There are a lot of troubling issues, but I think you can be sure that Dr. Keyes will not go any further than President Bush indicates is prudent in this particular area.
A menacingly statist idea. There is no compelling reason to coerce U.S. citizens into such a bureaucracy at this time. It is alarming the extent to which many so-called "conservatives" are enthralled with such socialist, statist, and secular humanist ideas. What is disturbing is that they use the idea that the masses are essentially lazy, worthless, and weak and that, therefore, everyone needs to be forced into some sort of passive aggressive boot camp (staffed by angry butch bureaucrats hell-bent on trying to program people to feel guilty about being free, no doubt). This is absurd. Conservatives, like liberal socialists, are using the excuse that high school students need to be regimented in order to push more big government. If the schools are wasting money in a soulless, dysfunctional bureaucracy, why should we expect a "civil service" program to be any different? No encroachment on liberty by government bureaucrats! Keyes and the others are morons to support this kind of insufferable nonsense. We don't need the police state bureaucracy which they are pushing. Drug abuse, delinquency, youth apathy, and declining test scores are no reason for proposing this totalitarian absurdity. Did anyone else notice how ominously they leaped rhetorically from Columbine and the OKC bombing to this nutty idea? Since when do the actions of a couple of nuts mandate turning the whole country into a forced labor camp? I seem to remember something about NOT depriving people of "life, liberty, or property WITHOUT due process of law." We used to joke about these kinds of programs being typical of places like the Soviet Union.