Zeal For Truth

In the CNN/YouTube Democratice Debate the other night, Hillary Clinton and Chris Dodd were doing their best to one-up each other on universalizing a service that America is one of the last countries to mandate. No, this is not yet another health care article. The service: labor.

I don’t mean to sound alarmist here, that work camps and total command of the labor market are around the corner. But the first steps were loudly applauded at the debate. It was fitting that the subject was brought up in a question about the military draft. Dodd started the contest:

I’m an advocate of universal nation service, not by mandating it, but one of the things I’m missing in our country is the shared experience… I want to see every American given the opportunity to serve their country in some way. I think we need to do more of that in the United States today. Elections ought to be more than just about a series of issues, but the shared experiences of service. It’s so important that every American have that opportunity. It’s something I strongly advocate and would advocate as president.

Dodd says he isn’t going to mandate it – just make it available – as if charities and various service organizations are desperate for more volunteers right now. No, the government clearly needs to spend a decent chunk of change to make a new “public service” program.

However, it will be mandated - 100 hours per person before they graduate high school. Again, not labor-camp material - but it is labor camp principle.

Clinton, not to be undone in collectivist rhetoric, let slip the fact that she would go the extra mile with such a plan:

I agree completely with Chris. We’ve got to look for more ways for universal national service. I’ve introduced legislation for a public service academy that would be patterned on great institutions like The Citadel and our military academies. Because we’ve got to get young people back into public service. And the other night we had a provision in our bill that we passed to have people who go into public service have their student loans deferred and even forgiven. We need to do more to support public service.

I bet most people didn’t know that this issue is already being legislated right now. I sure didn’t. I find it fascinating that no politician would support the draft (although they’ve never taken it off the books) yet several seem to still support the premise behind it – that government has a right to your labor, time and productive effort. That somehow, each individual owes it to their country to give these things without question – with the sole reason being platitudes about “shared experience” or sacrifice as a virtue.

Another crazy lady in her own way, Ayn Rand, while foaming at the mouth over things such as this, nailed the essence of this kind of program on the head:

No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man.

While obviously we aren’t talking about involuntary servitude in the terms that we usually think of it – the principle is still the same here. That the government may soon demand some portion of each citizen’s time without a realistic option to quit or defer. Remember, that this question was not asked but the candidates felt safe enough on the subject to volunteer this information. It received some of the loudest applause of the night when statements against a military draft (as opposed to a labor draft) were also applauded. In other words, Americans are still to naive about the principles this country was founded on to discern one form of involuntary servitude for another.