HOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN. Obama suggests national service for the young. At National Review Jim Geraghty talks about the "Obama Youth," etc.

I'm wondering about the President using federal funding to coerce schools into requiring community service for middle and high school students. Community service is (often) a noble act, but Obama appears to be very close to echoing John Kerry's Orwellian call for mandatory volunteerism. Notice it's always those who are old who are calling for mandatory time and energy commitments of the young.

Later, Geraghty offers a veiled comparison of Obama to Hitler. This reminded me of something, so I went online and found an excerpt from William F. Buckley's Gratitude: Reflections on What We Owe to Our Country, in which the founder of National Review argues for something very similar, powered by incentives and "sanctions":

It is feared by many opponents of national service that the use of state power in whatever form, even in a voluntary program, is nevertheless an effort, even if half-hearted, in that direction: an effort to change the human personality, and for that reason to be resisted categorically... Milton Friedman, my hero, was quoted as finding in national service an "uncanny resemblance" to the Hitler Youth Corps.

This last occasions only the reply that by that token, all youth programs, including the Boy Scouts, can be likened in the sense that they have something in common, to the Hitler Youth program, plus the second comment, that because Hitler had an idea, it does not follow that that idea was bad. (Albert Speer is said to have reflected, soon before his death, that it was a "pity that Adolf Hitler disliked Picasso.")

...Some libertarians will never agree with the Founding Fathers that a responsibility of the polity is to encourage virtue directly, through such disciplines as service in the militia, reverence for religious values, and jury service -- the kind of thing Prime Minister Gladstone had in mind when he proposed "to establish a new franchise, which I should call -- till a better phrase be discovered -- the service franchise." Opponents of national service must establish, to make their case, that national service, unlike the state militia, or jury service, or military conscription in times of emergency, is distinctively hostile to a free society.

Funny, just a few weeks ago they were blubbering over the sainted Buckley. Now he's a liberal fascist.

I'm not keen on either Buckley's and Obama's proposals myself, but I'm less worried about them these days, thanks in large part to the influence of the Boy Who Cried Hitler. I suspect most normal people would react similarly.