In the letter below, Don Boudreaux responds to a recent WSJ article calling for mandatory “national service” written by General Stanley McChrystal.
Whatever the general’s political leanings, he is advocating a profoundly authoritarian idea. Unfortunately, it’s one that many liberals and conservatives favor. The letter:
Editor, The Wall Street Journal
1211 6th Ave.
New York, NY 10036
Dear Editor:
Gen. Stanley McChrystal joins the discordant chorus of anti-American voices calling for mandatory national service (“Lincoln’s Call to Service – and Ours,” May 30).
Of course, Gen. McChrystal is convinced that government coercion of young people to “serve” in programs designed by politicians and operated by bureaucrats is pro- rather than anti- American. But what’s more central to the American creed than the manifesto in the Declaration of Independence that every individual possesses “unalienable Rights” which include “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” – and that government’s sole purpose is “to secure these rights”?
Not even the most twisted reading of the Declaration can make Jefferson’s words consistent with a practice of robbing young people temporarily of their liberty. That foundational declaration of American principles simply leaves no room for any policy of enslaving, even if only for a year, young people to serve Gen. McChrystal’s (or anyone else’s) notions – however high-minded in principle, if always arrogant in practice – of “citizenship” or “service” or “commitment” at the expense of these young-people’s pursuit of their own happiness as they themselves judge it.
Slavery, even for a limited time, is an atrocity. Gen. McChrystal’s proposal deserves the same scorn that America’s founders unleashed on their would-be masters in Britain in 1776.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
