My Fabulous, Fabulous Plan

Thursday, October 7, 2010
The status of our all-volunteer military has been on my mind a lot lately. Partly because my Smart Boy is now a member of that elite group, and partly because I still consider myself a member of that community. Today's all-volunteer military is meeting more demands than nearly any time in history on a per capita basis, and I worry about my brothers and sisters in arms.

Add that the fact that those amoral hacks in Washington are playing fast and loose with the Armed Forces appropriation bill because the DREAM Act was added in*, and the current "discussions" surrounding the repeal of DADT, and I'm ready to rethink the entire sordid mess, including reconsidering the draft or some other form of mandatory public service.

Now I'm not going to retreat to my Freehold and insist that a term of service should be mandatory to achieve full citizenship (although I still think a reasonable case can be made for such a point of view, ethics-wise), but I am going to throw this into the ring - why don't we have mandatory service in this country?

I think we should, and here's my FABULOUS PLAN, which America should adopt immediately because, obviously, I know better than anyone what's best for AMERICA. (Okay, I choked on that last part, but hear me out, anyway. If Sarah Palin can get an incredulous national audience for her retarded shitbaggery, surely a few folks will listen to me. At least I'm smart enough to pour piss out of a boot.)

The Fabulous, Fabulous Plan

This requirement would be for mandatory public service. A minimum term, say two to three years, to be completed by the time you're thirty years old. The requirement could be satisfied by any number of jobs - the only requirement being that the job must place the good of the citizenry ahead of the good of the individual. Here are some examples:
  • Military service
  • Fire fighting
  • Police
  • Public defenders
  • Doctors, nurses or other health care providers who work in clinics for the poor and underserved
  • Child care providers who provide care for the children of the poor and underserved
  • Public school educators who are willing to teach in inner-city, poor and underserved communities
You get the idea. The work must benefit society as a whole, and no one should be getting rich during their term of service. Service should be performed in this country, for the benefit of Americans. And election to public office DOESN'T COUNT.
    And here's the key part: No one is exempt from this requirement. And I mean no one. No excuses, no deferments, no buying your way free. If you're a competent adult, able to make your own decisions and capable of self-determination - you must serve. Physical disabilities will of course be accommodated, but they will not be considered as a reason not to serve.

    And here we come to the point of the sticky wicket. If someone refuses to serve, i.e., they refuse to contribute to the society in which they live in accordance with the social contract, what does the society do? Deport them? Send them to Coventry? Allow them to stay, but cut off their social entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare? Take away their rights? Stuff them in a barrel and feed them through the bunghole?

    I don't know the answer, and I don't pretend to think that mandatory public service will solve all of our country's ills. What I do know is that having such a small, clustered segment of the population bear the entire burden of our country's foreign policy is not a sustainable model. Socially, ethically, this can't go on forever. Eventually, ALL Americans must be asked to sacrifice for the common good - not just military families. If we had a mandatory service requirement, would more Americans care about what military families are asked to do? I don't know. But it can't hurt.


    ____________
    *What kind of ungrateful, sociopathic pricksack denies a veteran the opportunity to become a U.S. citizen? No, really - who? Who thinks it's simply a FABULOUS AND MORAL MOVE to say to volunteer members of our Armed Forces, "Yeah, great, thanks for your service, now GO HOME to that horrid third world shithole from whence you came. Because America is for [white][Christian] AMERICANS. So FUCK OFF. And kindly also please promptly die of amoebic dysentery or tuberculous, so we don't have to pay your benefits. KTHXBIE" 

    As the Incomparable Anne™ notes, this attitude makes me APOPLECTIC WITH RAGE.

    23 comments:

    mom in northern said...

    If I am not mistaken Isreal already something like what you purpose in place. I have always been in favor of this idea. Citizenship and all of its benefits should be earned and not just an accident of birth.

    kimby said...

    I like the idea. Kind of like the grownup version of what we make our high school students do here. Students must, in order to receive their high school diploma perform a min. of 40 hours of volunteer work. A chance for them to give back to society. This is a lesson that ALL should learn and your idea is a great way for grownups to give back too. Yes, there are many people who do give back, but perhaps if everyone had to do it, we might introduce a little more peace and tolerance in our fellow mankind.

    Anne C. said...

    I *love* this idea. For the non-combatant types, we even have a great model to start with:

    During the draft of WWII, my Mennonite (aka pacifist/conscientious objector) uncle worked with the CPS (Civilian Public Service) instead of doing military service. Another uncle joined the Army Corp. of Engineers, and though he was technically a non-combatant, he was kicked out of the church for a while.

    There are quite literally thousands of tasks that could be done by volunteers to make our country safer, better functioning, and more beautiful.

    (And I'm glad I'm not the only one who gets apoplectic on this issue... ;)

    nzforme said...

    My main reservation about such a plan is that all of these jobs are so damn important, I want the people doing them to be there because they want to be, not because they have to be.

    We pay public defenders the same as we pay prosecutors for precisely this reason. And I don't want to think about how unfair the system would work for criminal defendants who are prosecuted by career professionals but defended by lawyers "just doing it to fulfill their service requirement."

    (By the same token, I'd prefer to have career professionals investigating our crimes, teaching our disadvantaged, providing medical care in clinics, and defending our country.)

    On the other hand, I know that my state Bar Association toyed with a pro bono requirement -- not in a criminal defense fashion, but in a "use your particular expertise to help clients who can't afford a lawyer" sense (which could be, for example, getting domestic violence restraining orders, negotiating out of foreclosures, obtaining welfare benefits, helping non-profits obtain tax-free status, and so forth). The point is that it wouldn't be something that you do for a couple years when you're young, but something that everyone has to do for a couple weeks every few years throughout their career. The lawyers generally oppose this sort of thing, but I think it's a much better way of giving back rather than an all-at-once public service obligation which ends up putting the least qualified people in the public service positions.

    The sanction for non-participation, by the way, would be that your license to practice would be suspended until you do your service. This could work the same for all licensed professionals (doctors, teachers) but sorta falls apart for people who don't need state approval to do their jobs. You could, I imagine, impose a fine, but that would be the equivalent of allowing a "buy out" option.

    Eh... who am I kidding? In a country where a significant amount of people won't even give a few weeks to jury duty, there's no way a public service requirement would ever fly. (And shouldn't the hordes be calling you a communist around now?)

    Steve Buchheit said...

    "And election to public office DOESN'T COUNT." - I protest. For the usual reasons. Considering that tonight (yes, this very night), I must play the role of "Dick." Said "Dickieness" is a part of my fiduciary responsibility to the citizens of my community. Being in public office isn't fun, and it isn't a lark (unless you're a Republican and just skip over your committee meetings and not allowing them to proceed with work because of lack of quorum, but I digress). And what about those people who work for the elected officials, often for lower than civilian pay of the same type? Sure there's plenty of idiots in office (looking at you, Bell, CA), but most of us are hard working, non-partisan game playing, "make sure the streets are plowed and the fire department or police show up when you need them" types.

    And, IIRC, we already have such an obligation for high school graduation and/or federal government financial aid for college.

    Steve Buchheit said...

    Said requirement is in "service hours" or mandated volunteering. Sorry I didn't clarify that.

    Janiece said...

    nzforme, I guess in my own mind, I thought the so-called "professional" contributors would have their chosen professions constitute their service. For example, someone who wanted to be a school teacher in any event would perform their "service" by teaching for 2-3 years in that inner-city school before they're thirty, and then move on to whatever other teaching job they're qualified and can get. In the case of the public defender, someone like Eric (who has a calling for this work) would retire his service requirement through his regular job. In that way, people who are prone to public service in any case won't be required to serve twice - once for their vocation and once for their required term. Of course, you had no way of knowing that, because you can't read my mind, and I didn't state it explicitly.

    The people I'm trying to rope in are those silver spooned asshats whose parents got them into Harvard, and then go work on Wall Street for a ka-billion dollars, all the while basking in their sense of entitlement and looking down their noses at the "little people." I think those people should have to empty bed pans for a couple years, quite frankly. Because I am, indeed, a dirty, dirty COMMUNIST.

    Steve, the problem with your objection is that the system would have no way of differentiating between the dedicated public servants such as yourself and the Republican Asshat Brigade. So even though you and those like you (of both parties) are motivated by a genuine desire to serve (and conduct yourselves accordingly), the asshats - as usual - ruin it for everyone.

    Dr. Phil (Physics) said...

    Way back in the early 90s I was working on a novel where there was a two-year national service requirement. Among the things I recall, you could do two one-year stints, or one one-year and two six-month stints. But one year of your time had to be done out of the state or region -- Serve Your Country, See The World! This was to prevent people from just doing what they are already doing, such as work in the Church, and not do something new.

    There are plenty of jobs that can be a real help, if done with reasonable yet minimal training, which a volunteer workforce of millions could accommodate.

    What goes with such service? The voting franchise, driver's license, etc., but not access to basic health care and the ilk.

    Yeah, it's pie in the sky and I don't think it'll ever happen in my lifetime. That's what SF is for. (grin)

    Dr. Phil

    Janiece said...

    Dr. Phil, work with a church would not count toward retiring this requirement, at least in my fabulous, fabulous plan. I have a number of reasons for this decision, but mostly because MOST churches tend to do work only among their congregations, or couple their work with evangelical outreach. My fabulous, fabulous plan would be a bit more inclusive in nature.

    Eric said...

    It's interesting, Janiece, that you wrote this on a day I was having a mental conversation with myself on the drive to work about something tangentially related. So I wrote a blog post, but I'm not posting it 'til tomorrow because I'm a dirty rotten cheat, see, and I want to count it towards tomorrow's quota. Big long, incoherent piece, too, that I was able to write because I had a really slow afternoon today.

    Aside from all of that, have you considered whether the Awesome Plan creeps up on a Thirteenth Amendment violation or is there an assumption that the Selective Draft Law Cases and Immediato et al. (cited at the link) cover a broad civilian program? (And are you anything like me in worrying that those cases were wrongly decided, the draft cases out of necessity and the Immediato cases because the plaintiffs sounded like bunch of spoiled, whiny brats? Just wondering.)



    -----
    chiken: what everything tastes like.

    Eric said...

    As an addendum: just went back and read (or re-read, in the case of the Chapel Hill case) the school service cases. Yeah, geez, I really hate to say this but I really can't help thinking of the adage that hard cases make bad law. Plaintiffs are just a bunch of whiny brats, but the various Appellate Circuit reasons for finding against them range from barely-acceptable (Steirer at least seems to be casting about for analogous caselaw), including an obscure Hawai'i case about students working in the school cafeteria) to almost-incoherent (Herndon verges on the absurd).

    I dunno. I just don't know.

    -----
    osmot: the act of abandoning an overcrowded room. "When the living room became too concentrated with people, cigarette smoke and loud music, Bob osmoted to the kitchen and tried to stand behind the fridge.

    Janiece said...

    Eric, obviously I never considered the idea that my fabulous, fabulous plan might be construed as some form of slavery or indentured servitude - otherwise I wouldn't consider it fabulous, now would I?

    In seriousness, I'm in training today and don't have time to review the case law at this time, so I might indeed be talking out of my ass. If so, then I humbly apologize.

    But I'm unsure how a mandatory service law, which applies to ALL CITIZENS, can be considered in violation of the 13th Amendment. People would be paid for their service (no one would get rich - that defeats the purpose, but a living wage shoiuld be paid), and they could quit at any time within the context of any contractual obligations they may have. The only caveat is that the service requirement, however the individual chooses to fulfill it, must be fulfilled by the time they're 30. How that service requirement is fulfilled would be compeltely up to the individual.

    What am I missing?

    nzforme said...

    I guess my knee-jerk reaction against your plan is that you weren't talking about emptying bed pans -- you were talking about jobs that you need a lot of education, training, and commitment to do -- and I don't want ANY of those jobs being performed by the aforementioned silver spooned asshats.

    Come to think of it, I think I'd like a buy-out provision (if we can tailor it so that the buy out funds have to come from income received for one's own labor rather than a gift from mummy and daddy). But, in all honesty, I'd much rather have one of these people cough up a few months of wall street income than do a half-assed job providing child care in a low-income neighborhood. And I sure as hell wouldn't want to arm them and expect them to be proper representatives of our country abroad.

    Eric said...

    Y'know, I don't know the answer, Janiece, which is part of why I ask the question. The fact that it's paid servitude may make a difference. And, of course, the current state of the law is that conscription is constitutional, though I have ambivalence about that.

    There's a side of my brain that thinks something like you propose is a great idea, and something else that pushes back against it. So, y'know, brain is still chewing on it, etc. The Amend. XIII question is, perhaps a proxy for the part of my head that doesn't like the idea of pushing people around and saying they have to do something (even if paid), though I'm even a hypocrite there--I don't have a problem, f'r'instance, "forcing" people to drive on the right side of the road or to pay income tax.

    And there's an economic angle to your suggestion that's the subject of my post for Friday morning (EST), but there, too, I end up with all sorts of similar ambivalence.

    Tough questions, y'know.

    Janiece said...

    nzforme, you're right - I didn't include unskilled labor in my examples, which is my bad. And you're right - vocations are vocations because they require that someone feel a calling. I'm totally down with the bedpan thing, though.

    Eric, let me know when you figure it out, especially the whole enforcement aspect of the fabulous, fabulous plan. I can't think of a Constitutional, ethical answer to that question, except for a new Amendment.

    Which might in fact be the answer, since no one's going to support mandatory service in any case - we'll simply have you and nzforme write us up a Constitutional Amendment to make the Fabulous, Fabulous Plan part of the Constitution, and then we'll be all set.

    What could POSSIBLY GO WRONG.

    Juan Federico said...

    The idea that mandatory service is a bad thing. It's a legal form of slavery or,at best, as Eric put it "indentured servitude" It's bound to be abused. I am also opposed to the drafting of our children to be cannon fodder for some asshole who gets his orders from someone with money for his campaign. I have two quotes Robert Heinlein because I think they best fit my view on this matter.
    "Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." and
    "I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."
    - Robert A. Heinlein

    'Nuff said.

    Janiece said...

    Juan, while I appreciate your comments (and good luck in your Freehold), I have to ask - how, then, do you resolve the issue at hand? The fact that a very small, very insular segment of the population bears all the burden for our foreign policy? I'm not content to let the vast majority of the population trot along, fat, dumb and happy, without contributing.

    Do you make service voluntarily, but then confer specific privileges rights to those who choose to do so?

    Note: I'm not endorsing this, simply asking the question. Aside from the obvious Constitutional problem such an idea entails, I foresee even more abuse if only a select few receive the rights in question.

    Juan Federico said...

    OK, in plain English, the concept is tyrannical. Mandatory service of any kind "for the good of the state" is Tyranny. It will be "for the good of the State" and therefore tyranny, because it will be law. If a nation cannot step up to support itself and its own people, by its own people volunteering, for the correct reasons then that nation deserves to fail. I agree that it's "..a very small, very insular segment of the population bears all the burden for our foreign policy..." and for as long as Humanity has walked the planet, it has been that way. That's how the species works. We are a herd animal Janiece. Some of us, like you, can see greater things, some of us, like me, just want a nice comfortable place to sleep, a good mate and the ability to feed my family. I was taught that service to the nation is an obligation of being a citizen, I served. My children will serve also, maybe in the Peace Corps, maybe in the military maybe something else but they will serve. I just can't see mandatory service or special privileges for doing your part as a citizen. I don't know the answer to your question but the idea you've proposed makes me shiver.

    PS I've always considered my house as a freehold. :)

    Janiece said...

    Juan, your answer sounds a lot like apathy in the guise of high-minded dedication to the concept of Leave Me Alone.

    Sorry, I'm not willing to allow "The Great Experiment" to fail because I want to be left alone.

    Juan Federico said...

    LMFAO Thank you Janiece, I needed that!

    Janiece said...

    I figured that would make you laugh. You're not nearly as low-minded as you'd like the world to believe...

    Juan Federico said...

    sshhhhh ;)

    Anne C. said...

    Juan, by your example, the simplest solution then is indoctrination. Both you and Janiece were brought up to believe service is a requirement of a good citizen. I was brought up to believe hard work is rewarded. Neither of these is a Universal Truth, but they sure make us more effective contributors to the collective good, don't they?

    Tyranny is a concept invented by humans and subverted by sociologists. :p

    In all seriousness, I think any system - tyrannical or permissive - is going to end up being based on an ideal of human behavior that doesn't exist. You're either going to have the unhappy wastrels picking up garbage on the roadside and learning nothing about littering or the snot nosed child of entitlement asking why he has to look for a job in order to receive unemployment. Maybe we, as a species, deserve to fail...[cue ST:TNG episode]

    Axific = how one feels about the human race after listening to too much politics.