Automatic Selective Service Registration Keeps the Threat of Conscription Alive

This December, selective service registration for eligible young men becomes automatic nationwide. This might not seem like a big deal, as it merely automates an already mandatory process that many states had in place. Rather than requiring men to register online or by mail, the government will use existing databases, such as Social Security records, to add men ages 18 to 26 to a pool of candidates if conscription becomes necessary.

Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D–Pa.) said the move will save “taxpayer dollars” and described it as a bureaucratic improvement. But this is not simply paperwork. It’s a remnant of the military draft and a reminder that the government reserves the option to dispose of young men’s lives.

America hasn’t had a military draft since 1973. But selective service registration has survived, on and off, throughout history. It keeps the threat of conscription alive—even though most Americans have long opposed the military draft. A May 2026 Overton Insights poll found that 66 percent would oppose a military draft under President Donald Trump. Many young men have historically expressed their opposition by refusing to register for the selective service, despite the penalties.

Automatic registration takes away that choice. As Reason‘s C.J. Ciaramella wrote in 2024, automatic registration “remov[es] young men’s choice to engage in civil disobedience”— in effect, preventing young men from rebelling against potential conscription. And they have reasons to rebel.

Even leaving aside the constitutional arguments against conscription, the military draft is a profoundly immoral institution. It’s anathema to America’s founding promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The draft effectively tells young men that their lives belong to the state. During their conscription, young men must perform whatever the government requires while the state treats their lives as expendable. Our forefathers broke with the tradition of subordinating individuals to the state so they could live as they saw fit, free from government interference. Conscription is a direct affront to that principle. If sent to the battlefield, they may die or suffer severe physical and psychological harm.

They would endure all of this only to fight for a cause they may not share or even understand—one chosen by politicians in response to whatever they may deem an “emergency.” If we had a military draft today, conscripted Americans could be forced to fight in the widely unpopular Iran war—a war that even its proponents have struggled to explain or justify.

Beyond the risk of death, draftees are forced to put their happiness on hold during their service. Career plans, education, romantic relationships, friendships, and other commitments are forcibly interrupted when men are drafted during some of their most formative years.

When discussing the draft in a 1967 lecture, the philosopher Ayn Rand laid out the reasons why this is particularly egregious at this point in a person’s life. She explained that, when a draft is in place, young men are forced to live in fear and terror of being conscripted: “the terror of knowing that he can plan nothing and count on nothing, that any road he takes can be blocked at any moment by an unpredictable power, that, barring his vision of the future, there stands the gray shape of the barracks, and, perhaps, beyond it, death for some unknown reason in some alien jungle.”

We haven’t had a draft in over 50 years, and there aren’t any known official plans to bring it back. But that threat still looms. There have been renewed calls for conscription, and it’s an issue that has historically found some support across the aisle. Maintaining the selective service as an “emergency contingency” is a choice those in power continue to make.

And this choice preserves the possibility of the terror Rand described. Automatic registration removes all remaining friction between young men and the state’s power to take control of their lives. If you oppose the draft, you should oppose the measures that would make it easier to implement, too.

This column was first published in The Orange County Register.