Gratitude: reflections on what we owe to our country - book excerpt - special issue: 35th Anniversary 1955-1990

National Review, Nov 5, 1990 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

Coming very slowly to a boil in Congress is the question of national service. It is a very old idea, by the way. George Washington spoke in favor of national service, which was commonly supposed at the time to be service in the military, it being military preparedness that was in those days most commonly needed to defend against the agents of His Majesty King George, or the red-skinned agents of Chief Charging Bull. The proposition that American citizens owe something to the community that formulated and fought to establish their progenitive rights was proffered in 1910 by William James, in an essay still widely referred to as a kind of charter instrument of national service ("The Moral Equivalent of War"). The durability of the idea of national service at the very least betokens an inherent appeal. It was all so very much easier to speak about, and even to fancy, back when the tradition of public service meant the military. The Ferocity of the Warrior was readily transmuted to the Pride of the Father. In an age in which military contention absorbs less and less social energy (it has been 17 years since an American was drafted for military duty), the eye roams, under the prompting of a parched heart, for service of another kind; for the satisfaction, say, of juggling for Our Lady.

Both political parties, since the presidential contest of 1988, have declared themselves in favor of national service. Indeed, Democratic Senator Sam Nunn, acting for his party, introduced as the very first bill (S-3) in January 1989 a Citizenship and National Service Bill. What it says, to use only a few words to describe it, is that young people should be induced to give service to the nation. By no means does the bill propose that national service be limited to the military. Indeed, since the bill was introduced, because of the happy events of 1989 in the Communist bloc, it becomes apparent that we face the need for fewer, rather than for more, soldiers in the field. Accordingly, the efforts of many national-service volunteers would be directed to extra-military pursuits, of which there are a dismaying number. Dismaying in this sense: if you add up the number of young people whose services could profitably be used-say, in helping old people; in assisting teachers both in instructing children and in protecting them; in advancing environmental goals; in protecting deteriorating books in libraries-you add up quickly to more than one-half of the three million Americans who, every year, become 18 years old. The Nunn bill addresses the younger generation and says: Look, if you will. agree to give us a year of your time in national service, we will pay you $10,000 beyond the pocket money you will get during your national service. This $10,000 you can use toward your college tuition payments, if you go on to college; or as a down payment on your mortgage when you get around to buying a house.

It is conceived as a grand federal enterprise, and I do not wish only for that reason to oppose it, though I do so for reasons I will elaborate. As of this writing, the Republicans have (I concede, as I'll do later in greater detail) a half-hearted substitute bill, not worth exploring. It is very much worth remarking, however, that the subject of national service, although the debate about it has not yet reached the voter's hearth, is very much there, a subject waiting to be deliberated. It is going to run into any number of hostile presumptions, among them the aversion to an idea of federally sponsored philanthropy (though the Federal Government has long since encouraged philanthropy by granting tax deductions); an egalitarian resistance to special favors for special classes of citizens (though the government has long since favored veterans with the GI Bill, which pays much of college costs); and, not least, the inertial resistance to the blight of any Grand New National Idea. I hope to confront these objections, and even to suggest that not every conceivable Grand New National Idea ought to be discarded out of hand. (Wouldn't many of us agree that it would be a Grand New National Idea to replace "The Star-Spangled Banner" with "America the Beautiful"?)