Seventy-four years ago today, Jeannette Rankin – a Republican congresswoman from Montana, and the first woman elected to Congress – was the sole member of that body to vote against the United States’ declaration of war against Japan. Until Ron Paul’s presence in Congress years later, she was one of those rare souls who was willing to risk the political costs of standing up to the mindless herd by being the lone dissenter in a 388-1 vote. As she so nicely stated it at the time of her vote: “As a woman, I can’t go to war and I refuse to send anyone else.”
I wonder how many current politicians – be they male or female – are prepared to emulate Rankin’s principled stance? Perhaps this question should be put to the gaggle of presidential hopefuls now bloviating throughout the media. As Ms. Rankin – though a lifelong pacifist – may have qualified her lack of not being subject to conscription on the grounds of her being a woman, the statists might try to overcome this dilemma by subjecting females to military conscription. I can envision Hillary and her feminist lackeys defending the drafting of women as a “basic right” of a woman (to be placed alongside that of committing abortions and selling the organs of her unborn children).
Who can deny the principle of “American exceptionalism?”
9:10 pm on December 8, 2015
