Has anyone actually said that? Americorps and Peace Corps are two totally different agencies. Just curious, cause I’m a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer and I am intrigued to know if Glenn Beck thinks I was destroying American values or something by teaching English in to elementary school kids.
In the actual words of a hell of a lot of nutjobs, “civilian national security corps” = Gestapo, SS, KGB, whatever.
Obama was talking about more money for diplomats and Peace Corps volunteers. Fringe elements then go crazy and say Obama’s ordering brownshirts. Those crazies ought to know who they are insulting when they go off the deep end: people trying to keep our country safe and help starving, uneducated children living in poor countries.
It is both amusing and enraging the way Beck keeps saying “I’m not saying this is true, I’m only asking questions” as he shows selectively edited clips of Black Panthers and Farrakhan. His guest says I’m not comparing the president to Hitler or Hussein" and then describes what they did and Beck says “Oh but you are comparing them because there are similarities”
There are serious issues to examine and discuss and these jackasses aren’t helping.
Click on that link and you find that the nutob in question is a member of Congress! :eek:
Michelle Bachmann should have got us used to the idea by now, but, still! :eek::eek:
I really want to punch that face. I bet he’d cry.
Of course, not. The Peace Corps is CIA, not Gestapo.
It isn’t? Since when? 
http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1986/09/smith.html
Oh, apparently since 1975. Maybe.
The fact that the CIA has used it for cover does not make it a front for the CIA; most spies are in diplomatic service, but you wouldn’t call the State Department a CIA patsy.
Perhaps not all of the time, but it casts a shadow over everybody else.
Kyla, during your service did anybody suggest you worked for the CIA?
The associations between the Peace Corps and the CIA are very dangerous ones to continue to suggest. Volunteers have been kidnapped and killed under suspicion of such connections. When I was interviewing, they went a long way during the interview process to ensure neither you nor your family has ties to it, as it would be incredibly damaging to the Peace Corps to return to the suspicion that it’s a cover for the CIA.
I offer this as a flip side to what ladyfoxfyre said.
When I was in college, I had a summer intern job with the CIA as a file clerk and (occasional) junior secretary. When I was offered the job, they were VERY clear that if I accepted, I could never, ever apply to the Peace Corps.
My recollection is that the job was pretty damned boring, and since it was over 25 years ago asking me questions about it is likely to get you an answer of, “I really don’t remember”. And unlike certain former AGs, this would be the truth. Half the time, I don’t recall what I had for dinner night before last.
You were making furriners smarter. Why do you hate America?
Nope, not once. One volunteer I knew claimed that someone had suggested that he was a spy, but he was one of those storyteller types, and he was always going on and on about how shitty his village was and how crazy the people there were and this was just one example, so I don’t know how seriously to take him.
From what I hear, there are a lot of suspicions about Peace Corps’ motivations in Latin America, specifically, but I served in Eastern Europe and it wasn’t an issue. They were mostly just baffled as to why I would leave ~~America~~ to work in Bulgaria.
Like ladyfoxfyre says, Peace Corps goes to quite extensive lengths to disassociate itself from intelligence agencies. During my staging (a three day orientation my group had in DC before we left for Bulgaria), we had little exercises about how we needed to avoid all contact with intelligence workers. One I recall was “you’ve started dating a host country national, and a few months into the relationship, you discover that s/he is an informant for an intelligence agency. What do you do?” The correct answer was “break off all contact with him/her immediately.”
You didn’t have to take that pledge at the end of orientation, which included lines about not engaging in protests, etc.? It did creep me out a little.
If I took a pledge at all, I don’t remember it.
Is this the one?
That one rings a bell. “Getting things done” was a slogan that got used a lot.
Volunteerism, brought to you by Larry the Cable Guy.
I forgot, it was still VISTA when I was in it.
This more like the pledge we had to take
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
That I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;
That I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion;
And that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.
So help me God.
http://governor.mt.gov/speeches/ltgov/speeches.asp?ID=119
ETA: Obviously it doesn’t mention no protesting, lobbying, etc., but during orientation these were mentioned as not allowed.
I was discomfitted because I had joined a private volunteer agency but they got the stipends through us signing up with VISTA so it was a level of patriotism I wasn’t aware of till I got there.
I am a two-time member of Americorps NCCC – Perry Point, Class X, 2004 and Perry Point, Class XV, 2009. And the only pledge we make is the Americorps pledge given by Ravenman. It is true that you cannot participate in protests while you are in uniform but you can certainly do so on your own time so long as you do not wear anything identifying you as a member of Americorps. I’ve participated in the March for Women’s Lives (pro-choice) in DC, an anti-police brutality demonstration in Philadelphia, and a gay rights march, also in Philadelphia. I just wore my own clothes and went on my off-hours.