"The Supreme Court previously upheld the constitutionality of male-only draft registration in the 1981 case of Rostker v. Goldberg. However... that ruling was partly based on the theory that women would not be as valuable draftees as men in an era when the armed forces excluded women from most combat positions. Obviously, that logic is no longer valid.... Like most other constitutional law scholars, I think that Rostker was a dubious decision, and would not shed many tears if it were overruled...."
Writes Ilya Somin.
Personally, I think there is a government interest in excluding women from the draft. If we're ever in a situation in the future where we need to resort to the draft, it will be very different from our present-day America, and I suspect that there will be a need to preserve what is unique about females.
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Ah, yet another example of male privilege: The right to die for your country!
You need to explain this to the Israeli military.
The deuce you say. You're worried about preserving what is unique about females. Our President and his mini me minion Ashton Carter is insistent that the armed services need their fair share of transgendered people, These days, at least in the progressive world, being either male or female ain't no big thing--so to speak.
But on the other hand a "shemale" or a "wohim" is just what the doctor ordered for military effectiveness. Just ask the man you voted for Ms. Althouse.
Are they adults, able to shoulder their fair share of the load? Or are they wilting "unique" flowers that must be protected? I have to say, AA, I'm a little surprised at your conclusion there.
History shows that a draft would come long before we're in such dire straits that women have to be protected merely to keep the number of births up. Should such a epoch occur, women are going to be losing a lot more rights than just the privilege of signing up for selective services.
"I suspect that there will be a need to preserve what is unique about females"
Sorry, where's the uniqueness protection clause in the Constitution?
Future Headline: "WAR DECLARED"
Sub-Head: "Womyn, Minorities, LGBTQ Hardest Hit"
What is unique = childbearing.
I'm projecting that the draft would be revived in a horrible situation of population loss.
Apparently one unique thing about females is that it's fine for them to serve in the military, even in combat roles, if they volunteer; but they should not have to involuntarily serve their country (even if it means flying drones from an air-conditioned facility in Omaha)-- because the only way such a situation could occur is if the country is in dire need of their services.
What else is unique about females, and why would it be lost if they had the same national service duties as males?
I suppose that in the run-up to the draft there could be a lot of males who decided to change their gender identity to female, thus achieving uniqueness.
In today's day and age it's moot.......
Egad! Females doing national service keeps them from breeding -- ever -- somebody tell the Israelis, quick.
They are being forced into or on combat units.
"...need to preserve what is unique about females". Utter BS. That era is long over and men aren't buying it anymore. Women want to be equal? The good goes with the bad.
Well, that "uniqueness" argument didn't keep the gays out of the military, did it?
"What is unique = childbearing."
Sometimes you seem stuck in the twentieth century.
We Americans are an unserious people with unserious leaders, living in an unserious way in a world that is, unfortunately, deadly serious. If you doubt this, you need only look at the recent Iran agreement that Obama, Kerry, et. al. have just capitulated on for a prime example. The current obsession with transgender rights and other patent silliness is another. When things get serious and the SHTF, however, such silliness would immediately be put aside in the interest of survival.
There is a quote from Robert Heinlein that sums it up nicely:
All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly, which can — and must — be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. As racial survival is the only universal morality, no other basic is possible. Attempts to formulate a “perfect society” on any foundation other than “Women and children first!” is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal. Nevertheless, starry-eyed idealists (all of them male) have tried endlessly — and no doubt will keep on trying.
Bingo!
... and I suspect that there will be a need to preserve what is unique about females.
Go read the citation for Sergeant Leigh Ann Hester. A woman can kill an enemy combatant as easily as a man can. Petite, pretty, and deadly in close quarters combat. Turns out that doesn't just happen in 2nd rate action movies.
Men marching off to battle to protect their women, children, land , country--
That's so--yesterday.
Today, we men can sit and sip red wine, eat kale with chop sticks, and talk eloquently how beautiful Bruce Jenner looked in his dress today while the mother of our children engage in combat.
It's a beautiful World.
Progress-
let me know when you're getting home, hun--the place is probably going to be a mess
If we can draft men to die, can we draft women to get them pregnant?
You know, if the country needs a draft. Why not draft each gender for its specific abilities? Men are strong and women can carry replacements. B
Ridiculous.
"...and I suspect that there will be a need to preserve what is unique about females."
I thought the only thing unique about females is that they are oppressed.
I'm projecting that the draft would be revived in a horrible situation of population loss.
Yes, I addressed that and made the point that we've had drafts before when huge population loss wasn't an issue. And we likely will again.
Further, this is aside from the fact that a mail clerk or a motor pool mechanic can do their jobs while pregnant. The army, just going from memory here, needs seven soldiers to support every combat soldier. That means that "unique" womb carriers can be drafted and put in non-combat, in the rear with the gear roles, freeing up un-unique sperm reservoirs for combat.
There's simply no real support for your point aside from "I don't wanna".
If we aren't going to draft women then we'd better legalize polygamy!
Personally, I think there is a government interest in excluding women from the draft.
No...you don't say. You mean you want men and women to be treated equally except when it doesn't benefit women? Quelle surprise!
If we're ever in a situation in the future where we need to resort to the draft, it will be very different from our present-day America, and I suspect that there will be a need to preserve what is unique about females.
Wait..there is something unique about females? Men and women aren't equal?
What if womyn want the RIGHT to not be biologically capable of getting pregnant?
So..women should be allowed to serve in combat, but only if they want to and only if we don't need them to.
Sounds fair.
"Personally, I think there is a government interest in excluding women from the draft. ... and I suspect that there will be a need to preserve what is unique about females."
'Gays Too Precious To Risk In Combat,' Says General
Gen. McBrayer discusses how valuable homosexuals are, and why we must never put their lives at risk by allowing them in the military.
Tell you what I'll trade:
Women are safe from the draft, but we get to repeal the 19th Amendment.
Why would the feminine uniqueness in this regard carry any weight with the courts? Sure, it makes sense when considering that there are actual gender differences, but it's currently taboo to bring up gender differences in any sort of pro-family way.
And given the current push to treat artificial means as somehow being equivalent to natural abilities, I wouldn't be surprised in some dystopian future if the government bred people artificially in laboratories while sterilizing the populace after harvesting their sperm and eggs so it can exercise complete population control and gene selection.
MayBee said...
If we can draft men to die, can we draft women to get them pregnant?
7/15/15, 10:16 PM
Wasn't the latter one of the main themes of Handmaid's Tale?
Draft them. They want equality, give it to them.
That's an appeal to the natural order. A notably traditional scientific perspective. The same argument used to oppose women serving in combat and other high risk roles. Perhaps we can still sacrifice a few women to demonstrate equivalence. Its normalization is antithetical to fitness, but the experiment must go on.
MayBee:
can we draft women to get them pregnant
No, but we can normalize or promote the "choice", anti-choice. The first child, every child's right to life, and a full complement of body parts. We should probably curb immigration to welcome the new Americans.
Abortion! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
isn't this the point where Squealor brings the lambs out, bleating "Four legs good, two legs better"?
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
I suspect that there will be a need to preserve what is unique about females.
Amen to that...but only if they are size C or bigger.
With the pool of eligible men declining, women will be needed to fill in the difference.
It was just announced a few days ago that many young men can no longer pass the physical entrance exam.
"If we're ever in a situation in the future where we need to resort to the draft, it will be very different from our present-day America, and I suspect that there will be a need to preserve what is unique about females. "
Horse-hockey. Either women are capable of hand-to-hand combat, in which case they ought to be subject to the draft, or women are NOT capable of hand-to-hand combat, in which case we shouldn't allow them into the trenches.
Women pilots and drone operators are fine, but very few women can pass the Marine physical fitness test. The Marine brass are quietly easing the requirements, but that's just a recipe for having a lot of dead Marines, both male and female, and a lost battle that should have been won.
The problem is that Obama _HATES_ the military and is doing everything in his power to corrupt and destroy it. This surrender to Iran is just the latest insult.
One of the interesting things about women in combat, is that their voice over the radio works a lot better than men.
In a fluid battle, you usually have a bunch of people talking on the radio at the same time, and then all of a sudden, a womans voice cuts right through all of that jabber.
I always liked radio operators that were women, and I think that's a common opinion. Even cops like women dispatchers.
Since I am and have always been against an involuntary male draft, it's an easy call for me that requires no logical gymnastics.
It was just announced a few days ago that many young men can no longer pass the physical entrance exam.
I bet they could pass the one for the women.
I don't think we should draft women, either!
It's always ironic and amusing when our ideology runs up against reality.
Maybe the Supreme Court will adopt the "chivalry exception:" to the equal protection clause. Imagine trying to bring back chivalry into the 21st century. That would be a hoot.
If we're ever in a situation in the future where we need to resort to the draft, it will be very different from our present-day America, and I suspect that there will be a need to preserve what is unique about females.
Althouse has been watching Dr. Strangelove again!
The good news is that thermonuclear war makes women horny.
Always a bright spot. Stay positive!
To expand on my previous comment, the problem with Prof. Althouse's analysis is that she is answering the wrong question. The question is not whether the government might, under some hypothetical scenario, be justified in drafting only men. The question is whether the government is justified now in registering only men.
If we can draft men to die, can we draft women to get them pregnant?
I am pretty sure that if women were given the choice between not allowed to abort a baby they could later give up for adoption, or being trundled off to WWI type battlefields, they would choose to continue their pregnancy. The government absolutely has an interest in seeing that women do not abort their children in certain circumstances. That's why I think that Roe v Wade is a crock of shit.
But basically, the women will serve as prizes to be raped and assimilated when the men are sent into a battle that we got into because we projected weakness, and that we can no longer win.
Don't worry though ladies, burkas and clitorectomies are "authentic."
What is the real point of registration? Is it a merely practical matter because, in the 21st century, people of draft age would be hard to find if they weren't already pre-registered (but somehow, oddly enough, they're not hard to find when sending registration notices now)? Or is it a not-so-subtle message to young men from the government saying, "You may think you're a free man, but if push comes to shove, never forget -- we own your ass", or as it was once famously put, "Someday, and that day may never come, I'll call upon you to do a service for me".
BTW, I think registering only men is an anachronism that should go. There is lots of non-combat stuff women could do today in a major war that requires a draft even if we make the decision that combat is no place for women.
, "Someday, and that day may never come, I'll call upon you to do a service for me".
Is there some other way for humans to live on this planet that you are holding out on us that doesn't require complete world conquest to implement?
situation in the future where we need to resort to the draft, it will be very different from our present-day America, and I suspect that there will be a need to preserve what is unique about females.
Not much of a legal argument, is it?
Personally, I think there is a government interest in excluding women from the draft. If we're ever in a situation in the future where we need to resort to the draft, it will be very different from our present-day America, and I suspect that there will be a need to preserve what is unique about females.
Personally, I think there is zero legal justification for the ban. Women want to be equals --- then be equals.
I'm projecting that the draft would be revived in a horrible situation of population loss.
Would abortion still be legal at that point?
Drafting incubators is one strategy-abortion equal to desertion and The Execution of Edna Slovik comes to mind-but if the flesh of ladies is as apt to be torn and mutilated in combat and war, perhaps it will focus the ladies' minds, and they will be incented to see through the pretty lies of an Obama, or other Democratic wax-moth.
"Is there some other way for humans to live on this planet that you are holding out on us that doesn't require complete world conquest to implement?"
Yeah -- how about paying soldiers? You know, the same way we pay cops? The way we actually do things with our armed forces today? If you're in a hurry, jump forward to about 2:20:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mCV29j9_nY
Yeah -- how about paying soldiers? You know, the same way we pay cops?
In a desperate war there will be a draft. No amount of pay is going to motivate a free man who doesn't want to go, and when it is a matter of survival, a nation does what a nation must do to survive.
That's why libertarianism is a fantasy that could only ever work if a group of like minded, culturally very similar people settled a new virgin area far from other societies and with natural resources nobody else wants. The planet is out of those.
"In a desperate war there will be a draft. No amount of pay is going to motivate a free man who doesn't want to go, and when it is a matter of survival, a nation does what a nation must do to survive."
So you believe, in the worst of possible conditions (say in the face of an overwhelming invasion force) then THAT is precisely time when masses of men will refuse to fight and must be enslaved by force to do so? I'd say that you're wrong -- that in such a desperate situation, people will fight not because of the pay, but because at that point, they have little choice (it's either fight or die).
That unless, of course, the people aren't really in danger from the invaders -- only the government, in which case it makes perfect sense to do everything to avoid being enslaved as a soldier. What is your opinion of draft evaders in Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or the Soviet Union? Cowards or heroes?
Oh to hell with that in a handbasket.
Women have fought and cheered for the right to murder north of fifty million of our children.
We have then replaced these would-have-been Americans with foreigners.
Why should men be required to fight and die to protect a country that's in the process of being replaced anyway? Why should we protect women so that group A doesn't take over, when women are quite happy to allow group B to take over?
Women: We want equality... but we want to maintain our back-up plan as well! Egalitarianism is a con game.
Now, on top of abortion, we live in a society that denies that men and women are objectively and intrinsically different. Sex is fungible. Oh, and we're multicultural now - which apparently means that men still have a duty to die for their country, but that country is happy to deny them any privileges based on citizenship. In fact, that country will now go out of its way to diminish its military capabilities, ensuring as many of those men die as possible.
To hell with them! I would fight and die to protect the women in my life, but I'll be damned if in this day and age that I would step up as a bullet shield for half the population based on their having a vagina.
And tell me, would it be wrong to draft Bruce 'Arthur Ashe' Jenner, or is he exempt too?
Or is it a case where female privilege is the right to fuck over a society right up until the point where your in own life and property is in peril?
Finally, if male citizenship is contingent on the pledge to be a nationalized meatshield, then let's stuff it with this male privilege claptrap. Frankly, if I thought there was even a possibility that I would be wholly dependent on a group of people I was not part of to defend me from a barbarian horde, I'd demand every priveledge given to them they could possible want.
Althouse: I'm equal to all of you... but if it really comes down to it, you guys have to do the dying, you big, strong men you.
If we're ever in a situation in the future where we need to resort to the draft, it will be very different from our present-day America, and I suspect that there will be a need to preserve what is unique about females.
You continue in your touching belief that you can stop the crazy exactly where you want the crazy to stop. (And without rescinding any of the crazy that you want to keep.)
You can't preserve what you've already destroyed. No, not childbearing ability itself, but any norms and rules that made the maternal role "unique" and respected. You started out rejecting the importance of the paternal role, and thought you could stop the crazy there. You moved on to insisting that mothers aren't after all that important, either, because a baby is just as well off with two gay dudes, and doesn't need a mother at all. In some places, "Parent One" and "Parent Two" now grace birth certificates, because "mother" and "father" are unbearably discriminatory terms.
So childbearing is unique to females? Sure, but it's also common to females. There are billions of functioning wombs in the world, to be imported or hired. (Sorry, you can't cavil at the latter. How else can real "marriage equality" be achieved?) If you're so far down the "equality" and "non-discrimination" rat-hole that you're already pretending to yourself that it's perfectly sensible to put women in combat units, and that "transgender rights" are a matter of the gravest military importance, then what's the problem with cannon-fodder wombs? The Crazy doesn't respond with great agility to different circumstances. In fact, Crazy is notorious for not even noticing that, as they say, shit's gotten real.
The problem is that reality, right-here right-now reality, already is "a very different place" from the make-believe clown show that is "present-day America" (and the West in general). Presented with an existential crisis, sane, resilient societies can sober up fast and respond. A society, like ours, in which the "serious" people, people with real power, pursue nonsense, is not a sane, resilient society.
Ann, you're absolutely right, as far as you go.
But what you may fail to realize is that those biological differences provide justification for the government (and society in general) to treat men and women differently not only in the military draft but in all sorts of ways.
Those biological differences also provide justification for treating heterosexuals (and their relationships) differently than homosexuals (and their relationships).
But what you may fail to realize is that those biological differences provide justification for the government (and society in general) to treat men and women differently not only in the military draft but in all sorts of ways.
Such as? (not baiting...honestly interested)
Scott M: Such as? (not baiting...honestly interested)
Well, to start with, any significantly dangerous activity/job can be "restricted" from women. Even absent the draft, it justifies excluding women from combat roles.
Also, to kind of tie it in to the comment I made about relationships, it would mean that male-male marriages could be allowed to an extent greater than female-female relationships.
" and I suspect that there will be a need to preserve what is unique about females."
Perhaps, but, sometimes it's not all about women. Sometimes war has to be about winning.
Contemporary war is not all pushbutton/joystick/touchscreen; combat still makes enormous physical demands on combatants. Women in the aggregate are smaller, have more body fat, and significantly less upper-body strength than men and the fact that a (very) few women are stronger than the average man doesn't change that.
Accommodating women in combat can be done only by significantly lowering physical standards, for otherwise only a tiny percentage of women will pass (and if so, what's the point in drafting them?). Accommodating women inevitably means that a significant amount of resources will be spent protecting them, both in training and in the field. Accommodating women in combat inevitably will place a larger burden on men in combat; thus, the net effect of adding women will be a reduction in combat effectiveness.
The whole point of women-in-combat has always been equal opportunity and never combat readiness. It's not about making the military more effective, it's about opening military careers to women. If a military draft is ever necessary then that very necessity would argue for prioritization of combat effectiveness over equal opportunity.
And if "what is unique about females" refers to their reproductive capacity, well, isn't the time to worry about that before an existential war? It's hardly a secret that most Western nations are in steep demographic decline, and that the USA may find itself there as well if we ever limit immigration, or if we continue to make marriage insanely risky for most men.
Personally, I think there is a government interest in excluding women from the draft. If we're ever in a situation in the future where we need to resort to the draft, it will be very different from our present-day America, and I suspect that there will be a need to preserve what is unique about females.
So an extreme hypothetical circumstance exists where violating equal protection would be advantageous to the government, and this simple fact empowers the government to set aside equal protection.
I seriously doubt there is a single issue touching equal protection where this is not true. This means we're 100% reliant on the whims of the SC Justices. How does this differ from a non-constitutional government?
Personally, I think women should be excluded from the draft.
And all ground-combat roles.
And most air-combat roles too.
But that's because I believe in evolution. Wanna help the Army? Become an Army nurse or a logistics specialist. Wanna help the Air Force? Become an airborne intercept controller.
Do help the Navy, though. Assuming a female can stand the feet-crotch-machine oil scent of life on a fast-attack sub.
Draft doesn't have to mean combat. The problem with the draft, is it is usually two years duty, while enlisting generally is four years.
The four years allows a year of high tech training, while still getting good service length.
But there are a lot of jobs that don't require a year of training. Bomb loading, medic, food service, etc. These are very important jobs.
At any rate, women should at least be required to register with the selective service. Whether they are called up is a future issue.
I believe that 90% of the military forces are non-combat, or combat support. Very few are at the tip of the spear.
With modern weapons, you don't even have to fly over the target much. You can launch from the Med, and be back in London by dinner.
According to Wikipedia (there's a citation for it, but I didn't bother checking it myself), the grip strength of Average Joe is equal to or greater than the grip strength of Professional Weightlifter Jill. That makes sense.
Women ought not be firefighters, patrol cops, Marines (any kind of Marine - Marines are all riflemen first and foremost), combat soldiers in the other branches, bodyguards, Secret Service agents (remember the trained chick who got overpowered by the psycho fence-jumper with the knife at the White House?), professional lobstermen, Coast Guard Pararescuers . . . I could go on, but there's no need. This is, of course, my personal feeling, and I am aware that there have been women who distinguished themselves in combat. That they are by FAR the exception works in my favor. The few times this has come up in conversation with my wife and teacher friends, my wife has agreed with me and her teacher friends (mostly liberals, though not all) have agreed with me so far as to say that we shouldn't lower the standards of those professions to accommodate Vaginal-Americans.
It's not chauvinism, it's biology. It's evolution. It's common damn sense. Women can multi-task - operate the radar, then, and find targets for our male fighter pilots. Women can usually remember lists of "needs" better than men - so work in logistics and make sure our boys have all their M203 rounds and 120mm shells arrive at the front in good order, with the fuel and food (yeah, shopping lists) to fight and win. Women can comfort and empathize better - so tend to those same boys when a bunch of them come back missing limbs or with ragged, bloody holes in their chests. But that's enough.
And for all the folks saying that air combat is going to be done exclusively by drones pretty soon, I encourage you to read up on the realities of technology in combat. At the beginning of Vietnam, we didn't bother equipping our best fighter plane (the F-4 Phantom) with a gun, because dogfighting was going to be a thing of the past. It was all about radar capabilities and missile capacity, and combat was going to be almost entirely BVR (beyond visual range) and those who got in closer than that would be stuffed in the face with the short-range heat-seeker before the guns could light up.
By the end of the war, our newest model of the Phantom (the F-4E, I believe), incorporated a 20mm M61 cannon (a "gun", so to speak, with 6 rotating barrels). Because sometimes that technology breaks, and then you're turning and burning at 3,000 feet against a determined NVA pilot in his gun-equipped MiG-17, which you thought was obsolete, but all your missiles failed because the high-humidity ruined their electronics, or dust got in the rocket motor, or you couldn't get a radar lock to shoot from 10 miles away, and if you let him draw a bead on you he's not gonna care that you didn't have a gun to shoot back with.
We lost guys that way. Let's not lose guys, or gals, by pretending that war in the future will be fought via smartphone apps.
"So an extreme hypothetical circumstance exists where violating equal protection would be advantageous to the government, and this simple fact empowers the government to set aside equal protection. "
Right. And Althouse thinks this might be OK because of the need, in extremis, of preserving what's unique about females (the ability to bear children). So would Althouse then support women being required to register for potential draft into a sort of Handmaid's Tale style 'breeding corps' (you know, just in case of great national need for rapid re-population)?
Kyzernick, before the E model could be brought out they added an external gun-pod to the D model F-4. Otherwise, everything you write is correct.
The time to concern yourself about the need for women to breed is 25 years prior to event that concerns you.
But I still don't see why we need to protect women in the event of a hypothetical foreign invasion, when women are in favor of the present day actual one.
We will never be in a situation where we need to resort to a draft.
If it's thought that we do, and there are not enough volunteers, then either the cause will not be perceived as warranting the service (and that perception will be correct), or the country won't be worth defending.
Alexander: But I still don't see why we need to protect women in the event of a hypothetical foreign invasion, when women are in favor of the present day actual one.
How so? I've never seen a poll that indicated that more American women than men are in favor of the "illegal invasion", or current high levels of legal immigration, either - rather less so, as a matter of fact.
Fair enough, I'll rephrase: When women more than men favor electing public officials who explicitly cheer for the illegal invasion.
I do admit though that that quickly becomes a distinction without a difference, with the Republican establishment differing from the Democrat only in that they lie about their loyalties on the matter.
But the general point stands - the idea that women ought to be protected in the face of a foreign invasion when they 1) vote to bring more invaders and 2) demand the right to kill their offspring... is insane. That any man would single himself out for voluntary sacrifice to a population that reproduces below replacement strikes me as foolish, but that's his choice. That women should ensure that it stays on the books that someone else will protect them while in the sum, they explicitly reject the notion of continuing the indigenous nation is disgusting. Not surprising, but disgusting.
On another note, I still want to know if Caitlyn (ne' Bruce) Jenner gets an exemption.
Conclusion: Women want equality except for when it comes to death rates. Prancing about at Ranger Camp is good, being drafted is not. Kinda like how the battle for more female CEOs has yet to reach coal miners, deep-sea fishermen, or high altitude cable repairmen.
AA, under situations of horrible population loss, the most important thing to do would be to destroy the enemy that is causing that population loss. "All hands on deck," so to speak, rather than "Women and children, first."
After the enemy is defeated, either there will be enough women left to reproduce population, or special immigrant visas can be granted to foreign females - a la Dr. Strangelove - to handle the problem of doing jobs Americans can't or won't do.
So sign up for selective service knowing you ARE doing your part, females, to keep America safe and populated.
Alexander: Fair enough, I'll rephrase: When women more than men favor electing public officials who explicitly cheer for the illegal invasion.
I do admit though that that quickly becomes a distinction without a difference, with the Republican establishment differing from the Democrat only in that they lie about their loyalties on the matter.
Yes, exactly. That's why I think you're stretching it here and weakening your otherwise sound argument.
But the general point stands - the idea that women ought to be protected in the face of a foreign invasion when they 1) vote to bring more invaders and[...]
They don't, and the fact is that the most egregious promoters of open borders are men, very often conservative men. Republican or Democrat, male or female, unless you're in Jeff Sessions's or Steve King's district, you voted to bring in more invaders, whatever else you thought you were voting for.
2) demand the right to kill their offspring... is insane.
That is the essential point (and our hostess's blind spot). As you say, you cannot appeal to Group A's traditional duties and obligations while insisting that the individual autonomy and freedom of choice of Group B's members be given absolute priority over any traditional duties and obligations they might have.
That any man would single himself out for voluntary sacrifice to a population that reproduces below replacement strikes me as foolish, but that's his choice. That women should ensure that it stays on the books that someone else will protect them while in the sum, they explicitly reject the notion of continuing the indigenous nation is disgusting. Not surprising, but disgusting.
While I would agree with your point in essence (why should anybody protect the people who want to destroy everything worth protecting, what on earth are multiculturalists appealing to when they ask the people they hate to defend "the nation"?) my quibble here would be 1)many, if not most, women are not pro-choice, 2) low fertility rates in developed countries are not purely a function of feminism (there is evidence that uncontrolled immigration itself suppresses native fertility, and I sure as hell am not going to give an inch to the "but we have to have massive immigration because natives aren't reproducing enough" propaganda line) and 3) I've been in too many knock-down, drag-out arguments over the years about immigration with soi-disant "conservative men" to be persuaded of your men vs. women immigration scenario here. The very suggestion that there is an "indigenous" nation and culture worth preserving by a policy of reduced, selective immigration, or that entirely "free movement of labor" is not such a good idea, gives them the vapors, after which the hysterical allegations of ignorant isolationism, unAmerican-ness, Nazi-osity, racism, etc., begin to pour forth.
And a lot of them seem to think seem to think that American men (usually not themselves) have an obligation to defend the "nation" that's only a nation when it's protecting their economic interests, not when the national interest might actually work against their individual interests. That's why I thought your comment - "Or is it a case where female privilege is the right to fuck over a society right up until the point where your in own life and property is in peril?" - was apt and well-put. It works just as well for a variety of contemporary bad actors as it does for the "female privilege" that Althouse is always demanding.
Althouse is exactly right. Unfortunately, if this is decided by lawyers and judges rather than the military, then, as with marriage, the whole of human history won't stand against what they, today, believe constitutes fairness. Stay frosty, women. And try to avoid capture.
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