Consider it this way: By becoming a part of a larger human organization, you place yourself at the mercy of bureaucrats who may or may not know what they are doing. Often times, such bureaucrats may be less intelligent than yourself. Why would anyone right in the head trust their future to individuals or parties that are beyond their control? This is the height of irrationality. To mandate such irrationality by law is the ultimate indicator that government is simply a form of organized crime.

Virginia Postrel has the best comments I have ever read about the subject of national service. They are well worth reading.

http://www.dynamist.com/articles-speeches/asap/overclass.html

Hitler said that people should not get into politics until age 30 because one does not have enough life experience and perspective in order to understand political issues.

As a person who just recently graduated university (albeit, in Canada rather than USA as the thrust of the post seems to be aimed), I would think mandatory military service would probably not work. For one, motivation would be a problem. I suspect most people would just bide their time. Secondly, at least where I’m from, entering the military is seen as an option only for those not smart enough to get into postsecondary education (I know that is an incorrect in terms of real life.)

America is a fiercely individualist country indeed, and as a fierce individualist, I would reject such a proposal whole-heartedly. I would consider it a major affront to my dignity if, after a decade and a half of government-mandated education (most of which has been deliberately stripped of anything that would promote patriotism or national unity), I was then forced to give up more of my life for the sake of our sprawling national government, ostensibly to re-invigorate my love for my country.

I think it’s one thing to expand opportunities for people, quite another to press them involuntarily into government service and then try to use the ‘job skills’ mantra to placate their loss of freedom over their own lives. I suspect such a mandatory program would breed resentment far more than national unity.

Chirol,

This is a false choice because an individual is still being pressed into serving the state. The individual becomes an input into state power and the state no longer serves the individual. The right to pursue ones own interests without being harassed or forced to act in a manner that does not further those interests is being infringed. Ultimately, some bureaucratic power will come to control these civil or military services and seek to use them to their own ends. In the process many individuals will suffer because their rights will have been infringed and they will be prevented from living out their own lives as they see fit. This notion of forced public service is the imposition of one set of values upon all citizens, regardless if they share those values or not. The reality is that this notion is mass slavery and it will merely feed the “beast”.

Regards,
TDL

As a conservative liberal, or liberal conservative, I must agree with the majority of posters that mandatory public service runs counter to the American tradition. This does not place it beyond the pale of possibility, but it does mean that mandatory service should be reserved for times of national emergency when the survival of the nation is an appreciable danger understood by the great majority. Then, and only then, should the government have the power to compel young people to serve in either the Armed Forces, or some alternate civilian service to the nation.

I can see how some people would like national service to foster a greater understanding of the role and actions of the state, and to create a more unitary society.

These considerations may have been valid in the days of ancient Greece, but then they were grounded in necessity. Without necessity, it would be merely an imposition.

Not only would mandatory service infringe on our liberty, running contrary to the entire purpose of buy-in to a society whose ideals revolve around individualism and personal freedom, it would also result mainly in a watering down of the existing quality of volunteer service, whether military or civil. It would breed far more resentment than patriotism, far more of the public school go slow, dumb yourself down, and reject everything just because someone else is forcing on it you syndrome than it would any tangible increase in personal responsibility and civic pride.

What we must do is promote more individualism in all of our civil systems, not less. We must do this in a form of true self-responsible individualism, not nihilistic antipathy towards a world where each experience, opinion, and object means as little as the next. Beginning with education, promote student centric education, self-education, student choice, and a wide array of civics programs. Consider civics one of the classics, and focus on the classics intensively. Let students test above instead of dropping out if they find themselves miserable in our our public transnational radical-progressive indoctrination camps… I mean, public schools. Treat students as consumers of their own education, fully responsible for the results. Don’t coddle them, and don’t treat them as afterthoughts in a paycheck and pension protection program for public workers.

Yes, civil and military service are noble, and critical pillars of a strong society. But let’s remember that it’s not just warm bodies that count. Challenge the mind first, then dare them to compete and excell. The IDF is an exception because of the visceral and ever-present existential threat. In the US, like in much of Europe, I doubt the results would be any better than feeding the nanny state beast with greater numbers of young people pre-molded by years of being ground down into docile service by whichever demogogues maneuver themselves into the positions of power at top of these mandatory service programs.

Perhaps it’s just old-fashioned paranoia, but to my ears the phrase ”˜Everyone Serves’ has an ominous Orwellian tone to it. I can picture a line of grimacing teenagers piling into the doorway of a drab gray building under a banner reading ”˜Everyone Serves’ bordered by fearsome and majestic eagles on either side. Or perhaps, the phrase belongs on the top of a poster featuring stoic and physically fit youths holding arms and farm implements, standing shoulder to shoulder and staring off into their glorious future.

Thing is, even if you actually are being paranoid, you can bet you won’t be the only one to think that. Huge numbers of those exact same youth being piled into whatever bureaucratic buildings they are sent to will be thinking the same before, during, and after service. They will poison the service even if it isn’t worthy of paranoia. Such a program is also far too great of a honey pot for any two bit would be Orwellian character to not come along and make that paranoia justified after it’s been established. It could start with the best of intentions, but I think it a nation not facing overwhelmingly obvious existential necessity it’s doomed to fail 11 times out of 10. I mean just look at me as an example… product of more years in public education than in private, and I can’t even keep straight that you can’t have more than 10 units in a set of 10!

My question goes out to the critics namedropping Orwell. If civil service is one step away from some 1984ish nightmare, why do so many European countries have it and are hardly brutish dictatorships?

Again, I’m not saying civil service is the best idea for America, but it’s worth a good discussion because there are indeed many benefits of it.

As for Europe, I think them a poor example of anything socially. They exist in a glass bubble under our ever-present security umbrella. Remove that and let’s see what the real impact of such programs are.

For those of you who argue for “national service”, the question that must be asked is: is the purpose of such a thing to have an immediate means to defend the country against an enemy invasion? Or is it to simply foster fascistic social engineering schemes?

There is a ligitimate argument for the first. Societies cannot thrive unless the people who comprise such a society are willing to fight, and sometimes die, to protect it from an invader. People who build things have a vested interest in defending them. The question then becomes whether a centralized force under the control of the bureaucrats and politicians of Washington DC is the most effective means of accomplishing this.

The Swiss have a decentralized militia. Everyone serves and everyone is required to maintain firearms at home. The founders of the U.S. envisioned such a system. The national guard is an outgrowth of such a decentralized militia. In the case of the Swiss, it is based on Cantons. In the case of the U.S., it is based on states. Unfortunately, we have not maintained the lessons of the founders and have allows our federal government to become the huge monolith that it is today, rather than keeping it at bay as the Swiss have done.

The Swiss have not had to fight a war for 700 years. This alone tells you that their approach works.

Being the radical individualist that I am, I would actually go for a Swiss-type system. I would be willing to take 3 weeks out of my life every three years to undergo the training and refreshing necessary to learn military tactics and firearms.

The problem with implementing conscription in the U.S. is that it would not be for the purposes of defending the country against an invader. It is for the purposes of getting more bodies to support the interventionist foreign policy (that really dates back to the Spanish-American war). I refuse to have anything to do with this. I especially reject the notion that American kids should be forced to serve, in any capacity whatsoever, and to risk their lives “defending” foreign peoples and cultures that have nothing in common with ours.

The entire population of the rest of the world is not worth a single drop of American blood. Any politicians who think otherwise have no business being in our government.

Even the military itself says that conscription is not useful for improving fighting capabilities.

Most of the advocates of national service are aware of this. Their motivation is not to increase the defense capability of the U.S. Their agenda is simply social engineering. They believe that national service will somehow make people with different backgrounds, dreams and life goals feel some sort of “commonality” with each other.

This is horse-pucky. I feel “commonality” with other people on the basis of shared dreams and goals. If I am a transhumanist, naturally I will identify with other transhumanists. If I am a technology entrepreneur, engineer, or scientist, naturally I will identify with others who share these same interests. If I climb mountains or scuba dive, I will associate with other people who do these things as well.

These are examples of natural, organic ways that people interact with each other, on the basis of free will. What the social engineers want to do is to force people who have nothing in common with each other to associate and find some “commonality” with each other. This is the stuff that cames from bad social studies departments of lefty universities. Why any self-described conservative would buy into this clap-trap is completely incomprehensible.

I guess I was the one who name-dropped Orwell first, so I may owe some clarification. That post wasn’t directed at the idea of civil/military service programs in general, but specifically the ‘Everyone Serves’ motto the fellow several posts before me was advertising. Trying to channel some of my old logic courses, I would say that ‘Everyone Serves’ is the kind of slogan a totalitarian bureaucracy would use, but that a system which uses the phrase will not necessarily lead to a totalitarian bureaucracy.

I don’t believe that our European brothers are living in 1984-style totalitarian dictatorships (though I have heard quite a bit about Britain’s ubiquitous surveillance cameras), but I think that part of our American tradition is holding ourselves to a higher standard of liberty than the Europeans.

Twenty-seven replies (so far) and no one yet has mentioned money.

Where are the funds going to come from? I can think of several ways, all of which would annoy someone, from closing overseas bases to ending the mess in Iraq and Afghanistan to increasing taxes whether by a massive cut in corporate tax breaks or putting religious organizations on the tax roles.

European countries can have some kind of universal military because their militaries are small and designed for defense, not maintaining a large overseas empire, nor are they—Britain excepted—particularly interested in Iraq and Afghanistan. (See the recent flap in Germany about sending more German troops to Afghanistan.) This helps keep the cost universal service down.

So, if we have universal public service, how is it paid for it?

I see that most of you are ferociously opposed to the idea of “forced service”, but I am intrigued by the Swiss idea. What if this forced service was three weeks out of the year for training with an emphasis on learning basic civics, military training or national disaster relief training (with some mix of all three, or perhaps a choice.) Those who are philosophically opposed to military service could be called up in the event of another Hurricane Katrina disaster. This would be quite logical, especially considering that it is mostly the left leaning among the population that whines and moans about the federal response to disasters.
Would this idea be more palpable to any of you?

That said, I would be in favor of the idea in some form or another were it not for the aforementioned problems of funding and the apparent unpopularity of the idea.

As a broad based voluntary program a few weeks a year would be great. Sounds like a call to restructure and expand the national guard or some other civil service branch. But as a forced model it still fails. It will breed resentment, organized anti-social movements, and a high rate of anti-prohibition and anti-draft style refusal to submit or serve. You can think the purpose is high minded enough to warrant this kind of mild imposition, but that would be your own entirely unproven opinion as to what is good and mild. Expecting the entire nation to agree, as would be needed for this proposal to be implemented without widespread civil strife, is not based on the reality of how citizens in our system act.

Why exactly do we need an “everyone serves” program anyway? Wouldn’t a better goal be to maximize rates of proud, self-responsible, voluntary participation?

As I see it, the question comes back to one of first freedoms. What does it mean to have a free citizenry if they do not have the basic training to safeguard and secure their own lives for the use of that freedom? And what does it mean to be secure in person and possession if each individual citizen is not free to make their own decisions in their own lives, including whether to serve militarily or in civic programs? The truth of the matter is that one cannot be free without basic security and one cannot be secure without basic freedom.

Your proposal may be a clumsy attempt at addressing that very point, but it isn’t enough to base policy on how you think Americans should be. Take us as we are.

Instead of a mandatory service program that will surely intensify levels of civil strife as people (like me) get all adamant in resistance, how else could we expand and improve on voluntary civil service activities and training? If given the option of a 2 year intensive program with a week a year of follow up could it be promoted more intensively as a free/subsidized part of a high quality education? If combined with appropriate tax breaks and stipends could a flat 2-3 weeks a year program attract much larger numbers of participants? Would granting college credits to students who choose to sign up for a 6 month program be an effective option? What other ideas for a well marketed, civic pride boosting, appropriate compensation providing, all-voluntary program can we come up with?

Just a couple of quick points/questions.

How successful was the G.I. Bill?

My inner economist wants to point out, be careful what you subsidize.

Regards,
TDL