How successful was the G.I. Bill?

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

Regards,
TDL

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?

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.

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?

Regards,
TDL

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.

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.

Well, not all of them. The Puritanical tradition, with its emphasis on universal militias and strong social controls on the young, is quite compatible with the concept of forced service. It’s not that far from the old apprenticeship system.

Personally, coming from the midland Quaker tradition, and descended in part from a proto-Quaker ancestor who fled the Bay Colony with an outstanding warrant against him, I don’t fancy the notion of the deliberate and universal re-imposition of indentured servitude.

And Chirol, many European social democracies indulge in national service impressment because they’re European social democracies. True libertarianism is in rather short supply on the European mainland, and it always has been. At least one of my German ancestors came over here to avoid things like the Prussian draft.

Like I said before, even if the paranoid view (that envisions Orwellian conspiracy behind it) isn’t what’s actually going on, how many of those forced into such a program will hold that exact conspiratorial belief? What impact will it have on the program and on the nation for millions of youth to be forced through what they see as yet another Orwellian nightmare? How many other Americans will see it the same way? How many Michael Moores will this feed?And if you have a program where millions of youth are forced into “service” won’t it be a massive temptation for those all too un-rare highly ambitious members of the political class who do happen to harbor Orwellian inclinations to abuse even the best of intentions once mandatory service is put in place? Why take that risk?

As for the benefits, I think they are pure speculation. You are best-casing the scenarios. I think Kaplan is a good person to remember when discussing best-case vs. worst-case scenario planning.

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.

Do state lines remain a good indication? Or do you foresee a fracturing due to collapse followed by a struggle between cities? I myself see it coming, but where the lines are is hard to tell. Surely Utah would be one, California would try but is probably three nations within it, would it be able to survive as an empire within an empire? Texas would maintain unity, but I seriously doubt it would be even remotely loyal to the president, being as I’m from there and often return and gather info. Florida is doomed anyway. The old south seems to be solid enough, if not for the race wars that the hatemongers are so eager to start, then again there are many who would battle them, at least if the lights were still on, I remember quite clearly the post here about Atlanta and its fracturing and fort building. How likely is war between the states, and whose interests are in what? After all we all expect a multi polar environment, so it is fruitless to imagine it as red v blue. State governors are still very much entitled to militias, and the more I think about it the more likely it seems to me that Texas and California are well on their way to that given the arrival of systems disruption in this hemisphere. New Mexico is an Indian territory through and through, and Arizona is screwed for lack of water. We’ve got 50 states folks, and that kind of environment plays very well to power politics on a scale that the past two world wars couldn’t hope for.

As for cities, what size historically has been achieved? 300,000? As it is lots of the midwest has just one city, making it more akin to a city-state than anything else. Ramblings to be sure, but I am seeking thoughts.

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!

Okay, now I really am starting to sound paranoid. But, the point remains.

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.

We’re trying to encourage the next president and congress to start a mandatory service program. Sign the Everyone Serves petition if you agree.

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.

We as a generation couldn’t care less about how long till oil runs out, be it 10 days to 30 years (which seems to be an appropriate range given the new attacks on mexican oil). What is a harsh reality to us is that 30 years is our lifetime, and as a finite resource, we have no illusions about how we can make it last; yet now, we are not running around putting up solar power, and wind turbines, and tidal generators, we are engaging in a war that has cost us billions that nets us little energy in the grand scheme of things. If we had thrown that into energy independence, well it’d be a different place now wouldn’t it.

This on top of that climate change. I may not have as many years as the rest of you, but when discussing it with my peers, all across the country as I am prone to traveling and internet discussions, we all unanimously agree that there are fluctuations occurring that simply were not how it used to be. Everyone my age, including those supposedly on the right, I’ve ever met agrees about climate change, and yet evidence is being covered up and withheld by the administration to keep the sheeple in check. If we had this information perhaps we could prepare solutions, but alas no.

Few if any real solutions are being offered by our political leaders, and none of the activities they are partaking in will help us at all. Even the most simple of scenarios, like a 1 meter rise in sea level, immediately creates a depressing world, a world which most of my peers refuse to think about due to their perceptions of an inability to react. This does not mean they do not acknowledge it as the future, they just seek not to dwell on it because if they do they end up like myself: constantly worried about processing the little bits of data that slip out, at least until I realized that and got it under some control. If the sea levels rise one meter then half of new jersey will be flooded and unusable, this of course will create an interesting refugee problem. That is just one of many things. But what can be done? go build another wall like the one supposed to keep the mexicans in check? not likely, nor is it likely to do anything if we did.

Instead of choice I would advocate a program where you have two years civic and two years military training. Both of these times should be spent learning massive amount of skills, including language, construction, farming, animal husbandry, computers, just to name a few. Also, while inside the programs you would have to continue your education. This would effectively make the whole population achieve at least an associates level of education, making them less likely (hopefully) to control via mass media, and way more capable of dealing with the future, which is bleak to us indeed.

However, this is not likely to happen, and at most what we can expect is an industrial draft meant to control global power, not seek active solutions. However the results of such a narrow minded action will be a skilled military generation who is quite unhappy with the old people. All I’m saying is don’t except that my generation will feel gratitude towards the previous generations, considering these problems all became apparent in the 70’s, and you had 30-40 years where all you did was pretend they weren’t there.