- Government-mandated "community service" is
integral to Barack Obama's vision of "change." Obama has described
such service as a key element of creating "a new era of responsibility
- a recognition on the part of every American that we have duties to ourselves,
our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudgingly accept, but
rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying
to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult
task."
-
- Actually, there is nothing novel about Obama's emphasis
on government-imposed citizen "service." National service, in
some form, has been endorsed by every U.S. president since George Bush
the Elder. But none has promoted it as insistently as Barack Obama.
-
- Of course, most Americans are hardly strangers to responsibility.
They hold jobs, provide for families, and perform volunteer work for schools
and churches. Thousands of acts of service occur literally every second
of every day in America, both in the form of mutually beneficial business
transactions and charitable deeds performed out of conviction.
-
- The problem with such service, apparently, is that it
is neither mandated nor brokered by the government. So from the perspective
of those who believe that life should be organized by the state, such spontaneous
service simply doesn't count.
-
- Before it created a small but significant scandal, the
Obama campaign's position paper on national service promised that as president
he would "inspire" Americans to render "universal voluntary
service."
-
- It was not explained how service could be both "universal"
and truly "voluntary": Was the assumption that differences over
opinion regarding the proper type of "service" would simply vanish?
Or would the reluctance of many Americans to surrender valuable time to
carry out government-approved activities be overcome by the sheer power
of Obama's charisma?
-
- Obama's vision of "Universal Voluntary Service,"
as originally outlined in his campaign literature, displayed far greater
ambition and more than a touch of authoritarianism: "Obama will call
on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing 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." The blueprint likewise
called for the expansion of AmeriCorps from 75,000 to 250,000 and the creation
of five separate "Corps" of government-funded "volunteers"
to deal with education, health, energy, veterans affairs, and homeland
security.
-
- One element of the Obama plan, the "Classroom Corps,"
employed frankly militaristic language, stating that the administration
would "enlist" retired teachers, "recruit" civic leaders,
and "draft" parents, grandparents, and others to serve as mentors.
-
- The campaign for "universal voluntary service"
is bipartisan and enjoys enthusiastic support from the mainstream media.
Richard Stengel, Time magazine's managing editor, is co-chair of Service
Nation, a non-profit established to promote Obama's service campaign. Former
GOP presidential candidate John McCain has joined with Obama in promoting
government-imposed service.
-
- Tony Blankley, who served as chief of staff for former
House Speaker Newt Gingrich, has called in his new book American Grit for
the re-introduction of a universal military draft.
-
- Blankley's proposed system is similar to legislation
being promoted by House Democrat Charles Rangel; it would require all Americans
who turn 18 to spend two years either in military service or in a government-selected
"Homeland Security" role. He proposes a "compulsory program
for all Americans aged eighteen or nineteen, men and women, after most
have graduated from high school. The military, reviewing these graduates'
transcripts, extracurricular activities, and medical reports, would select
however many they needed to fulfill their draft allotments for a two-year
period of military service. Those not chosen by the military would undertake
a two-year service obligation."
-
- Setting a tone likely to be emulated by other Republicans,
Blankley condemns Obama's national service proposal not because it represents
a presumptuous imposition on the lives of Americans, but because it wouldn't
provide soldiers for ongoing and envisioned military conflicts.
-
- "We will soon be faced with the choice of severely
scaling back our role in the world or expanding the army through conscription,"
observes Blankley, blithely assuming that the former option is simply inadmissible.
Since "there is a limit to the number of people willing to volunteer
to be a soldier," the government must return to a system its critics
consider nothing less than military slavery.
-
- All "national service" proposals, whether civilian
or military, are rooted in the assumption that individuals owe service
to the State - indeed, that the State has the first claim on the individual's
time, labor, and wealth.
-
- Although the legally protected practice of chattel slavery
ended roughly a century and a half ago, politicians routinely insist that
the government is entitled to claim uncompensated labor from the citizenry
in the name of "community" or "national" service.
-
- The first American public figure of significant stature
to endorse this concept was philosopher and psychologist William James,
who in 1910 urged "a conscription of the whole youthful population.
. . for a certain number of years as part of the army enlisted against
Nature." James envisioned a national system of conscript labor to
build roads and bridges, skyscrapers and tunnels; to extract ore from the
ground, and fish from the sea; and to do various other kinds of manual
labor as a way of having "the childishness knocked out of them."
-
- Through government-imposed labor, James insisted, young
men "would have paid their blood-tax" to the amorphous entity
called "society" without serving in the military. In fact, it
was through this proposal for universal conscription that James infected
American political discourse with the phrase "moral equivalent of
war," an expression that has become one of our more obnoxious clichés.
-
- William James was not the first or only one to propose
universal conscription. The eighth plank of the Communist Manifesto dictates
a "universal liability of all to labor" as the state directs,
and the creation of state-supervised "industrial armies."
-
- After seizing power in Russia through the Bolshevik coup,
Vladimir Lenin demanded that his subjects consider themselves part of a
"great army of free labor" to be deployed as the ruling oligarchy
saw fit: "The generation that is now 15 years old. . . must arrange
all the tasks of their education in such a way that every day, in every
city, the young people shall engage in the practical solution of the problem
of common labor, even the smallest, most simple kind."
-
- Undergirding such grand pronouncements is the shared
assumption that only labor or "service" that is mandated and
supervised by the state is worthwhile. Left to attend to their own business,
human beings have an amazing capacity to serve each other in mutually beneficial
ways.
-
- But this is done without the intrusive and presumptuous
involvement of social engineers who desire to correct what they see as
defects in the way other people live. For such people "service"
is simply unsatisfactory unless it somehow helps build and fortify the
state. And to them the state of crisis produced by a war, or the "moral
equivalent" thereof, is useful as a pretext for the regimentation
of society.
-
- This is why aspiring social engineers welcomed the onset
of World War I, which offered unprecedented opportunities for government
intervention in private life.
-
- During World War I, Bernard Baruch, chairman of the Wilson
administration's War Industries Board, brazenly endorsed the concept of
state ownership of every American:
-
- Every man's life is at the call of the nation and so
must be every man's property. We are living today in a highly organized
state of socialism. The state is all; the individual is of importance only
as he contributes to the welfare of the state. His property is his only
as the state does not need it. He must hold his life and possessions at
the call of the state.
-
- Baruch insisted that this form of human bondage - that
is, the ownership of one person by another - was not prohibited by the
13th Amendment, since "involuntary service for a private master is
and has been clearly and repeatedly defined by the Supreme Court as slavery."
This isn't the case, he insisted, regarding the military draft of conscripted
labor, since in those arrangements there "is but one master. . . and
that master is America."
-
- In its decision in the 1918 Selective Draft Cases, the
Supreme Court took a very similar approach to the 13th Amendment in dealing
with the World War I military draft: Grandly describing compelled military
service as "the supreme and noble duty" of a citizen, the High
Court simply insisted that the amendment didn't apply.
-
- The common understanding is that government exists to
protect the lives and individual rights of citizens. Military conscription,
which is the most severe form of "national service," is based
on the idea that the people exist to protect the government. This principle
was given voice in a July 1863 editorial supporting the draft in which
the New York Times claimed that "our national authority has the right
- to every dollar and every right arm for its protection" (emphasis
added).
-
- In any form, government-compelled "service"
is an assertion of state ownership of the individual, and a violation of
the most fundamental property right - self-ownership. In the Western
tradition of individual liberty under law, no other human being, either
individually or acting as part of a collective, can properly claim ownership
over any part of our lives, or the product of our exertions, without our
consent. That consent can be expressed through contract, commerce, covenant,
or charity. It cannot properly be obtained through coercion or fraud.
-
- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter written to John Adams during
the War for Independence, referred to conscription as "the last of
all oppressions." If the State can steal you - not just your labor,
but your physical being - as those controlling it see fit, you have
no rights.
-
-
- A Memo to Congress:
-
- "Shame on you! you who make unjust laws and publish
burdensome decrees, depriving the poor of justice, robbing the weakest
of my people of their rights, despoiling the widow and plundering the orphan.
What will you do when called to account, when ruin from afar confronts
you? To whom will you flee for help?" -- Isaiah 10:1-3
-
-
- Traditional Values http://www.anglocatholicsocialism.org/acsoc.html
-
- Mar 19 08:11
-
- House Passes Mandatory National Service Bill http://www.prisonplanet.com/house-passes-mandatory-national-service-bill.html
-
- Tags: DICTATORSHIP The House passed a bill
yesterday which includes disturbing language indicating young people
will be forced to undertake mandatory national service programs as
fears about President Barack Obama's promised "civilian national security
force" intensify.
-
- Webmaster's Commentary -
-
-
- Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as
a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted,
shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
-- 13th Amendment to the Constitution.
-
-
- THE BACK-DOOR WAY TO THE MILITARY DRAFT!
BE AWARE OF WHAT THIS BILL MIGHT LEAD TO IN A DICTATORSHIP, WHICH
IS WHAT THIS IS (DO NOT BE DECEIVED)
-
- RatTube » Google/YouTube Filters "The Give
Act"? - Mandatory Volunteerism
- http://rattube.com/2009/03/17/googleyoutube-filters-the-give-act-mandatory-volunteerism/
-
-
- This Week in Congress
- Your Headlines, Your Issues, Your Opinions
- March 17, 2009
-
-
- SHOULD THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT EXPAND VOLUNTEER PROGRAMS
ACROSS THE NATION?
-
- Following President Barack Obama's call for more volunteerism
and public service, Congress is considering a bill this week that would
encourage national service. H.R. 1388, the Generations Invigorating Volunteerism
and Education (GIVE) Act, would more than triple the number of positions
in the Americorps program, from 75,000 to 250,000, and would increase educational
stipends and other financial awards for people of all generations who enter
public service programs.
-
- Should the federal government expand volunteer programs
across the nation? Tell President Barack Obama and Congress how you feel
by voting in our action poll.
-
- ACTION POLL: (Cast your vote by sending a message)
-
- Yes,The Federal Government Should Expand Volunteer Programs
- http://capwiz.com/congressorg/utr/1/LCFAKBMNGX/HZAZKBORXB/3058873361
-
- No, The Federal Government Should Not Expand Volunteer
Programs
- http://capwiz.com/congressorg/utr/1/LCFAKBMNGX/EROVKBORXC/3058873361
-
-
- Remember - it's not what the opinion polls say, it's
what Congress hears.
-
- You want our labor on the cheap? What do you think you're
getting now, while you give yourselves and Wall Street fat pay raises at
our expense?
-
- Why should we volunteer anything more than we already
have? We've been compelled to acquiece to extortion and looting of everything
we have, our homes, jobs, and futures. We're already being forced into
involuntary servitude simply by having to remain in this country.
-
- Whatever happened to the common good and the general
welfare? How does what's being done to this country in any way resemble
"the Kingdom of God on Earth?" Aren't we supposed to be about
'our Father's business'?
-
- When do we get OUR bailout? Inquiring minds want to
know.
-
- Sincerely,
-
- ------
-
- http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=11
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