3/4 Hearted Defense of Indentured Community Service

Primarily because of Gammaboy's postings and prior e-mails, I am pessimistic and scared about the state of this country financially- moreso that at any other time in my life. We have been blessed, but I feel like this is our WWII, Vietnam, etc. Given this, I'm not certain that a draft isn't a bad analogy. We're damn lucky that our kids get "drafted" to contribute to society in a productive and safe manner (assuming they are not assigned to ACORN).

Further, I'm pretty damn libertarian, but this doesn't scare me. I liken this to jury duty and other necessary, time consuming tasks that are a fabric of our government, not antithetical to it.

Stalinist Russia was not scary evil because the youth performed socially beneficial acts at the State's direction, it was scary evil because they were indoctrinated to place the State above all else and turn in friends and family for even whispering a concern. (For an entertaining fictional novel about Stalinist Russia, check out Child 44. Some crazy plot twists that are unbelievable, but reads like a great movie and you can't put it down. I had no idea how scary and paranoid that society was.) And if you did whisper such a concern, or simply piss off someone above you in the chain, you were either killed or sent to a gulag...after you named everyone else, usually under torture. On this note, I was much more concerned by the violation of civil liberties in this country over the last 8 years as a part of the war on terror, then I would ever be concerned by forced volunteering of our kids for community service for the war on our country going down the toilet.