“Ready, Willing, And Unable To Serve:” — a report released on November 5 by the non-profit organization Mission: Readiness, Military Leaders for Kids, along with Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan (at left), asserts that: “75 percent of young Americans are unable to serve their country because they have either failed to graduate high school, engaged in criminal activity, or are physically or mentally unfit.”

The Washington, D.C.-based Mission: Readiness, Military Leaders for Kids describes itself on its website as follows:

The AP report noted that Mission: Readiness “is pushing Congress to pass the Obama administration's Early Learning Challenge Fund, a program that would grant states $1 billion annually for 10 years for early childhood development programs.”

While the attention-grabbing headlines certainly elicit concern among all Americans concerned about our national security — particularly in these troubled times — a quick study of the solutions proposed by Mission: Readiness raises even more concerns. While a strong-and-ready military is essential for our federal government to fulfill its constitutional mandate to protect the states against invasion, that function has traditionally been met without excessive federal involvement in areas best left to the states and private enterprise. However, the solutions proposed in “Ready, Willing, And Unable To Serve:” go far beyond the proper federal function of building an effective military and favor a heavy intrusion into an area where the Constitution grants no power to the federal government — education.

There are several leading indicators of this misguided direction: First, Mission: Readiness was joined in releasing “Ready, Willing, And Unable To Serve:” not by the Secretary of Defense, as one might expect, but by the Secretary of Education.

Second, although the group lists more than 80 retired military leaders — including two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former secretaries of the Army and Navy — on its Executive Advisory Council, the groups national director, Amy Taggart, has quite a different background. A Political Science major, Taggart’s experience before launching Mission: Readiness, Military Leaders for Kids began with working for a tutoring and mentoring program for low-income, Spanish-speaking youth in East Palo Alto, California. Taggart then helped found what is described in her biography as “the anti-crime organization Fight Crime: Invest in Kids.” That group’s first chairman of the board was former Attorney General (again not Secretary of Defense) Elliott Richardson. It now represents “over 5,000 police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors, and victims of violence advocating for the programs proven to get kids the right start so they never turn to a life of crime.”

A third indicator that Mission: Readiness is advocating government involvement in something beyond a purely military function is the complete title of the report: “Ready, Willing, And Unable To Serve: 75 Percent of Young Adults Cannot Join the Military; Early Ed in Pennsylvania is Needed to Ensure National Security”

“Early ed,” of course, refers to early education, usually of the government-paid-for-and-controlled variety.

This is not to say that many of the problems addressed in this report (and other similar reports) are not legitimate, or that early education programs chosen by parents for their children are not beneficial. However, it is as important to make the distinction between private and government involvement in education as it is to make the distinction between federal responsibility for our national defense and federal responsibility for our educational needs. Consider this quote from General Henry “Hugh” Shelton, Former Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, featured in the report:

Again, the general presents a legitimate challenge, but advocates a false solution. Certainly, all Americans want to see our young people graduate from school with a good education, with good physical fitness, and without a criminal record.  But those goals have historically been best achieved by direct parental involvement, with help from privately (or at least locally) funded educators.

Lest there be any mistake about who the “we” are whom the general believes must make an investment in high-quality early education, we read in the report:

Let us distill that statement down even further.

The report advocates the The United States Congress and the Pennsylvania Legislature (not parents, or private schools, or church-affiliated schools, or even the local community) should fund programs to educate children as young as three years old, “to ensure our national security.”

The idea of three-year-olds being enrolled in federally funded early education programs does seem at all compatible with this writer’s memories of a carefree childhood, playing in the park with other three- and four-year olds. Rather than being valued for our potential future service to our “national security,” we were valued as children, our most important cares in the world revolving around matters no more serious than blowing the white seed tufts off dandelions!

Should our children be better educated, encouraged to become physically fit through proper diet and lots of exercise, and taught the basic moral values that will enable them to avoid trouble with the law?

Of course.

But that is the job of parents — not our federal and state governments.

 

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Will Grigg said:

Fatten up your lambs, or they'll be slaughtered With proper respect to Mr. Mass, his analysis misses the most important point: This story reflects the desire of the government ruling us to continue sucking American youth into the imperial military, and most likely is a portent of a return to military slavery (aka conscription) -- a subject the timid people running the nuJBS want desperately to avoid. Conscription is constitutionally impermissible and morally abominable. Back in 1968, when Mr. Welch was alive and the JBS was actually concerned about freedom, the estimable Dr. Medford Evans described the draft as "both slavery and a contingent death sentence." You won't get that kind of candor out of Appleton today. Parents should get their kids fit and teach them that our most important enemy is not some distant foreign regime, but is now and always has been the government ruling us.

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November 06, 2009
Votes: +3

Pat Henry said:

Responsibility and preparedness, not "the guvmint" This is typical liberal rhetoric to say whatever sounds good in order to get more money. (We should expect it from that quarter; but have any great spirits fallen to this ploy?) A billion or even a trillion more fiat papers and digits will not help, of course. It is the school SYSTEM that has created the problem. Charlotte Iserbyte has well exposed this dumbing down (noting Reagan, under whom she served, signed the system to integrate with Russia's). The report,while correctly suspicioned, is likely true enough. The answer is to indeed prepare our own children - at home, or in schools of the like-minded. Intellectual, but also spiritual/moral preparation. And, as Mr. Grigg notes, rather than training for an imperial army, now is the time to understand and prepare the Constitutional militias in the States. For that is where the battle lies today. And may be won without force, especially if we so prepare. http://libertydefenseleague.com/liberty/2009/11/03/choosing-federalism-choosing-freedom/

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November 07, 2009
Votes: +3

Gene Kane said:

... Teaching as an adjunct faculty for 15 years (I am retired) in private university I see on a daily basis our young people of quite low education and unable to function in the intellectual world. Although our prevailing idea is that it "is the job of parents" to be the first responsible for our "children to be better educated, encouraged to become physically fit through proper diet and lots of exercise, and taught the basic moral values that will enable them to avoid trouble with the law", it they - several generations of parents, grown on soft drinks, hamburgers, junk food, junk pop culture, parents who are cheating on each other every stay in hotel, divorcing every second or third family, tweeting, texting and chirping in their mobiles non-stop and are not able to function in intellectual words - it is parents, who are failing our children in the first line. Our government is as good as we are, and we deserve the government who reflects our society as a gigantic mirror. It is now a logical outcome that our kids are now unfit both physically and mentally. First of all - our parents are not fit. First - go after them. Then go for school, school teachers and how federal government should leave dis-functioning families alone to rear for children abandoned by their non-able parents. Now, on the whole, our society is failing our children, alas!

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November 08, 2009
Votes: -2

Lee Gonzales said:

	Bad attitude I'm sure there's a bar where a certain dismissed writer can go to drown out the loss of a writing job due to that writer's bad attitude. When a person of character loses his job he dusts himself off and looks for another one and quits bothering others about his personal problems. I for one am tired of the nufired employee belly aching at this site.
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November 08, 2009
Votes: -1

Will Grigg said:

A matter of character? It's a widely recognized cult tactic to deflect someone's arguments by impugning his supposed motives. You can do better than that, I hope. People of character, a population that doesn't include the incumbent JBS management, aren't required to stay mute in the face of pusillanimity and hypocrisy, particularly when they distort the priorities of an otherwise worthy organization. And, FWIW, I don't drink, never have, and have no intention of picking up the habit.:-)

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November 08, 2009
Votes: +1

Will Grigg said:

A matter of character? It's a widely recognized cult tactic to deflect someone's arguments by impugning his supposed motives. You can do better than that, I hope. People of character, a population that doesn't include the incumbent JBS management, aren't required to stay mute in the face of pusillanimity and hypocrisy, particularly when they distort the priorities of an otherwise worthy organization. And, FWIW, I don't drink, never have, and have no intention of picking up the habit.:-)

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November 08, 2009
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Lee Gonzales said:

	Motives are quite clear It's quarter to three, there's no one in the place except you and me, set up Joe I got a little story I think you should know.
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November 09, 2009
Votes: +1