Altruism at the point of a gun

Under section 6104 of the bill, entitled “Duties,” in subsection B6, the legislation states that a commission will be set up to investigate, “Whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed, and how such a requirement could be implemented in a manner that would strengthen the social fabric of the Nation and overcome civic challenges by bringing together people from diverse economic, ethnic, and educational backgrounds.”

Section 120 of the bill also discusses the “Youth Engagement Zone Program” and states that “service learning” will be “a mandatory part of the curriculum in all of the secondary schools served by the local educational agency.”

“The legislation, slated to cost $6 billion over five years, would create 175,000 “new service opportunities” under AmeriCorps, bringing the number of participants in the national volunteer program to 250,000. It would also create additional “corps” to expand the reach of volunteerism into new sectors, including a Clean Energy Corps, Education Corps, Healthy Futures Corps and Veterans Service Corps, and it expands the National Civilian Community Corps to focus on additional areas like disaster relief and energy conservation,” reports Fox News.

Clearly, the goal of this program is to involve every single young person in America in a mandatory service program. The "Commission" is a smokescreen. Of course they are going to recommend that there be mandatory service and they will lay out procedures on how to do it.

During the campaign, Obama envisioned a program that would require youngsters to spend several hours a week in community service. Many high schools already require a certain number of hours devoted to "community service" in order to be eligible to graduate. How this all fits into "national security" will be very interesting to see.

What we have here is nothing less than altruism at the point of a gun. Fine thing we're teaching our kids - that government can compel you to do "good."