A new report from the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service is keen on the idea of expanding national service, urging the federal government to “promote the vision ‘every American inspired and eager to serve.’”

Putting aside the creepy notion that Americans exist to serve the state, there are a few particulars in the recommendations that stand out for their determined indifference to individual liberty.

Among them: expanding Selective Service registration requirements “to eliminate male-only registration and expand draft eligibility to all individuals of the applicable age cohort.”

In other words, the panel wants the government to be able to draft your daughters, as well as your sons if the government decides a mass mobilization is needed. All in the name of “equity.”

The U.S. eliminated the draft in 1973. Registration for Selective Service was once again required for 18-year-old males in 1980.  As George Mason University Prof. Don Boudreaux wrote when his 18-year-old son got the SSS letter:

Nothing – literally nothing – makes my blood boil more furiously than the notion that my boy is at the disposal of politicians and bureaucrats who claim the privilege of conscripting him into “service” – or of even merely reserving the ‘right’ to conscript him into “service.”  My son is no one’s slave – neither in actuality nor potentiality.

Better than allow government to have an exclusive claim on our children’s lives, let’s abolish the Selective Service System entirely.