Article 1 makes no mention of FORCING people to serve so your analogies and purposeful misreadings of the document only help to prove my point.

That point is that you are a simple little boy who would rather wail about the unfairness of having to grow up and shoulder the reponsibilities of adulthood and citizenship.

If you had your way and the world just left you alone to watch porn and and choke your chicken, we’d all live in peace and harmony. Right?

Grow up. And wait a year or two and I’m sure your real balls will drop.

I’m at a loss as to why so many people automatically jump to the conclusion that you have to be a slave in order to do something for your community or that you don’t owe this nation and those who came before you a debt of gratitude. Just today Radley posted another story about the innocence project getting someone freed from an obviously unjust conviction. If that isn’t working for a cause (one that I’m glad someone is doing) I don’t know what is.

#67, People are born today with the idea that this country owes them something instead of being instilled with the lesson that it’s the other way around and then we wonder why so many things are getting more and more screwed up. We put more and more laws on the books because people are looking for the government to take care of every little issue in their lives instead of taking care of themselves. You’re kinda right, it’s sad that that kind of upbringing is considered “old time”.

_The_Cult_of_the_Presidency_ by Gene Healy. These same Progressive see war as a way to control the people. Putting young folks into these programs provides a preconditioned army for whatever the powers that be desire.

It is disconcerting that we have been purposely driven by our servants, pretending to be leaders (the President is merely the head butler of the US with 11 enumerated, limited powers), into the current system where people believe in the authority and power of the President (and even Congress) to do these things. Spend some time reading the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Understand the central concept of our government is one in which We the People tell THEM what to do. The Constitution is our set of rules for every part of the government. Anyone in government who fails to follow the People’s rules is a dishonorable person.

Please enlighten as to how the 13th Amendment was not used to nullify the draft. Oh wait, perhaps you’re a brilliant Constitutional scholar who just found that! That must be it.

You’re an ass flails about trying to use the constitution to support your arguments without actually reading the document (it’s written in plain English, btw, you don’t have to be a legal scholar to understand it), but I’ll answer you anyway.

Article I, section 8 of the constitution gives Congress the specific power to “raise and support armies” and “provide for the common defense.” The 13th amendment would have to specifically nullify that power in order to make the draft unconstitutional (doesn’t mean people didn’t try to argue that point during Vietnam, but they failed).

In closing, Ira, you’re a dick, and if you want to force any of your fellow citizens into servitude you’re going to have to get another amendment to the constitution passed. Good luck with that, jackass.

“Don’t we pay about half of everything we earn in local, state, and federal taxes? So we’re already giving half of our time to community service. How much is enough?”

Again, if 50% of our time is not enough, how much should we give? What is the appropriate amount of time to sacrifice for a good patriotic American? 60%? 70%? Hell, forget trying to raise a family. I’ll just enslave myself to the state full time and live off of food stamps. How does that sound?

#56, that’s retarded. Re-read your statement and get back with me.

#53, that isn’t what radley was upset about in the McCain speech. McCain was speaking to a group of people who willingly signed up for Naval service and he was praising their decision and commitment. If all it takes is praising a group for putting on a military uniform to generate that kind of hostility, I see an issue. This isn’t the first time radley has made snide comments about people who believe military service is one of the highest forms of honor. Coming from a military family, I take that personally.

#65, You have a responsibility to your heritage whether you accept it or not. You have every right to sit on your ass complaining about what a horrible nation this is because someone with more honor and class chose to stand up and be counted. I don’t believe the government should be able to force you to “volunteer” for anything, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us who do don’t have the right to let you know your attitude blows. Americans aren’t born with a birthright, they earn the respect they deserve. Being incredibly lucky enough to be born here and pay taxes isn’t good enough. Either you work to make your neighborhood and society better, or you’re a drain on it.

I’m astounded that a person could be so self-indulgent and arrogant as to believe he could force another person to be conscripted to work to bring about his own view of “the common good.” Perhaps you are not quite so bold as to think _you_ should be the one determining which version of “the common good” we are working towards, but if you are willing to give that decision up to our overlords than you are an even poorer excuse for an intelligent animal.

Maybe they would give us options of what service we do as slaves, but I find that unlikely. Even if they do, I expect it will be from a very narrow list of popular Politically Correct causes du jour. But I expect I would never be allowed to use my conscripted labor to listen to wiretaps of Congressional offices to try to reduce corruption, or to serve on a police oversight unit, or to work towards cutting all subsidies for all goods and services, domestic and abroad.

And personally, I think that those projects, and others like them, are the only sort that would help satisfy the debt I owe this country. Because what this country gave me (in ever dwindling supply) is freedom, and the only way to repay freedom is to continue to fight for it.

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You want all the benefits of living in this country and none of the responsibilities.
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Try again. The greatest responsibility of living in a free country is eternal vigilance in defense of her freedoms. (Not freedom, freedoms.) And that is an ongoing, losing battle, especially when someon like McCain, Obama, or yourself seems to think it patriotic to take them away.

haha Linda, fair enough, fair enough..

No no no no no. Let’s not encourage an expansion of the public sector along any lines, and particularly not along these stupid lines. Don’t overlook that “the jobs they want to conscript ‘volunteers’ for” would constitute even dumber dumb shit than the dumb shit you lament above.

#40 and the rest of you fools:

Please enlighten as to how the 13th Amendment was not used to nullify the draft. Oh wait, perhaps you’re a brilliant Constitutional scholar who just found that! That must be it.

Please. Whether you accept it or not, you owe this country. We all do and giving some time to the common good is not un-American nor is it illegal for the government to ask that from us. Take little old idiot me for example… I didn’t want to serve in the military so I was a VISTA for a year in the inner-city. Then, I started my carreer and whoopdeefriggindo everybody got something out of my vonlunteering.

I say again, you are all a bunch of NIMBYs and slackers. You want all the benefits of living in this country and none of the responsibilities.

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Yes, I do owe this country for all the illegal wiretapping, illegal wars, terrorizing of my fellow citizens, decaying infrastructure and educational system….
And you know what?
I pay my debt every time I pay my taxes.

If the government would stop spending money on dumb shit, they could pay people to do the jobs they want to conscript “volunteers” for

Go fuck yourself.

Don’t we pay about half of everything we earn in local, state, and federal taxes? So we’re already giving half of our time to community service. How much is enough?

Barack Obama’s recent words to promote his image as Community Organizer in Chief were not about forming a paramilitary force of volunteer brown shirts. They were about turning America into one, giant, community organizer’s sandbox at enormous cost to taxpayers.

Senator Obama was nearly 17 minutes into his July 2 speech (yet another one where naming Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was required) in Colorado Springs, Colorado when he deviated from his pre-released script and performed without the teleprompter net saying,

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.” (emphasis added)

The immediate context for that amazing statement was a preview of parts of his plan to vastly expand community service opportunities for Americans of nearly all ages. He said,

“People of all ages, stations, and skills will be asked to serve.”

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I respect Radleys efforts on behalf of individual rights. Many people talk – he does things. But,

Radley, where is Obama in your post? Do you really think that ONLY McCain is a threat to the individual? Obama’s plans shriek of the collective.

But do you think that the state should make indifference to one’s own shallowness illegal?

Please enlighten as to how the 13th Amendment was not used to nullify the draft. Oh wait, perhaps you’re a brilliant Constitutional scholar who just found that! That must be it.

Please. Whether you accept it or not, you owe this country. We all do and giving some time to the common good is not un-American nor is it illegal for the government to ask that from us. Take little old idiot me for example… I didn’t want to serve in the military so I was a VISTA for a year in the inner-city. Then, I started my carreer and whoopdeefriggindo everybody got something out of my vonlunteering.

I say again, you are all a bunch of NIMBYs and slackers. You want all the benefits of living in this country and none of the responsibilities.

That is an entirely nonsensical claim. That is sort of like saying, “If you don’t believe that Keanu Reeves makes more money than you, then you don’t make much money”.

And, of course, all of these things will undeniably raise the cost of college, homes, cars, etc., making them less affordable to people who don’t sign on for the “volunteer” program, in turn increasing dependence on the program to the point where only relatively wealthy people can afford not to “volunteer”.

Also, keep in mind that taxes will have to rise to cover the added (soon-to-be-forgiven) loan costs and the cost of administering the “volunteer” program and it’s projects. And, there will be fewer people contributing, as the government-administered programs will reduce the time people have for productive work. And so on down the line…

Let’s avoid the strawman: There is no outcry here against people volunteering for what they decide is a worthy cause, nor against people finding meaning in something “greater than themselves”. The problem is when government makes volunteerism mandatory (among other things, demonstrating that they don’t know what the “volunteerism” means). At that point, the politicians determine what the “higher causes” will be and they will determine whether a citizen is being a “selfish bastard” for not serving their pet causes. In a decent country, the government doesn’t get to point a gun at me and decide what the best use of my time is, how my life is best spent, or which charitable notions I should support.