Community Service Bill Marginalizes Organized Religion

Axis of Right ^ | 3/26/2009 | Sal

[SalAOR]

The House of Representatives passed the Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act (GIVE), creating a mandate for community service among high school and college students. The bill spends $6 billion on beefing up government-paid and sponsored national service programs, and paves the way for future mandatory service by establishing a commission to explore the feasibility of such a plan. The stated goal of the Obama Administration is to require service programs in secondary schools, as well as for a period of three months to a year of service before, during, or after one’s college education.

Leaving aside the already heavily talked about socialist civilian army comparisons, expanding government’s role in the business of community service is a bad idea for several reasons. First, it places a mandate on what should be a “volunteer” activity. Community service is a wonderful thing, but it is and should be the result of volunteering or goodwill on the part of participants. Second, coordination of such efforts are best applied at the local level. The Federal Government has not demonstrated an ability to run anything efficiently, and a national mandatory community service program for ALL young people has the potential to grow into an enormous bureaucracy that can never be effectively managed. Finally, and probably most ominously, the service mandate would do severe harm to organized religion and move our nation to a more secular society.

[SumProVita]

Contact your reps in Congress about this.

[silverleaf]

mandatory volunteerism is always good for the soul
America’s very own “Great Leap Forward”

Look how well it worked in nazi germany, post war North Korea, Cuba, Mao’s China and communist Russia

[Liberty1970]

This makes sense. Raising taxes starves dissenting (from the State Religion) faiths of free-will offerings. Forcing the children to then serve the agenda of the State further removes them from opportunities for faith involvement and indoctrinates them to pursue goals and agendas that are unconnected or hostile to other faiths. This is an insidious attempt to centralize the power of the secular humanist state religion.

Hopefully, it would have the effect of giving another dramatic impetus to homeschooling efforts. Get the children out!!