# Obama's Creepy 'Call to Service' **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 21, 2008, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamas-creepy-call-to-service/457284 "2008-07-21T18:28:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 1
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2008, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamas-creepy-call-to-service/457284/1 "2008-07-21T18:28:51Z")
Here’s one of the things that bothers me most about Obama: He seems to think that not only is public service a good thing ( a statement few would disagree with), but he’s taking that general principle and being really extreme about it. Is anyone else bothered by how much he wants to expand the notion of setting up various civilian ‘corps’? Here’s a video of Obama’s [Call to Service speech](http://hotair.com/archives/2008/07/17/are-the-media-airbrushing-obamas-speeches/). In his own words, this is not a small part of his candidacy: > [@](#): > > This will not be a call issued in one speech or one program – this will be a central cause of my presidency. We will ask Americans to serve. We will create new opportunities for Americans to serve. And we will direct that service to our most pressing national challenges. These are some of the things he says he’ll do: [ul] [li]Expand Americorps from 75,000 people to 250,000[/li][li]Create a new ‘energy corps’ to carry out environmental projects in local neighborhoods[/li][li]Create an online ‘Service Corps’ web site that’s like [Monster.com](http://Monster.com), only for ‘service’ opportunities.[/li][li]Create a ‘Social Investment Fund’ that gives money to non-profits and volunteer organizations.[/li][/ul] So far, I don’t have a lot of qualms, other than that it all sounds like a pretty big waste of time and money. But then he starts to get pushy: > [@](#): > > So when I’m President, I will set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year. This means that by the time you graduate college, you’ll have done 17 weeks of service. > > We’ll reach this goal in several ways. At the middle and high school level, we’ll make federal assistance conditional on school districts developing service programs, and give schools resources to offer new service opportunities. At the community level, we’ll develop public-private partnerships so students can serve more outside the classroom. So… public schools will have their funding cut unless they force their students to perform 50 hours of service a year. Since for most people, public school is the only choice they’ve got, this amounts to a mandatory service program for every child in a public school in the country. I would find this blatantly offensive, and if I lived in the U.S. I would refuse to take part in it, even if it forced me to pull my child out of public school. I don’t want my kid starting life thinking that the state somehow has a right to demand his time and labor. in the meantime, he’s going to inject the government into private industry to force them to accept these kids and their ‘service’. And no doubt these kids doing forced ‘service’ will be angry and unwilling to do much work at all, so companies will resist. What a disaster this would be. He then talks about how he’s going to screw up college kids: > [@](#): > > For college students, I have proposed an annual American Opportunity Tax Credit of $4,000. To receive this credit, we’ll require 100 hours of public service. You invest in America, and America invests in you – that’s how we’re going to make sure that college is affordable for every single American, while preparing our nation to compete in the 21st century. This is one of those things that sounds okay on the surface, but has pernicious effects. I mean, it’s voluntary, right? The problem is that it’s such a good deal for students that they’ll all take part in it. Heck, that’s $40/hr, far more than they’ll make at graduation, and probably two or three times as much as a typical summer internship would pay. So this will eviscerate the summer job system the economy has already worked out, and it will take all those kids who gain experience in private industry while in college and instead jam them into makework government programs. Businesses that rely on summer students will be destroyed. Government will expand in a big way into the economy. This sucks. And in the end, it might not be good for students either, because a huge injection of cash into the college environment could simply result in tuition inflation. So now kids will HAVE to work these jobs, because there’s no way a normal summer job would make up for the new price hikes in education. But it gets worse: > [@](#): > > And we will not leave out the nearly 2 million young Americans who are out of school and out of work. We’ll enlist them in our Energy Corps, so that disadvantaged young people can find useful work, clean polluted areas, help weatherize homes, and gain skills in a growing industry. And we’ll expand the YouthBuild Program, which puts young Americans to work building affordable housing in America’s poorest communities, giving them valuable skills and a chance to complete a high school education. What that sounds like is: If you’re young and don’t have a job, we’re going to create a huge government jobs program and enlist you in it. I assume it won’t pay the current minimum wage, since Obama opposes that. So it will displace all the current jobs that rely on young minimum wage workers. Imagine - a new government program employing 2 million young people, plus all the overhead to manage it. This would be a huge expansion of government. Oh, and apparently he 's going to create a new program of federally-subdisized public housing. In other speeches he outlines that a bit more, and his plans are on a pretty big scale: Thousands of new homes per year built with federal money. And the worst, craziest idea of all (hear it at 16:45 of his speech): > [@](#): > > We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded. WTF? A civilian national security force? Just as powerful and well funded as the U.S. military? What, are you going to spy on your neighbors? Hire people to search handbags of people going in and out of buildings? Add all this up, and Obama appears to have a completely different view of America - one in which everyone works for the state from time to time, where citizens are enlisted into ‘corps’ which tackle national problems, where every kid in America will have to do mandatory service for the country before becoming citizens. Sorry, but this sounds… Fascist. It turns the relationship between government and citizens as spelled out in the constitution on its head. It’s one thing for government to fund a small auxiliary of volunteers like the Peace Corps. It’s quite another to inject every nook and cranny of American life with calls for ‘service’ to the state. The phrase he used during the section on college ‘service’ is especially telling: “You invest in America, and America invests in you.” College kids aren’t ‘investing in America’. They are investing in _themselves_. They are acting to better their own lives as free people. For me, this is one of the big deal-killers with Obama. And I would think this would cause Liberals to worry the most. I’ll bet if John McCain was saying this stuff it would be giving you the creeps. Comments? --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamas-creepy-call-to-service/457284)._