Societies are cooperative ventures. Everyone has to compromise to a certain extent. We refrain from doing things we'd like to do, and do things we'd rather not, for the sake of the common good.
That's a self-evident truth. The only thing to quibble over is how much we want to allow our society to demand of us.
You think two years of community service is too much; I don't.
If we were to carry your argument a little further, we might ask what right the state has to demand that kids go to school.
For the good of the child. Not for the good of the state. In this case, the state properly intervenes in the sacred relationship of child and parent only to the extent that it may be necessary to defend the rights of the child from a parental default of fundamental duty. However the state has no right to demand that kids go to school because it will make them "good citizens" or economically productive.
Whatever just powers state enjoys to intervene in private life derive from its mandate to be our servant -- not our master.
No, that's social contract theory. You do know there are other organizational philosophies of societies right?
Social contract is a recent development that fueled the godless blood bath of the French revolution not to mention communism and nazism.
That the GOP and National Review, Weekly Standard, American Spectator and other organs of the neo-con propoganda machine have adopted Jacobin philosophy has become glaring obvious.
we might ask what right the state has to demand that kids go to school.
Good question, care to take a crack at it without resorting to rhetoric that is indistinguishable from that of Vladamir Lenin or Chairman Mao?