Any volunteers for national service? Barack Obama's national-service plan purports to be voluntary, yet nonparticipating schools would lose funding, and uncooperative individuals would be denied tax credits.(NATIONAL SERVICE)(Cover story)

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In 2007, Richard Stengel, former speechwriter for liberal senator/presidential candidate Bill Bradley and managing editor for Time magazine, wrote an article entitled "A Time to Serve," promoting "Universal National Service" for all Americans. Constitutionalists would find themselves irritated. Stengel book-ended his piece with quotes from the Founders and disingenuously implied that such national service would have been warmly received by the promoters of laissez faire who fought for our independence. Stengel wrote, "The courageous souls who signed the Declaration of Independence pledged 'our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.' The least we can do to keep the Republic is to pledge a little time." Stengel apparently missed the point that the Declaration of Independence was considered a treasonous act against the British Empire ruling the colonies at the time. Stengel's proposals sound more along the lines of what the loyalists of the day believed, not the patriotic individuals who revolted against a tyrannical government.

In his effort to promote universal national service, Stengel bemoaned

the fact that "today the two central acts of democratic citizenship are voting and paying taxes. That's basically it. The last time we demanded anything else from people was when the draft ended in 1973." According to Stengel, that's apparently a bad thing. While he tiptoes around the use of the word "draft," his article is filled with adulation for the notion that Americans owe more to the government than what has been asked since the end of the mandatory draft. Stengel feels that it is for this reason that today's communities have grown disjointed, and the way to unify the people is through "universal national service" to government. "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." (Emphasis added.)

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Stengel's plan involves a huge growth of government, including making a new cabinet-level department to manage national service and drastically expanding AmeriCorps and the National Senior Volunteer Corps. Stengel also proposes creating new "corps" with distinct "brands" for education (to work in troubled school districts), healthcare (which would mostly assist people in obtaining welfare benefits), a "Green Corps" (to somehow combat "climate change" and most likely stifle any contrary debate on the subject), a "Rap id-Response Reserve Corps" (for call-up in times of national emergencies), and a "National-Service Academy" ("to provide a focused education for people who will serve in the public sector--either the federal, state or local government"--in order to create a new generation of bureaucrats).

Establishment Consensus