Conscription Gets a Face Lift
2020-06-26 · Guest: Warren Gibson (Retired Professor of Economics) · 51:48
Mandatory National Service and the Draft Report
Bob Zadek interviews retired economics professor Warren Gibson about the final report of the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service. They explore how a commission originally intended to modernize the Selective Service System expanded its scope to recommend mandatory national service for all young Americans, potentially violating the 13th Amendment’s prohibition on involuntary servitude.
Topics: Conscription, The Draft, National Service, 13th Amendment, Selective Service System, Mandatory Public Service, Collectivism, National Defense Authorization Act, Involuntary Servitude
Speakers: Bob Zadek, Warren Gibson
Introduction to the National Commission [00:18]
Bob Zadek: Hello everyone, welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live libertarian talk radio show on all of radio. And yes, in this day of pre-recorded podcasts, we are proudly and always live. We enjoy the spontaneity of an unrehearsed hour of conversation with, as the intro said, the smartest guests on radio. Thank you so much for listening this Sunday morning.
So there I was doing my daily reading, including the daily blog of the American Institute for Economic Research, a wonderful blog which somehow has managed to accumulate very, very informed, smart bloggers and writers who always entertain and, more importantly, inform me. And often the articles—this morning’s topic being the best example—get me thinking, cause me to delay a bit the start of my daily for-profit work that I do, and off I go clicking link upon link upon link, more and more curious with every mouse click.
And this morning’s guest did just that. Warren Gibson is a retired professor of economics at San Jose State University. Before starting his second career as an economics professor and studying economics, he was a successful engineer and business person, graduated from Case Western Reserve University with an engineering degree. So Warren has lived at least two lives that I’m aware of. Perhaps we will learn during this show more than two lives.
And Warren’s piece that got me, if you will, off to the races, was a piece in AIER, the daily blog, where he called my and soon our attention to a commission that, no headline here, I never heard of. The commission is entitled the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service. And as you will learn, what this somewhat lofty-sounding title of a commission has in store for us is the possibility—I’m not prepared to say likelihood—but the possibility of, if you will, reactivating the draft, either directly for military service or, even worse or even better, that’s up to you, using conscription, using the requirement that “do what we say and serve what we want you to serve or else you’re going to go to jail”—remember the drafts in the 1970s, we’ll go back to that—a system of conscription requiring perhaps all 18-year-olds, who knows, it’s still very much in the works, to perform one year, maybe more, who knows, of quote “public service.”
Can you imagine such a thing? But yet that is a process being adopted as we speak—it’s a common phrase—in Western Europe, in France and in Germany, they are experimenting with mandatory quote “public service” for the youth of their country. And that is perhaps, unless we pay attention, right around the corner for us. So Warren introduced the topic, I will now introduce the speaker, and Warren and I will discuss the history of the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, what its mission was, what does it mean for the draft. I bet you all thought the draft was dead. You thought that Nixon ended the draft. You will learn, it may frighten you, you will learn no, the draft is not dead, it is just asleep, hopefully forever, but maybe only for a while. So we still have the draft. And indeed, as Warren will explain, maybe the cohort of youth who are required to register for the draft may even be expanded. More about that in a moment. Warren, welcome to the show this morning. And at the very outset, I want to publicly thank you for the article that woke me up to something that I should have known about but didn’t. So tell us about what caught your attention in the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service—whatever public service may even mean—and what prompted you to alert the rest of us by writing your piece for AIER. And good morning, Warren.
Warren Gibson: Good morning, Bob. First of all, thank you very much for having me on. It’s a great privilege and a pleasure. Well, when this piece came out, when the final report of the commission was issued on March 25th of this year, it got a little bit of notice in the press for the idea that not just men but women should be subject to the draft as well. Now, I have to say my response to this was visceral because it cut to the core of my fundamental beliefs about who we are and how we should treat each other. So we have a quote here that favorably quoted in the report that says, “Ours is a nation built on pride and sacrifice and commitment and shared values, a willingness of our citizens to give of their time and energy.” Now, I read the Declaration of Independence to say that we are here in pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So that really cut to the core of what I believe when I read the report in more detail.
Mission Creep: From Selective Service to Public Service [05:30]
Bob Zadek: Now, Warren, if I can just jump in for a moment. In the quote that you read, what I perked up over—and I of course read the same quote—is the word of “nation of sacrifice.” And I say, who says? Where is it written? Where is the word or the concept of sacrifice anywhere? There is no such thing. And indeed, I would say sacrifice is contrary to our founding principles. No, we are not here to sacrifice ourselves. We are here to preserve our life, preserve our liberty, and pursue happiness. We’re not here to make sacrifice and surrender any of those. So you are correct in pointing out that as a starting point, and it shows how we are already at direct disagreement and variance with the very goals of the commission. Now, Warren, how and why was the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service formed? Where did it come from?
Warren Gibson: Well, it was included in the Defense Authorization Bill in the last month of the Obama administration. Now, I’m not quite sure who was behind this or what the impetus was, but in any event, the commission was established at that time. So that would have been December of 2016, and the final report was issued on March 25th of this year, as I said.
Bob Zadek: Actually, the commission—you’re right, of course—it was formed under the Defense Authorization Act. That is the mega-omnibus spending bill which gives the military its money. Now, so we have as its starting point a military, a defense authorization bill, having nothing whatever to do with public service. And I’m going to be mentioning this throughout the hour because this will show you how this stuff gets created. It’s insidious, it’s scary, and it shows how these very, very apparently innocent concepts get started with perhaps sound and limited intentions, and how it grows to what you will learn its mission is now by the end of the show.
So Warren, you’re exactly right, of course. It was formed under the Defense Authorization Act. And it was actually—you’re right, at the end of the Obama administration—the commission was actually created in September of 1917, early in the Trump administration, and it started operating very recently in January of 2018. Now, its mission, if I’m not mistaken, Warren, was kind of limited. It was limited to a re-examination mostly of the Selective Service System. There wasn’t much said in its authorization except for a few throwaway words about public service. So here we are, we are now find ourselves surprisingly discussing the draft. Now, I thought Nixon quote “ended” the draft. So why are we talking about it?
Warren Gibson: Well, as you may remember, Milton Friedman got Richard Nixon’s ear back in the late ’60s, I think, and argued that the draft should be abolished. And Nixon listened, and the draft was ended, but it was not abolished. As you know, the Selective Service System continues in operation. Every young man must register, I think between 18 and 25. And of course, there hasn’t been any draft since then, but they could start it, you know, they could push a button and start it almost overnight.
The Draft is Not Dead [10:45]
Bob Zadek: So every young man on their 18th birthday or thereafter must register for the draft. Just so they have your name. It’s handy if they need it. So now, contrary to, frankly—should I be embarrassed? Perhaps—I kind of thought the draft was done, and it’s been a long time since I was 18, so therefore I don’t really remember the act of registering for the draft. But everybody in this country—every male at 18 years old—registered for the draft. So they have your name, they quote “know where you are,” and you are subject to conscription until you are 26. Is that right, Warren?
Warren Gibson: That is correct, yes, yes. And you know what’s interesting? If you go to the Selective Service website and you can fill it out all online, of course, these days, and there is a place where you pick either male or female. And underneath those buttons, it says, “We do not register women at this time.” So they are ready to go to register women. And of course, that was the aspect of the commission’s report that got the attention in the newspaper. It’s a 250-page report, but registering women is what got attention in March of this year.
Bob Zadek: So it starts with—and I’m going to be doing this throughout the hour—I’m going to trace the life of this commission. So it starts with a throwaway concept which became codified in a statute that as part of a Defense Authorization Act, a must-pass bill, so nobody reads it, everybody votes for it. In 2016, somebody, some congressman gets an idea or senator, “We need a National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service.” And they did so, and I’ll quote from the commission itself when it was formed. It says the commission’s recommendations—it was formed, and this is a quote, “analysis for sustaining and/or modernizing the Selective Service process.” So the commission started primarily as its raison d’être to modernize the Selective Service System. So that’s why it was started. Well, no one can argue about modernizing the process if you reluctantly concede, yes, we do need a Selective Service System, we have to be able to find all the 18-year-olds in case we need them.
So now we have this commission formed for the Selective Service System. And if that’s all it did, I assure you, Warren and I would never have met and become fast friends, and Warren would not have written his piece, I dare say, about some modernization of the Selective Service System. But of course, the commission, once formed and once given a budget, says the words that we have to fear in private life or in government, those words are, “Gee, while we’re at it.” And you know that at an early meeting of the commission, when all of these commissioners are dressed very nicely and discussing their mission, it’s “while we’re at it,” and since there was some mention in passing of national service, let’s include that as part of our review. And jumping ahead to the end, but not to ruin the story, the commission ended up producing, if you can believe it, and this is a quote from the commission, 164—164, that’s not a typo—recommendations addressing, get this, you would think they would say civil service because that’s what they were formed to do. Addressing civic education, the federal workforce—that’s civil service—national service programs, and then military service, and we finally get to, at the end, this is from their website, the Selective Service System. So the Selective Service System becomes an afterthought, not the mission. Talk about mission creep. Now, mention, Warren, if you will, expand a little bit more, although there’s not much more to say, about women and their relationship to the draft. What was existing law and what is the suggestion—and it’s only a suggestion—made by the commission regarding women and the draft?
Warren Gibson: Well, we’re all concerned with inequality, and there’s no question that it’s discriminatory to register only men and not women. But what they’re proposing is the wrong way to do it, in my opinion. I mean, they shouldn’t be doubling the pool of potential draftees; they should be eliminating it. They should achieve equality by eliminating the draft, in my opinion. But of course, that’s not what they said.
Conscription and the 13th Amendment [15:30]
Bob Zadek: Now, just a little side trip because a discussion of the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service has a lot to discuss. But just before we leave the subject of the draft, some of you may wonder, because the question does come up, how could conscription be constitutional? It is in the classic sense, it is requiring people to work against their will. Yes, the military gets paid, but it is still involuntary servitude. And those words, “involuntary servitude,” actually appear in the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. The 13th Amendment was of course one of the Civil War amendments, 13, 14, and 15. And 13, the first of them, says basically it bans in all forms involuntary servitude. How much more direct involuntary servitude can there be than the draft? Warren, you were going to mention something, I believe.
Warren Gibson: Yeah, there was a lawsuit in 1918 soon after the draft was instituted for World War I. Lawsuit was interestingly enough filed by a progressive group. Now, I don’t know how many people know that the progressive movement dates back to the early 1900s, but it does. So this progressive group challenged the draft on the basis of the 13th Amendment and went all the way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court in 1918 decided that it was constitutional because Congress has the right to raise armies, something like that.
Bob Zadek: Raise and support—raise and support armies.
Warren Gibson: Yeah. So I was a little hesitant to use the word slavery, but there is this precedent, as a matter of fact. And you know, you’re right, when you read the 13th Amendment, it flat out says no involuntary servitude unless you’ve been convicted of a crime. Well, if you’ve been drafted in the army, you’re serving involuntarily.
Bob Zadek: There has been some interesting discussion at a high level by constitutional law scholars. There was a wonderful piece by Ilya Somin, a frequent guest on our show. And Ilya examined or re-examined the constitutionality of the draft, and he, in quite a scholarly piece, obviously cited the 1918 decision and concluded, as many others have, that it probably was done on a very weak constitutional law basis. And it is fair speculation as to whether if that were litigated today, whether the Supreme Court would reach the same conclusion. So it is right now, we’ll call it a doctrine of weak constitutional law, that conscription by the government and requiring anybody to perform any work, whether they’re paid or not, but requiring them to do it or else they go to jail, there is a serious constitutional question to be re-examined as to whether or not that is lawful.
Mandatory Public Service: Conscription on Steroids [20:45]
Bob Zadek: Now, what got my attention, and where we’re going to spend a lot of the rest of the show, Warren, is on the thrust of your article, where the commission, having been formed as I said earlier to kind of re-examine civil service—I’m sorry, the Selective Service—too many services—the Selective Service, and to see if it should be modernized. With that invitation, off they went and examined public service. And if I can get ahead of myself, only because sometimes it’s interesting to get the dander up on the listening audience, and I’m about to do that. The commission, as you will learn from Warren, went beyond the boring, bureaucratic modernization of the Selective Service System—that’s no way to spend a day—but they went on that and they ended up concluding, and you will see how they got there, suggesting that maybe our country would be better off with mandatory public service. That is conscription on steroids. And the commission actually had hearings, which we will—Warren and I will discuss and examine in great detail—whether or not this country needs—“needs” is of course a cynical word and in air quotes like crazy—whether this country needs mandatory conscription for public service, like go and build the roads and build the bridges and cut down trees and stuff like that. Now, Warren, in your piece, the part that really caught my attention, and I’m going to ask you just to introduce it very briefly now, we’re going to go to a 30-second break in about two minutes, Warren, but introduce it because the phrase you wrote really caught my attention. And the phrase is “public service, rendering mandatory public service to”—and here we go, Warren—“to the nation.” What’s wrong with that as a concept?
Warren Gibson: Because there is no acting entity called the nation to whom you can serve anything. It’s an abstraction. And when you look at the reality of the service that’s implied, it’s service to particular politicians and bureaucrats who hold the strings. So the draft in the Vietnam era was because Lyndon Johnson’s ego was behind the whole thing, really. So there’s no such thing really as national service. There’s service to the particular politicians and bureaucrats who hold power.
Bob Zadek: So national service, which really got my attention, which as I said was not a natural—was not an automatic outgrowth of the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service. The public service part of it was the commission, in my opinion, clearly exceeding their authority as to why they were formed. They were formed to do an administrative function, to clear up the Selective Service System and examine into it. And one of their gifts was they said, “Okay, one of our thoughts was include women.” Well, that scared the bejesus out of everybody. We may discuss that briefly after the break. But then they were off to the races. And as I said, not only did they exceed their authority on cleaning up the draft, and of the 164 recommendations they made, very few of them actually dealt with the draft. Almost all of them dealt with national civil service system, dealt with employing more government employees and paying them more, and the subject for this morning because it affects every 18-year-old in America: mandatory public service. Should we have a country going in the same direction as Western Europe, that 18-year-olds are required to give up an hour of their life in the service of some bureaucrat or some group of bureaucrats and perform for their own good, ha ha, national service? We’ll explore that important topic when we come back after a very brief 30-second break. Please stay tuned, lots more to follow.
[Sponsor Break]
The “Last Resort” of Mandatory Service [26:45]
Bob Zadek: Hello everybody, welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live libertarian talk radio show on all of radio. The show this Sunday and always the show of ideas, never once the show of attitude. This morning we are having a conversation with Warren Gibson. Warren has brought to my attention and now your attention the report, the final report of the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service. That commission was formed in 2016, started operating in 2017. It was formed primarily to re-examine the Selective Service System as it is now organized, makes any sense, and make recommendations. They used that as a launchpad to take off and examine a subject they really weren’t invited to examine, which is public service, which means mandatory public service, which means conscription or the draft on steroids. They recommended, as Warren pointed out, including women. And remember, including women means only in the registration process. They haven’t really reached a decision as to whether women should actually be conscripted into combat. Women are of course permitted to serve in combat roles in the military, as of course they should to the extent that fighting is required. But up to now, women have not been required to register, to get on the list so they can find women if they need them for the draft. But the commission kind of softly recommended including women. And then the commission, using the review of the draft as a starting point, they examined and made extensive recommendations, mostly positive, on whether we should have conscripted, mandatory public service. And that is—that caught my attention, and I thank Warren for bringing this all to my attention. Now, Warren, the commission kind of stops short, but I don’t think they did, in actually suggesting that youth, 18-year-olds, should be conscripted in public service. But wasn’t there some really scary language in their final report that kind of said, I think to you and I because we have great fear of growing government power, wasn’t there some language that caught your attention about how close we are to conscription for public service?
Warren Gibson: Well, it was implicit, as you know, through the whole report. So they tiptoed around the mandatory concept, but they were laying the groundwork. You just can’t escape that conclusion if you look at all these recommendations. And—
Bob Zadek: Now, Warren, there was one—there was one sentence which I think you highlighted in your piece, and I want to just read this to our friends. I just want our listeners to ask themselves whether this is as close as they could possibly come to mandating public service. This is a one-sentence quote from the report. After they discuss forever in the 164 recommendations why mandatory public service would be a good idea, listen to this sentence. This is a quote: “Policy makers should make every effort to promote voluntary approaches to service.” Now listen to this: “reserving mandatory service as a”—here it comes—“last resort.” Now, can you—last resort. Now, we can only speculate in the most scary way, Warren, who and when would decide that we’re ready for the last resort? What would be the exigent—the emergency—that would occur on some Wednesday morning that would say, “Okay, everything else has failed, we’re at the last resort stage, we’re declaring a state of public service emergency, we need more public service workers”? And I think, Warren, that was the phrase you were calling to our attention about they danced around, but everybody knows last resort is like governors calling a state of emergency. They do so for ulterior motives, don’t they?
Warren Gibson: Yeah, you never know what might come out of left field to trigger this. Could happen.
National Service as a Tax on Youth [31:00]
Bob Zadek: So this really means—now remember, once we are talking about, once we are talking about, once the last resort comes, what does that mean? It means, “Okay, 18-year-old who wants to go to college or who wants to get a job and start on a career path, you are required to go and pick—go clean kitchens, scrub floors, cut down trees, do whatever as Warren says a politician determines you should be doing, but you can pick which unpleasant chore you want to do. We will pay you way below market wages because we don’t have to pay you a lot because we can force you. And if you don’t like it, go to jail.” That is the clear recommendation. Take a job at below-market wages against your will—you get to pick which unpleasant job you’re going to have—but do this job or go to jail. All I will say is open up the Canadian border once again, they’re heading north until they are 26 and come home. And Warren, I think this is what you were suggesting at in terms of the scariest part of this report. Again, started to reorganize the Selective Service System, look where they have gotten.
Warren Gibson: Well, there’s an aspect that’s even scarier than what you say, and that is that if they can convince young people that it is their duty, then they have them hooked. So if they can convince people that they have basically no right to their own life, and if they buy into that, then they’re owned free.
Bob Zadek: And when you say convince, I think you used far too polite a term. Convince, I think you mean indoctrinate, don’t you?
Warren Gibson: Well, yes, yes, that would be a better word. Yeah, right. This is all about—so much of this report is about indoctrination, about propaganda. As you pointed out, a great number of the recommendations have to do with what they call education. So they want to have, you know, courses available at all the universities and so forth. Sounds very bland and mild, but when you sum it all up, it’s to convince us all that we do not have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that we owe our lives to the state.
The Trend Toward Collectivism and Indoctrination [36:00]
Bob Zadek: And what’s interesting is how once these ideas are created—remember, it was created in the most idealistic manner: “Let’s re-examine the draft.” And look where we are. We have a national commission, spent a bunch of money, recommending, even as a last resort, mandatory public service. And to show you how this idea gets seized upon, I, in doing my research, what I found is I found a quote very current, apropos of the virus. A commentator who I do not know, her name is Emma Moore, I know nothing about her except she’s identified as an analyst for military veterans and social programs. She’s associated with the Center for a New American Security. So that’s her background, I know nothing about her. But I’m giving you a quote from her in commenting on the report of the commission recommending softly mandatory national service. She said, speaking about the pandemic virus, she said, “The virus, the experience with the virus”—and this is a direct quote—“highlights in my mind the greater need for national service.” Huh? Now, how could you—how could you take the virus and say, “Wow, that proves my point, we need compulsory public service”? That’s the kind of dynamic that scares the heck out of me, when we see how we start with a report on the Selective Service System and look where we get. Everybody is jumping on the bandwagon and looking at any event in public life and saying, “That proves we need mandatory public service.” That’s the kind of stuff, Warren, that you mention in your article and that really is why this report, born of innocence, is so scary.
Warren Gibson: Well, I don’t know if it was born of innocence or guilt, but in any event, it is indeed scary to the extent it’s taken seriously. Now, we can always hope that it’ll get shelved and forgotten and that only the draft part will be remembered, but I’m afraid not. I mean, it’s just a little more groundwork for increasing collectivization of our society.
Bob Zadek: And this commission held hearings, public hearings, available—I actually watched some of them, pretty interesting stuff—where it asked for expert commentary. And there was commentary on this subject, not of reorganizing the Selective Service System, which was their primary mission, but they invited commentary on mandatory public service. And they actually had expert commentary. And I listened to one of the—one of the hearings, and Doug Bandow from Cato, who has been a guest on our show, Doug Bandow of course spoke, needless to say and not surprisingly, passionately about all of the downside of mandatory—mandatory public service, taking a year of somebody’s life and depriving the country of their work experience, taking that away from the individual and the country in the private sector and mandating you must give an hour of your life to the quote “public sector.” And there were hearings on it. And what was interesting, Warren, and I know you highlighted them to me, what was interesting is even those who said, “We would love the idea of national public service, but we find it to be politically a non-starter.” Well, I hope—I hope they’re right. But what that says to me is, “We would love it today except we’d get voted out of office.” So that was—was very interesting because it disclosed that as to many people, that would be their first choice, quote “if only they could get away with it.”
Warren Gibson: Yes, well, that right, and that’s again, that’s the tone of the whole whole article that maybe we should make this mandatory. Yeah.
Climate Corps and Infrastructure Apprenticeships [41:00]
Bob Zadek: And implicit in mandatory public service, implicit in that, and one of the most damaging aspects as a matter of policy, is it says that, “Okay, since nobody will volunteer to do a good thing, let’s force them to be charitable.” Well, that’s a form of taxation. It’s no different than forcing me to pay taxes, the purpose of which is to allow the government to do a charitable activity. A lot of what the government does is just public sector charity. I’m not saying it’s bad, charity is not bad, but it’s public sector charity, which means the politicians get to pick the charity. So charity is good, compulsory charity doesn’t feel so good. Now, Warren, as an economist, I’m going to ask you in your sweet spot, in your comfort zone, is it accurate to say that when you compel an 18-year-old to give under threat of prison a year of their life to some activity they otherwise don’t want to do, that year of that 18-year-old’s life has an economic value? Is that any different than saying all 18-year-olds have to pay a special tax?
Warren Gibson: Basically, it’s not different. Yeah, you’re right. I mean, it’s forcing them to contribute something that they would other not wise not want to do. In the case of tax, it’s money; in the case of national service, it’s their labor. So sure, it’s compulsory extraction of value.
Bob Zadek: So let’s not say that public service will instill some special values on 18-year-olds. No, it is a tax on 18-year-olds who others are exempt from the tax. And that is—just call it a tax, and why not allow an 18-year-old to either serve in compulsory public service or buy out of it by giving the value, the economic value of a year of their life? And by the way, Warren, I know you know this, but our audience doesn’t. During the first system of draft, which was in the Civil War, there were draft riots in New York, brutal draft riots and fires, think the recent rioting during the pandemic. Why were there draft riots in New York? Was it because people didn’t want to serve? Well, yes, but it was more complicated. In the draft during the Civil War, young men were drafted by Lincoln and had to serve, but—and this is the point, and this is directly relevant to a conversation on compulsory public service—if you were drafted to serve in the Civil War by President Lincoln, you had an option: you could hire somebody else to serve in the military, and if you hired them to serve for you, you didn’t have to serve. Right. And therefore, now that makes it even more clearly that conscription is nothing other than a tax, just like in England and in the US—not in the US that I’m aware of, but in England in the Middle Ages, taxes were assessed and you paid the tax not by money but by grain or by giving the crown an item of livestock. You were taxed and you gave up livestock or corn or things of that nature. So taxes are never limited just to money. Taxes are taking anything of value, and if you don’t pay the tax, which is do the time, you go to jail. It’s exactly the same, isn’t it, Warren?
Warren Gibson: Yes, it is. And now, but before we go any further, I’d like to again re-emphasize something you just said, which is that service is a good thing. I’m not saying—I don’t say that public service is a bad thing necessarily in per se. It’s good for young people to have some experience in serving voluntarily and locally to people they can look in the eye and become better people for it. So service is a good thing, but it’s not a primary obligation, it’s not something should be forced.
Conclusion and Call for Vigilance [46:00]
Bob Zadek: And public service also just means conscripting people to do what the government wants to get for the cheap. And so you disguise it in a public service program, and it’s simply a way to force people—involuntary servitude again—to perform a task that government could perform or the private sector by paying market value for the cost of the labor, but you get it for cheap by saying, “You do this for below-market wages or you go to jail.” And to just give you some example—I’m sorry, Warren, go ahead.
Warren Gibson: No, go ahead.
Bob Zadek: So just to give you some example, in the conversation about public service, already politicians are identifying the following kinds of areas as eligible for public service. Now, I’ll apologize in advance, this will frighten you. This is actually in the public sphere as being discussed. There’s a suggestion that the federal government needs a Climate Corps—C-O-R-P-S—a Climate Corps. We need to get 18-year-olds to work for below-market wages and give them some free tuition or whatever, but pay them below-market wages to, if you will, save the planet. Another one that really got my attention is—get this, and watch how politicians will take a concept like public service and watch what they do with it. How about this, my friends: a National Infrastructure Apprenticeship Program. Oh my god, it makes you teary-eyed, how wonderful that sounds. You know what it means? Cleaning up parks and cleaning up federal buildings, janitorial services in effect. So that’s what—that’s what will happen, not what could happen, what will happen once we give politicians and government speaking broadly the invitation to compel people, young people, 18-year-olds, to do your—the politician’s—bidding. That’s what we get in exchange. Is that a good use of an 18-year-old’s high-energy, intense learning year? Is that the best use to go and clean up office buildings or pick up paper in the parks? And we actually experienced that in the ’60s during the various job programs during the Great Society. Warren, remember those?
Warren Gibson: Oh yeah, yeah, Job Corps and so forth, yeah, scandalous. I want to—I want to again re-emphasize the broader implication of all this, which is a trend to collectivism. There’s a great deal of what is said that amounts to crushing individualism and establishing a collectivist mentality in the country, that we all have to be on the right side of this and that issue, whether it’s climate or racism or you name it. If you’re not right in lockstep with what’s currently accepted, then you’re no good.
Bob Zadek: And you’re—you know, I’m so happy you mentioned that, Warren, because whenever any government agency talks about compulsory public service, they invariably use as the model, as the starting point, the military. The military: wearing the same uniform, profound obedience, following orders, doing what you are told, severe punishments if you disobey, if you leave the reservation, respect for chain of authority. It’s always the military which is the model. And we can just—we think back in history, whether it’s Maoist China, whether it’s even worse, the Hitler Youth, all of these programs instinctively we fear indoctrination, turning 18-year-olds—the total life of 18-year-olds—to the government to educate, to train, as Warren says, indoctrinate for a year of their lives against their will. And just—this is not something which I’m raising for the first time. This goes back almost 100 years when those proponents always use the military as the model. And if you think this is all far-fetched, I will remind you that only a year ago during the early Democratic primary, we had a candidate, John Delaney from Maryland, a progressive, a member of Congress, who was passionate about advocating mandatory public service. So this idea is not far-fetched, it was advocated by one of the lesser-known candidates for the Democratic candidacy for presidency. So Warren, we’re running out of—we’re running out of time. So Warren, in closing, what do you see as the future of the commission’s program? How concerned are you about mandatory public service and what might be the event that triggers it? We have about 30 seconds, Warren.
Warren Gibson: I’m very concerned about it because the groundwork, as we’ve said, is laid by this commission’s report for collectivization of our society. And who knows what event might trigger a mandatory service? It would be something that we hadn’t anticipated.
Bob Zadek: And we close—sorry, Warren—Warren and I close with: be vigilant, don’t ignore innocent commissions. Have a good day, everyone.
Warren Gibson: Okay, thank you.