...what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." John F. Kennedy's words are so embedded in our civic catechism that the mere mention of the word "service" automatically calls them forth. On Veterans Day and Memorial Day, we rightly extol the valor of those "without whose sacrifices we would not enjoy our freedom." Bill Clinton praised the idea of service. George W. Bush now does the same. It is one of the few issues on which our last two presidents agree.

Yet how firm is our belief in service? There is no prospect anytime soon that we will return to a military draft--and our own military is skeptical that a draft would work. The number of politicians who support compulsory national service--the case for it is made powerfully in this issue by Robert Litan--is small. President Clinton succeeded in pushing his AmeriCorps program through Congress, building on the ideas of Will Marshall and others at the Democratic Leadership Council who sought to reward young people with stipends and scholarships for giving time to their country. But many Republicans denounced the idea as "paid volunteerism." Representative Dick Armey, the Texas Republican, described it as "a welfare program for aspiring yuppies" that would displace "private charity with government-managed, well-paid social activism, based on the elitist assumption that community service is not now taking place."

And in truth, many Americans doubt that they or their fellow citizens actually "owe" anything to a country whose main business they see as preserving individual liberty, personal as well as economic. In a free society, liberty is a right owed to all, worthy and unworthy alike.

Finally, Americans differ widely over which kinds of national service are genuinely valuable. Many who honor military service are skeptical of voluntarism that might look like, in Armey's terms, "social activism." Supporters of work among the poor are often dubious of military service. Most Americans honor both forms of devotion to country, and we have included here powerful testimonials...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



More articles from Brookings Review
September 11, 2001: the case for universal service.(Editorial), September 22, 2002
A bad idea whose time is past: the case against universal service.(Edi..., September 22, 2002
The politics of service: how a nation got behind AmeriCorps., September 22, 2002
New direction: service and the Bush administration's civic agenda., September 22, 2002
At work for America's workers: the labor community and national servic..., September 22, 2002

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