Today’s Christian Science Monitor has an article calling for a mandatory national youth corps. The author, a professor of ethics at Southern Illinois, has no trouble with coercion; it’s all right (the 13th Amendment notwithstanding) to force young people into “national service” for two years because they’ll later be repaid with some educational subsidies. Talk about liberal fascism! Jonah Goldberg will need to add a chapter to his book.
The writer says that voluntarism won’t “promote the sort of permanent cultural change the financially strapped 21st century increasingly demands.” Obviously, the professor has no idea as to the causes of our temporary economic troubles (government interference with the free market), but I’m afraid he knows just what he’s talking about with that “permanent cultural change” business. This is part of a project to turn as many young Americans as possible into communitarians who think that government must be in control of just about everything.
The faith that people like this have in federal coercion is frightening.