National Service Is Essential to Our Security

National service has always been the bridesmaid but never the bride in American politics. From the time the idea of some kind of service more comprehensive than military duty became popular in the early 1900s, it has had a lot of support. But national service has never really gotten very far. Now, after a century of failed attempts, several members of Congress are pushing for a comprehensive national-service program.

It behooves us to ask why this idea has failed so often. Universal military training was proposed by Army Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood after World War I, and there were people who wanted to revive the Civilian Conservation Corps after World War II, but they got nowhere. As we consider the idea again, it is worth looking at which arguments against national service the majority of policy makers and the public have found compelling in the past. Are they still valid — or at least, are they going to persuade a majority of people, whether they’re valid or not?

Three rationales for national service have been offered over the years:

• Filling unmet needs. Nursing homes are inadequately staffed, park benches need to be built in national parks, litter must be removed from the highways, and a vast array of other needs come to the attention of Americans and lead to calls for new solutions.
• Building character. People should not go through their entire education without encountering someone from a different race, a different socioeconomic background, or a different religion, and community service is a way to prompt a mixing of people and ideas.
• Practical defense needs. The nation must have a strong military and a strong homeland defense, so national service offers a way to ensure that America’s cities and towns get the protection they need.

All of those ideas have some supporters, but that has been the problem in getting national service passed. Proponents have sought to build the broadest possible coalitions to endorse the concept — without also getting them to endorse the same rationale and goals for what it is to accomplish. But agreeing to disagree about the purpose of national service hobbles the chance that mandatory service will ever succeed. At the very least, we need agreement about what is the most important goal for national service.

The argument most often advanced for national service is that volunteers are needed to fill unmet needs. However, it’s very subjective to say that needs are not being met, either by the marketplace or by our flourishing nonprofit world. To some on the political right, one unmet need is that religious groups don’t have enough manpower; to people on the left, needs might include bringing the arts to poor children.

Even if a majority of Americans were able to agree on a list of unmet needs, the question then becomes whether the marketplace can take care of those needs. If the market can’t do it, then can nonprofit organizations or churches or other institutions in our existing noncoercive, nonconscriptive civil society? When the power of the state is being invoked, it’s not enough to note a shortage of people helping the elderly in nursing homes because of the high cost of staffing. First, Americans would have to be persuaded that it is impossible to pay more money for adult professionals with benefits and perhaps labor-union representation to do those jobs. And even if that proved to be the case, it would have to be clear why the jobs must be done by the government. Why the federal government? Why not instead by nonprofit organizations, which potentially could have a greater role? We tend to forget about that and think it’s just a question of the market or the state, but we have the world’s most developed nonprofit infrastructure.

In a country with libertarian traditions, it is not reasonable to force 18-year-olds to do things that might be inspiring for a nonprofit organization to do, like beautifying highways and helping the elderly. If national service is mandatory, and those who don’t participate go to prison, the rationale for its role must be more compelling than beautifying highways and emptying bedpans.

Equally weak is the argument that national service builds character and encourages people of different races and classes to mix. It is true that many of the youngsters born after the Vietnam War have essentially lived in a socioeconomic bubble. They have managed to go from birth through prep school through the Ivy League without encountering anyone from outside their rarefied social stratum. It would be good for the souls of these kids if they went out and helped the poor or helped tutor children or even went and dug ditches. It might be good for their souls, but that doesn’t mean they should be drafted. Frankly, the federal government should not be in the character-building business. What’s more, American traditions have never supported the idea that the federal government can simply conscript a person for a period of time to perform functions that are not absolutely and immediately justified by necessity.

It’s the military argument for national service that Americans have found most compelling, and after September 11, that notion has grown even stronger. For the first time since the early and midpart of the 20th century, homeland defense is something very significant. Homeland defense is not an afterthought; it is not a way to avoid the military draft. It is a serious need.

If the professional military can’t defend the country adequately (and that includes having soldiers with satisfactory expertise and educational credentials), it seems only practical to have a community-service draft to meet manpower needs.

But a moral case can also be made. In a republic, unlike the old-fashioned despotic monarchies, the citizens participate. They are owners of the state, the state does not own them. The republican ideal is not socialism but rather something like a property-owners’ association. In return for being associated, you take part in the administration of justice by voting on neighborhood policies. You take part in the selection of leaders and you take part in defending the property from intruders.

That republican ideal has faded away, and in practice our relationship with the government is largely one of paying taxes. Americans who don’t serve on juries, don’t vote, and don’t serve in the military don’t really live much differently than the 18th-century Hessian subjects of King George.

Because September 11 helped change our ideas about commitment to government, it seems possible to change that mindset. One way is to offer a two-tiered national-service program: Young people could choose between military service abroad and homeland defense of the United States. Conscription for the purpose of homeland defense seems plausible — that is, it doesn’t look as though the federal government has simply come up with an excuse to require community service. Instead, homeland defense is something that America really needs to do.

What would those homeland defenders do? They could provide personnel support for emergency medical units, firefighters, and police. Professionals should serve on the front lines, but members of the national service corps could drive ambulances, answer phones, and arrange those logistics behind the scenes.

Admirable as they are, many of the activities associated with AmeriCorps or VISTA are not a legitimate alternative to homeland defense or to serving in the military. At least in theory, people are risking their lives to help respond to a tornado, to help firefighters deal with a terrorist bombing, or to help hospitals during bioterrorism attacks. Such activities have the same connection between personal and physical labor and sacrifice and citizenship that war abroad has had historically. Teaching young children to read, picking up litter on the highways, or helping the elderly in understaffed nursing homes is not comparable.

The contemporary debate on national service was started by William James in his 1906 essay, “The Moral Equivalent of War.” Most civilian service is not the moral equivalent of war. The connection between citizenship and sacrifice lies in actually putting yourself in harm’s way. That’s why the public will support a national service plan — because Americans want to do all they can to support a strong national defense. Let’s hope we hear more about that from America’s policy makers.

Michael Lind is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, in Washington. This article was adapted from the spring 2002 issue of

The Responsive Community: Rights and Responsibilities, which features three other articles on national service.