Here is a column I agree with that will get me an argument.
Mandating 'volunteer' work amounts to moral fraud
By Steven Martinovich
freelance writer in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.
Given the acrimony and narrow focus on only a few issues during this year's presidential election, it won't be much of a surprise to most that the platforms of George W. Bush and John Kerry have received little in-depth analysis. Buried in each candidate's platforms are a number of promises that would infringe upon the civil liberties of Americans.
One such proposal is a Kerry pledge that each high school student must perform community service as a requirement of graduation. "This service will be a rite of passage for our nation's youth and will help foster a lifetime of service," states Kerry's Web site.
Along with this effort, Kerry also proposes an ostensibly voluntary "Summer of Service" program for 13- to 17-year-olds, essentially a glorified baby-sitting service for parents in which teens receive a $500 grant toward their future college or vocational studies in return for community service during their summer break.
Some scholars like Robert Litan of the Brookings Institution argue that compulsory service for all American youth would act as an equalizing force, much in the same way that military service has done in the past. Litan points out that compulsory service merely follows on the recent trend in which some school districts force high school students to perform volunteer work before they are allowed to graduate.
"Compulsory service brings together people from all walks of life during crucial formative years and puts them in a common environment, where they have no choice but to get along with each other," Litan wrote in 2002 in the Brookings Review. "It also helps instill a sense of obligation to the larger society."
Although the idea of mandatory service might seem attractive, there is one good reason for Americans to oppose the concept: freedom. Proponents of mandatory service believe that living in a free society, such as the United States, means that you have an obligation to do it.
That assumes, however, that rights aren't inherent but granted by the state. Mandatory volunteerism assumes that a person's life essentially belongs to the state, and the state may claim it in order to advance an arbitrary agenda.
Mandatory service turns the natural order of America's freedoms upside down. Instead of protecting the right of the individual to live their life the way he sees fit, the government instead imposes its beliefs on that individual and negates his rights. The government's primary justifiable rationale for existence is to protect our rights.
Forcing youth to serve in America's blighted areas is no better a rationale for compulsory service. Forcing youth to toil for the economic betterment of others when youth traditionally begin to firm their self-esteem, ambitions and their minds is nothing but mindless altruism. Instead of sacrifice for a cause, it is sacrifice for sacrifice's sake.
The ultimate goal of proponents of mandatory service, as Litan pointed out in his essay, is to address the moral fiber of today's youth. He and people like him believe that compulsory service would instill morality, but morality - by its very nature - is a voluntary code of conduct. Forced community service is not voluntary, it the imposition of the involuntary.
The utmost that force can do is to create an absurd counterfeit of morality, one not based on knowledge and rational judgment but on mere brute fear and obedience, and even that fraudulent morality can last no longer than the force that imposed it.
If participants place the slightest value on their own lives and freedom - i.e., if they have the slightest beginnings of genuine morality - then mandatory volunteerism will not even produce that sorry fraud. Instead, it will provoke even more malaise.
Copyright 2004 The Orange County Register |
