The Growing Threat of Mandatory National Slavery . . . Excuse Me, ‘Service’

Linda Stamato, the collectivist Rutgers University professor, joined the rising call for universal mandatory service. No surprise there. In a New Jersey Star-Ledger guest column Should all Americans be required to serve?, Stamato declared that a universal draft would “unify” the country. Mandatory public service would be a win-win for those who receive and those who give, she asserts. Stamato lists a whole bunch of anecdotal examples of people voluntarily serving in programs like the Peace Corps and Vista, saying they represent “the best of America”.  Despite these programs, which have helped millions here and abroad, it is “not good enough.” Why she has the right to make this judgement she doesn’t say. But her motive is clear. On her way to endorsing “that the nation step up and mandate . . . universal service” she writes:

There appears to be no widely held expectation of service in the U.S., however, and no culture to nurture it.

Institutionalizing public service as a national responsibility is a productive way to think about this. It’s less about charity and more about a kind of reciprocity, providing a means for young people in particular to find paths to “earn” their citizenship, perhaps to cultivate future vocations, but certainly to see service as a way to help improve the lives of others and, by doing so, add value to their own.

And we should create a culture of service by providing encouragement for service in K-12 schools and provide frameworks to support service in the years following secondary and postsecondary school.

Incredibly, though not surprisingly given the Star-Ledger’s heavy Leftist leaning, this article was published under the label "Humanitarianism"! I posted these comments:

Tyrants of every type have fed off of the belief that the individual’s life is not his, but belongs to the collective—the tribe, society, the nation, the public. The Enlightenment swept that away under the ideal of individualism, and codified it in the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes each person’s inalienable right to his own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

A “culture” of forced service is not a humane culture. It is a resurrection of the master/slave orientation. Genuine reciprocity is built on voluntary trade, in which one person serves another in exchange for payment. Voluntary charitable service is a fine supplement. But it is only moral when it is voluntary and consistent with the server’s interests, goals, and values. It is not moral if it is some master imposing her idea of “meaning” on others. “Encouraging”—indoctrinating—schoolchildren into a “culture of service” to “the nation” is not education. It is setting the foundation for authoritarianism. It is educational malpractice. It serves power-hungry politicians and their ivory tower rationalizers at the expense of kids. 

The military draft was barbaric. Mandatory universal public service is orders of magnitude worse. It is thoroughly immoral. The “unity” of universal mandatory service is the unity of chains. Any slave plantation or totalitarian state can boast of that type of unity. Humane unity is based on shared values rooted in respect for the rights of others, including the right of those who disagree to go about their lives unmolested. It’s bad enough to steal a year or two of a person’s life. But once you establish the collectivist principle that the “nation” owns the individual, the door is wide open to ever-expanding servitude and shrinking freedom.

National service is not a new idea, of course. It has been around for a long time, and breaks into public attention from time to time. This is such a time. Given the rise of socialist politicians, it’s not surprising. 

But this time there may be a serious threat of it happening. Schools have been laying the foundation for some form of national servitude for a while, with requirements for “community service” attached to high school graduation. But I did not know that there is a National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service. Stamato claims it is a bipartisan congressional panel, and will be releasing its report soon. Many Democratic presidential candidates have endorsed it.

Scary developments. It’s also another example of the fact that fundamentally, the only way to fight back against collectivism requires fighting back against altruism. It’s a tough fight. But altruism, properly understood as defining moral behavior as self-sacrificially serving others, is what gives advocates of involuntary servitude the moral cover they need to justify it. It gives collectivists the moral high ground. The Founding Fathers gave us a political revolution on behalf of the common person’s right to live for his own sake. The rising tide of support for “national service” to “earn” one’s citizenship is about as clear an indication as you can get that if Americanism is to be saved, a moral revolution on behalf of the common person’s right to life and liberty is the only path forward.

Related Reading:

Books to Aid in Understanding Ayn Rand's Rational Selfishness

In Defense of Selfishness: Why the Code of Self-Sacrifice is Unjust and Destructive—Peter Schwartz

July 4, 1776: Words that Will Never Be Erased 

Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice—Craig Biddle

General McChrystal’s Un-American Call for Universal National Service

The Creed of Sacrifice vs. the Land of Liberty—Craig Biddle

Democrats’ “National Service” Plans Immoral, Un-American—Ben Bayer

Pete Buttigieg's National Service Plan Is a Really Bad Idea Whose Time Might Have Come—Nick GillespieI

Presidential Candidate John Delaney Has a Plan for America's Young Adults. It's Called Forced Labor.—Scott Shackford

QUORA *: ‘Is Ayn Rand wrong about altruism?’