After watching highlights from the last Republican debate, I could not help but sense that these candidates are ill-qualified to lead, much less expand, our military. None of them has any military experience. Yet they know how to talk tough.[1] They all were able to research how to sound “tough on terror” and how to produce answers that were palatable.
What is somewhat shocking is that conservatives who love freedom would promote the notion that women being forced to register with selective service would be a positive for society. Another rule to impose on society. Another burden to impose upon women who might be thinking about marriage and starting a family. They now must consider the military and all that it has to offer by way of job and career training. For some “modern” Republicans, requiring all women to become prepared for a military draft would indicate that society is not denying them equal opportunity as men. That’s a clever way to take away freedom from government intervention. Make something mandatory (like selective service) and then act like non-participation would deprive the individual of some fundamental human right. Government Intervention in Individual Life 101.
Thankfully, not all of the Republicans on the stage agreed. At least one was not ready to impose new legislation on women who have traditionally not been required to register with the government to fight for their country. It’s difficult to grasp how full-grown, sensible men might not see the difference between requiring all women to require with a government agency in case our nation finds itself ready to re-institute a military draft and opening up military positions to both genders on a volunteer basis.[2] The two positions are logically and conceptually distinct. What seems to be the problem? Perhaps some Republican candidates need a refresher in logic? This seems to be a clear-cut case where rhetoric ought to be informed by logic and how expanding Selective Service is not the answer to the problem of why so few women volunteer for the military currently.
What the spiritual “take-away” on some proposal like this to create new government legislation to expand the military by requiring a new class of citizens to become registered? Israel faced a similar problem in her history.
The portion of Scripture where God addresses Israel’s desire to be a nation like the other nations and have a king is very instructive in this regard. God warns them about their notion about trying to be like the other nations. It will come with a cost. When you accept the monarchy, you accept demagoguery. Israel sought after an “alternative government program” in lieu of Yahweh’s leadership.
What was the cost in their case? Listen to the warnings that were issued toward the people of Israel: “So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, ‘These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots…He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers…And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day” (I Sam. 8:10-11, 13, 18; ESV). If only Israel had heeded the prophet’s warning in that day. Yahweh had just delivered them in the previous chapter from the Philistine army without Israel having to institute a military draft and force men and women into the service of the State. But Israel wanted its own way. It wanted to “expand its military.”
Speaking of Israel and Yahweh, Locust & Honey has just released a new audio book production of “Don’t Forget the Part about the Sheep and the Goats” which deals with whether Yahweh can still be the Christian God even though He commanded the Israelites to conquer and inhabit the land of Canaan. Dorothy Deavers does such an excellent job as the narrator for this project. We cannot thank her enough for rendering this ebook so authoritatively and compellingly!—AZ.
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