Ben Shapiro is disgusted by what may or may not be humor.

 "I don't know whether that's parody or whether that's real," says Ben after watching a TikTok. "Either way, it's the end of our civilization, because some of what this person is saying is absolutely true. Do you think that Gen Z is qualified to defend the country in any serious way — mentally, physically, emotionally? I don't either."

Here's Ben, watching the TikTok:

"We’d go around, do this dog and pony show, and I would open up for him, singing, and people would all get together to hear David Harris talking about how we’re going to change the world."

Said Joan Baez, quoted in "David Harris, Leader of Vietnam Draft Resistance Movement, Dies at 76/An activist who went to jail for refusing to serve in the military, he teamed with and married Joan Baez and later became a journalist" (NYT).

" Police and military officers swooped down on a Moscow business center... looking for men to fight in Ukraine — and they seized nearly every one they saw."

"Some musicians, rehearsing. A courier there to deliver a parcel. A man from a Moscow service agency, very drunk, in his mid-50s, with a walking disability. 'I have no idea why they took him,' said Alexei, who, like dozens of others in the office complex, was rounded up and taken to the nearest military enlistment office, part of a harsh new phase in the Russian drive. In cities and towns across Russia, men of fighting age are going into hiding to avoid the officials who are seizing them and sending them to fight in Ukraine. Police and military press-gangs in recent days have snatched men off the streets and outside Metro stations. They’ve lurked in apartment building lobbies to hand out military summonses. They’ve raided office blocks and hostels. They’ve invaded cafes and restaurants, blocking the exits.... It is terrifying — and, at times, comically haphazard.... As the backlash intensifies, some Russians are confronting authorities and recording videos.... A Russian truck driver posted video of himself confronting a police officer and a military enlistment official who tried to take him to the enlistment office. 'I don’t give a s--- about your mobilization. You’re the one who is eligible, not me. You’ve got a gun after all, not me. Why don’t you go mobilize yourself?' "

From "Russia is grabbing men off the street to fight in Ukraine" (WaPo).

Well, it goes right along with the loss of the right to abortion.

I'm reading "Every branch of the military is struggling to make its 2022 recruiting goals, officials say/With a record low number of Americans eligible to serve, and few of those willing to do it, this 'is the year we question the sustainability of the all-volunteer force,' said an expert" (WaPo).

And you thought your body was yours.

But wait!

"Many young people have an unfortunate perspective derived from coming of age amid national humiliations in Iraq and Afghanistan."

"In school, they’ve learned more about the United States’ shortcomings than about her triumphs and the nation’s indispensability as a global force for good. The crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed that blind spot.... The Cold War generation better understands the stakes.... It’s prudent to be cautious about drawing World War II analogies, but it’s proper to recount the carnage that followed America’s turning inward during the 1930s...."

From "Why Biden should deliver a European history lesson during the State of the Union" by James Hohmann (WaPo). 

How old is Hohmann? I wondered. It wasn't easy to Google, but I think he graduated from college in 2009, which might make him about 35. It's safe to say he's a millennial. 

I went looking for his age when I read "The Cold War generation better understands the stakes." Usually, we're called Baby Boomers, and our understanding of "the stakes" was powerfully shaped by Vietnam, and that took place under the compulsion of the military draft.

You'd better take that into account when you say we're different from these kids today who grew up under "the national humiliations in Iraq and Afghanistan."

"It remains to be seen, of course, whether Congress will end gender-based registration under the Military Selective Service Act."

"But at least for now, the court’s longstanding deference to Congress on matters of national defense and military affairs cautions against granting review while Congress actively weighs the issue."

Wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a statement, joined by Justices Breyer and Kavanaugh, quoted in "Supreme Court Won’t Hear Case on Limiting Military Draft to Men/The justices had been asked to decide whether one of the last sex-based distinctions in federal law should survive now that women can serve in combat" (NYT).

It was a cert. denial, and the rest of the Justices had nothing to say.

The requirement is one of the last sex-based distinctions in federal law, one that challengers say cannot be justified now that women are allowed to serve in every role in the military, including ground combat. Unlike men, though, they are not required to register with the Selective Service System, the government agency that maintains a database of Americans who would be eligible for the draft were it reinstated.

It's good to leave this to Congress. We don't currently have a draft, but if we ever did, it would be an emergency, and the need to judge masses of people crudely, by their physical abilities, would matter. There is an important government interest that is substantially related to the distinction between the sexes. Of course, registering for the draft is a different matter, and treating young men and women the same in this theater of patriotism has some meaning. Let Congress grapple with that meaning and consider abandoning registration altogether.

"The majority of white Americans vote for Republicans for president, unless they were born after 1981 or between 1950 and 1954."

I'm reading that factoid in "The Coddling of the American Mind" by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff. "Why is there a little demographic island of Democrats among white Americans born in the early 1950s?" I'm on that island, so I'm interested in the answer, which — as I listened to the audiobook — I assumed was Vietnam.

Haidt and Lukianoff cite "the period of emotionally intense national political events" around 1965-1972  when we "islanders" were in our politically impressionable years, ages 14 to 24.

For Americans born in the early 1950s, all you have to do to evoke visceral flashbacks to 1968 is say things like: MLK, RFK, Black Panthers, Tet offensive, My Lai, Chicago Democratic National Convention, Richard Nixon. If those words don’t flood you with feelings, then do an internet search for “Chuck Braverman 1968.” The five-minute video montage will leave you speechless. Just imagine what it must have been like to be a young adult developing a political identity, perhaps newly arrived on a college campus, as momentous moral struggles, tragedies, and victories happened all around you.

I don't have to imagine, but here's the video montage:



The authors proceed to assert that "the years from 2012 through 2018 seem like the closest we’ve come to the intensity of the stretch from 1968 to 1972" and that "[t]oday’s college students have lived through extraordinary times, and, as a result, many of them have developed an extraordinary passion for social justice." There's a long list of "extraordinary things" — Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, Donald Trump, Caitlin Jenner, school shootings. But I don't think these can compare with the Vietnam War with the draft, the assassinations, the riots, the Manson murders, the hippie movement, and Nixon.

"The show isn’t afraid to go dark; death is a fact of life, as Springsteen acknowledges..."

"... when he recounts narrowly slipping out of the Vietnam War draft and wonders who might’ve gone in his stead."

From New York Magazine's very positive review of Bruce Springsteen's Broadway show "On Broadway."

He "acknowledges" that "death is a fact of life" when he tells about "narrowly slipping out of the Vietnam War draft"? Springsteen avoided the draft — I'm reading here — by failing the physical "largely due to his deliberately 'crazy' behavior and a concussion previously suffered in a motorcycle accident."

I don't see that as acknowledging that "death is a fact of life." It's more of an acknowledgment that selfishness is a fact of life. But that is credibly called "dark," and it does take some courage to admit to something you did in the past that could be seen as a failure of courage.

ADDED: From the NYT review:

But now, entire swaths of the Walter Kerr Theater, apparently unmindful of downbeat lyrics like “I ain’t nothing but tired,” started clapping along to “Dancing in the Dark,” Mr. Springsteen’s biggest hit, from 1984.

He stopped cold. “I’ll handle it myself,” he said, shutting them down with a small, sharky glint of a smile....

Ha. Great.

"My motivation at the time was simple. I was being actively pursued by the military, who seemed single-mindedly determined to send me to fight, and possibly die, in Vietnam. I wanted to publish something that would express my anger."

Said William Powell, author of the "Anarchist Cookbook," quoted in his obituary. He was 66.

He declared that his book was an educational service for the silent majority — not the one identified by President Richard M. Nixon as his middle-American constituency, but the disciplined anarchists who were seeking dignity in a world gone wrong. To them, he offered how-to plans for weaponry and explosives as well as drugs, electronic surveillance, guerrilla training and hand-to-hand combat — a potent mix that attracted the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The book found a big audience. More than two million copies have reportedly been sold, and still more have been downloaded on the internet.

"We need to remove arbitrary barriers to service by women in our armed forces... There is no draft in today's military..."

"... but it is difficult to say we have true equality if we continue with a Selective Service system that only requires compulsory service from men."

Said Jack Reed, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. The chair of the committee is John McCain, and he had no comment yesterday, as a spokesman said President Obama supports requiring women to register for the draft.

Registering for the draft is a symbolic ritual... until the draft becomes real. Is the symbolism of equality worth it? The government, if it ever reinstates the draft, can opt only to call up the males on the list. So why not go for equality in the symbolism? Perhaps the better question is: Why put young people through this symbolic ritual? Or: Why discriminate against men, subjecting only them to the ritual?

As for an actual draft, compelling men and women into service, I have never been able to picture Americans accepting forcing their daughters into combat. But if you allow women in combat and you force women into service, would we tolerate a system in which, when it comes to combat, women have a choice and men do not?

(I've thought about these questions a lot, because Rostker v. Goldberg comes up in Conlaw2. That's the 1981 case that said males-only registration doesn't violate the Equal Protection Clause. And for the record: My mother was a WAC in WW2.)

How the Supreme Court decided the draft evasion case against Muhammad Ali.

It's hard to remember the details, and today's obituary's don't linger on this topic. For example, the NYT obituary just says: "As Ali’s draft-evasion case made its way to the United States Supreme Court, he returned to the ring on Oct. 26, 1970, through the efforts of black politicians in Atlanta."

But Ali had been convicted in 1967 and sentenced to 5 years in prison. The Supreme Court case that ultimately kept him out of prison came in 1971. What did the Court decide? Here's the very unusual inside story, found in "The Brethren" by Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong:

Apart from the complicated war and draft issues, there were racial overtones to the case.... Public sympathy was growing for Ali, but at the same time the Black Muslim faith had been portrayed as separatist, antiwhite and bizarre....

"Men should protect women. They should not shelter behind mothers and daughters."

"Indeed, we see this reality every time there is a mass shooting. Boyfriends throw themselves over girlfriends, and even strangers and acquaintances often give themselves up to save the woman closest to them. Who can forget the story of 45-year-old Shannon Johnson wrapping his arms around 27-year-old Denise Peraza and declaring 'I got you' before falling to the San Bernardino shooters’ bullets?"

From "Only a Barbaric Nation Drafts Its Mothers and Daughters into Combat," an editorial in The National Review.

This is a traditionalist view of the female role, but it is deeply connected to physical and emotional differences that hold true for many (though not all) males and females. It's one thing to open the military to woman who, knowing themselves, choose to volunteer. But the many women who feel drawn to the caring, nurturing role should be allowed to hold their place back home, preserving the reality of home — a place with children and old people — and the idea of home — which must live in the minds of those who go far away to fight.

How hard was it, really, to answer the question, asked at last night's debate, whether young women should have to register for the military draft?

Here's the transcript.

Martha Raddatz noted that Army and Marine Corps leaders just said they thought women, like men, should have to register for the draft — the nonexistent draft. Shouldn't we ask why we impose ritual form-filing on anyone?

Raddatz prefaced her question to the candidates with: "Many of you have young daughters." I find that offensive, but maybe you think it properly pokes at the conscience or moral feeling. Why shouldn't the prod be "Many of you have young sons"? Why are sons burdened with something that daughters get to ignore? Do we even remember the traditional answer? Young men's bodies are expendable. Women's bodies are needed to produce the next generation of expendable males and baby-making females.

Raddatz aims first at Rubio. Does he think "young women [should] be required to sign up for Selective Service in case of a national emergency?" Rubio begins with the recognition that woman do now serve in combat and that he supports it "so long as the minimum requirements necessary to do the job are not compromised." Fine, but those are volunteers. What about exposing women to some future draft? He says: "Selective Service should be opened up for both men and women...." Opened up? Isn't that odd? We're talking about imposing a requirement, not creating options. He quickly moves on to a military topic where he's got talking points to dump — rebuilding our too-small Army, Navy, and Air Force.

Raddatz moves on to Jeb Bush, who completely fails to answer the question. He babbles about not imposing a "political agenda" on the military, the right (not the requirement) of women to serve in combat if they can meet "minimum requirements," and how we shouldn't be "weak militarily" and just "talk about red lines, and ISIS being the J.V. team, and reset buttons and all this." Raddatz tries to pull him back to the question, and he responds with the assertion that the draft won't be reinstituted. There's quite a bit more pushing by Raddatz to get him onto the question, and though at one point he reveals he knows what the question is — "You — you asked a question not about the draft, you asked about registering" — he never gives one word of an answer.

At this point, Chris Christie breaks in: "Martha? Can I — can I be really — can I be really clear on this, because I am the father of two daughters?" Demanding to go next? Playing the I-have-2-daughters card? He gets away with this, and he'd better answer the actual question.

What my wife and I have taught our daughters right from the beginning, that their sense of self-worth, their sense of value, their sense of what they want to do with their life comes not from the outside, but comes from within. And if a young woman in this country wants to go and fight to defend their country, she should be permitted to do so.

I get that he wants women to think of him as the one who cares about women, but permission to serve if you want is exactly not what registering for the draft is about. But he moves to the right subject:

Part of that also needs to be part of a greater effort in this country, and so there’s no reason why one — young women should be discriminated against from registering for the selective service. 

Let's just pretend it's the women who are being discriminated against. Do viewers not see that the current discrimination is against men and that the proposal is not to increase but to limit the options open to women?

The fact is, we need to be a party and a people that makes sure that our women in this country understand anything they can dream, anything that they want to aspire to, they can do. That’s the way we raised our daughters and that’s what we should aspire to as president for all of the women in our country.

Back to the old cheerleading for women and the treacle about dreams. They say you can "be all that you can be" in the Army as they encourage you to volunteer, but there is at least one very obvious thing that you cannot be in the Army. You can't be a person who is not in the Army.

So Christie got away with interrupting to take the opportunity to promote himself as a champion of feminine fulfillment, and he only answered the question in the form of pretending it meant close to the opposite of what it means.

Now, Ben Carson decides to butt in:

CARSON: Can I say something...

RADDATZ: We just covered — wait one second, Dr. Carson.

CARSON: Something about the draft. Very quickly.

RADDATZ: Very quickly.

He talks about the decrease in volunteers but not the draft as a solution. He wants to treat veterans better, helping them with health care and "integrating them back into society." And then "we won’t have to ever worry about a draft again." So, like Jeb, his only point is there shouldn't need to be a draft. Not a word about the real subject: whether men alone or men and women or nobody should — in a country with no draft — have to register for the draft.

How incredibly annoying! It's a difficult question, one I've discussed many time in constitutional law classes, and no one engaged on the level that would get any credit at all on a law school exam. That is, they're not even showing that they understand the question. But you understand the question, I trust. So take this poll and discuss it in the comments.

Here's the Supreme Court case that said it's not a violation of the Equal Protection Clause to require men but not women to register for the draft. That's from 1981, but if you think that's wrong, you should be disturbed that we're still following it. Congress is free to end the discrimination either because disagrees with the Court or because it prefers a stricter standard of formal equality. That stricter formal equality is achievable either by ending registration for the draft or by including women along with men. The alternative that we have now can be defended as a substantive — as opposed to formal — equality, in which the physical differences between male and female bodies justify the different treatment.

In times of dire military emergency, when a draft would be needed, government overcomes the individual's freedom, and in that awful situation, it may see males as expendable and females as necessary to rebuild the population. But so what? If everyone is registered, the government will know who's male and who's females, and if the draft comes, it can restrict the draft to males if it wants. I don't expect any political candidate to talk about this on the level that would satisfy me, but I am criticizing them for failing to answer the question Raddatz asked.

While there is no draft, who should be required to register for the draft?

No one, but if anyone, only men.

No one, but if anyone, both men and women.

Only men.

Men and women.

 

pollcode.com free polls

Christie bullied Rubio and Trump bullied the audience.

Did anything else happen at the debate last night? We bailed out of the live broadcast somewhere around halfway through. I'm glancing at the reports this morning. I'm seeing that Christie accomplished a "beatdown of Marco Rubio" (Salon) and Christie "rattled" Rubio (Yahoo Politics and Washington Free Beacon and that Rubio "chokes" (Politico) and "Malfunctions" (Buzzfeed), so I figured I'd flip it and say Christie bullied Rubio. It's just my way of protesting the tiresomely dramatic headlines. Who did what to whom? Any schlonging?

I've got the debate recorded, and I could start watching where I left off, but now here's the transcript, which is so much faster (even as it seems not to matter). The one thing I want to look up is what they said about drafting women — drafting women into combat. I never thought this idea would even be acceptable let alone popular or even — has it come to this? — what you think you're supposed to think. (And this is an idea I delve into on an annual basis, because Conlaw2 must cover the Supreme Court case that said it's not a violation of the Equal Protection Clause to require men but not women to register for the draft.)

I'm going to start a new post to talk about what they said about the draft.

As for Trump bullying the audience:

"That's all of his donors and special interests out there," Trump said of the people booing him. "That's what it is. And by the way, let me just tell you: We needed tickets. You can't get them. You know who has the tickets? … Donors, special interests, the people that are putting up the money. That's who it is.... The reason they're not loving me is I don't want their money. I'm going to do the right thing for the American public"....

"Should women now be drafted? Why many women answer 'yes.'"

"In some ways, the debate is largely a symbolic one – at least for now...."

Making women part of the draft is a good way to create resistance against ever restoring the draft. I find it extremely hard to picture the government ever forcing women into combat, and at the same time, it seems wrong to take nonvolunteers and put them in jobs structured by gender. (And I say that as the daughter of a woman who joined the Army in WWII and worked in the care of men who suffered from combat fatigue until she was seen as more useful for her typing skill.)

I've taught the Supreme Court case Rostker v. Goldberg for many years, and I feel I've seen opinion change on this subject. I usually at some point say something like: I don't think the American public would accept requiring women to go into combat. And in recent years, it seems, the reaction from law students is puzzlement. Why am I even saying that?

ADDED: If my mother had not been transferred into typing, she would not have met my father, and I would not be here to tell you about it.

"Lawsuit challenges constitutionality of male-only draft registration."

"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.

"11 Things We Learned About Harry Shearer From His 'WTF' Episode."

I found that listicle just now — "8... Shearer got his start as an actor at the age of 7, booking his first audition for The Jack Benny Program... 7. The Beach Boys Helped Him Avoid the Draft... " — as I was looking for a specific quote from that podcast, which I listened to yesterday. I've been listening to episodes from the "WTF" archive ever since President Obama made me notice the existence of the show. Anyway, what I was looking for was a quote of Maron quoting something he'd heard Shearer say long ago, something Shearer didn't remember but that Maron had been quoting for years.

I found this 2011 episode of The Mental Illness Happy Hour (a podcast I've listened to a few times) where Maron is the interviewee. At one point, he says:

I quote this a lot, but Harry Shearer once said that, to me, and I’m paraphrasing, that the reason comedians do what they do is to try to control why people laugh at them.

That got me thinking about the recent fuss over something former Disney CEO Michael Eisner said:

"Unlike the nastiest Obama hatred — which is typically rooted in a fear of the Other (black, with an Arabic middle name, product of a mixed marriage) — Clinton disdain had a strange kind of intimacy."

"It was like hating a sibling who was more popular, more successful, more beloved by your parents—and always getting away with something. [R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., the founder and longtime editor of The American Spectator] felt he knew the Clintons, because he’d gone to college with so many Clinton types: draft dodgers, pot smokers, ’60s 'brats.' They were 'the most self-congratulatory generation in the American republic,' he tells me. 'And it was all based on balderdash! They are weak! The weakest generation in American history!'"

So writes Hanna Rosin in "Among the Hillary Haters/Can a new, professionalized generation of scandalmongers uncover more dirt on the Clintons — without triggering a backlash?"

ADDED: Is "more dirt" needed? It seems to me that the new generation of scandalmongers could just dish up the old dirt, which never seems to have been taken seriously enough — notably Hillary's role in suppressing the voices of Bill's women.

Weekly Standard bellyaches...

... about the Creedence song "Fortunate Son" getting played at the "Concert for Valor" (a televised Veterans Day event on the National Mall). The song is termed a "famously anti-war anthem," "an anti-war screed," and "an anti-draft song." The latter is most accurate, but the Weekly Standard author says that makes it "a particularly terrible choice," since the concert was "was largely organized to honor" those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan and these people were all volunteers.

It seems to me that an anti-draft song is a good choice to honor the volunteers. Read the lyrics here. The singer complains that he has to do the fighting because the sons of the men who decide when wars will be fought manage to evade the draft. I don't see how that's generically anti-war. What it's against is a particular political dysfunction that has been corrected. So it's a complaint that doesn't hold up anymore. You don't have to be a "fortunate son" to avoid the military. You can do what you want. Every single person who serves chose to serve.

Now, some people think that's also a dysfunction, and they'd like to correct that by bringing back the draft so people in general would have more of a stake in avoiding unnecessary war. But I don't know any songs about that.

I couldn't watch the clip at the first link. I can't stand Bruce Springsteen, and much as I dislike the Weekly Standard's bellyaching, it's not as bad as listening to Bruce straining histrionically. I have to concede that it's possible that Bruce thinks — and somehow conveyed — that those who volunteer today are doing so because it's their best option in the limited array of choices they have because they are not rich or well-connected. If that's the message, then it really is a rotten thing to say to our American volunteers.

50 years ago today: the first draft-card burnings to protest of the war in Vietnam.

According to Wikipedia, which cites an event involving 12 students in NYC.

The citation goes to the book "Hell no, we won't go!" which I can't search inside at Amazon or Google Books, and I couldn't find an article in the NYT archive, so I'm a bit unsure of the accuracy. This Vietnam War timeline has this for "May 1964":

Some 1,000 students gather in New York City to protest the Vietnam War. Twelve burn their selective service registration cards—draft cards....

The next year, reacting to various protests, Congress made it a crime to "knowingly destroy" or "knowingly mutilate" your draft card, and, in 1968, the Supreme Court rejected a free-speech challenge to the law.

If you carried around a draft card back in the 1960s, did you ever abuse it?