By: Joanne Williams

Joanne Williams — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 05:29:52 +0000

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.

Comments on: Barak Obama’s National Slavery Plan

By: Joanne Williams