At Uncle Sam's service: national service is often associated with patriotism, but the degree to which it becomes compulsory is the same degree to which it becomes involuntary servitude.(NATIONAL SERVICE)(Cover story)

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Proponents of universal national service claim that it will bring this nation together and teach younger generations about what it means to be an American. Sadly, many Americans seem to believe those claims. Even with information that the program will be virtually mandatory and might lead to a new version of the draft, some Americans might shrug their shoulders and say "so what?" Well, there is much more wrong with national service than is immediately apparent.

Nineteenth-century French economist and statesman Frederic Bastiat famously wrote in his essay "What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen" that "a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them." What other effects could there be to this universal national service?

Another Big-government Program

National service is just another costly and wasteful big-government program. Like most federal government programs, it will be top-heavy, slow-reacting, expensive, ineffective, and administered from D.C. To get a good idea of what these new "corps" will be doing, one only has to review what AmeriCorps has been up to since its inception. Author James Bovard has documented the almost comical "volunteerism" that AmeriCorps has produced:

 
   In most areas of AmeriCorps activity, 
   its effect is negligible--at best: 
   ... An AmeriCorps member helped 
   organize a "Pink Prom," the first gay 
   youth dance in Snohomish County, 
   Washington. AmeriCorps members 
   in Worcester, Massachusetts, 
   presented lessons in half a dozen 
   schools about "Super Bowl Surge" 
   --the problems that occur when 
   millions of people watching the big 
   game use the bathroom during halftime.... 
   Puppet shows are a favorite 
   activity for AmeriCorps members. 
   In Springfield, Illinois, AmeriCorps 
   members presented a puppet show 
   to edify three-year-olds at the Little 
   Angels Child Care Center by alerting 
   them to the benefits of smoke 
   detectors. 

Bovard also explains that AmeriCorps is grossly mismanaged and has yet to produce any serious, tangible results.