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DesideriScuri -> RE: A National Service Obligation? (6/1/2013 4:08:20 AM)
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ORIGINAL: TheHeretic
So what might a system of universal national service look like?
It would be an obligation that every American, before reaching an age to be determined (24 maybe? 26?), needs to either join one of the service corps for a specified period, participate in a qualifying form of alternative service (the IRS will NOT be creating those criteria), or receive a waiver due to physical, mental, or moral deficiency. As mentioned in my reply to Aswad, nobody is going to jail for refusing to do it, but they'll be dealing with unpleasant civil and social penalties that will follow them around for life, unless they get it squared.
Might not be jail, per se, but, is the punishment really fitting the crime?
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The key to all of it, maybe most critically the key to making such a thing palatable to a free people, is personal choice in how the obligation is met. The obligation is also met in terms of points, rather than a specific time frame.
At the center of the whole thing are the service corps - nationally established organizations of sworn servicemembers, trained, equipped, and assigned, according to the needs of the service, and by extension, the nation. They enlist. They take an oath. They go through a basic training deployment, and appropriate secondary training. They are subject to an appropriate version of the UCMJ and military discipline. If they are in an active duty role, they get pay and allowances, and less for less.
Beyond the armed forces (where we keep all the benefits of a volunteer military, and put better forces in the field by having a far larger pool to select from, and acquire a massively deep bench of reserve and inactive reserve forces) we could also create a non-military disaster relief corps that could provide anything from dedicated humanitarian emergency first responders, to local reservists to fill and stack sandbags when the river starts rising.
There could be a community service corps, doing all those things the toughy-feely liberals are so naive about.
What's interesting is that there was a requirement by the Catholic church I was attending at the time, for those who were going through the Confirmation process, to do some sort of volunteer work of their choosing. I don't know what anyone else did. I didn't particularly care. I chose to help an elderly lady in the neighborhood with her lawn care needs. After my service requirement was satisfied, I finished out that summer. And the next. Would have gone on to the next summer too, had she not had a grandson take over. I do admit to accepting some "payment" some of those days, though. She made some of the best lemonade...
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Bigger than all of those though, could be the public worker corps, where every low skill job done by any level of government could be staffed by an enlistee, rather than a public employee. Landscapers, pothole fillers, DMV photographers, jailers, dogcatchers, free clinic receptionists, welfare clerks, 911 dispatchers, right on up through professional positions for those who have deferred enlistment until after after finishing school.
The public Unions won't allow that.
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Just not gonna raise your right hand for anybody? Ok. Get accepted into a program through an NGO or private charity that will let you tick off the box.
What we get, 20 - 40 - 60 years on, is a country where everyone has served somehow, where everyone has skin in the game of our society, where we have all contributed to what our country becomes. I think that would be a better place.
Oh. There is also the leave the country option. No worries. Nobody is going to hunt you down. Just don't come back.
As good as the idea is that we all take part in some form of service to the country, even if it be limited to a local offering, you are still making it a de facto requirement. Now, if it were something where college gets paid for by your putting in X years of work for the gub'mint in a position that is in your field of study, with the number of years proportional to the amount of loan forgiveness (ie. a 4-year Harvard education wouldn't be forgiven in the same time frame as a 4 year education from Po Dunk Univeristy), that would be something entirely different.
People could still choose to not provide service, but they wouldn't get the benefit of loan forgiveness. I am a bit hesitant though, depending on what unintended consequences this program could bring (ie. college costs soar because people don't care since it's going to get forgiven by a few years of service).
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