Or, at least, indentured servitude.
(Update below)
"Yes, we can."
"President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year."
First off, since when does the President-Elect have authority to command any national programs? Or maybe he's just thinking out loud for Jan. 2009. I can never tell with this shape shifter.
Obama's new White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, shares in his boss' vision of 'req'd national service', as well. (Read an excerpt from Emanuel's 2006 tome, The Plan: Big Ideas for America)
Secondly, How Orwellian: required volunteering. I'm sure this dissonance will be lost on the swooning masses eager for THE ONE to usher in the new utopia.
What's missing from this dichotomy is the implicit notion that Americans don't already volunteer/donate/serve. Especially with regard Faith & Church.
Krykee. We're the most generous nation in the history of this planet with our time & money! And that's just the private sector which far exceeds government aid - foreign or domestic - which in turn comes from the tax paying pockets of that same generous private sector.
My guess is - in Obama's world - that the private sector largess, which is freely given from the heart, doesn't register. Oh, he'll give it a token nod, but for Obama, it seems that only what the State gives and takes away is worthy of admiration & loyalty.
But before too much time & energy is expended pro or con, someone should tell this Constitutional scholar that the thirteenth amendment of the Constitution forbids involuntary servitude.
Welcome to the Obama Nation.
Update: S-L reports that the 'required' has mysteriously been changed.
I hope so.
