Obama’s Call to Service

Filed under: General News — Claudia, Assistant Editor on July 3, 2008 @ 12:23 am CEST

Obama gave a speech in Colorado Springs today stressing the theme of national service.

He renewed a call frequent in his campaign; that serving the country is not something to be done by a few but by everyone, and a call for everyone to serve within their capacity. Service would be accomplished through the military, but also through the PeaceCorp and AmeriCorps or other forms of volunteerism.

You can watch the speech below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df2p6867_pw

The whole concept of national service appeals to me greatly. It only started doing so when I started living in Europe. Here, sometimes it seems like patriotism is a dirty word, and I’ve come to believe that a national service can serve to create cohesiveness, a sense of shared destiny, with other people in your country.

The real value of national service is not only the good you can do through your service, nor is it the contact with people you may otherwise never meet (though both are valuable) but the value of a shared experience. Service makes you part of a group, and in the case of national service, it makes you part of a NATIONAL group. It also gives you a stake in the wellbeing of your nation. When you’ve stepped up to try to make things better, it’s harder to feel indifferent when you see the country YOU worked to better suffering.

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1 Kevin H

July 3, 2008 @ 1:27 am CEST

I would actually favor a draft if you got to pick between Military/Peacecorp/Americorp, so I’m quite happy that Obama shares some of my views here.

Although for me I think the most powerful thing is to make you work with and for people that you might never otherwise contact. If everyone suddenly had a co-worker or friend who was black, gay, muslim, etc I think people across the land would be a lot more reasonable.

2 Tully

July 3, 2008 @ 1:49 am CEST

There is constitutional justification for a military draft.

There is NO constitutional authorization for a civilian "national service" draft. Indeed, there is a constitutional ban on slavery and involuntary servitude. It can be found in the 13th Amendment.

The potential for coercive "re-education" in such a scheme is obvious in the original post.

3 RRRocks

July 3, 2008 @ 3:19 am CEST

This is some scary stuff here.

Im telling you this Obama dude is the Ultimate Nanny Stater. He is going over the edge on this one.

Mandatory community service? Hell thats what they give you when you go to court for misdemeanors.

Mandatory community service. College grants based upon community service. Trying to pull Chruch organizations under the umbrella of the federal government.

Scary. This man is scary.

4 RRRocks

July 3, 2008 @ 3:38 am CEST

Expand to Meet Military Needs on the Ground: A major stress on our troops comes from insufficient ground
forces. Barack Obama supports plans to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 troops and the Marines by
27,000 troops. Increasing our end strength will help units retrain and re-equip properly between deployments
and decrease the strain on military families.

This is from the same pdf file that lays out the above proposals. Sounds good till you think about it for a minute.

Why does he want to increase the military when in fact he is going to pull them out of Iraq and bring them home? Notice his position says that BETWEEN DEPLOYMENTS.

What deployments? Hes bringing the troops home. Isn’t he? Why would he want to do that? Perhaps as a moderate he has no intentions of pulling out of Iraq like he has promised. I don’t know. I’m just saying.

5 Claudia, Assistant Editor

July 3, 2008 @ 9:29 am CEST

RRRocks, please show where Obama said it would be mandatory. Take your time and show me the link, the actual place where he said the word "draft" or "mandatory"? You won’t find it because it’s not there, it’s only in your mind.

In any event, "mandatory education" already exists, it’s called public school.

6 Connor

July 3, 2008 @ 2:44 pm CEST

I sure wouldn’t mind seeing a military draft return, IMHO it’d be the the best form of service. But whatever Obama ends up doing I’m glad he’s at least discussing national service.

The shared experience is good, but I think one of the most valuable things is to get away from our excessive focus on self and individualism and submerge your identity within the group and the group’s goals. Nothing teaches the value of sacrifice like putting aside your choices and goals and instead focusing your energies on achieving group goals by playing a specific role.

That may sound vague, it’s one of those things you really have to experience to understand.

7 Tully

July 3, 2008 @ 5:54 pm CEST

I’ll repeat: The potential for coercive "re-education" in such a scheme is obvious in the original post.

There is absolutely nothing preventing anyone from doing community service now. I’ve been doing it for my entire adult lifetime, without any government bribes to motivate me. I’ve both created and run community volunteer organizations, large and small. I don’t need or want government to spend my tax dollars to impose any herd mentality thinking, thank you. The abuse potential inherent in government-funded community "values" evangelism is frightening.

For example, Obama’s call for an "Energy Corp" to green up communities through moral suasion should give one serious pause, and his call for "a civilian national security force that just as strong, just as powerful, just as well-funded" as the U.S. military should scare the holy bejeebers out of you.

While I’m sure it’s not what Connor intended, please read what he said and think about it: "I think one of the most valuable things is to get away from our excessive focus on self and individualism and submerge your identity within the group and the group’s goals."

Remember that those goals will be subject to the current leadership’s control and manipulation at any given time. That such schemes require the taxpayers to fund political activism they don’t agree with. That such organizations can AND WILL be used to influence public political opinion, BY DESIGN.