In 2002, the Senate introduced National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2003 (S.2514). Elements of the “Call to Service Act of 2001” were incorporated into this lengthy legislation. Two key changes in the Senate Defense Authorization bill were the linking of national service programs as a component of the short-term military enlistment incentive, and the specific inclusion of Peace Corps as a program which could be considered as part of a national service option.

Many adults in the United States believe the country’s citizens should not be required to serve in the armed forces, according to a poll by Gallup released by CNN and USA Today. 85 per cent of respondents say the military draft should not return at this time.

Underlying most of the proposals for national service is the elitist assumption that the body politic is morally deficient and needs a federal program to set it straight. Coercion is a dubious means of transmitting such important social values as charity and tolerance or even patriotism. Whether or not the current generation of youth is narcissistic --and that criticism is hardly new--the notion of compulsory compassion is an oxymoron. Ideals cannot be imposed from above; to permanently transform society, values need to move upward, through the family, church, and community organizations, all of which have been undercut by the self-aggrandizing state in recent decades.

Summary: Though we've had no draft since 1973, many are calling for conscription now -- and not just for the military. Statists want to force every youth in this country to serve in some capacity and are clamoring to join in the power grab of the current crisis. "[T]he most fundamental objection to draft registration is moral," President Reagan once said. "[A] draft or draft registration destroys the very values that our society is committed to defending."

National service has long been a favorite utopian scheme. Eighty years ago William James wrote of the need for a "moral equivalent of war," under which all young men would be required to work for the community.(1) He argued that "the martial virtues, although originally gained by the race through war, are absolute and permanent human goods" and that national service provided a method of instilling those values in peacetime. "Our gilded youths would be drafted off," he wrote, "to get the childishness knocked out of them, and to come back into society with healthier sympathies and soberer ideas."(2)

The purpose of this Comment is primarily to assist the reader in understanding the unique design of the Corps, its relationship to the national service agenda, and the various criticisms of the National Service Corps voiced in political and media circles.

As Charles Moskos, a prominent military sociologist, said just after 9/11, "We're in a new kind of war. It's time for a new kind of draft." The Washington Monthly piece calls it "a 21st century draft." As outlined in the now infamous Selective Service memo of February 2003, or by Moskos in his articles, and now by the Washington Monthly proposal of March 2005, it will be a much more efficient draft, more universal (women as well as men), more complex and more sinister. It will demand that all young people be registered in a massive data base that details their skills and strengths, their weaknesses and dalliances. It will know who are linguists and who are likely good at killing--and it will draft them to relevant tasks. It will draft for 'homeland security' as well as duty overseas--for border guards and immigration cops--and for computer nerds and medics. It won't even be called a draft--more likely, 'national service,' 'homeland service,' or 'universal service.'