Time Magazine is now pushing national slavery. Oops, I meant national “service,” of course. In a particularly disgusting article, Richard Stengel recommends enslaving all of our children to the state for a period of one or two years. It’s this kind of thing that makes me glad my kids have dual citizenship.
Of course he claims that the service would never become mandatory. He just wants all young people to “volunteer” universally. And he wants a cabinet-level position created to “encourage” this “voluntary” activity. His central plan is needed, you see, in order “to give us that more capacious sense of ‘we’” that is apparently so vital to saving our Republic. But no matter what Mr. Stengel may have in mind, the reality is he will not be the one implementing the programs. Bureaucrats in Washington will do that, and there is zero chance that national volunteer programs will remain voluntary once that happens.
I’m amazed at how glibly people can talk about forcing kids into some sort of government make-work program that takes one or two years of their lives. The author even bemoans the ending of the draft (and dismisses libertarian concerns about that pesky 13th amendment in the same breath):
“Today the two central acts of democratic citizenship are voting and paying taxes. That’s basically it. The last time we demanded anything else from people was when the draft ended in 1973. And yes, there are libertarians who believe that government asks too much of us — and that the principal right in a democracy is the right to be left alone — but most everyone else bemoans the fact that only about half of us vote and don’t do much more than send in our returns on April 15. The truth is, even the archetype of the model citizen is mostly a myth. Except for times of war and the colonial days, we haven’t been all that energetic about keeping the Republic.”
By Mr. Stengel’s estimate, the slew of programs (which would include military service, of course) would cost about $20 billion per year. Although he claims that national service itself would always remain voluntary, what about the funding? I’m guessing the taxation part of this plan would be sort of mandatory-ish. After all, the $5000 for each child’s savings bond would have to come from somewhere. (No doubt the $20 billion-a-year fund would be managed by bureaucrats every bit as well as they’ve handled Social Security).
The really funny part comes when he suggests creating a National Service Academy: “Picture West Point, but instead of learning how to fire an M-4 and reading The Art of War, students would be studying the Federalist papers and learning how to transform a failing public school.”
Granted, it’s been over a year since I read the Federalist papers, but I don’t recall the part about transforming failing public schools. You might as well have a National Service Academy to teach unicorns to tap dance – you’ve got the same probability of success. Besides, the last thing the government wants people to do is read the Federalist papers! That would only encourage us to consider the unconstitutionality of most government programs, including the National Service Academy.
If this article just represented one yahoo spouting a bunch of nonsense, I wouldn’t be so concerned. But the reality is that some form of national service has been floated by more than one presidential candidate. John Edwards is the most outspoken advocate of national service, but I’ve heard more than one Republican give it serious consideration as well.
“National service” in the current context represents a complete destruction of the concept of individual liberty. If someone feels his time is best spent by volunteering to a community organization, then by all means, he should volunteer. But agitating for the involuntary servitude of others in the guise of “national service” is simply disgusting and un-American. If we really want to serve the nation, we should continue to spread the ideas of individual liberty far and wide. They’re desperately needed these days.
P.S.: There is a rebuttal to this stupidity in the same issue of Time, but for some reason the link on Time.com seems to be broken (just an oversight, I’m sure). It is available here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20070904/us_time/nationalservicepuhlease
