Per our post yesterday on the saga of Texas Democrat congressman Beto O’Rourke, who offered up an idea to draft every young person in America into compulsory national service – in other words making your kids into government slaves for a year – yesterday saw a new development.

Namely, that Beto just said “Never mind.”

Days after sharing his idea to introduce a bill that would require all young people to spend at least a year “in service to this country,” U.S. Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke backtracked from that statement.

On Monday, the El Paso Democratic congressman said, in part, “I made a mistake,” as he addressed voters via Facebook live on Monday.

O’Rourke admitted the feedback from the public over his stroke of fascistic genius in suggesting a mandatory year of national service was highly negative, and said all he was really trying to do was to make college more affordable.

Because motives are more important than actions, you see, so actions which are uncommonly, ridiculously stupid can’t be castigated as such.

“When we were in Corsicana a couple of nights ago, we were talking about a national service bill that I would like to work on, and that I have been working on, that would encourage more young people to serve and perhaps connect that service with the ability to go to college without debt, and if they’re able to afford coming back to their communities — to El Paso, to Laredo, to Ft. Stockton, to Wichita Falls, to Lufkin to Longview — to wherever they are from, or wherever they want to be, or wherever they can do the most good.

In talking about that, I said ‘I’d like to make that mandatory.’ That is a word that has concerned a lot of you and I got to tell you, you’re right.

I think I got way out in front of this without having the necessary conversation, without listening to enough of you about if you were serving as a teacher, if you were serving in the VA, if you were clearing trails in a conservation core, if you were serving in the military, if you were doing some kind of service that helps to make your country stronger, or your community better, that all to have some sense of shared purpose and sacrifice in this country.

Talking about this being a requirement for everybody — that’s a few steps beyond the conversation that we’ve had already — so I want to tell you that I’ve heard you and I’m listening to you and that I made a mistake — without having listened to enough people and really have the conversation that we need to have on what this would look like getting so far out ahead on an issue.”

O’Rourke brought a bill in Congress last year on this subject. It’s not like he’s just tossing ideas around. He’s put his name on this idea and last week he was bragging about finding a Republican co-sponsor for his idiotic bill to draft every 18-year old in America into involuntary servitude.

So no, Beto doesn’t get to say “I made a mistake” and act like he jumped the gun without having a real conversation about his idea.

The fact is, people who love freedom and understand and respect the principles backing the Constitution and Declaration of Independence wouldn’t bring an idiotic idea like mandatory national service to the fore. We fought the War of 1812 in large part due to the British practice of impressment of Americans captured on the high seas into service on Royal Navy warships; some 200 years later it isn’t a very good look to be resuscitating that practice on the part of the federal government.

Not to mention the abject waste involved in throwing free college money at all of the impressees after the fact. It turns out that most 18-year olds are not actually better off in college; either they can’t afford it, and free tuition money won’t actually fix that because you do need money to live on while you’re in school, or they lack the academic qualifications to succeed in college, or they’re better suited for jobs apprenticeships and trade schools, rather than colleges, train people for.

This is the kind of one-size-fits-all idiocy in government policy today’s Democrat Party is replete with. Beto O’Rourke is pretty typical within that party these days – a patently unserious fop of a man, grounded more in soft Euro socialism than the nation’s founding principles, who survives on fawning media coverage and glib platitudes.

That he wants to run against Cruz in Texas this fall is a good thing. That race should be a perfect contrast between the people who live in the real world and the people who don’t. Advantage Cruz.