The GOP-controlled Congress has received a report from the Pentagon advocating the conscription of women—the daughters, young wives, and young mothers of America, ages 18 to 25—according to the Washington Times.
This is truly unprecedented. At the tail end of the Obama administration, then Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who opened combat roles to women (with the enthusiastic blessing of John McCain), wanted women to be required to register with Selective Service, but that went nowhere.
Nor did it go away; after all, how could it? Americans are committed to an ideology of equality, an egalitarianism that deems each humanoid an individual who by right should be able to choose “their” own path, including “their gender” and personal definition of manhood and womanhood. This is, by definition, a culture of depravity. Today, to say that a boy ought to learn how to fight with honor for those weaker, to protect, provide for, and show deference to women is as forbidden as it is to say that a girl ought to learn how to cook, and to dress (and speak) modestly. These statements are considered hate speech. On the other hand, to force or even to encourage women to act as men—an action that is every bit as abusive as the predations of a Harvey Weinstein—is considered good.
Some decent people still have the temerity to say that boys should never hit girls. What do they think happens in war?
According to the Pentagon, which now defends Americans from the threat of their own traditions, it is vital to our interests to require girls to register for the draft because this would increase the size of America’s potential fighting force by 11 million, “in short order,” per the Pentagon report. And with war looming in Iran and North Korea, and an already overextended military, how can we refuse the opportunity to add millions to our stockpile of cannon fodder?
This report was prepared for Congress by the office of the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness (USDPR). The man currently serving as acting USDPR is Rear Admiral Anthony Kurta, a holdover from the Obama administration. Yet he’s not merely a holdover: Kurta is also President Trump’s ignominious nominee for the same position. According to the Department of Defense’s website, on June 12, “Kurta talked about the importance of diversity in the workforce as he led the ceremony for the 6th-annual LGBT Pride event in the Pentagon Auditorium.”
War is a clarifier, and so is poverty. When we lack many things, or find ourselves fighting for our lives, what truly matters—what we truly need—tends to come into focus. The light shines brighter in the darkness.
Then again, we live in an age in which it is no longer acceptable to look to Sacred Scripture, or the accumulated wisdom of our forebears, or even common sense to discover what truly matters. We are instead expected to find meaning somewhere on the left-right spectrum offered us by the media.
Where on that spectrum might we find the traditional view of womanhood? I’m not talking about being pro-life, or pro-“heterosexual marriage,” or anti-feminism. I mean the idea that women (with rare exceptions) are called by God to be wives and mothers, not warriors. St. Paul used the phrase “keepers at home,” and we might note that St. Paul was not only a Christian but an Apostle who wrote half of the New Testament. We might also note that all Christians agreed with St. Paul until the 20th century, the bloodiest in human history, came round. Which church has the guts to say (without strenuous qualification) “keepers at home” today?
The Christian teaching is a positive one that jibes with natural law, by which I mean reality as it exists. It is good and rewarding to be what you were made to be. Christian conservatives are right to oppose the LGBT movement because, at root, it denies and defies the created order. That’s easy, in one sense, because most Christians are not afflicted with the perversion of same-sex attraction. But we often stop short of affirming traditional teachings that affect ourselves, our pride, and our bottom line.
So long as we are afraid to speak and live the truth, it should be no wonder that the truth is neither seen nor heard. Nor should it surprise us that, when the vocation of homemaker is ridiculed, homes are neither made nor kept. In the name of equality, our daughters are sacrificed on the altar of empire.
Leave a Reply