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L. Neil Smith's
THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE
Number 540, October 11, 2009

"The gun is a symbol of freedom, not tyranny"

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Mandatory National Service
by C. Jeffery Small
jeff@go-galt.org

Special to The Libertarian Enterprise

Dear Tea Party Members:

First, I want to express my deepest appreciation to everyone who has been involved in all aspects of organizing, promoting and participating in the Tea Party events. The willingness of people to devote so much time and energy in the name of preserving liberty and restoring our lost rights is amazing, and inspiring. Just when despair sets in and you begin to think that the United States might be down for the count, the American people do what they have always done—fight back for their independence! But this time, instead of a waging a physical battle with guns, we are engaged in a battle of ideology. Ideas are our weapon, with truth and principles as our ammunition.

I am impressed at how well the organizers have done at keeping up the momentum by staging a continuing series of creative events. The town hall protests over the summer were a staggering success and the 9/12 march on Washington, although minimized, misrepresented or ignored by the main stream media, still had tremendous impact on the politicians, no matter how much they denied it. Let's go back to Washington, this time two or three million strong, but with a well defined and financed advertising campaign that does not rely upon the moribund media. This campaign should be designed to insure that our message is conveyed accurately to the rest of the country. And then we will keep returning in ever-growing numbers until our government finally acknowledges that we too are American citizens!

During the month of October we are all working diligently to keep the cowards in Congress from sneaking a health care bill through the back door after discovering that they could not do it honestly, in the bright light of day. We must also stop the disastrous cap-and-trade legislation that would certainly destroy our economy. Once again, the President has demonstrated his utter contempt for the American people by completely bypassing the normal legislative process and having the EPA, a regulatory agency under his purview, declare CO2 as a "pollutant", so that his draconian policies can be implemented without the need for scientific scrutiny or public review and debate. My hope is that the October Surprise will be a trick for Congress and a treat for the the rest of us!

The reason I am writing is that I want to bring another important issue to everyone's attention. During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly spoke about his deep commitment to national service. In our President's view, we are not sovereign individuals possessing unalienable rights protected by the Constitution. Instead, as a thoroughgoing collectivist, he views "society" as the fundamental political unit and the sole repository of rights, with people as merely the raw material of that society—a natural resource to be applied by the collective's whim and will to those societal issues and problems deemed by the controlling elite (i.e., by him) to be worth addressing. If you think about this for a moment, I believe that you will see that this perspective makes sense of every one of his subsequent actions, from his calmly believing that he can make all of our personal decision for us, whether in the realm of executive pay or health care, to his belief that he has the power and authority to control every aspects of our economy. And as we are the clay in his hands, he intends to shape us as required to achieving his purpose, by instituting mandatory service requirements for every citizen, effectively making us all slaves of the state. Here is what Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had to say:

"Citizenship is not an entitlement program. It comes with responsibilities.... Everybody—somewhere between the ages 18 and 25—will serve three months of basic training and understanding in a kind of civil defense. That universal sense of service—somewhere between the ages of 18 and 25—will give Americans, once again, a sense of what they are to be American and their contribution to a country and a common experience."

Get that? Rahm knows that you don't have any idea what it means to be an American, so he plans to place you and everyone in your family into a re-education program that will ensure that you learn what a "proper American" is and how they act!

Barack has been a little busy lately with some of his other plans for us, so he hasn't gotten around to trying to implement this national service requirement—yet. But that doesn't mean that this program lies dormant. On the contrary! And just like all of his other schemes, this one is being snuck in under the radar in a truly despicable manner. You might remember that earlier this year that the "Serve America Act" was passed, transferring an additional $6,000,000,000 (yes, that's 6 billion) of taxpayer money to the Corporation for National and Community Service.

And what is this organization doing with all those additional funds. Well, a good chunk of it is being funneled into the National Service-Learning Partnership, which is working very diligently to get every school in this country to institute "service-learning" programs, which is just a fancy bit of double-speak for "mandatory community service" programs for all students from Kindergarten up, with rigid service requirement on all high school students which must be met in order for them to graduate. In other words, every child in this country is being forced into indentured servitude, in direct violation of the 5th and 13th amendments of our Constitution. According to reports I have read, over half of the public schools across the country have already instituted these mandatory requirements.

Channeling Rahm Emanuel, Ron Waldman, the Head of the Meridian School in Seattle, WA, stated it this way:

"Service is the rent you pay for living on earth, and it starts in elementary school. By the time they leave 5th grade, we want our kids to feel that this is part of the fabric of who they are. It's not whether I should or shouldn't serve the community, but how. That's just what we do."

And this is very representative of statements made by teachers and school administrators across the country. Our public schools are rapidly being transformed into indoctrination camps, brainwashing the youth to see the social philosophy promoted by Obama and the progressives as simply the unquestioned norm. They are being taught that they must suppress their own dreams and plans, placing the needs of society or the community above their own. And in this way, their enthusiasm and independence is slowly crushed.

There is much more to be said on this subject, and I have created a website which analyzes the philosophical and moral underpinnings of this movement. I have also created a running blog which track ongoing developments in the arena of mandatory service. Please take a look and read all the gory details. I would appreciate it if you could also make all of your organization's members aware of this site. It is extremely important that we get the word out to as many people as possible about this action which is not being reported on in the main stream press. It would be of great help if you could also announce the site at your October rallies, and I would also encourage you to write about this issue on your own websites, blogs or newsletters, and to send letters to the editor or write articles for your local papers expressing your outrage at what is being done to our children.

The assault on our freedoms is pervasive, and it may seem difficult to focus on yet another area of attack, but I believe that this issue is one of the most important to our future. While health care and cap-and-trade will have devastating economic consequences, we could shoulder those burdens as we continued to work for a better future. But if mandatory national service becomes the law of the land, then we will have, once and for all, abandoned the fundamental principle of individualism at the core of our Constitution, which is the underpinning of all of our rights and freedoms. We will have truly become servants to the state, with the fundamental relationship between the government and its citizens permanently inverted. Please work with me to stop that from becoming a reality.

At my site you will also find an initiative called the John Galt Pledge. As most readers of this letter will probably already be aware, this pledge was the concise summation of Ayn Rand's moral philosophy outlined in her novel Atlas Shrugged. In conjunction with that pledge, I have written a "Personal Declaration of Independence" as follows:

"I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."

I take this pledge as a personal Declaration of Independence. As a sovereign individual, I assert the exclusive right to my life, my liberty and my property, as guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. As government is properly instituted to protect my rights, I oppose, and declare as unconstitutional, all actions taken by government that violate the very rights it is charged with defending. I support a return to the principle of individualism upon which this country was founded. And rejecting any initiation of the use of force as being wholy inappropriate, I support a society based strictly upon voluntary association and free trade among its people.

This is the pledge that I make to myself, as a personal commitment to proudly stand in the face of opposition and defend my rights and my freedom. I ask anyone else who understands these words and wished to also publically proclaim it to the world, to add their voice to a movement for a return to the principle upon which this country was founded. And they can start by adding their name to the growing list at this site.


Mr. Small's website is go-galt.org/Galt_Pledge , his Blog is at go-galt.org/Galt_Pledge/JG_Blog.html


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