Are there enough fighting aged men? Senate Armed Service proposes drafting women in National Defense Authorization Act
Women are needed at home to produce the children who will replace the fallen but there are always a lot of women who have a vocation to serve in the armed forces instead. They voluntarily want in to the armed services so it is reasonaable enough to accept their service if they meet the physical standards. But forcing them to get shot at is evil
One of my ex-wives served in the army for nine years. She served in the transport corps and told me that lots of women are keen on driving the army's big trucks and are actually safer drivers. She also told me me that most army women are queer. So in camp she actually had to fight off sexual approaches from both the men and the women. She is however 5'11" tall and a former reprentative athlete so defended herself effectively. I can testify that she was VERY heterosexual. I have some very happy memories of our times together
She was also good-looking. See our wedding photo below. She had it all
The Senate Armed Services Committee voted 22 to 3 on a bipartisan basis in favor of the current year National Defense Authorization Act, which includes a provision for requiring women to sign up for the national draft via the Selective Service.
Why? The bill’s executive summary does not provide any stated reason, but ostensibly, the reasons given for doing so in past years’ proposals have merely centered around issues of equity and sexual discrimination and whether it’s fair if only men are drafted, or that women would be excluded from the draft.
But another issue might have to do with the population of fighting aged men 18-to-24, currently 15.1 million, according to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, accounting for about 4.5 percent of the total U.S. population of 335.2 million as of 2023 per U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data.
That’s not much better than the 14 million seen in 1980, when the male population aged 18-to-24 as a percent of the population peaked at 6.19 percent, back when the population was just 230 million.
Meaning, although the U.S. population has increased by 115 million since 1980, the population of fighting aged men has only increased by 1.1 million, as the number of 18-to-24-year-old men as a percent of the population declined from 6.19 percent to 4.5 percent.
When compared to potential adversary nations such as China, where conflict in Taiwan or the Koreas or Japan could break out any day, the potential size of U.S. fighting forces of able-bodied, young men is considerably dwarfed.
In China, there are about 102.3 million 18-to-23-year-olds, of which about 51 percent are male. And that’s with the one-child policy in effect there since 1980. That means there are about 52.2 million fighting aged men in China, compared to just 15.1 million in the U.S.
In the U.S., without any laws requiring less than two babies per woman, the FDA’s 1960 approval of birth control has nonetheless resulted in less than population replacement birth rates as more and more women have entered the labor force, attended college and opted either to not get married or not have children at all, with the numbers still plummeting, from 3.65 babies per woman in 1960 to 1.61 babies per woman in 2023.
If the U.S. had maintained more robust birth rates, the population might be more than 520 million today, and the number of fighting aged men would be considerably larger, more like 23 million. That’s still less than China, but it also underscores that the current prolonged demographic deficit of fewer marriages and fewer challenge may in fact pose a real and present danger to national security not easily offset even with immigration.
Either way, in a hypothetical conventional war of attrition where the draft was employed by both the U.S. and China, China would have a considerable advantage in terms of wearing down personnel, since theoretically it could withstand more than triple the losses U.S. forces could.
Such a conflict might seem unlikely with the U.S. nuclear deterrent, on one hand, but on the other, mutually assured destruction might make a conventional war more likely if neither side was willing to go nuclear for fear of retaliation and national or global destruction. In any event, such a conflict might start out conventionally but ultimately come down to the use of nuclear weapons if it looked like one side or the other was losing.
That said, even if such a war was unlikely, the presence of nuclear weapons might not be enough to deter such a conflict from beginning. If U.S. armed forces were to employ a draft of both men and women, the pool of potential recruits would jump from 15.1 million to 30 million, with 14.9 million females aged 18-to-24 as of 2023.
That’s still 20 million less than simply the number of men China could potentially deploy if necessary, and still more than 70 million less than the number of men and women China could deploy.
According to the CIA World Factboook, China has already similarly decided to put women into the military via conscription: “18-22 years of age for men for selective compulsory military service, with a 2-year service obligation; women 18-19 years of age who are high school graduates and meet requirements for specific military jobs are subject to conscription.”
All talk of equity aside, that appears to be a far more compelling rationale for expanding the draft in the U.S. and other Western countries, even if it is unstated. The fact is, in traditional wars of attrition, larger nations tend to prevail over smaller nations and in a war against China, the personnel deficit would pose a considerable challenge.
That means even enlisting women would likely not be enough to match simply the number of potential fighting forces China could muster for a conventional war, and would require the U.S. to team up with other countries via alliances if China were to ever become a global threat akin to Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union after World War II.
Given the global scale and the likely, eventual resort to nuclear weapons, such a conflict would certainly be undesirable, but if it did occur, assuming it did not immediately go nuclear, who has the most fighting men and women might be more important than the Senate currently dares to admit. All talk of equity aside, in wars numbers matter.
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No time to fiddle as Hezbollah burns northern Israel
Northern Israel is on fire. Hezbollah, Iran’s terrorist proxy in Lebanon, launched more than 300 rockets and drones across the border between June 12 and June 13.
The attacks came in response to Israel’s killing of Taleb Abdullah — a commander south of the Litani River — on June 11. Israel and Hezbollah exchanged fire over the weekend. Israel Defence Forces Spokesman Daniel Hagari said on Sunday that “Hezbollah’s increasing aggression is bringing us to the brink of what could be a wider escalation, one that could have devastating consequences for Lebanon and the entire region.”
The war, launched by Iran-supported militias on Oct. 7, has long exceeded the single front in Gaza. Yemen’s Houthis have closed the Red Sea to international shipping and, along with Iraqi Shiite militias, regularly launch drones and missiles at Israel. The attacks aren’t directed only at the Jewish state: More than 170 attacks took place on U.S. and allied forces in Syria and Iraq between October and February.
Yet the prospect of open warfare between Israel and Hezbollah dwarfs these developments. The Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv-based think tank, estimates that the group has around 200,000 rockets and missiles, including precision-guided munitions capable of hitting targets in Israel within a few yards’ radius. Hezbollah also has missiles such as the Fateh-110 and M-600 systems, which could hit Israel’s central cities. The group boasts a ground force of somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 fighters.
War between Israel and Hezbollah could lead to a wider regional conflagration. Iran has control of a contiguous corridor from the Iraq-Iran border, through southern Syria and into Lebanon. Iranian client fighters could easily make their way along this line to an Israel-Hezbollah combat zone. Its forces could likewise launch missiles and ordnance from Iraqi and Syrian soil.
Neither side appears to want immediate confrontation, but that doesn’t mean it won’t come. Senior Hezbollah official Naim Qassem recently described Hezbollah’s current level of engagement as representing a “complete” but not “all out” intervention. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly prevented the swift response to Hezbollah’s Oct. 8 attacks that Defense Minister Yoav Gallant favoured.
The status quo is disruptive. Some 60,000 Israelis have left their homes, from Rosh Hanikra to Kiryat Shmona. The country’s north has effectively been shut down for the past eight months. Hezbollah’s rockets and drones have hit the cities of Acre, Tiberias and Nahariya.
Such a departure is unprecedented. More than a century ago Jews’ determination to hold the remote settlement of Tel Hai against a Shiite Arab militia gave birth to a central national myth. The eight Jews killed in the fighting at Tel Hai on March 1, 1920, entered the Israeli pantheon as a symbol of determination to hold the ground, no matter the cost.
Kiryat Shemonah, the “Town of the Eight” in Hebrew, is named after them. Today the border communities are empty. Hezbollah is using antitank missiles to destroy the neat red-roofed houses of Metula.
Israel maintains the tactical advantage. Hezbollah has reported the deaths of nearly 350 fighters in recent fighting. Israel has lost 10 soldiers and 15 civilians near the border area. Yet despite this disparity, Hezbollah’s losses aren’t significant enough to deter it from further attacks.
Israel thus faces a dilemma. The present state of affairs is untenable, unless Jerusalem wishes to concede a de facto security zone of control to Hezbollah on Israel’s side of the border. If the fire is spreading south, the natural response is to spread it north. Increased air attacks up to Beirut, possibly accompanied by a ground incursion, would be among the list of options. The 36th Armored Division, which played a prominent role in the invasion of Gaza, is training close to the border.
Yet such an incursion would need to consider what would happen after Hezbollah’s forces were pushed north of the Litani. Would it merely be a punitive hit-and-run raid? If so, is it worth the losses that would come from it, given the likelihood that Hezbollah would return to the border once the fighting concluded? If not, what is Israel’s preferred arrangement on the Lebanese side of the border after the fighting?
Israel’s leadership is considering these questions, and it doesn’t have time to waste. An agreement to end the Gaza war might have led to a messy de facto ceasefire in the north. But the fighting likely won’t end anytime soon. With more than 60,000 displaced Israelis, and daily missile attacks in the north, Israel must answer soon.
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Appeals Court Deals Blow to Racial Discrimination by Big Money Corporate Interests
A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has thrown a wrench into the blatantly discriminatory practices of big-money corporate interests.
In American Alliance for Equal Rights v. Fearless Fund Management, over a bizarre dissent by a third judge, Judges Kevin Newsom and Robert Luck upheld an injunction against a venture capital fund with tens of millions of dollars in assets that gives money only to businesses owned by black women. Nobody else is eligible even to apply.
The plaintiff, the American Alliance for Equal Rights, sued on behalf of three of its members—business owners who aren’t black women and, therefore, aren’t allowed to compete in Fearless Fund Management’s funding process.
Fearless Fund was apparently fearless about violating anti-discrimination laws.
The threshold question was whether the American Alliance for Equal Rights had standing to sue on behalf of its members. Each member provided an affidavit showing he was “able and ready” to participate in Fearless Fund’s competition, meet all prerequisites but the racial one, and have concrete plans to use the funds they would get to build up their businesses if they weren’t racially excluded.
That is all that’s required to establish standing, according to Newsom and Luck, and they are correct—these business owners have an obvious claim since they are explicitly excluded from applying for the $20,000 in venture capital offered by Fearless Fund in its grant contest.
Yes, Fearless Fund discriminates against members of the Alliance for Equal Rights because of their race, but that isn’t enough to establish standing, according to Judge Robin Rosenbaum, an Obama appointee. In her dissent, Rosenbaum accused the alliance of “flopping”—that is, faking an injury the way soccer players do by flopping on the field—“to manipulate the referee into inappropriately exercising his power to award a penalty kick in the box.”
That’s a strange position to take in the 21st century. According to Rosenbaum’s illogic, members of the NAACP who, during the Jim Crow era, avoided hotels, restaurants, and buses where they knew they’d be turned away would be “flopping” because they didn’t go in and actually get turned away.
This retrograde view of civil rights ignores that, as Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh put it recently, “discrimination is harm.” It would also force victims of discrimination into humiliating and even potentially dangerous situations before letting them seek justice.
It’s curious, isn’t it, how efforts to defend the race discrimination that is now trendy and politically correct in academia, the media, and the corporate world so often end up tolerating the race discrimination that was trendy in the past? The only difference between today and the 1960s is which race is being discriminated against and which is benefiting.
But Newsom and Luck took a principled view and reminded Rosenbaum, their fellow judge, that
we’re talking about real-live, flesh-and-blood individuals who were excluded from the opportunity to compete in Fearless’s contest solely on account of the color of their skin. Respectfully, victims of race discrimination—whether white, black, or brown—are not ‘floppers.’
They face very real race discrimination, and that discrimination, Newsom and Luck recognized, is forbidden by federal law.
The lawsuit was filed under 42 U.S.C. § 1981, which, as the judges pointed out in their June 3 ruling, prohibits race discrimination in the making and enforcing of contracts. In fact, the entry form for applicants specifically said it was a “contract.” But Fearless Fund “conspicuously” changed that to take out the contract language after the lawsuit was filed in an obvious attempt to avoid the legal consequences of violating federal law.
In defense of its discrimination, Fearless Fund argued, in essence, that it was allowed to discriminate “so long as there are prospective funders out there who aren’t discriminating.” Newsom and Luck dismissed that argument as “anathema to the principles that underlie all antidiscrimination provisions.”
There is no doubt that the Southern racists of a long-gone era would have loved that argument. By Fearless Fund’s logic, so long as some hotels, restaurants, and buses served black people, they would be free to discriminate against black Americans.
We know that was wrong then. And it is still wrong today, as is discriminating against anyone on the basis of race.
In a last-ditch attempt to defend its discrimination, Fearless Fund argued that it had a free-speech right to engage in racial discrimination. But Newsom and Luck dismantled that argument too. There is a “critical distinction between advocating race discrimination and practicing it,” they said.
And again, an example from the past proves the point. If a restaurateur banned black people from his restaurant, he would certainly be making a statement, but while the First Amendment would protect his right to say racist things, it would not protect his act of discriminatory exclusion.
So, too, today.
Of course, the trendy race discrimination that Fearless Fund practiced has its defenders. A quick internet search will reveal angry pundits saying that the decision is racist, that it “fails black women,” that it represents “a sick victory,” and that it amounts to “using historic civil rights laws to attack black people.”
But take their arguments out of the thick cloud of rhetoric that pervades our era and apply them to the discrimination of the last one, and you will find what Rosenbaum missed—that to defend discrimination today is to excuse discrimination yesterday. There were angry pundits then, too, who no doubt argued that the ending of segregation and discrimination against blacks was a “sick victory” and an “attack on white people.”
The wiser path is to rise above our era and find the principles that transcend all of them, as Newsom and Luck did. Racial discrimination is always wrong—there is never any justification for it. And it is about time that the corporate world of American business recognized that, just as American universities have been forced to do.
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Pope Francis bans traditional Mass at Melbourne’s St Patrick’s
This is a disgraceful fiat by a "progressive" Pope. The Tridentine mass is one of the few growth areas for the church, as well as being comforting to older Catholics
In a move that has shocked and upset hundreds of Catholics in Melbourne, the Vatican has banned the traditional Latin Mass from the city’s St Patrick’s Cathedral.
The final traditional Mass will be offered on Wednesday, June 19, at 5.30pm. By essentially ordering traditional Catholics to get out of their own cathedral, the ban is stirring up tensions and divisions.
On Wednesday evening Mass, which has been a regular feature of cathedral worship for 13 years, drew a crowd of more than 150, mainly young people, including city workers not aligned with traditional parishes.
Veronica Sidhu, who attended the Mass, said it was solemn, uplifting and sad because worshippers knew it was coming it an end, as well as devotional, with “heavenly’’ choir singing.
“There was a mix of people – city workers and tradies _ including a dad who went to Communion with one toddler on his shoulders and was holding another by the hand,’’ she said. “Has Pope Francis or Archbishop Comensoli ever attended a Mass like it?’’
Ms Sidhu said that after years of contributing energy and resources to the church in Melbourne she felt “appalled’’ to be excluded from her own Cathedral.
The priest who said that Mass, Father Shawn Murphy, 34, who was ordained a year ago, told The Australian: “The Cathedral is the mother church of the Archdiocese and like a mother should be welcoming to all her children.’’
Father Murphy, the Assistant priest of the St John Henry Newman old rite parish in Caulfield North in Melbourne where he leads the young adults’ group, said members of the group were distressed, shocked and disbelieving about the decision.
“What is so tragic is that unlike previous oppressions of the Mass and the faithful, in England under the Tudors, during the French Revolution and in prison camps of the Soviet Union and China, this oppression is coming from within the church,’’ Fr Murphy said.
It was a blow against Christian and Western cultural heritage and causing confusion, especially among the young, he said. St Patrick’s Cathedral had been built for the traditional Mass in the late 19th century, he said.
The ban was imposed by Archbishop Peter Comensoli, who had no choice, following a direction from the Vatican’s Dicastery for Divine Worship.
It is the next step in a campaign by Pope Francis to crush the traditional rite, which evolved through the early centuries of the church and was largely unchanged for about 1500 years until the mid-1960s. It was phased out following the second Vatican Council, replaced by the more prosaic novus ordo (New Mass), usually said in the vernacular.
The traditional Mass was given fresh impetus by Saint John Paul II in the 1980s and by Pope Benedict in 2007, who affirmed the right of all priests to say Mass using the traditional rite (now known as the “extraordinary form”), without the permission of bishops. Benedict’s letter also clarified the fact that the Traditional rite was never abrogated.
While those changes were initially expected to accommodate older Catholics who remember the pre-1969 Latin Mass, the growth in attendance stunned church leaders as young families and 20-something and 30-somethings discovered the Old Mass and stayed. Along with Pentecostalism, it is one of the main growth areas of Christianity around the world, with new societies of priests established in the US and Europe to train priests in the Old Rite.
Francis overturned his predecessors’ initiatives three years ago, in a document ironically entitled Traditionis Custodes (Custodians of Tradition), which crushed centuries of tradition.
Cardinal George Pell, an adherent of the New Mass, who respected the principle of choice and inclusivity for Catholics who preferred the Old Mass, predicted that Traditionis Custodes “would not outlive the current pontificate’’.
In June 1992, an auxiliary bishop in Melbourne, the then Bishop Pell celebrated the first Solemn Pontifical Mass (an extraordinary form High Mass said by a bishop) in St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne, or in any Australian cathedral, since 1969.
Ms Sidhu said the latest decision from the Vatican was divisive, denied Catholics choice, and had an element of coercion – trying to force worshippers to attend the New Mass against their will.
Traditionis Custodes stipulates that the traditional Mass is “not to take place any longer’’ in normal parishes. But bishops around Australia, including Archbishop Comensoli, have used their authority and discretion in implementing it, with a view to the pastoral needs of growing numbers of worshippers, especially the young and converts, who were drawn to the transcendence and gravitas of the Old Rite.
The Wednesday evening Cathedral Mass survived, until Archbishop Comensoli sought further guidance from the Vatican.
In a letter to Archbishop Comensoli, Archbishop Vittorio Viola, Secretary of the Dicastery for Worship, said it was not “appropriate for the antecedent liturgy to be celebrated in the place that should serve as an example for the liturgical life of the entire diocese’’.
Father Glen Tattersall, Parish Priest of Newman parish in Caulfield in Melbourne, said the weekly traditional Latin Mass began at St Patrick’s in 2011, granted in response to a petition by Catholic laity. “I had the privilege of celebrating the majority of those Masses over the following years,’’ Fr Tattersall said. “There was a pause during Covid, but we returned after the lockdowns.
“This Mass was loved by many. It was fitting that the rite of Mass for which the Cathedral was built was returned to it, and had an honoured place in the life of the Archdiocese of Melbourne.
“It was also a particular demonstration of the communion of Catholics attached to this form of the Mass, with the Archbishop of Melbourne. The Mass was celebrated peacefully up to now with the blessing of the former and current Archbishops.
“I can personally attest to the many graces, including those of conversion, that have been granted through this Mass. It has borne only good fruit. But now, we learn that the Holy See has directed that the Mass be discontinued – causing widespread sadness and distress.
“In fact, the historical form of Mass is a constituent part of tradition and cannot be lawfully suppressed or forbidden. But in this Pontificate neither orthodox doctrine nor the law of the Church counts for anything.
“Everything is about power, and those in power in Rome insist that this Mass must stop. Archbishop Comensoli has been treated by the Holy See not as a Successor of the Apostles – which he is as Archbishop – but as the flunky of a remote and heartless bureaucracy. It seems that Pope Francis has suppressed Vatican II as well as the old Mass!’’
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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