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View Full Version : WaPo writer Gerson: National slavery will heal the nation.




Anti Federalist
06-25-2013, 07:38 PM
Yah, nothing a little indentured servitude to the Evil Empire can't fix.



National service can heal a divided nation

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-gerson-national-service-can-heal-a-divided-nation/2013/06/24/e1bbc470-dce4-11e2-9218-bc2ac7cd44e2_story.html

By Michael Gerson

These are tough times for the nation, by which I mean the idea of the nation, the concept of things national.

Some conservatives are in full Jefferson-Jackson mode, resisting national education standards as if they were the National Bank and criticizing the National Security Agency as though it were enforcing the Alien and Sedition Acts. All that is national is seen as federal, and all that is federal is seen as Obama, and all that is Obama is seen as arbitrary and threatening.

It is not an auspicious time to begin a dialogue on national service. Which demonstrates why it is needed.

The impetus for this discussion has come from the military. During an event at the Aspen Institute’s Ideas Festival last year, Gen. Stanley McChrystal offhandedly endorsed universal national service for young people graduating from high school or college, fulfilled in either a military or civilian setting. His particular concern was the growing disconnect between the less than 1 percent of Americans who serve in the armed forces and the rest of the country. The result is not only an unequal distribution of burdens but also the unequal development of citizens. “Once you have contributed to something,” McChrystal said, “you have a slightly different view of it.”

This mention has matured into a proposal, endorsed by a list of luminaries including former secretaries of state Condi Rice and Madeleine Albright and former defense secretary Robert Gates. Instead of giving 18-year-old males a meaningless (to them) Selective Service number, why not also give all 18-year-old men and women information on the five branches of the armed forces, along with the option of serving a year or more in a civilian service program? National service, while not legally mandatory, would be socially expected.

The service movement has always had an element of nostalgia for the shared, unifying burdens of World War II, the United States’ epic of citizenship. In his slim, weighty volume, “Gratitude,” William F. Buckley recalled how his war experience has been a reminder of the “pulsation of consanguinity” that united the “Laramie cowboy” and the “Litterateur in Greenwich Village.” National service, he argued, can “ever so slightly elevate us from the trough of self-concern and self-devotion.”

This nostalgia is rooted in a deeper insight about self-government. Alexis de Tocqueville warned that a rights-based democracy has a natural tendency toward individualism — “a calm and considered feeling which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends; with this little society formed to his taste, he gladly leaves the greater society to look after itself.” The natural centrifugal forces of democracy have been augmented by geographical mobility and technologies that allow for the complete customization of little societies.

How then does a democracy cultivate civic responsibility and shared identity? Taxation allows us to fund common purposes, but it does not provide common experiences. A rite of passage in which young people — rich and poor, liberal and conservative, of every racial background — work side by side to address public problems would create, at least, a vivid, lifelong memory of shared national purpose.

The opposition of some conservatives to national service is predictable. Buckley faced critics who dismissed his proposal as “induced gratitude.” To which he responded that all gratitude is induced, or at least taught, given the “disposition of modern man to take for granted everything he enjoys.” Conservatives, on the contrary, should be attracted to the devolution of responsibilities beyond government entirely, to citizens themselves. It was, after all, Gov. Ronald Reagan who founded the California Conservation Corps, which trained and inspired young people under the motto: “Hard work, low pay, miserable conditions.”

This is a strange moment in the conservative movement. Following a period of governmental overreach, a Jefferson-Jackson corrective is predictable and necessary. But a tone of anger and paranoia is discrediting. Future generations will struggle to explain the conservative elements that praised Edward Snowden, apparently granted on the theory that the enemy of my government is my friend.

(It is not "overreach", you fucking asshole. It is fascism and tyranny. - AF)

The conservative instinct — and America’s shared republican tradition — heads in a different direction, toward gratitude for our patrimony and affection for our traditions and institutions, expressed in service to the country and to one another. We honor and cultivate such responsible citizenship because it makes our country, in Buckley’s words, “safer, lovelier, and more precious.” And because it strengthens something valuable and unavoidably national: our national character.

(And nothing says that better than incinerating foreign beggars 10,000 miles away by drone strike. - AF)

Origanalist
06-25-2013, 07:40 PM
I was just reading this and decided it was so frigging awful I decided not to post it lol.

Origanalist
06-25-2013, 07:43 PM
Here's a nice little rebuttal at TAC;

Conservatives and National Service


By Daniel Larison • June 24, 2013, 11:30 PM










.

Michael Gerson lauds the idea of national service:


The conservative instinct — and America’s shared republican tradition — heads in a different direction, toward gratitude for our patrimony and affection for our traditions and institutions, expressed in service to the country and to one another.

As he tends to do, Gerson takes admirable ideals and makes a mockery of them. Conservatives should feel gratitude for our inherited traditions and institutions, and conservatives should want to contribute to the common good, but that doesn’t mean that they should want or support national service organized by the federal government. A person forced by law or social convention to do such service isn’t going to feel gratitude or affection. It is more likely that he will be made to resent the authority or the convention that so compels him. National service isn’t a “devolution of responsibilities.” It is an unwelcome redefinition of what a “responsible” citizen is expected to do.

Of course, there is nothing stopping anyone interested in this sort of work from doing it. What worries Gerson is that Americans are becoming too concerned with their “little societies” and lack sufficient enthusiasm for things on a national scale, but it is very difficult to see how this is something that needs to be remedied at all. Conservatives should reject the idea because they value those “little societies.” National service is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/conservatives-and-national-service/

A Son of Liberty
06-25-2013, 07:44 PM
I see. The 12 years of indoctrination just weren't quite enough to instill that ol' civic pride, eh?

I know I feel better already.

Anti Federalist
06-25-2013, 07:48 PM
I was just reading this and decided it was so frigging awful I decided not to post it lol.

From the comments:


barandsail wrote:

6:24 AM CDT

I've been advocating this for quite awhile.

The great merit is bringing together those from all walks of life, giving them insight that our commonalities outweigh our differences. There would have to be .....

A) A viable non-military option

B) No Exceptions. Period.

Because, you know, nothing says "Freedom" like slavery.

A Son of Liberty
06-25-2013, 07:50 PM
From the comments:



Because, you know, nothing says "Freedom" like slavery.

And we could all wear nice uniforms together, and sing songs, and we could march around in formation! How fun! Just like the good ol' days... you know, back in the '30's and '40's... What was the name of that little fellow, with the funny mustache?

heavenlyboy34
06-25-2013, 07:55 PM
From the comments:



Because, you know, nothing says "Freedom" like slavery.
It's Service! It can't possibly be slavery, mundane! Besides, it's in your Social Contract, don'tcha know?

VoluntaryAmerican
06-25-2013, 08:02 PM
I don't even have words.

Origanalist
06-25-2013, 08:05 PM
From the comments:



Because, you know, nothing says "Freedom" like slavery.

Your patriotism will be noted on your record comrade! You have a future in the Party, I can tell you that.

Anti Federalist
06-25-2013, 08:07 PM
And we could all wear nice uniforms together, and sing songs, and we could march around in formation! How fun! Just like the good ol' days... you know, back in the '30's and '40's... What was the name of that little fellow, with the funny mustache?

Yay!

Sounds like fun.

What could go wrong?

http://www.gordonstate.edu/pt_faculty/jmallory/index_files/image1954.jpg

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/images/Hitler%20youth%20on%20parade.jpg

http://history.cultural-china.com/chinaWH/upload/upfiles/2010-02/12/history_of_the_communist_party_of_china81582eb3aef 7e7f8379f.jpg

Cutlerzzz
06-25-2013, 08:07 PM
And we could all wear nice uniforms together, and sing songs, and we could march around in formation! How fun! Just like the good ol' days... you know, back in the '30's and '40's... What was the name of that little fellow, with the funny mustache?

Adolf Hitler.

No wait, that doesn't sound right.

Charlie Chaplin was who you were thinking off.

VoluntaryAmerican
06-25-2013, 08:08 PM
I don't even have words.

I found them; Fucking Fascists.

Origanalist
06-25-2013, 08:10 PM
I found them; Fucking Fascists.

Fast recovery, + rep. :)

bunklocoempire
06-25-2013, 08:10 PM
Yeah, okay, sign my life (and everyone else's) over to a "national" entity that has already accumulated $17 trillion + debt. I'm sure my indentured servitude will be treated with the utmost respect.

If it was $18 trillion I might be worried.

How about the ones proven NOT to be careless with resources play the slave owner part? If the "solution" demands "service" that would make a hell of a lot more sense.

Origanalist
06-25-2013, 08:18 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ev122QWO1tQ

BAllen
06-25-2013, 08:49 PM
Yay!

Sounds like fun.

What could go wrong?

http://www.gordonstate.edu/pt_faculty/jmallory/index_files/image1954.jpg

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/images/Hitler%20youth%20on%20parade.jpg

http://history.cultural-china.com/chinaWH/upload/upfiles/2010-02/12/history_of_the_communist_party_of_china81582eb3aef 7e7f8379f.jpg

I was going to post some communist army pics.......you beat me to it.
The mundanes are totally clueless to make the obvious conclusion you just posted. As that Russian defector said, they truly are 'useful idiots'.