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Most Americans have less confidence in the country’s future, and many attribute that sentiment to an extreme partisan divide. To mend these relationships, some experts believe mandating national service could be unifying.
Straight Arrow News contributor Timothy Carney says a new national service corps would likely prove ineffective. He asserts America’s polarizing climate would prevent agreement on what initiatives would benefit the country most.
That’s why some politicians and commentators look back to those golden years for a solution to our current polarization and alienation. They don’t call for another World War and mass deployment of men to the Pacific and continental Europe, but a more peaceful variation of war: a massive new national service corps — maybe even mandatory service.
The New York Times editorial board asked what could be objectionable in asking all young people to pause before plunging into the scramble of adult life to donate some of their time and energies to some socially beneficial, critically needed service at home or abroad.
Here are two objections:
First: The Times was writing about mandatory service, and so it’s not “asking all young people” to serve. It’s forcing them to do so.
The second objection is more prickly. Read those words of the New York Times again. They want young people to “donate some of their time and energies to some socially beneficial, critically needed service….”
Well, our society is so fractured that we could never get consensus on what is “socially beneficial” or “critically needed.”
