- ServiceNation Wants Youth

Written by Ann Shibler

Tuesday, 05 August 2008 05:47

Here we go again, with this “national service” business.

Last September, Time’s managing editor Richard Stengel wrote a piece entitled “The Case for National Service.” In the ensuing year much progress has been made toward the ultimate goal of national service for all 18 to 26-year-olds. Certain corporations and foundations have since joined together in a coalition called ServiceNation. Stengel has now written another piece called, “The Service Agenda,” wherein he pushes the universal service agenda.

ServiceNation will now be convening a ServiceNation Summit September 12 in New York City. It will be opened by Mayor Bloomberg and closed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Co-chairs are Stengel, and Alma Powell, Caroline Kennedy, Carnegie president Vartan Gregorian and AARP CEO Bill Novelli. Presidential candidates Obama and McCain will be present to discuss their views of national service.

And in conjunction with the summit, Senators Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch will be introducing legislation for voluntary and not so voluntary national service – both civilian and military. ServiceNation wants the legislation pushed through and enacted by September 2009.

In order to accomplish this the ServiceNation Organizing Committee is willing to pay $3750 to anyone who will attend a 5-day “Change Agent Academy” in Atlanta with the apparent goal of forming “change agents” who will return to their hometowns and work to train others to become change agents, and on and on. This way, hundreds of thousands of citizens will then be more mentally prepared to accept the notion that one or two years of their lives must be given to the sate in a “new spirit of volunteerism.” Meanwhile, the proposed legislation would provide “greatly expanded national service opportunities,” for all to partake in.

There is no reason, unless it be to gain control over peoples lives, that government needs to be involved in fomenting plans for various national services schemes. There are, in fact, plenty of opportunities now for volunteer work with countless good and enterprising private charitable organizaitons, and many people take advantage of the existing opportunities to volunteer their time and talents for various charities and hospitals, schools and community organizations. In point of fact, when Stengel first wrote the 2007 article on national service he admitted that 61 million Americans volunteered over 8 billion hours of their time.

Also in that 2007 article, Stengel had the unmitigated gall to quote the Founding Fathers on the Republic, and used the most patriotic terms to cover his socialist and fascist agenda – which universal national service is. (Think Mao and his little red book, and Nazi armbands – universal national service.)

Stengel nauseatingly tried to appear the selfless renaissance man suggesting that the spirit of volunteerism must become a part of America’s permanent culture. He, unfortunately, wants the president of the United States to ensure that it does. And that, of course, would not be voluntary, now would it?

In that 2007 piece Stengel said:

The way to create a common culture that will make a virtue of our diversity, the way to give us that more capacious sense of “we” — finally, the way to keep the Republic — is universal national service… It is the simple but compelling idea that devoting a year or more to national service, whether military or civilian, should become a countrywide rite of passage, the common expectation and widespread experience of virtually every young American.

If Americans cannot read between these pretty little seductive lines, God help us all.

All the patriotic words in the world cannot change the fact that universal national service is nothing but fascism and forced servitude. The Founding Fathers never dreamt of national service. The term and concept simply didn’t exist. The “nation” was not meant to be served. And the state was never to be in the business of “creating a common culture” or imposing a “rite of passage” on anyone.

The confiscation of one’s time, assigned work, and dictated pay sounds an awful lot like slavery to me. A free society is no longer free when government demands the people’s livelihood be submitted to it.

The cost to the American taxpayer would be astronomical. If even 4 million young people were put to work for 40 hours a week for a year at minimum wage, the cost would approach $100 billion.

The usual suspects are advocates and sponsors for ServiceNation and include Carnegie Corporation of New York, Home Depot, Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the Case Foundation, Illumination Fund, Bank of America. It is presented to also by Time, AARP and Target. Organizations taking part are La Raza, Habitat for Humanity, and sundry other leftist groups.