Mandatory Service and The Road To Serfdom

(Cross-posted at Heritage)

There has been a small uproar around Obama’s call for a “civilian national security force” especially one “that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the military. But many have said that these words were taken out of context. If you read the whole speech, they argue, it is clear that he just wants to expand the Peace Corp a little bit*.

Similarly, there was a mild uproar about his call for mandatory service from students, but many said that the programs were never intended to be mandatory. The college program was optional community service in exchange for a larger education credit, and the high-school one was no different from adding an art class or something to the public high-school curriculum. Obama initially called both mandatory on his change.gov website, but after the buzz began he changed the wording and removed several sections of the site.

But now there is new evidence that the critics are right. He does favor mandatory service and it might be worse than we thought. He has chosen Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff. Rahm Emanuel wrote a book called The Plan in 2006. On page 60-65 of the book Rahm calls for universal conscription of 18-24 year olds for civilian service in order to prepare for a potential terrorist attack.

“All Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service.”

In a 2006 radio interview Rahm explains more about the program. He speaks about the dangers of a chemical attack and about the wonderful common experience that all Americans could have by being drafted for 3 months into a civilian national security force training program. He seems to be using the fear of attack to justify drafting all youth into a militaristic civilian security force – something more reminiscent of a dictatorship than a democracy. And all of his calls to unity and common experience only confirm his preference for nationalism or collectivism over individualism and freedom.

That Obama has chosen this man as his chief of staff should give anyone pause. This man has a “Plan” for the country that involves training our youth like soldiers, and calls upon “a new patriotism that brings us together again in a common mission” for his plan which will “unite us in a higher national purpose.”

If this is Obama’s vision, then there is great reason for concern. We are treading very near the Road to Serfdom.

* …and create a Classroom Corps and Health Corps and Energy Corps and Veterans Corp, and a Homeland Security Corp – as one blogger wrote “Here a Corp, there a Corp, everywhere a Corp Corp.”.

America Serves

(cross-posted at Heritage)

President-elect Barack Obama has quietly changed the meaning of the American Dream and introduced a proposal for American Serfdom. In America, what it means to serve one’s country is very clear. It is voluntary and for the purpose of defending the country during a time of war, or for the purpose of upholding the constitution by serving, for example, as a judge or on a jury.

Obama has reinterpreted the American Dream of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” as a collectivist ideology. He believes it is a dream about the collective happiness. He connects the notion of “service” to the American Dream, as he interprets it:

When you choose to serve -- whether it's your nation, your community or simply your neighborhood -- you are connected to that fundamental American ideal that we want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness not just for ourselves, but for all Americans. That's why it's called the American dream.

Obama is wrong. It is called the American Dream because in America the individual is secured rights and liberty, and with those rights protected and liberty ensured anything is possible. The American Dream is an individual dream. It is the dream of each of us, not the dream of a collective hive, or a collective outcome. This is not to say that private charity in un-American. Private charity and civil society are very much part of the American spirit. But this is because they are private and voluntary.

But then Obama goes on to describe what it means to him to serve. He has a list of new “corps” to add to his expansion of the Peace Corps. Then he lists “a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.” That is, 500 hours of mandatory community service.

Obama says that it is when “you choose to serve” that you are connected to the American Dream. But this quote is used to bolster support for a program which includes mandatory community service for every American child and college student. So, now mandatory community service is the American Dream. Now, it is not an independent pursuit of a better life but performing manual labor for the state that constitutes the American Dream.

Now to serve one’s country in America will have the taste of being a servant to the state, a serf, rather than the proud voluntary service of a free man.

The Future of Mandatory Service

(Cross-posted at Heritage)

Time magazine ran a story back in 2007 on “The Case for National Service.” The story described the positions of the candidates for president on expanding “public service” programs. Two of the Democrat candidates favored mandatory community service by all high school students. And two others — Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden — favored creation of a U.S. Public Service Academy for training civil servants.

Barack Obama has centered speeches around this idea of public service. He waxes sentimental about what we can each do for our country. All in one speech, he said that we must “answer a new call to service to meet the challenges of our new century” and that he “won’t just ask for your vote as a candidate” but “will ask for your service.” And he said that, in fact, this is the cause of his presidency.

Obama, though, is not listed as favoring this proposed academy. Instead, he proposes expanding AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps along with several other programs, and offering funding to students in exchange for community service. We can only hope that he isn’t convinced by his supporters and colleagues to change his mind on this.

Proponents of the academy argue that we’re facing a shortage of public servants, and such an academy could help. Of course, they do not mention that we could reduce the size of government instead of training our youth like soldiers to work for an ever expanding public sector.

It isn’t mere rhetoric to say they would be trained like soldiers. Supporters of the bill have called the proposed academy the “civilian counterpart to the uniformed service academies.” But we should not need a civilian counterpart to the military service academies beyond the police academies that already exist — because the civilian counterpart to the military is just the police officer corps.

Another scary thought is that the belief in mandatory community service for high school students, or mandatory military service as Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) has proposed, could combine with this call for a Public Service Academy. In fact, Rangel himself suggested that under his proposal, “Recruits not needed by the military in any given year would be required to perform some national civilian service.” He argued that mandatory service would close the economic gap, in which the poor are forced to serve disproportionately. However, this gap is actually a myth.

The idea that America’s youths should train like soldiers to serve government on the domestic front is contrary to the freedom and independent spirit this country was founded on. Furthermore, such programs are reminiscent of Soviet youth programs and Soviet job programs, and would similarly incorporate propaganda beneficial to the government in power. A free economy founded on small government has no need for such things — and they set a dangerous precedent.

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Ask what you can do for your country? What happened to your civil servants serving you - the government as a service to us, to protect us, so long as we vote for it to do so, and no longer? How did this mutate into the ideal of citizens showing their love for government through potentially mandated terms of service?