Screw The Selective Service

By Alex P. Laslow

Turning eighteen is a big deal to almost everyone. Turning eighteen makes you an “official” adult, and you gain certain privileges along with your adulthood. The privilege most think of first is that in some places the government lets you drink alcohol. As an adult you also have the privilege of the right to vote, but no one seems to really care about voting. In addition, if you happen to be of the male gender, a privileged trip to your local post office is in order. That’s right. It’s time to register for the draft. Why? Just turn on the television set and you’re sure to see the bullshit ads the government runs about registering because it’s the law, and because it’s cool.


The idea l want to toss your way is that an organization that forces an individual to register for a draft violates personal and moral freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution of the United States. The Selective Service is such an organization, and as such is illegal, and should be disbanded.

Mandatory registration isn’t anything new. It’s just one of those laws that sits quietly unnoticed in the back of the room and gives the finger to the Constitution. You might say, “What’s the big deal, just register and get it over with.” This thinking is the whole problem. No one thinks about what it’s all about. When a person registers, they are indirectly supporting the act of war, and therefore the act of killing.

In 1945, Senator Robert Taft gave a speech at the Gettysburg Cemetery: “Military conscription is essentially totalitarian. It has been established for the most part in totalitarian countries and their dictators led by Napoleon and Bismarck. It would set up militarism on a huge pedestal throughout the world as the goal of all the world. Militarism has always led to war and not peace.”

Ever since the draft was used, it has shown negative results. Just look at how eager our young men were to get to Vietnam and fight for democracy. Like I said, it’s not a new idea or anything. Registration discriminates against male eighteen year-olds. They are forced to register and upon order of the government, go to war and fight for the “freedoms” of America, or against “Communism” in other countries.

Let me try to put it in familiar terms. Some eighteen year olds wants to consume alcohol, but because of “the law,” they can’t. And nearly all of those same eighteen year olds bitch about “the drinking age.” But not many eighteen year olds think about what they’re supporting when they register: death and killing. It’s “the law” right? How many eighteen year olds break “the law” when it comes to drinking? Why isn’t it the same with the draft? Because it’s the law?

The government shouldn’t be able to violate personal moral beliefs, but does so with the Selective Service.

On November 9, 1983, in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Chief Justice Lowrie ruled that the draft was unconstitutional and in talking about whether drafting was discussed in the Constitution, he said, “…I am quite unable now to suppose that so great a power could have been intended to be granted, and yet be so loosely guarded.”

Two other Justices agreed with Lowrie and stated that, “The moral evidences are all against the idea (of the draft).”

Unsurprisingly, in the great tradition of American politics, the ruling was reversed (unconstitutionally) after Justice Lowrie’s term expired.

In former U.S. Senator Ron Paul’s book, Freedom Under Siege, he states, “The use of the Selective Service is the use of force and the threat of violence, methods that are unacceptable in a free society.”

The need for a draft is proof that the only way for the government to get men is through force and law. Showing that the people are the ones that decide. If the people don’t believe in the war, there will be no war. So, in order for the government to live out its “police actions” and C.I.A. wars, they create an organization like the Selective Service to threaten us with jail sentences if we don’t support the war.

If an event occurred that threatened the very borders of the United States, and our democracy, then we wouldn’t need a draft, most everyone would volunteer to save the country. And it’s not every decade that something like this happens. It’s those foreign Vietnam-like wars that nobody wants to go over to. And that’s because nobody believes in them. It has been proven that draftees do more harm than help. In a June 1979 study conducted by the Brookings Institute, they estimated that $300 million could be saved by retaining older personnel and decreasing the number of new recruits.

I say leave the choice to support war and fight for your country up to the individual, because if the people believe a war is justified and necessary, then a draft won’t be needed.

Screw the Selective Service.