You show up once a month, with boots, rucksack, and rifle, or you don’t get to vote.

See, wasn’t that easy?

P.s. Which reminds me Radley, do you even own a “voting” (.30 cal. or greater) rifle?

I’m exempt from the requirement, being older than 45. I do keep handy defensive weapons by the bedside.

Blurm,

Did you miss the part where the service is mandatory?

I’ll say it again.

It is not optional.

It is mandatory.

MANDATORY.

M
A
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D
A
T
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Y

As in NOT OPTIONAL, but MANDATORY.

Do you get it? We are not objecting to the possibility of an opt-in program, we are objecting to the FACT that it is NOT OPT-IN.

If you use the phrase “optional/opt-in volunteer program” to describe Obama’s plan to quote “call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year” again, we will know that you are in fact a troll. So prove to us that you aren’t or stay away.

BTW: “developing a plan to REQUIRE” — source: http://change.gov/americaserves/ That’s the site of the President-Elect, AKA Obama.

For the record I don’t think anything like this will go through without some serious limitations. But the fact that it has a strong chance of going through, especially considering how much power the govt. has already taken from its citizens, indicates that we have been on the slippery slope for a long time–and it’s only getting slicker.

No, I don’t think universal service programs are going to cause the end of civilization. Just because something doesn’t lead directly to fascism doesn’t make it a good idea, however. So defend your immoral and stupid universal service programs for what they are, not what you believe your opponents think they will be.

Blurm, It’s clear you’re a snarky douchebag. While I disagree with libarbarian, she’s intelligent and civil. This isn’t the start of the ‘slippery slope’- we’ve been on the slope for quite some time. Empires implode- we’re still in the Phillipines over a hundred years after that war. These military abuses are perilous. Our kids are being randomly searched (many times by dogs), drug tested, have their freedoms of speech limited, and now, they’re going to be forced into serving this monstrosity of a govt. The drug war has eroded the 4th amendment to the point of never being relevent again. The fundamentalists and do-gooders in this country are turning this into a fascist nation. Hell, Mussolini used Woodrow Wilson as his template for fascism.
More govt programs and laws equal less freedoms. Now that they’re coming after our kids instead of just demanding our money and restricting our freedoms, I think people are waking up.

And, more generally, how is that Obama advocacy working out for you? He was your lesser of two evils, and the Congressional outcome was roughly predictible, so you’ve got to be happy with a one-party White House and Congress, right?

There is no way to care “equally” for 6 billion people except in the most abstract sense where is largely becomes meaningless. When it comes practice, there will always be those you feel more closeness and connection to.

If I had a steak, I’d share with a starving African before a moderately-hungry American, but I’d probably help a starving American before a starving African. I’m not going to pretend that there is some objective moral standard behind this .. its very subjective.

Look, I appreciate your response to my quip (and it was a quip, not a thesis or reasoned argument), but people have spent the last 10,000+ years differentiating between their tribes and other tribes without necessarily formulating logical or coherent theories about how to do so. Usually it was kinship, but it was almost never any immutable standard or written in stone – almost every society had way where a kin could be cast out of the tribe and a stranger could be adopted into it.

Ultimately I think it will always involve some degree of arbitrariness.

Maybe it will help you understand if I explain that I help my family and friends often, but would resist being forced to help them by the government.

My tribe is the human race. When Kang and Kodos come, this will all be made clear.

Somehow, I don’t think that was the change that people thought they were voting for………

Please try to come up with something workable based off of this tribe idea. If you could do that, the debate would be more interesting.

Why do you help friends and family in cases where you would not help strangers? Its easy.

Americans are my tribe. Mexicans and French aren’t.

At least Noam Chomsky fully admits that logically you cannot stop at your border and American wealth should be redistributed globally to better all of humanity. So, “I only help American kids” is darn right stupid.

Now, I of course disagree with both Obama and Chomsky.

Straight from his website: “Obama and Biden will set a goal that all middle and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year…”

Tell me, what does the word ‘all’ mean to you….?

you cite the constitution’s (the vastly weakened document that’s supposed to restrict the government) ability to protect us, but then you want to increase the federal government’s power.

you think government programs are easy to change if we don’t like them.

you ridicule people pointing out what the new chief of staff’s values are, the values he outlined in a recent book.

there’s already optional programs in place to help students with tuition- why create a huge bureaucracy? are there really that many students with no better options? just because you ‘like the option’ doesn’t mean others should be forced to support it.

instead of telling me to ‘suck it up a little and see what really happens’, you could show me examples where something like this has worked before. History has repeatedly shown socialsim to be a failed idea.