Walter Kirn reflects on the differences between gun owners and non-gun owners:
To certain fellow gun owners whom I was ashamed to regard as fellow anythings, my belief that the public has a right to collective self-defense from those who abuse their individual rights qualified me as traitor and a weakling. To certain purists among the unarmed, my guns marked me as unwholesome, perhaps a “nut job.” A girlfriend had called me this name once, partly in jest, after coming across some bullets in my desk (a few. 22 shells, just pocket litter to me and no more ominous than thumb tacks). I shouldn’t have, but I bristled. This troubled her slightly. Which troubled me.
You all know how that goes, that spiral of defensiveness when someone questions something you take for granted. Or maybe you don’t, since you’ve never owned a gun.
The discussion on women being drafted has shifted to a more general debate on the organization that runs the draft:
Maybe my perspective is skewed because I’m in that tiny cohort of men who never had to register for Selective Service (born between March 29, 1957, and December 31, 1959), but I think your reader is completely wrong. When in the past we’ve faced a large country with “military projection power,” we’ve had no problem creating asimultaneous registration and draft system and mobilizing the population (I’m thinking World Wars I and II) and shutting down the registration system when the war concluded. A permanent registration system started with the advent of the Korean War and escalated during the Vietnam War. In more recent conflicts we’ve used volunteers and contractors (the currently terminology for mercenaries). President Reagan had no problem requiring retroactive registrations when he restarted the system.
We are not a nation where the entire adult civilian population should be constantly on a war footing. I enjoy the privilege of being one of the few adult males not in the Selective Service System’s records and not legally required to be. This privilege should be more widely shared. I don’t argue that the department should be shut down – maintaining the data and the systems is part of being prepared. But unless we have declared war, Selective Service registration should be voluntary.
Another disagrees:
Now you know why cutting the budget is so difficult. We haven’t used the Selective Service System in 40 years. President Carter signed Proclamation
4772 on July 2, 1980, creating the current system, one that has never ever been used. For five years, from 1975 to 1980, we didn’t have registration (which is why I never registered; I was born in 1957 and, thus, turned 18 in 1975). This program isn’t like FEMA, which is used several times each year. It isn’t even like earthquake preparedness material, as earthquakes here in California happen about once every ten years. Nope, this current program has never been used.
Worse, the likelihood that millions of Americans would be needed to fight in any war is effectively nonexistent. The kind of wars that require such manpower are not possible with missiles and nuclear warheads. So we not only have a program that has never, ever been used, it is extremely unlikely it ever can or will be used. Worse, does anyone believe the addresses and information gathered by the system isn’t completely outdated in six months?
Nevertheless, you have people arguing why we should keep it. It doesn’t cost all that much. It might be useful. It can be done easily. All of those reasons ignore the reality the program accomplishes absolutely nothing. I am willing to bet you a good steak dinner the deficit hawks in Congress will be the first people to defend this useless, wasteful program to the bitter end.
Another is on the same page:
In what likely future will America no longer be secure in regards to military safety? Our defense budget is roughly 40% of the entire world’s military spending. For all intents and purposes, we’re an island. So unless you fear Canada or Mexico invading, quickly raising a force to defend the homeland won’t be needed.
Also, the original Selective Service Act was passed in 1940, two whole years before the US entered World War Two. If they were able to organize everything by hand back then, one would think with modern technology, we would get up to speed at least as quickly. Of course, that would depend on public cooperation, but realistically the draft will never be reactivated without broad public support. Otherwise, it’s pretty much political suicide: bye, bye youth vote and soccer moms.
Lastly, what country could realistically start a war that would require the numbers that only a draft could provide? China, perhaps, if they wanted to wreck their entire economy (20% of its exports go to the United States. Another third to the EU and Australia). Russia, with its declining population and its profits from selling gas to the EU? The next five highest spenders are the UK, France, Japan, India, and Saudi Arabia. I guess one could make a case for the last, if radical Islamists took over, but again, only at the cost of wrecking its economy (~40% of exports to the US and allied countries) and therefore it’s capacity to fight.
So why should we be spending $24 million a year on it, again?
Today on the Dish, Andrew reframed the gun-control debate to give some meaning to the term “pro-life.” He meditated on the role of language in our attitudes on immigration, rebutted Douthat on the origins of America’s liberal sexual mores, and laughed off more of the stale arguments for DOMA. Andrew also recoiled at the nasty desperation of the anti-Hagelians, scoffed at McCain’s and Butters’ performance in today’s confirmation hearing, and shook his head at Hagel’s own flip-flop toward the hawkish line. He glimpsed the sketchier side of the Boy Scouts’ founder and dismissed the pseudo-cultural criticism of Breitbart’s disciples.
Andrew also answered more questions from readers about the new, ad-free Dish coming Monday, whose subscriptions have been gaining momentum lately (a trend you can contribute to here.)
In political coverage, Larison gauged Rubio’s angle in the push for immigration reform, Barro tracked GOP maneuverings on gay marriage, and we asked whether the Republicans can pacify their Tea Party caucus. A reader made the case for keeping the military’s draft program as Ilya Somin reviewed the legal history of the male-only system. Amanda Marcotte fumed over a conservative organization of pro-gun gals while Ackerman profiled the typical American mass murderer. Jacob Sullum parsed a new poll on America’s anti-prohibition majority and readers stayed on top of the unfolding Boy Scouts ban on gay membership. Meanwhile, Laura Seay colored herself unimpressed by the media’s Mali analysis, we worried about the simmering tensions in the China seas, and Eli Valley gave a crash course on real anti-Semitism.
In miscellanea, Mark Oppenheimer mapped his road back to pot smoking now that he’s a father, Eli Lake had second thoughts about his beloved e-cigarettes, and E.D. Hirsch contended that building vocabulary is the key to fostering literary youngsters. We listened to the moving story of a reader who refused to conceal his HIV+ status and assessed Netflix’s business model of instant gratification. Elsewhere, we wondered if algorithms could put fact-checkers out of business and fancied slapping our smartphones onto our wrists.
We showcased anthem for the nutritionally challenged in the MHB, watched the sun come out in Long Beach, California, and made eye-contact with an Israeli boy who breathed behind a gas mask in the Face of the Day.
I was reminded of a few key things today. The first is that the Republican party in Washington has no regrets about the Iraq War. McCain and Butters reveled in the same utter certainty of their moral and strategic high ground today as they did in the run-up to the worst foreign policy mistake since Vietnam, after the worst national security lapse since Pearl Harbor. Sure, we were so negligent we allowed more than 3,000 innocents to be mass-murdered not far from where I am typing this; yes, we reacted to the atrocity by bungling the search for the actual culprits, brutally torturing countless suspects (some to death), and then starting a second war on false grounds that cost a trillion dollars and tens of thousands of American and Iraqi lives. But you, Mr Hagel, were wrong about the surge!
He wasn’t, as I have long argued. The promise of the surge was to buy enough time and peace to get the sectarian mess of post-Saddam Iraq to resolve itself peacefully and form a viable non-sectarian polity. That hasn’t happened. What we have is a Shiite authoritarian government in open conflict with both the Sunnis and the Kurds – and greater Iranian influence in the country. The surge did dampen some violence, but the collapse in mass murder was more a result of a political decision by the Anbar tribes to turn against the Sunni extremists, exhaustion after a long period of ethnic cleansing and segregation, and American money to bribe away the rest. It was a face-saver for a war that had manifestly failed.
Then there is Hagel’s heresy on the question of Israel. Although he is, like most of us, a supporter of the Jewish state, he recoiled in the Senate at the way in which the Greater Israel Lobby choreographs the voting. He just refused to do the necessary grand plié whenever AIPAC’s emissaries came with their bills and resolutions to be rubber-stamped by the Senate. He dared to think outside the box of American foreign policy options called “What The Israeli Far Right Wants”.
He even at one point raised the possibility – are you sitting down? – of containment in foreign policy, the doctrine that guided the Cold War for generations. This puts him waaay outside the mainstream that gave us the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It made him, in James Inhofe’s view, a virtual emissary of the Revolutionary Guards or in Ted Cruz’s fetid brain, an ally of Jihadism. But if you are McCain and Graham and go to a foreign country, Israel, and on foreign soil, side with that country’s prime minister in a diplomatic showdown with your own US president, you are fine and dandy, and any implication that they might be putting another country’s interests above your own is a disgusting anti-Semitic slur. But if you are a Nebraskan war hero who dares to think about containment, rather than a new cycle in a global religious war, you are effectively called an Iranian double-agent in the Senate itself:
“Why do you think the Iranian foreign ministry so strongly supports your nomination to be the Secretary of Defense?”
John Avlon is rightly incensed by this disgusting insinuation – and the whole fracas. But the Senate GOP does not surprise. Even after the catastrophes in Iraq and Afghanistan, neoconservatism in its most paranoid and aggressive form still reigns supreme. We won both wars; we never tortured anyone; there is no such thing as the Greater Israel Lobby and it never intimidates anyone and has never defended any dumb idea (like settling half a million Israelis in a conquered territory). And the proof that the fever still has not broken was Hagel’s dreadful, inarticulate surrender on anything he had ever thought or said. Or as Weigel so delicately put it today:
Lindsey Graham had wanted to know who had ever been spooked by The Lobby and what stupid things they’d done out of panic. The answer was right in front of him, at the witness table.
In the end, they all give in. Or have to pretend to.
Like you, I have been both openly gay and HIV+ positive for decades. I have never concealed my orientation, but I had told only a very close circle of gay friends about my HIV status. I’m not sure why I was so reticent with straight friends, but I think mostly it was fear of being shunned and treated differently (having to wear a bell).
Then, I fell in love … with the newborn son of a coworker and close friend. He brought the week-old baby into our office, and proudly slipped him into my arms. While his father worked for an hour, I fed Henry a bottle, rocked him in my arms, and held him against my chest while he took a long nap. And I was hooked – the feel of his fingers holding mine, the smell of his scalp, his soft snoring as he napped. I visited the young family as often as I could, and both parents seemed comfortable with me handling Henry. I soon fell into the role of babysitter/gay uncle, and the feel and smell of carrying a spit-up blanket on my shoulder quickly became normal. I was flattered by their level of trust in me; it was something my parent’s generation could never imagine.
Several weeks after Henry started day care, his dad asked me if I would come to the day-care center to sign up as an emergency contact and surrogate caretaker. I was happy to sign the forms, but it also made me realize that they were formally entrusting me with their greatest treasure, and I decided that I needed to be fully honest with them about my HIV status. Some day they would find out that I was positive, and I didn’t want them to feel that I was deceiving them.
I told the father first. I’m not good at reading emotions, but he was obviously uncomfortable and shocked. I assured him that my viral load was undetectable, and that I would never do anything that would endanger his son. He was very quiet, and said that he would have to tell his wife, and that they would discuss it that evening. That night, I slept only a few hours.
They invited me over the next evening. Walking up to their front door, I steeled myself for a long, difficult conversation. When the door opened, Dad handed Henry to me and said “Henry needs somebody to play with while I fix dinner … come on in.”
Thank you for giving me the confidence to come out fully to them; I have never felt more trusted and loved. And best wishes for your new venture; I’ve signed up, and am encouraging friends to do so.
In the 1981 case of Rostker v. Goldberg, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of male-only draft registration in part because women were barred from combat roles, and female draftees are therefore less valuable to the military than male ones would be. In the thirty years since then, more and more combat roles have been opened up to women, and the Pentagon’s most recent decision is likely to eliminate most if not all remaining gender-based restrictions. So that rationale for a male-only draft is undercut.
But then-Justice William Rehnquist’s majority opinion also relied heavily the courts’ “lack of competence” on national security issues and the consequent need for “healthy deference to legislative and executive judgments in the area of military affairs.” That deference might justify upholding male-only draft registration even if all or most combat positions are open to women. The federal government could argue that, in the expert judgment of the military, few women have the strength and endurance needed for many combat positions, even if they are not categorically barred from them. Thus, female draftees might still be less useful to the military than male ones. A court applying “healthy deference” might choose not to contest that assertion.
Amanda Marcotte rails against the Independent Women’s Forum, a conservative group making the case that guns are an “equalizer” that enhance women’s safety:
(Photo: Joanna Baginska, a fourth grade teacher at Odyssey Charter School in American Fork, Utah, is shown how to handle a 40 cal. Sig Sauer by firearm instructor Clark Aposhian at a concealed-weapons training class to 200 Utah teachers on December 27, 2012 in West Valley City, Utah. By George Frey/Getty Images.)
The Dish 