“We are all, regardless of where we sit on the political spectrum,” Dr. Jonathan Holloway wrote in The New York Times last week, “caught in a vortex of intoxication.”
Holloway, president of Rutgers University as well as an author and historian, blames social media for encouraging us not “to see and respect one another.” But have no fear, he offers a solution to all or most of our nation’s problems.
“The time has come,” he argues, “for compulsory national service for all young people — with no exceptions.”*
He references FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps, LBJ’s Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) and today’s “domestic civilian service” programs such as AmeriCorps, asserting, sans evidence, that these “have been enormously successful.”
Effectiveness aside, does this academician see no significant difference between the programs mentioned, which were offered freely to young people who wanted to participate, and a program forced upon young people against their will?
Regardless, Dr. Holloway declares “it is easy to imagine” this one-year governmental control and use of millions of young people as “a vehicle to provide necessary support to underserved urban and rural communities, help eliminate food deserts, contribute to rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, enrich our arts and culture, and bolster our community health clinics, classrooms and preschools.”
In his utopia, mandatory national service would also
- “put young people in the wilderness repairing the ravages of environmental destruction”;
- “dispatch young Americans to distant lands where they would understand the challenges of poor countries”;
- “force all of our young people to better know one another”;
- “shore up our fragile communities”; and
- even unify “America’s races, religions and social classes.”
Ah, the Rutgers president: terminally delusional . . . or only temporarily “caught in a vortex of intoxication”?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* The “no exceptions” stance is designed to silence questions of fairness and “equity” . . . even though just a few moments of thought will convince anyone that exceptions must and will be made.
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