The Evil of Forced Volunteerism
by G. Stolyarov II
The schools of the Dewey system and leftist bureaucrats in Washington have recently allied for the promotion of mandatory youth groups similar to the Pioneers of the former Soviet Union and the Spies of Mr. Orwell's dystopia. Let us recall that within such organizations, occupying a student's time beyond the school day, were coordinated "collective" activities aimed not at material gain or the development of individual capacities, but rather at the reinforcement of the mentality of "service", "spirit", and "cooperation", words of Newspeak quality defining in actuality the surrender of personal opportunities and selections for the sake of the Party. The songs, marches, drills, and banners of the Pioneers and the Spies were intended to foster the fanatical inward devotion to the ruling elite and the heated outward hooliganism against potential dissenters, which molded the youths into "uncontrollable little savages." It is a matter of alarm, although not one of surprise, that the socialist wing of academia is at the moment attempting to implement a similar design. In order to maintain necessary vigilance and thwart such a scheme, as well as establish yet another link between the Oceanian Party and the modern left, it will be fitting to conduct an anatomy of the precise state of affairs.
Here the factual and analytical data furnished by Mr. Steven Martinovich, Editor-in-Chief of "Enter Stage Right" Internet Magazine, will be of assistance to us. The assaults against thousands of innocent civilians by murderous fanatics on September 11, Mr. Martinovich claims, have resulted in a fanatical initiative from regulators seeking to exploit the situation.
Tragedies, however, also bring out baser instincts as evidenced by some of America's lawmakers and pundits. There is currently a push on Capitol Hill for an expansion of the AmeriCorps program, alternately derided and praised by Americans. Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Evan Bayh, D-Ind. later this month will seek to have the six-year old program expanded from 250000 participants to 500000. More ominous, however, is a quieter push by some to institute mandatory national service, something that Americans haven't faced since the Vietnam War. People like Robert Litan of the Brookings Institution have publicly stated that compulsory service for all American youth would act as an equalizing force, much in the same way that military service has done in the past. Litan points out that compulsory service merely follows on the recent trend by some school districts forcing high school students to perform volunteer work before they are allowed to graduate. 'Compulsory service brings together people from all walks of life during crucial formative years and puts them in a common environment, where they have no choice but to get along with each other,' Litan writes in a recent issue of the Brookings Review. 'It also helps instill a sense of obligation to the larger society.'
(Steven Martinovich, Chief Editor of "Enter Stage Right" Internet Magazine. "Mandatory Volunteerism". January 11, 2002.)
Volunteer campaigns such as AmeriCorps are not in themselves flawed, provided that individuals possessing membership within them have volitionally resolved to undertake such an endeavor, which results in discernible personal gains (if not monetary profit, then the contentment of successfully pursuing one's values). However, the suggestions of Mr. Litan and the practices of high schools at present are admittedly socialist and blatantly intervenient with a student's personal welfare. The entire concept of artificially imposed "equality" is opposed to man's fundamental inherently derived liberties. The only genuine equality, that under the law, can exist in a meritocratic society founded upon freedom of choice, where positive choices are rewarded and negative ones are punished, where individuals through the exercise of their own consciences, not those of the legislature, would determine their standing and future. The act of mandating equality suffocates the most admirable of human beings by coercing them into not accomplishing meritorious actions within their capacities simply because all others do not possess the skill nor the willpower to ascend to their level. Since excellence cannot be mandated (the man of sloth will remain indolent on "an even playing field" because, should he even mechanically undertake the fulfillment of orders, he will lack the creativity and motivation required for truly functional and praiseworthy achievements), the ultimate consequence of mandatory volunteerism is the reduction of adolescents undertaking it to the lowest common denominator. Considering the mystical element of "sacrifice to a greater whole" present within the rhetoric of supporters such as Mr. Litan, we can conclude that the modern American drive for forced service is an overtly collectivist design with the precise intention of establishing the aforementioned condition of mutual decay.
There is a related path upon which coerced volunteerism treads for the restriction of individual ascent, which, as we had examined, is a key struggle of totalitarian regimes.
Freedom. Back in 1967, novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand addressed one of the burning issues of the day and one directly related to mandatory service, the military draft, decrying it as no less than the worst statist violation of a person's right to life, comparing it to the similar forced service in the Soviet Union. It was no less than the defense of a free nation by a slave army. 'It negates man's fundamental right -- the right to life -- and establishes the fundamental principal that a man's life belongs to the state, and the state may claim it...,' she wrote. Proponents of mandatory service believe that living in a free society, such as the United States, means that you have an obligation to it. That assumes, however, that rights aren't inherent but granted by the state. She and I argue that the state only exists to protect the rights of a person and can't claim title over a person because of them. Mandatory service, Rand would have surely argued, turns the natural order of America's freedoms upside down. Instead of protecting the right of the individual to live their life the way they see fit, the government instead imposes its beliefs on that individual and negates their rights. The government's only justifiable rationale for existence is to protect our rights.
(Steven Martinovich, Chief Editor of "Enter Stage Right" Internet Magazine. "Mandatory Volunteerism". January 11, 2002.)
(It will be essential to note, as a tangent on the issue at hand, that both Ayn Rand and the Deweyite hippies had voiced opposition to the draft during the Vietnam War, but the similarity ends there. Ms. Rand opposed the draft in itself as an immoral practice. The hippies possessed no philosophical quarrel with forced military service. As a matter of fact, draft registration had been reinstituted in 1980 by the administration of the leftist hippie sympathizer, President Carter. The hippies' evasion of participation in the army had been aimed at destructing U.S. prospects in the Vietnam War. It was the war they had sought to undermine, not the draft.)
Thus, the collectivist pleas for volunteerism to enhance "devotion to society at large" are antithetical to the legal and philosophical foundations of American society. They are, however, reminiscent of the Party's desire to subvert all previously autonomous entities to itself for the purpose of the perpetuation of it as a tribe. In addition, freedom is essential in order for an individual to advance in his personal interests, which are at the root of Absolute Morality. By restricting freedom, the oligarchy seeks also to suppress merit and comfort as aspects detrimental to its existence.
It is compatible with the fundamental objectives of the Party and of socialists in general that this campaign be targeted not so greatly at the material world as at the minds of persons performing tasks dictated by the collective. Mr. Martinovich explains the essence of the nihilistic mentality of sacrifice imposed upon youths by the proposed practices as well as those currently enacted.
Forcing them to serve in America's blighted areas is no better a rationale for compulsory service. As Rand pointed out, forcing youth to toil for the economic betterment of others when youth traditionally begin to form their self-esteem, ambitions and their minds is nothing but altruism. Instead of sacrifice for a cause, it is sacrifice for sacrifice's sake. Proponents of mandatory service are right on one count, forcing America's youth to perform community service could probably check some items off the national to-do list. Their ultimate goal, however, as Litan pointed out in his essay, is to address the moral fiber of today's youth. He and people like him believe that compulsory service would instill morality, but morality -- by its very nature -- is a voluntary code of conduct. Forced community service is not voluntary, it the imposition of the non-voluntary. The utmost that force can do is to create an absurd counterfeit of morality, one not based on knowledge and rational judgment, but on mere brute fear and obedience, and even that fraudulent morality can last no longer than the force that imposed it. If participants place the slightest value on their own lives and freedom -- i.e., if they have the slightest beginnings of genuine morality -- then conscription will not even produce that sorry fraud: it will provoke even more malaise.
(Steven Martinovich, Chief Editor of "Enter Stage Right" Internet Magazine. "Mandatory Volunteerism". January 11, 2002.)
The fundamental aim, as professed by the plan's advocates, is not enhancement of the external world (which would occur at a faster rate if individuals were left to their own selfish designs), but rather the warping of targets' minds, the institution of a hold which no physical accomplishment could possess, the fostering of delusions of virtue which are in reality virtue's direct antitheses. If one constructs a shelter for the homeless because one admires the task of building, because one seeks to enhance one's capacity to build and create (as did Roark when he initially designed Cortlandt in The Fountainhead), then both the individual and the homeless living in the shelter will benefit. Should one, however, seek to perform the act not for the sake of self-interest but self-deprivation, he will not be concerned about the act, but rather about the depletion of his life and energy on a "selfless" task, i.e. a task of sacrifice. Altruism, the mentality which the oligarchy seeks to promote through forced volunteerism, does not enhance the life of any creature, for it preaches as its foundation not service to others but deprivation from self, that even should a task of genuine assistance be undertaken, it is of no value if it elevates the individual's position and comfort. Thus, the doctrine is nihilistic at its core, for it denies the objective standard of value that is human life.
An action performed without self-interest is performed without interest for one's own life and is thus immoral. A member of the statist-spawned organizations, ideally, should not even obtain pleasure and satisfaction from the accomplishment of his labors, for actions committed with the intent of acquiring genuine euphoria from them are essentially selfish and performed with an egotistical objective in mind. The antonym of pleasure, satisfaction, and happiness, and the condition which exists when such pursuits are abolished, is that of genuine selflessness, the state of suffering, precisely the savage quagmire into which the orthodoxy seeks to thrust individuals. Inculcated with collectivism, they will consequently embrace the condition to which they have been lowered and employ for the cause which shackled them the sole weapon left to the primeval entity, brute force. This is how the Party in 1984 had been able to furnish little agents for itself. This is how the Hitler Youth had been designed to become National-Socialism's backbone. This is how the Soviet Union suppressed the aspirations of youth through the Pioneers. This is what the American oligarchy is instituting as we speak, with discernible consequences already witnessed in the attitudinal and behavioral patterns of children today.
One needs also recognize that volunteerism is a severe time drain on the student. The performance of homework is an egoistic task in that it serves to earn a man knowledge for later success in life, a grade for advancement along the high school hierarchy and a prominent position in a university, a key to a successful career, as well as a work ethic which demands that one remain intellectually active for one's own benefit. Yet valuable time is deducted from an individual which could otherwise have been applied to furnish more thorough, valuable, and numerous homework assignments. The student is also robbed of the ability to perform a more valuable manner of service, service to himself by initiating his own career and working for profit instead of altruistic sacrifice. Yet because both of the above are useful in developing personal capacities, enjoyment, comfort, and ascent, they are detrimental to the leftist-socialist oligarchs who wish to eliminate such qualities.
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