Oh Good. Illegals with automatic weapons and the right to use them on us whenever Janet Napolitano cooks up an "emergency".
With an Army like that, why worry about China?
The Denver Post | May 15, 2009 | Mike Rosen
FR Posted 06/17/2009 by 2ndDivisionVet
At a campaign rally in Colorado Springs July 2008, former community organizer, Barack Obama, grandly told an enraptured audience: "We've got to have a civilian national security force that is just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded" as the U.S. military. Now, understand, he wasn't talking about a "security" force in the sense of an armed militia. He was talking about a network of social service workers.
When I first heard that, I wrote it off as a politician's extravagant, feel-good campaign rhetoric. After all, the Department of Defense includes about 3 million men and women — active duty, reserves and civilians — and will spend an estimated $675 billion in 2009.
The first step was the passage of HR 1388, "The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act," originally titled the GIVE (Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education) Act before the Senate renamed it as a tribute to the "Lion of Liberalism." It triples AmeriCorps from 75,000 to 250,000.
The second step is HR 1444, not yet passed, which would establish a Congressional Commission on Civic Service. The commission would "address and analyze" the effects on the nation and on those who serve "if all individuals in the United States ... were required to perform a certain amount of national service" and "whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all young people could be developed."
It's one thing, out of clear necessity and for purposes of national survival, to have a military draft when our nation is at war (hot or cold). But mandatory community service of up to two years? This is a preposterously intrusive notion and one that is surely unlawful under our Constitution.
The Thirteenth Amendment prohibits "involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime." What crime have these young people committed?
The "audacity" — to use President Obama's favorite expression — of such a sweeping mandate is a direct contradiction of our founding principles as reinforced in the Bill of Rights, which emphatically restricts the powers of government over the lives of individuals. The camel's nose under the tent that has led some people to regard national mandatory community service as respectable public policy is no doubt the imposition of a similar requirement on students as a condition of graduation in our public schools.
What message does that send to American students? That government owns their life? I understand that attendance in school is compulsory but that can be satisfied in a private school or a home school. Should government, then, be allowed to reach into your home or to private schools and mandate involuntary community service for students in those venues?
It's one thing for public schools to dictate how their students spend their time while under their supervision. It's quite another to tell these young citizens how they must spend their own time outside of school.
This is social engineering, not academic instruction. There's already too much of that kind of thing in public schools and it's invariably oriented toward the liberal agenda. I'd rather the students spend any additional time, if there's to be some, in the classroom on basic academics.
Whatever the virtues of community service, it's far more rewarding when undertaken voluntarily. The theories and wishes of do-gooder educators notwithstanding, most of the kids I've talked to resent the assignment as just another task that robs them of their leisure time. Many look for the easiest way out and just go through the motions. For them, the psychic benefit ranges from little to negative.
How ironic that forced community service is meted out as a punishment for petty criminals. It's an inappropriate sentence for schoolchildren and would be an outrageous government assault on individual liberty as a national mandate.