Beatings will continue until morale improves” has morphed from an old joke to the latest prescription for national salvation. “Compulsory National Service Could Unite America,” whooped a New York Times Op-ed headline last week. Prominent media outlets, think tanks, and too many professors and former generals are calling for government to commandeer a year of young Americans’ lives to forcibly restore their faith in the political system.
Rep. John Delaney made a one-year mandatory service requirement for every 18-year-old a keystone of his Democratic presidential campaign. Last year, the congressionally-created National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service recommended reserving “mandatory service as a last resort” to force Americans to serve as politicians demand. From the Aspen Institute to the Brookings Institution, from the Washington Post to Politico, national service is being whooped up as a silver bullet for all that ails America.
Congress last month created a new federal holiday, Juneteenth Day, spurred in part by focus on the horrors of slavery. But compulsory service advocates are rewriting the script for American history. Apparently, slavery was evil not because of the unjust subjugation but because plantation owners, not politicians, were the profiteers. If the federal government is the beneficiary of forced labor, any quibbles about the 13th Amendment’s prohibition of involuntary servitude are moot.
Compulsory national service is the deranged civics version of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). MMT theory presumes that politicians can fabricate and spend unlimited amounts of fiat money without profoundly damaging the economy. Similarly, compulsory national service proponents presume politicians can destroy a vast swath of freedom without harming America. Proponents tacitly assume that the time of young people is of zero value, so their scheme costs nothing. Since every 18-to-20 year old is squandering all their time playing video games and watching Pornhub, why not round them up? But where did politicians acquire the right to command young people to postpone building their own lives?
Compulsory national service would provide “attitude adjustment” for an entire generation. Many proponents stress that shackling young people is the best way to encourage them to be tolerant and appreciative of people of different backgrounds. Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin favors national service because “you get people from the city to the country, country to the city, you begin to create a new generation that has shared values.” Indoctrination would be a huge part of any such program but the media wouldn’t use that term because progressive values would be inculcated. The vast majority of young Americans spend 12 years in government schools but politicians want more control over their thoughts.
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https://www.aier.org/article/can-mass-subjugation-save-american-democracy/
