by Kevin Deenihan
Daily Californian (U. California-Berkeley)
01/23/2003
(U-WIRE) BERKELEY, Calif. -- A group of Congress members, led by Rep. Charles Rangel, D-New York, have submitted a bill to Congress that would reinstate the draft for ages 20 years and up. Including, this time, college students.
Said Rangel, "I am preparing legislation to authorize reinstatement of the universal draft and other forms of mandatory national service." Superb. It's always heartening when members of Congress achieve popularity on a "get the young killed" platform. It really puts the awesome power of the 18 to 25-age voting bloc in perspective.
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Of course, this isn't seriously about reinstating the draft. The Bush administration doesn't want it. Even Rangel doesn't really want it back.
This is an anti-war statement. He wants to end disparities in who "shoulders the burden" of military service in this country, which is to say mostly the poor, by having "shared sacrifice." No one at UC-Berkeley will have to be shot at if they don't want to be, unless they walk around Telegraph Avenue after midnight.
But Rangel is also making a larger point about the need for every young American to be committed to a period of national service. And while not many politicians get too excited about standing up and saying, "Let's send your children to get shot at!" a lot of them feel very good about a form of compulsory national service. Bush talked about it in his last State of the Union speech. The "Call to Service" act was introduced in last year's Congress. Many nations already impose national service. Young people are, after all, self-absorbed hedonists without any respect for civic duty and patriotism, so let's show them the beauty of American democracy by voting them two years of forced volunteerism. Silly student, planning to spend your first post-graduate years earning money for law school. Here's your shovel. Today we dig democracy holes.
This is honestly the view of the old of what patriotism for the young should look like. Sacrifice. Paying your dues. Committing yourself for democracy.
Blood, toil, tears and sweat to prove yourself, and incidentally build park benches in Indiana. And we all know this is silly because we know what is worth giving our time to and what we should give our time to far better than what a national bureaucracy would come up with. Our generation volunteers more hours than any other did. Most everyone at UC Berkeley was either an Eagle Scout or protested the Boy Scouts, so one way or another they got involved. The United States doesn't need everyone in a uniform to get their national sacrifice merit badge, it needs young engineers and bright business graduates for us to do what we're already doing. Certainly we could stand to vote more or spend an hour reading up on political issues, but nothing that life-altering.
Our generation will be the first in which helping the nation is largely synonymous with self-interest. Immediately following Sept. 11, President Bush told Americans that the most patriotic thing they could do was go to the mall, spend freely, go to work and spy on the neighbors. We already do three out of four. And there are many, generally ancient, politicians who see this and feel that without a spirit of sacrifice or gratitude, the ability to stand up for your country won't be there when a crisis arrives.
Hence, the above attempts to send a compulsory message to today's youth.
That message is, "You're either too self-absorbed to help your country or too stupid to figure how to do it on your own."
Maybe Rangel and company need to learn to trust this generation a bit. They have a view that if we aren't employed by the government or being shot at we'll end up permanently self-absorbed. But we weren't self-absorbed to start with, especially compared to our parents at college age. Unlike their generation, our age group filled the military by volunteering, not conscription. Our generation held the first pro-United States rally at UC Berkeley, not theirs. In all, there's little evidence besides worrying-aged people that our generation needs character-building and so much of it. The best thing the worriers can do for us is let us graduate, get a job and stay out of our lives.
We're a perfectly decent generation, Congress. Excuse us if we don't jump through hoops just to prove it.
