'Hell No We Won't Go?' - House Passes Automatic Military Draft Registration
This year's National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) has a little surprise for males between 18-26 in the US: Automatic registration for the military draft! As the US moves closer to war with Russia, will a new generation of Americans say, "hell no, we won't go"? Also today: NATO claims to have placed half a million troops on "high readiness" for war with Russia. Finally...the US and EU have agreed to steal $50 billion from Russia's frozen assets to give to Ukraine...as a loan! What could possibly go wrong?
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this Monday?
Doing well, doing well.
All right.
We have to talk about slavery today.
You know, I thought slavery was banned by our Constitution.
I think the higher law bans slavery.
But there was a vote recently for reinstituting and re-emphasizing the involuntary servitude of fighting illegal unconstitutional wars.
And I raised a question about that.
I said, boy, those Democrats.
All they want to do is have a so he said, what?
All the Republicans almost voted for it.
The Democrats voted against it.
So for various reasons.
But it still tells you.
All that talk, they're all constitutionalists.
And the one we can always depend on, of course, is Thomas.
He knows the difference.
So two others voted.
Three Republicans voted against it.
And this is something they, the draft issue has been around for a while.
I remember the disaster of the draft and the riots of the 60s.
So as soon as the war was over but lost, although they didn't want to admit, the war was lost, and we came out of there with a tail between our legs.
And I guess just to show their sentiment against war, we got rid of the draft.
And then about the late 70s, shortly after I went into Congress, they were reinstating the draft because you didn't even have to register.
So in the 70s, it was reinstated.
And that was a big fight.
And there was one time with a coalition of some Republicans and some Democrats.
We won it, and they could not reinstate the draft.
But lo and behold, you know what they did?
They brought that up about two weeks later and had a re-vote.
And by that time, they had bought enough votes to reinstate the draft.
And the draft, of course, has been with us all these years.
And they said sometimes they refer it to it as a voluntary thing.
But in a way, it developed into that.
It was compulsory.
But I think as the years rolled on, since they never used it, less and less people actually signed up.
But a lot of people did.
They signed up and became registered.
But now, all of a sudden, there was a proposal to make it mandatory, automatic.
And I always argued they always have the list anyway.
They know where the 18 years old are.
And who knows in this age, they might even start drafting women.
And of course, that was done in the early part of this legislation.
They were going to draft women.
But boy, that stirred some people wanting to defend freedom.
And they say, oh, you can't do this, women.
You can't impose this freedom, a violation of freedom on the women.
But the men, they don't qualify.
They don't qualify.
And so they wrote the law up, finally voted on, and it was a reasonably close vote, but 217 to 199, I guess.
It's a shame, though, is what it is.
But along with the military buildup around the world and the money being spent around the world on militarism, I tell you what, and this sort of thing, because we all know we don't have enough volunteers to go into the Army, the volunteer army.
You know, it's amazing that we need more volunteers all the time, even when with the mechanizing of everything, you know, even with AI, boy, this is going to wipe people out of millions of jobs, but not in the military.
You still need the foot soldiers.
And so that's come back.
So unfortunately, it was a vote.
Just recently it passed, but they have the money, they have the troops, and they have support from NATO and that sort of thing.
And they continue to antagonize Russia and they don't allow China alone because for some reason this is so radical.
But to me, some people, it looks like they're looking for starting a war.
Yeah, let's put that up.
Now, this was a Friday vote.
And this is just zero hedge.
It's been written about quite a bit elsewhere.
Military draft coming.
House passes measure to automatically register men for selective service.
Now, this is the notorious NDAA National Defense Authorization Act.
Previous iterations of this bill included indefinite detention of American citizens and all sorts of greatest hits of violations.
Well, this year they did it again.
They put an automatic, automatic draft registration for all draft age male residents ages of 18 to 26.
I just barely escaped it, and so did you, Dr. Paul, just by a hair's breadth.
And I was wondering, well, I had forgotten what the system was before that.
If you go to the next one, this explains what they actually did.
So, well, there's been a selective service program in effect for decades.
It has long previously only been voluntary.
But this new amendment will make registration automatic.
The voluntary system had been in effect since 1980, but critics have said that leaving it up to young men to decide for themselves has resulted in a weak and ineffective system.
According to more background for this push, it was a bipartisan vote, Dr. Paul, a bipartisan proposal put in place by Representative Chrissy Houlihan, Democrat from Pennsylvania, and the warhawkish, the Uber Warhawkish House Armed Services Committee Chair, Mike Rogers, Republican out of Alabama.
They voiced it in the committee without opposition, took it to the floor, put it on the NDAA where it was accepted.
And now young Americans can look forward to, young American males can look forward to automatically being ready to be drafted into the military, registered for the draft, ready to roll.
Well, it does violate one of my basic principles that I remind myself always: everything voluntary in a free society.
So this one more time says, no, we can't even have them voluntarily sign the registration.
No, it's force, force, force.
And it's sort of ironic what they go through, especially with the money is spent and the sacrifice of civil liberties.
And now, what is the reason they do this?
Because we're actually almost compelled to be very patriotic in anything the military wants, they get.
And they have to be the hero.
And here they take involuntary servitude, which some people call slavery, in order, and what do they tell the country or the parents?
They're going to save liberty.
They're going to protect liberty.
So you use violence and threats, steal the money, and then force them to go in and be prepared for the next war.
And now the troop numbers are building up and the enemies are all identified.
And it's all done in the name of we're protecting liberty.
It is our responsibility to protect liberty throughout the world and give them a sound currency and have peace and prosperity forever.
I would think that we could give them a couple other suggestions.
Yeah.
And maybe we will at our conference.
Maybe we will.
And in fact, it's not the military that wants this, it's Congress.
It's probably most of the guys have never served in the military.
They're the ones that want to grab your sons and get them ready for war.
The military has long said we don't want a draft, we don't need a draft.
I don't know if that's changed in the last year or so because it's gotten so woke that nobody wants to join the military fighting for the rainbow flag.
But anyway, the military has notoriously in the past does not want to have it, but Congress want to take control of your young men, your young sons.
Here is the actual language, if we can just put it up just for reference, except as otherwise provide in this title, every male citizen of the United States and every other male person residing in the United States between the ages of 18 and 26 shall be automatically registered under this act by the director of the selective service system.
Now, I didn't read the whole bill, and I wonder how do you think they're going to do it automatically?
I mean, through the driver's license, or I mean, how well they have records of everybody for everything, and now computers are getting pretty fancy.
Yeah, Social Security cards.
And, you know, 30 years ago, they used to go and they would find these stores that teenagers would go and buy things and be registered for that.
And they would gather names up.
But now, I think they, you know, from birth on, they know.
But, you know, one of the sad things that happened at the end of my medical career, I'd have patients come and they say, well, I don't want to be registered.
Can you deliver my baby and not sign a birth certificate?
You know, and there are some that did that.
But to me, and I'm not even sure we need birth certificates, a truly free society.
But it still was sad that they had to go to that point that you couldn't even issue the birth certificate because we need to keep tabs on it forever on.
We keep tabs on it.
So I think this voluntarism is the whole thing.
But there was a big issue in the preliminary vote, in the committee, I guess there was.
They said, and this has always come up.
Do you draft women?
Well, we don't believe in equal liberty.
We don't even believe in the concept of liberty.
So no, you don't have to draft women.
You know, they're not strong enough to be in the military, so we're going to keep them out.
And that's been the tradition.
But this time they tried to get it in.
They tried to get it in.
And boy, that is when some people got pretty upset about this.
No, we have to protect the women.
But they didn't say anything about protecting the people from involuntary servitude and get rid of the farce that the reason we need the men and the women is to protect the liberty of the people.
Yeah, yeah.
And put that up because it's actually Representative Houlihan, the Democrat from Pennsylvania.
I think she's progressive.
Representative Houlihan had been one of the leading advocates of the proposals of previous years to expand draft registration to women as well as men.
Her latest proposal for automatic registration of men only for military draft indicates she's more deeply committed to militarism than to any purported feminism.
That's a quote from the article, but they were trying to, as you say, Dr. Brother, they talked about it, they were trying to, but Chip Roy stood up and he gave them some business.
Let's put this one up.
He is pointing very aggressively, put this next one up.
He says, over my dead body, Chiproy slams Senate NDAA provision that would require women to register with selective service.
Now, we're not picking on Chiproy.
He's done some things that we admire and agree with.
But on this one, it sort of reminds me, Dr. Paul, of a typical Republican response.
It's not based on principle, as you alluded to earlier, that, well, heck no, you shouldn't draft anyone.
It's like, no, don't draft those women.
That's where I draw the line, you know.
As if they still believe in equal rights.
Everybody's equally protective.
Equal Rights Redux00:12:21
What a shame that is.
But evidently, he did some good from his point of view.
He got that removed.
They're not going to make the women.
They're not going to collect the women's names.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, that's where you go.
I'm not working on principle.
But here's a reason why if I was a man, well, I'm a male, technically, not MML, but between 18 to 26, why I would be concerned about this.
And that's this next story we're going to cover.
Now, skip one and move to the anti-war one.
Skip that.
So here's why I would be worried if I was that age.
NATO, 500,000 troops on high readiness for war with Russia.
And I read this headline, Dr. Paul.
You sent it over the weekend.
And I thought, what center did they think that we're in?
Do they think they're going to be, the Russian hordes are going to be marching over the Ural Mountains and we're going to have our 500,000 men on horses with lances or something?
I mean, it's crazy, but crazy is what they do.
But there was some conflict in the news because, you know, the news was out that they can't recruit enough American to join up and volunteer.
So all departments are short of personnel for whatever they're, well, maybe they're planning some conflict somewhere.
But it said that NATO said, North Atlantic Alliance people said, oh, you know, we said we're taking our role as if they're some independent little group over there.
We've already, we were told to get 300,000 troops ready.
A couple weeks are ready.
And they have more than they need.
It's over 300.
So it shows Americans that didn't have enough troops.
So they had 300,000, and that's when they said they need 500,000.
But the point was, the job was to get 300,000, and they went over their mark.
Well, they're doing so good.
I guess they're back to it.
Maybe someday there'll be a resistance in this country.
Well, they're talking about drafts.
I think we talked about it a week or so ago in Germany and Denmark and elsewhere.
They're talking about drafts, but I think the people are speaking out, and we talked about it at the European elections last week, about how the parties that are very skeptical about this war in Ukraine have gotten a lot of votes in France and in Germany as well and elsewhere.
So here is the thing.
Now here's an analyst that I admire a lot and I think we've had at least quotes from him on the show before, Will Scriver.
And he has actually a comment about this anti-war article with the 500,000.
And I think it's certainly worth listening to what he has to say.
Now here's his comment on the 500,000.
This is a complete fantasy.
The U.S. and its mere handful of willy NATO vassals could not field and equip even 250,000 combat defectives in Eastern Europe if you gave them a full year to do it, evacuated every single U.S. military base on the planet, and the Russians chose not to interfere.
NATO is an empty shell.
So he's pouring cold water on it, saying, you can't even get a quarter of a million.
And you think the Russians are going to stand by while you start amassing 500,000 people ready to attack?
It sounds like some of those numbers are for propaganda purposes to show how well they're doing.
We can get more if you need them.
Yeah, for sure.
Here we go.
Be worried.
Be worried.
A lot of people are going to, I guess you can't even send your kids to Canada anymore.
They probably extradite them.
Heck.
Yeah, they're not the same old Canadians that we knew in the 60s.
Find some countries for our kids to go to.
So the next one I think we want to take up is also another outrage, and that's that over the weekend, I think it was the G7 leaders met.
Did you see any of that video from that, Dr. Paul?
Did you see the one where Biden was wandering off?
And Maloney from Italy had to grab him back.
There was a little argument.
This was a so-called liberal talk show host this morning talking about this issue and he had some colors.
And the one person I called in was convinced, you know, it was all a conspiracy.
That's all fake.
Yeah, he's sharp.
All fake.
He really wasn't wandering on.
But all I could think of was it didn't make me angry.
I just thought it was so pathetic.
You know, how people who care about peace and prosperity and all this stuff, and then they take somebody who's obviously not quite with them and they're going to make good use of him until he's not available anymore.
I don't know when that's going to be.
Their lust for power is so strong that they would use up the hollow shell of not only Biden, but these half a million kids, too.
Oh, yeah.
Terrible.
So anyway, they met.
Biden was wandering off.
They had to get him back on the reservation, but they did come to an agreement.
If you put up this next clip, they agreed, why don't we steal Russia's money?
And so here's a great idea.
So G7 leaders agreed to provide Ukraine with $50 billion using frozen Russian assets.
Now, this is a complicated deal, and we don't really have time to go into the thicket of the whole thing.
But essentially, what it is, is $200 and some billion dollars is being held, I believe, in Belgium by a clearing company in Russian assets, and this is a result of the sanctions on Russia.
So the U.S. and the EU came up with this brilliant scheme.
Here's an idea.
Why don't we take, we won't take the principal, but we'll take the interest from that principal, and we'll give it to Ukraine as a loan.
They'll pay it back.
They're good for the money.
Trust us.
It sounds like theft to me, Dr. Paul.
Well, they're escaping it.
They don't want to be accused of theft.
So this is different.
But the whole thing is, we've done that so often.
This money's been hold up for a long time.
And I think they're, and I think Putin came across with a pretty harsh statement for this.
This is getting pretty bad.
And yet we keep doing it.
And then we wonder, because we wonder why people get annoyed with us.
And we assume, and that's the arrogance that comes along with running an illegal and constitutional empire.
And that's what we're doing with the trap, to trap the people in who would defend us as people who are unpatriotic and immoral and don't care about the troops and don't care about the people, don't care about our freedoms, our protection.
So it's, and they have the machinery, the propaganda machine.
So that is pretty savvy.
This whole thing.
Oh, no, we don't want their money.
We don't want to be a thief.
We'll just take the interest.
Who's keeping the books?
Yeah, but you know, you and I are mere mortals.
You know a lot more about the global financial system than most people.
However, I'm afraid, Dr. Paul, I don't say it often, you're wrong because the highest authority on the monetary world, she's come out against you.
Let's put on the next one.
Here is Janet Yellen, Treasury Secretary.
Janet Yellen says the use of Russian assets from Ukraine is not theft, despite Putin's claims.
So Janet disagrees with you, Dr. Paul.
Well, she disagreed with me when I was there.
But she was mellow, and nobody could yell at her.
Yeah, that's right.
She was very mellow.
I'll tell you that.
That's the same old story.
Lie, cheat, and steal.
Yeah.
And do it with force.
Force is okay because we don't want to deal with a nihilist because they actually believe that you can't figure out what is right and wrong.
So whatever they do is right.
You know, I remember the first time I heard that story, I was probably less than a teenager because there was a lot of talk during World War II of the Russians, the Soviet system.
And they said, they explained, somehow or another, I heard the explanation that what is right is wrong, they didn't have like a constitution or some guideline.
The guideline was what the party said.
Yeah, the party.
And I don't know who the party is in this country.
Well, you know, in a way, we've made the case pretty good for so often bipartisanship.
So that might be the party that endorses all these things.
It's a little different, but the principle is basically that way.
Somebody else fulfills the vacuum when people will not follow a proposed constitution.
So they'll figure out a substitute, and then they will ridicule.
Oh, he's a radical.
He wants to keep the Constitution exactly the way it's written.
We don't want to have any of that.
No.
Well, adding insult to injury, Dr. Paul, in this whole Ukraine thing.
So they first got together and they said, okay, let's go ahead and give Ukraine $3 billion a year of the interest on this held Russian assets.
But Ukraine, being as gracious as they always are with our money, put on this next clip.
This is what they said about $3 billion.
Instead, the EU devised a separate plan to provide Ukraine with about $3 billion per year using the interest made by the Russian assets.
Ukraine said that amount wasn't enough.
And the U.S. proposed a 50 billion.
And I can assure you, Dr. Paul, if someone offered RPI $3 billion a year, we would not say that's not enough.
But here's the funniest part.
So the EU and the U.S. say, okay, you guys, here's your $50 billion.
And guess what happened next?
This is from the Times UK.
Ukraine, arms prices are soaring.
We need 800 billion pounds to beat food.
So we just give them $50 billion and they say, well, actually, we need 800 billion pounds, which is about a trillion dollars.
What was soaring?
Prices and things like that.
The prices of prices of weapons are soaring.
that means.
I wonder what that means.
Where did that come from?
It's always amazing to me how long the system is pasted together and people want it so badly to work because there's so many beneficiaries and there's so much ignorance out there and as a consequence, you know, I frequently say, because I've met a lot of people and I got along with them in Congress, I didn't come away bitter with anybody.
But I did say And I think it's a true statement, there are very few Austrian economists in there.
And if you think even a discussion of it would be worthwhile, it's not like you will do everything the Austrian economists say, but it makes sense to us because it's good economic policy.
But we didn't see many people that I had people and members and staffers that would ask questions because they're inquisitive.
And I thought that was a big step forward when they at least want to ask a question, you know, about what would you do if you didn't have a Fed?
Well, we would probably be more prosperous.
Yeah, exactly.
Easy answer.
And we would not have inflation.
Well, I'm going to close out, Dr. Paul.
And now I put this up on Friday, I think it was, so I didn't get a chance to announce it on the show.
So if you put that last clip up, if you or someone you know is an upper division undergrad or a grad student, I have a link in the description to apply for our 2024 Ron Paul Scholars Seminar.
This is a great one-day event.
It occurs the day before our big RPIDC conference.
All of the lucky scholars are invited to also participate in the conference after a one-day seminar on U.S. foreign policy, U.S. civil liberties, peace and prosperity, and a lot of other things.
It's a fun-filled day.
You can see here Representative Thomas Massey in a previous year giving a luncheon presentation.
Voluntary Choices Matter00:03:10
It's a great group, but it is a small group.
So there is a link there to the story with more information and a link to the application.
I would recommend people apply right away if you qualify and are interested.
We do have scholarships.
If you read the article, it details the entire story on how you can get your scholarship if you're accepted.
And by the way, also there's a link to get your tickets to the conference.
Very good.
That's that, Dr. Paul.
Well, you know, when slavery was banned after the Civil War, and they wrote a change to the Constitution, they used the words involuntary servitude.
They banned slavery, but they said all involuntary servitude.
And that serves a good purpose because there's a lot of indirect ways of the government making us serve their interests.
So I think the whole thing, I've used over the years, I used the word voluntary a lot more because it does say a whole lot.
Because it's sort of a magic word.
And most people have an understanding idea because most Americans would say, yeah, you can go to whatever church or synagogue you want to do.
It's voluntary.
Nobody's going to force you to do that.
But when it comes to everybody getting a government education, there ain't no voluntary stuff there.
So it varies on there.
But just think my goal and so many of our campaigns have been based on volunteerism for the individual.
If two individuals didn't like each other, that doesn't mean you will be bosom buddies.
So all activities.
But then when you go to the step, what about economic exchanges?
This is a hard one for people to say because that controls so much.
You control all commercial property because if somebody comes into the store and blows it up, you have a right to retaliate.
And that's not voluntary.
Voluntary is welcome, you could put a welcome sign out to sell them something, but that didn't mean that they could do it and steal it from what they have.
So voluntarism with the individual, with the economic policy, and the principle ought to be applied to a couple countries trying to get together or thinking they can get together, and that is you can't take land from another country that you think are yours.
And people should be doing things voluntarily.
But how much voluntarism is there in NATO and United Nations?
And for the average American and taxpayer, there were times in the 60s where people wouldn't pay their taxes because they sound sick and tired of the Vietnam War.
Well, that's one way of challenging them, but it would be much better if we could see people accept the word voluntary.
Everything should be voluntary.
And then you would have a lot more peace and prosperity if one did that.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.