12-08-2010
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William Buckley
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Subject: Still Chipping Away At It ...
"National service, like gravity, is something we could accustom
ourselves to, and grow to love."
—
William F. Buckley, Jr.
Aah yes, can you feel that slow but unrelenting pull of enslavement
as it distorts the very concepts of rights and principles, rending
you from your life and liberty. Resistance is futile. Just accept
your fate, relax, and let the sunshine in. Cue
The Fifth
Dimension.
Well, if you can't rely on a patriot like Bill Buckley to have your
back, how about George C. Wilson over at The Huffington Post? In a
recent article titled Our
Own Foreign Legion, Wilson, a former national defense
correspondent for The Washington Post, laments that there is a large
gap in understanding between those who actually provide the military
defense of our country and the civilian "establishment" who
comfortably sit back with no dog in the hunt. Recognizing that
"presidents, defense secretaries, generals, admirals, senators,
representatives, and journalists can all be wrong about when going
to war is justified", here are his thoughts:
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"I will set down the Wilson proposal for resuscitating the
national referendum that should precede sending young men
and women to die in questionable wars: Freeze the recruiting
budgets of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps at
some reasonable level. Have federal manpower experts figure
out how many of the 4 million Americans who turn 18 every
year have to be drafted to find enough who are fit to serve
in the armed forces. Everyone would be drafted by lottery,
like pulling names out of a hat. Those drafted who could not
qualify physically to serve in the military for 18 months
would serve an equal amount of time in some other type of
national service. Sons and daughters of the establishment
would be among those drafted, restoring the now missing
national referendum on going to war."
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And once again, the obvious solution to a perceived problem is to treat
American citizens as though they were the property of the state — a
slave labor resource to be utilized in any manner deemed necessary. And
the irony of Wilson's position appears to be lost on him, as he happily
recommends sacrificing the lives of many random youth to a period of
involuntary servitude and potential warfare in the name of stopping others
from sacrificing the lives of willing volunteers to improper or unjustified
warfare. I guess for Wilson, slavery is OK if it is executed by lottery,
and wars are ipso facto just, so long as they have the backing of a
national referendum.
Then we have the Americans
for a National Service Act (ANSA), a group of individuals with the
mission of seeing some form of mandatory national service imposed on all
Americans.* In a section titled Philosophy of Service,
Jason Blindauer argues that our rights are contingent upon social
stability, which rests upon citizen participation. His entire line of
reasoning hinges upon his rejection of the autonomous individual as a
practical reality, declaring all humans to be "social creatures by
necessity", and thereby elevating society to a higher moral
status, firmly grounding his arguments in a species of collectivism.
After considering various philosophical perspectives, he sums up his
observations with this:
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"So the next time you hear someone proclaim that he or she has
a right not to serve in the military, or not to pay taxes, or
break the law as long as it does not harm someone else, or
not participate or make a contribution to this nation, it is
correct to say, 'Do you?'"
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Well, do you punk? I guess even the question of national
service is simply too relativistic a topic to be able to form a clear,
declarative statement and firmly commit oneself.
ANSA is just a part of the broader and more active
Service Nation which purports
to consolidates over 200 service organization under one coordinated
umbrella. And once again, while casting a descriptive veneer of
"volunteerism" over their goals, a careful look at their actual programs
and activities always shows close ties to governments at the local,
state and federal levels, with public funding for the majority of their
activities. So, as with the official Corporation for National and
Community Service, these so called "volunteer" efforts turn out to be
nothing more than make-work jobs for people who are the recipients of
wealth redistribution from the very non-volunteering tax payers.
It has now been two years since Obama came to power, with his goal of
conscripting every American citizen into mandatory government servitude.
And while the overt public rhetoric from the administration may have
quieted somewhat on this topic, the social indoctrination program behind
the scene continues at full speed. As more and more students and adults
are drawn into the government fold, they soon become converts to the view
that what's good enough for them is certainly good enough for others
— even if those others have to be forced to experience the tender
goodness of it all. And before you know it, we will have achieved that
"national referendum" that George Wilson was seeking, and the last of our
rights will be "democratically" legislated away.
Take every opportunity to speak out against the forces who are actively
working to enslave us all. Jason Blindauer is right in one regard: the
preservation of our individual rights do rest upon our actions. Let's
make sure that we do what is necessary to see them safeguarded.
* It is true that ANSA states that they don't necessarily argue for
mandatory national service if voluntary national service was
sufficient to "gets the job done." And just exactly how many
volunteers would be enough? They admit that "that's tough to say."
But the answer is unimportant since this line of reasoning is all
disingenuous misdirection from their true mission, clearly articulated on
their website, which is the creation of a legislative act that extracts
from every citizen the duty that they see being owed to their country.
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