Service, No! A Militia, Yes!

Fall 2008 -- Speaking at the University of Colorado on July 2, Senator Barack Obama declared that “just as we must value and encourage military service across our society, we must honor and expand other opportunities to serve. Because the future of our nation depends on the soldier at Fort Carson, but it also depends on the teacher in East LA, the nurse in Appalachia, the after-school worker in New Orleans, the Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, and the Foreign Service officer in Indonesia.”

Then, departing from the written text handed out in advance to the news media, Obama added: “We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives 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.”

One relatively minor point about this stunning proposal should be dispensed with immediately: its potential cost. According to estimates made by Jim Lindgren, a professor of law at Northwestern University who has been following the subject on the blog Volokh Conspiracy: “If Obama means what he says, his civilian national security corps would cost at least another $100 billion a year, and perhaps as much as $500 billion a year. With total federal income taxes of $935 billion in 2005, Obama’s proposal would mean using up to half of all federal income tax revenue just to fund his promise” (July 19, 2008).

A Return to Serfdom

But the deeper problem, of course, is that Obama’s vision for service will mean reversing the gains to our human condition that have been brought about by freedom-loving individuals laboring over the past ten centuries. Lindgren gives a brief sketch of that ennobling English history to which we, as Americans, are heir:

Under the medieval system in much of Europe, serfs or peasants owed obligations of actual physical labor (beyond military service) to their political overseers. As English liberties grew, this obligation of physical labor was replaced by the right to pay taxes instead, with the chief exception being obligations of military service for males. Free men were increasingly free to choose their line of work and pay their political overseers with money, rather than owing an obligation of service to whatever physical tasks happened to be thought important or profitable to the upper and the political classes.

Now, someone might object that neither Obama nor most other advocates of service are currently calling for mandatory labor. And that is true—currently. The trouble is that many national-service advocates don’t really see much difference between the voluntary and mandatory proposals. The organization Americans for a National Service Act says: “When people speak of National Service, the question invariably arises whether we are talking about voluntary or mandatory service. The answer is both. There are worthwhile ideas to be discussed with both systems. Some people believe that an incentive-based voluntary system is more politically viable. Some people think that National Service will not be effective unless it is mandatory. Certainly, with either option the devil is in the details.” So, the freedom of Americans is a “detail” to be worked out later.

With that attitude, the outcome can hardly be doubted. As George Mason law professor Ilya Somin wrote on the Volokh Conspiracy blog:

I don’t expect mandatory national service to be enacted in the near future. But it might well be adopted through a slow process of accretion over the next few years. . . . For example one can imagine an initial proposal that merely requires mandatory service as a condition of receiving student loans (as many national service advocates propose). Once that law is enacted, critics will claim that it is “unfair” for relatively affluent students to escape this obligation by paying for their tuition with private funds. The law could then be amended to cover all college students. At that point, many would consider it unfair that college grads are required to serve, while other young people are not. Eventually, the law could be expanded to impose mandatory national service as a condition of getting a high school diploma. Obviously, these requirements would have to be imposed on students in private schools and colleges as well as public ones. Otherwise, they would not be truly “universal” as national service advocates insist they must be. Other slippery slope paths to mandatory national service are also possible. The scenario I outline is just one of several plausible possibilities.

A Republic of (Small-R) Republicans

In short, the libertarians’ case against mandatory national service is iron-clad—morally, legally, and fiscally. Unfortunately, their case is also highly vulnerable. It is vulnerable, I believe, because libertarians seem unable to accommodate the deep Tory sentiments and truths that they are facing: the deep sentiment that service to one’s country should be widespread, and the deep truth that Americans’ liberties were purchased by men who acted on such a sentiment.

Coming to terms with these facts appears to be quite beyond most libertarians. They prefer to demonize all contemporary sentiment for civic volunteerism as merely collectivist and to dismiss the pro-service remarks of the Founding Fathers as merely unfortunate. The reason, I suspect, is that libertarians tend to think of their country as no more than an arbitrary collection of people who happen to employ the same government for the purpose of protecting their rights. Their sense of patriotism is thus nothing but a reflection of how good a job the government is doing, according to their criteria. It is a patriotism virtually indistinguishable from brand loyalty. They love America (to the extent they do) in the same way that they love Apple—because they like its products.

One familiar consequence is that many libertarians go on to adopt the theory called “competing governments” or anarcho-capitalism. If competition is good for Apple, then competition would likewise be good for Washington, and people who currently buy from DC should be free to shop elsewhere, just as people who (shudder) buy from Microsoft should be free to shop elsewhere. Understandably, such libertarians rarely exhibit a sense of nationhood or the spirit that the Founding Fathers called “republicanism”—the sense that government is a joint endeavor on the part of a people who are “living together,” a joint endeavor that binds those people into a nation.

Yet a revival of such republican spirit, I believe, will be required to head off mandatory national service. The American people feel, rightly, that they ought to be more involved with their country. They were offended, rightly, at being told that their task after 9/11 was to go shopping. They are frustrated, rightly, at not being able to share the burdens of those Americans who provide for our common defense and secure our domestic tranquility.

This is not a desire to practice self- sacrifice. It is a desire to cooperate, voluntarily and on one’s own terms, in the tasks that constitute the core of “living together” in a polity. Thus, whatever other forms of volunteer work a person may do, and many forms are worthy, nothing but volunteer work for government security agencies can truly satisfy the republican impulse.

What would such a program of renewed republicanism look like? And how could it be deployed to frustrate the ambitions of today’s “national service” advocates?

Call Out the Militia

I believe that the basis for a revival of republicanism can be found in a remarkable article written by Randy Barnett¸ now Georgetown’s eminent libertarian professor of law. Published one week after 9/11 in National Review, the article pointed out that the American “militia” consists of all able-bodied males from 17 to 45, and that it is divided into two parts. The first part is the organized militia, comprising the National Guard and the Naval Militia. But there is also a second part: “the unorganized militia,” which comprises all other militiamen. Thus, Barnett observed, we might say that it was members of the unorganized militia who brought down Flight 93 and perhaps kept it from destroying the Capitol. Moreover, he said:

Here is the cold hard fact of the matter that will be evaded and denied but which must never be forgotten in these discussions: Often—whether on an airplane, subway, cruise ship, or in high school—only self defense by the “unorganized militia” will be available when domestic or foreign terrorists choose their next moment of murder. And here is the public-policy implication of this fact:

It would be better if the militia were more prepared to act when it is needed

(“Saved by the Militia,”

National Review

, September 18, 2001).

Barnett’s proposal entails no compulsion. As he observes: “Congress has the constitutional power to create training programs in effective self-defense including training in small arms—marksmanship, tactics, and gun safety—for any American citizen who volunteers. Any guess how many millions would take weapons training at government expense or even for a modest fee if generally offered?” Since the Supreme Court’s June ruling in Heller, which established that gun ownership is an individual right, the ability of gun-controllers to stop such programs would be virtually nil.

But what has all this to do with deflecting the efforts of “national service” advocates? Well, a familiar adage says, “You can’t beat a horse with no horse.” And, to date, libertarians have had no horse in the race to fulfill Americans’ legitimate sentiments of republicanism. Barnett’s plan for a voluntary training of the unorganized militia would be such a horse—though a horse of a very different color.

Rescuing 9/11

As this column is being written, at the beginning of August, an organization called ServiceNation is planning to hold a “summit” on September 11. It is hard to imagine a greater perversity. For seven years, our leaders have told us that the United States was attacked on 9/11/2001 because our free way of life infuriated the enemies of Western Civilization. Are we now to celebrate the day by proclaiming ourselves a nation of serfs?

Of course, I do not know what will be said at this Service Summit, and indeed I cannot be absolutely sure it will take place. But Time magazine has already begun to promote the event and has announced that the organizers have invited Senators Obama and McCain to attend. The sponsors, Time says, are also “working with Senators Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch on legislation designed to expand opportunities for volunteering and national service. ServiceNation will urge the next President and Congress to enact that legislation by Sept. 11, 2009.”

Those of us who consider such legislation intolerable need to respond to this outrage with much more than assertions of libertarian theory. Our response, I suggest, should be Randy Barnett’s militia proposal, put forward as our alternative to “national service.” It is the perfect vehicle, for a number of reasons.

First, the militia program would satisfy what is legitimate in Americans’ republican sentiments and would be just the sort of national service that the Founders truly believed in. When “national service” proponents piously quote the Founders’ words about serving one’s country, we could reply: “Yes, and this is the sort of service they advocated. They were not talking about paying college students $40 an hour to plant trees. They were talking about service devoted to repulsing servitude. They were talking about free men serving in defense of their freedom.” Fittingly, we could note, the emancipation of a medieval serf was marked by giving him a personal weapon, because the bearing of arms was considered incompatible with servile status.

Second, the militia program could be made to pay for itself, in two ways. It could be made available for a fee to all citizens of the United States (that is, of the United States alone) who had never been convicted of a violent crime. To those who were, in addition, members of the unorganized militia, it could made available without charge, in return for several hours of volunteer work each month with organizations dedicated to public safety.

Many such volunteer programs are already in operation. During my decade in Philadelphia, I served two nights a month patrolling the city’s streets (armed with a walkie-talkie) for a Neighborhood Watch program that was run by the police department. Surely, our departments of defense and homeland security, our state national guards, prisons, state and local police departments, and district attorneys’ offices must have a huge array of manual, clerical, and other security-related tasks from which volunteers could choose, according to their tastes and talents. In this way, the militia program, rather than costing billions, could both save governments money and give citizens better protection. (Reluctantly, I have excluded fire departments from this list, as being the thin-edge-of-the-wedge that opens the path to all other worthy civil-society volunteerism.)

Lastly, but far from least, such a militia program could be a suitable way of rescuing 9/11 from those who seek to turn it into a celebration of servitude. To date, we have observed 9/11 as a day of sorrow, and we are discovering (as each year’s remembrance stirs us less) that the American spirit is not suited for extended mourning. That is as it should be. The time has come, therefore, to transform 9/11 from a day of sorrow into a day of resolve: a resolve to fight those who would harm us. And though the fact is not widely known, the proper name for this 9/11 holiday has already been proclaimed each year since 2002 and needs only to be made permanent: It is Patriot Day.

Designated as Patriot Day, September 11 (not the nearest Monday) could be the day set aside for America’s unorganized militia to enroll in its annual training classes and volunteer programs—and could thus be a day of passage for male citizens who have turned seventeen. It might, I suppose, come to be celebrated with fireworks, parades, music, and speeches (speeches extolling personal and national liberty); it might also be celebrated with demonstrations of self-defense, hand-to-hand combat, and marksmanship. I am no seer.

But I do know that Patriot Day should always celebrated by individuals, assembling together, by voluntary choice, in order to re-dedicate themselves to a joint defense of their lives, liberty, and property; their beloved homeland; and their Western Civilization.

spiderID=870

‍