And here's the result: PowerLine's Paul Mirengoff writes today about Barack Obama's plan to inculcate civic pride in our nation's youth. That is, use the federal government's coercive power to force high school students to do 50 hours of local community service and college students to do 100 hours.
Mr. Mirengoff's comments are excellent. (So go read them!) But, naturally, I'd like to add a few things.
A community service requirement strikes me as a secular way of using the state to enforce morality. Research also shows that heavy drinking and divorce lead to social problems, and that attending church regularly is correlated with greater happiness. Should the former be banned, the latter required? Of course not! The logic is flawed.
And it is flawed because you cannot legislate morality that is not already in the national character; otherwise, it becomes a cynical parody. This is precisely the case with community service requirements now. As Mr. Mirengoff points out, it is difficult to define "community service" exactly, and in my experience in high school, those who don't care will find ways to accumulate hours while doing hardly anything. Additionally, requiring students to do community service to graduate will turn "volunteer" work into a paid job, for all intents and purposes. Combined, these two effects will actually cheapen community service to the point of cynicism. This is often the result of coercive moral legislation: obedience to that moral principle becomes a point of self-interest rather than real morality.
Instead of engaging in hasty, ill-considered federal projects, we need to think about the societal forms and institutions that foster good citizenship and responsibility.
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