Where the Bern Is
8th February 2016
Mark Steyn scratches his head.
Aside from the Marco Rubot malfunction, the most dismal aspect of Saturday’s Republican debate was the sight of supposed conservatives competing in their enthusiasm for making women sign up for “selective service”. For non-Americans, I should explain that registering for “selective service” – as in military service – is something all young men have to do upon turning 18, so, in the event that the draft is ever reinstated, they’ll have everybody’s name in the big database. As with many aspects of the vast bloated federal bureaucracy, it seems a largely redundant exercise: I mean, between Social Security numbers, the IRS and the US Census, don’t they have every 18-year-old male in the database already?
Oh, Mark, Mark, Mark. When will you ever learn? The purpose of government isn’t to provide a service efficiently; it’s to hire and pay government workers. And if that means paying more than once for the same thing, they’re okay with that.
Be that as it may, there’s now a proposal to make the young ladies register for selective service, too. And naturally the Republican candidates were falling all over each other to say how hot they were for the idea. For my own part, I’d like to go back to the days – barely within living memory now – when America won wars, rather than figure out ways to lose them more diversely. But, as usual with Republican pandering, it seemed to me a bit behind the curve.
Indeed. Time to Get With The Program.