I must admit, I was a little bit “wrongheaded” disagreeing with Robin’s point of view this morning. While I do agree that an all-volunteer armed service is the optimal solution, the statistics just do not support it. And I am (somewhat) in favor of a draft. It would not do any of our children, or our children’s children, any harm to have mandatory Armed Forces service. It might point some of these aimless, drifting people in a good direction.
That being said, I do not agree with what little I’ve read about Obama’s Universal Service. I do not think anyone should be forced to do “community service”. Yes, we should help others less fortunate. But we should be able to follow our conscience, not be told we MUST help the disenfranchised, the illiterate, the desperate poor. The Peace Corps, the Job Corps, etc, are all good programs, but should remain volunteer programs.
Of course, I don’t know why people are causing a furor about it now. It looks to me like it was something Obama spoke about prior to his election and nothing much has been said since. If you google it, all you find are some articles written in 2008 after he made a speech in Colorado. I haven’t found one current article about it. Personally, I think Obama is too busy trying to push through all the other spending programs, i.e. socialized, oops, Universal Health Care, bailing out fat cat insurance/banking/automotive companies and so on, to worry about a Universal Service program. This may pop up again in the future, but for now, there’s bound to be other things about which to worry.
Let’s spend our time worrying about reforming our current political system. A democracy is a good idea, but truly, we need to limit the time a person can serve in Washington (or Columbus, Lansing, Albany, you get my drift). Once we start limiting terms, then we will probably be able to get representatives who truly are for the people, by the people.
That’s just my opinion.
