Jeff G. at Protein Wisdom does a very thorough and
deliberate takedown of a
Pajamas Media piece by Michelle Catalano, her central point being that forced indentured servitude is not the same as slavery when it's dressed up like "community service." And, also, that's it's not Marxist to require - or "encourage mightily," perhaps - freeborn citizens of the republic to pick up trash in parks, read to old people, babysit at the local day care center after school or whatever else would qualify as community service.
Of course, how this kind of program would ever get implemented is beyond me, as we as a nation are comprised of 300 billion individuals all doing our own thing and not interested in getting together in a hive mentality and doing something. The same goes for the
creepy national civil defense organization Obama has proposed, which I think he once said needs to be equal to the real military in terms of size and might. How, exactly, is O! going to pay for any of this, much less organize it?
Oh, sure, requiring your local school to document your hours of "community service" on your transcript somehow and denying you advancement to the next grade without having met your obligatory volunteer requirements would be one way to go, but I don't think you'd get most kids on board. As for adults, if they're included, good luck with that.
People inclined to volunteer to do stuff for free are already doing so; the rest want nothing of it. It's that simple. I don't volunteer to work in a soup kitchen because I don't feel like wasting my time in such a pursuit, regardless of how noble it might be. Not for me. No thanks. Ditto for every other activity that theoretically should enrich my soul and waste my time. I've got better things to do, and if by better I mean catching up on re-runs of
Wild Wild West while working on my pecs, well, deal with it, bitches.
As for the civil defense force, ahem, are we talking some modern-era version of
the SS? What with shiny boots and neat-o collar patches? Count me in! Or, are we talking some sort of third-rate National Guard experience, complete with steel pots, hand-me-down BDUs and luke-warm stale coffee in paper cups? Count me out!
First off, if the country is already spending about 25% of the total budget on actual military defense, where are we going to get an equal amount of cash to fund an internal security force, and who's going to train it? And, will these guys enforce existing immigration laws or will they concentrate on enforcing certain kinds of behaviors on citizens who'd rather behave differently? Plus, of course, why do need another law enforcement agency, especially a intranational one posing as some sort of do-gooder paramilitary organization and what laws would they enforce?
Second, who's going to join it? Seriously, in the real military you at least have the theoretical opportunity to travel to distant exotic lands filled with strange, different people to kill, but who's going to want to leave Manhattan or San Fran to visit despair on Norman, Oklahoma? Have you ever been to Norman, OK? El-boro, bud. I don't even know if there's a sushi counter at the Albertson's and, trust me on this one, the staff at The Library has heard all the jokes before.
Third, as I've already mentioned, we're a nation of individuals, not a collectivized hive mind directable by some higher power. Doubt this? How many different ring tones exist for cell phones? How often do you think your average teen changes the ring tone on his cell phone? If we're all sheeple, how come there are so many options for you MySpace page? If people can have a car in any color they want, so long as they want it in black, why are there so many choices of colors?
Do you really think you can get the burnouts and the Goth gangs to put aside their differences to either:
a) head to the old folks home every Thursday after school for an hour to read that week's NYT #1 bestseller to a collection of old people sitting on folding chairs and smelling of soiled Depends undergarments
or
b) show up at the local citizens armory to learn how to march in step and respond to commands with "Yes, we can!" when told to assault the local tavern for allowing smoking to continue inside
Neither of these proposals is realistic or achievable, at least not in the short run, which we'll say is the next four years. First, brainwashing the masses to collectively volunteer to do stuff is wishful thinking. Next, coercing the unwiliing to join a cult-of-personality paramilitary organization is going to be tough to do, seeing as even the most devoted Kos Kid is probably unwilling to give up his laptop and lattes to police Jesusland on whatever schedule the Obamacorps would require.
Not that there isn't a model for all this stuff, sort of. Woodrow Wilson actually had an official internal "security force/propaganda army" outfitted with government badges and charged with shutting down unwelcome political speech and enforcing preferred shopping habits, but that was a then we'll never return to
{well, maybe not until about the third or fourth year of an Obama-induced depression, but if things get that bad, Obama will be typing up his third memoir in Chicago explaining how it was all Bush's fault and he did everything he could to turn things around, but one term wasn't enough time to do the work needed to fundamentally change the country}. It's not going to be possible to control all of the means of information distribution, not without a fight, anyway, as just making certain avenues of information transmission illegal isn't going to stop it.
Just look at drugs. Illegal? Sure. Stopped? Eh, not so much. The Democrats and the mainstream media are not getting control of The Narrative back, which is why both lied to the American public during the preceding election.
Plus, would the Obama Administration really want to make the rugged individualist the new black? Ahem, sorry, I meant to say, super-cool counter-revolutionary archetype? Because, seriously, there are a lot of males out there looking to strike a pose, and they'd really prefer not to have to squeeze into a black turtleneck and beret, not to mention the requisite cigarette smoking and topiary facial hair. There are lots of men looking to don a duster and some bad-ass boots so they can roam the countryside framing houses and finishing basements before heading to the bar to look down on lite beer drinkers.
Not to say that Obama and his coming thugocracy isn't going to take a stab at either of these ideas, however. We might just end up with a new high school graduation requirement and a new secret police force that hands out fines for anti-government "hate" speech or incorrect displays of patriotism.
But one thing is clear: requiring a person to volunteer is slavery, much as Michelle Catalano might not want it to be. Slavery on a part-time schedule, sure, but government-mandated behavior by private citizens on behalf of the "community" so as to benefit someone else is forced labor, and forced labor is slavery.
Obama and his worshippers might want to make it so, but in the end, even Michelle Catalano isn't going to want to be told what her options are, and if she wants to volunteer to pick up litter and cigarette butts off the side of the highways near her house, fine, she can find out from the corrections department when the inmates are scheduled to do it and work her way around that, but if she thinks its perfectly fine for the national government to draft a set of rules detailing how I or my children should spend a certain amount of our time every year or face some consequence, then she can go pound salt because I'll spend all my time undermining the system and teaching my children how to work around the requirements, because you know for certain that their will be exemptions galore for the ruling elites, celebrities and special people connected to the government.
But, let them try for this. I, for one, welcome a future as a
Browncoat.
(cross-posted here because)
