National "service" for children.

There are a lot of false claims about Barack Obama. And I don’t know why. Certainly the accurate problems with Mr. Obama ought to be sufficient reason to not want him anywhere near the White House. Ditto for Biden, McCain and Palin by the way.

This commentator is often conflicted over which policy is the worse offered by a candidate. There are so many bad policies to pick from that the choice isn’t easy. But certainly among the worst policies being proposed is Obama’s desire to put children into “service” to the state.

In July Obama gave a speech demanding that the citizens of this country engage in “service” to the country and said we must all act in “shared sacrifice”. And he thinks this sort of “sacrifice” to the collective is most important for children -- that they need to be taught to serve. My view is that servility is a tool of obedience and that servility and obedience are the hallmarks of slavery.

In particular Obama wanted more young people to learn total obedience to the state by joining the military. I should note to his antiwar supporters that a limited number of bodies to send to war is a limitation on the power of the state to make war. To expand the capacity for war-making also expands the ability of the State to wage war. Obama said he calls “on a new generation of Americans to join our military, and complete the effort to increase our ground forces by 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines.” He said, “we must value and encourage military service across our society.”

He promises to expand “AmeriCorps to 250,000 slots, and make increased service a vehicle to meet national goals like providing health care and education, saving our planet and restoring our standing in the world, so that all citizens see their efforts connected to a common purpose.” A common purpose? Is this the Third Reich? We have individual purpose not common purpose. Freedom means individual choice not a herd following “suggestions” from the president. And notice how the issues that will be addressed are all top Left-wing issues.

Now we know that Mr. Obama wants to conscript your wealth and force you to finance his political agenda but would he conscript your children to do so as well? That is a legitimate question when you here some modern fascist-lite extolling national service (and I include McCain in that category even if he isn’t as bad as Obama on this issue.)

Obama has said:

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.

Let us look at this more closely for a second. First, where in the Constitution is the president given any such power? Second, since when did the U.S. government have the power to determine how Americans will spend their free time? These are not the proper functions of a government in a free society. If you add this sort of “national service” mentality to the Bush surveillance state (and don’t expect Obama to repeal any of that) you have the fascist state in a nutshell.

I think this is critical for voters to consider. The Republican agenda alone is not fascism. The Democratic agenda alone is not fascism. Both contain major elements of fascism. But as we stagger back and forth from Democrats in charge to Republicans in charge each implements their favored version of fascism while neglecting to repeal any of the measures pushed through by their “opponents”. This is like a drunk staggering toward a cliff. He may stumble to the right for a bit and then to the left for a bit but he continues to head for the precipice no matter which way he staggers.

America is being converted to fascism for sure but it is a bipartisan effort. And Obama’s call for national servitude is a major step in that direction. In Obama’s case it is the kids he wants pushed into some sort of youth faction to promote expectable left-wing goals. He is talking about “middle school” and “high school” students.

How will he get these kids into such a program? If it is entirely voluntary most won’t volunteer and I applaud them for that. No child should enroll in any government volunteer program. If they wish to volunteer, and it is good that do so, they should do so entirely outside the public sector. And that has been the problem for national servitude programs. They need coercion to work. Obama knows this. But he also knows that if he sends out government thugs to force children in obeying his call for service it will look bad and Obama is very careful about his image (substance may be lacking but image is everything -- another trait he shares with his national service mentors in Italy and Germany).

Obama says he will meet his goal of forcing children into service “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.”

So there is a carrot and a stick. The local school have to push children into national servitude or lose federal funding -- funding which is first taken from the local parents. If they succeed in forcing children into government approved service they will get extra funding. Please note that the purpose of federal funding of education is not to increase funding -- after all the money is taken from local taxpayers first. The purpose is so that politicians in Washington can use the funding to force local schools to act on their behalf. Bush did this with his silly abstinence programs and Obama wants to do this with his program of placing children into national servitude.

Schools that ignore Obama’s agenda of making children servants of the state would lose their funds. Few can afford to do that. They will be forced to comply and they will have to find methods of forcing children to comply as well. One such method could be withholding earned diplomas or credits until the child “voluntarily” enslaves himself to Obama’s agenda.

If the schools make the “service” truly voluntary they will find it impossible to meet Obama’s directive and would lose funding. Their only alternative is to make this “voluntary service” involuntary by finding a means of forcing children to serve Obama’s agenda. Remember the government calls income tax voluntary even as they are sending armed agents to incarcerate you if you don’t pay. Democratic fascist Charles Rangel has been pushing for government slavery for years. He says that his measure is voluntary because the slave can pick between “community service” or the military. These national service measures are voluntary in the same sense that you voluntarily hand your money to a gun-toting mugger who says: “Your money or your life.”

It is critical that as many parents as possible remove their children from state schools.

In the Obama tradition of demanding sacrifice for the common good here are some quotes in a similar vein.

If we then understand national solidarity aright, we cannot but see that it is based on the idea of sacrifice. In other words, if somebody or other objects that the continual giving involves too heavy a burden, then we must reply that... true national solidarity cannot find its sense in mere taking. Adolph Hitler

Once the whole nation has really succeeded in grasping the fact that these measures call for sacrifice on the part of each individual, then they will lead to something far greater than a mere lessening of material needs, from them will grow the conviction that the "community of the nation" is no mere empty concept, but that it is soemthing which really is vital and living. Adolph Hitler