d and submit to groping on demand), etc. \u2014 to \u201cmilitary slave,\u201d obligated to shed others\u2019 blood and perhaps our own on command, at risk of death should we obey and on pain of death should we refuse.<\/p>\n
While I\u2019m opposed to conscription ON principle, neither it nor the bureaucratic games that come with it are different IN principle from the larger system they\u2019re embedded in. We can have political government or we can have freedom. We can\u2019t have both.<\/p>\n
Thomas L. Knapp (X:\u00a0@thomaslknapp<\/a>\u00a0| Bluesky:\u00a0@knappster.bsky.social\u00a0<\/a>| Mastodon:\u00a0@knappster<\/a>) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You may have only recently heard: As of this coming December, all American males will find themselves \u201cautomatically registered,\u201d upon the occasion of their 18th birthdays, for a prospective military draft. Given current events, that prospect understandably gives off sinister vibes \u2014 \u201cbut without a draft, who would do the necessary work of murdering Iranian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[816],"class_list":["post-58138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"0","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58138"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58146,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58138\/revisions\/58146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58138"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=58138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}