posted by Kyle on Jul 9
Yes, I said the S word. Slavery! It brings to mind horrors of the past, when this ugly practice destroyed lives and dehumanized millions. I want to bring that to mind, because it is important that we associate the philosophical underpinnings of slavery with their vivid and horrifying results.
What, you ask, are the philosophical underpinnings of slavery?
It is the idea that man exists not for himself, but for the sake of others, and that his very existence requires the sanction of others. If you hold that man has rights, and those rights are the very essence of his being, you automatically reject slavery. If you reject the notion of man’s rights, you accept the notion that the strongest may enslave the weakest, and that the biggest gang may do as it pleases with the rest of humanity.
Barak Obama’s National Service Plan is a fundamental rejection of man’s natural rights. He would have every high school student perform fifty hours of mandatory community service per academic year, and require 100 hours of mandatory community service each year for college students.
Quite honestly, under those circumstances, I may not have even graduated high school, let alone college. I strongly object to being told when to be charitable. I have rights, and the government is there to protect them, not to force me into servitude. The philosophical underpinnings of this proposal are the same as those of slave-traders: The mighty (in this case a gang known as the Democratic Party) may subject the helpless to their whims.
You might think that it would be a very nice thing for high school and college students to “serve” others. If so, I recommend that you go back to college, take some philosophy courses, and “serve others” yourself. Be generous with your own time, not with mine!
I’ll close with a quote from Ayn Rand:
It only stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.
Barack: I am not your slave, and neither is anyone else. That dark era of our nations past is over. You speak of hope–and it is becoming clear that your hope is to take America down a dangerous course of collectivism that can only lead to abject misery for all.
To my readers: remember the consequences of ideas. It is ideas that drive human action. The same ideas usually get the same results. Let’s not revert back to the idea of slave and master. That idea will bring us nothing but misery.
July 11th, 2008 at 5:29 am
While I absolutely agree with Kyle about the philosophical dangers inherent in Barak’s idea to mandate community service, I would also like to point out a major practice problem that will arise as soon as Barak tries to begin to mandate that we “serve our communities.” Namely, that we will have to, as a nation, agree on what activities should count as community service for the purpose of fulfilling each young American’s mandated quoted. Obviously, most people will say that working in soup kitchens and animal shelters should count, but what about greyer areas? If a church group stands on a corner and hands out Bibles to help people become more moral, should that count as community service? What about volunteering in an abortion clinic? Should the Jehovah Witness, who woke me up one morning and made me lose sleep just to give me a brochure about their god that I didn’t want, get community service credit for this act? The truth is, much community service done in America today is done to propagate or spread a religion by providing services in the name of that religion. How much of this proselytizing will be considered as being in the service of the community? An even grayer area would be helping with a fundraiser for, say, the Catholic Church. Some of the money raised will go to feeding starving children, but some of the money will go spreading Catholicism. Since the act is part charity and part proselytization, should it count for government mandated community service?
We cannot all agree on what is truly in our community’s best interest. If we could, we probably wouldn’t have two main political parties, numerous minor political parties and countless religions alive and thriving in America. To give a broad mandate that youths must “serve their community” requires making many value judgments about community service that will, by their very nature, require whichever official makes them to break the separation of church and state. Barak is opening a Pandora’s Box of lawsuits as different groups battle over the unpaid servitude of the millions of youth’s required to perform free service for whoever can get government recognition as a “community service.”
Kyle is right about the philosophical dangers of community service, but even if you don’t believe him, or don’t believe in the ideal of liberty and freedom of choice that our country was founded on, as least stop and think for a second about if the idea of legislating that youths perform something as subjective as “community service” is even possible in such a multicultural country. And if nothing else, consider the cost to the government, and you the tax payers, of all those lawsuits and all the bureaucracy that it will take to run a program large enough to control every high school and college student in America.