Jayne: National service: Take back nation by giving back to it
By Greg Jayne
Published: July 17, 2016, 6:02am
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Yes, we are divided. From debate over police shootings, to a presidential campaign in which one candidate’s platform is to demonize otherness, to questions about whether the government is actually run by lizard people, our differences are receiving more attention than our similarities.
No, the Election of 2016 will not close those divisions, even if both sides are paying disingenuous lip-service to such a necessity. And it is, indeed, a necessity. As Abraham Lincoln said about slavery, drawing upon Biblical imagery, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
Yet while this notion has been oft-repeated in recent years, it also typically has been met with a lack of solutions or the lack of a genuine desire to find those solutions. Many people in the United States — including the national media and countless politicians — benefit from exploiting wedge issues rather than searching for common cause, and the fault lies with all of us for being duped by this ploy.
The question, then, becomes what to do about it. And while there is no single solution, it is difficult to ignore the benefits that would come from an emphasis upon national service. As Gen. Stanley McChrystal wrote for The Washington Post in 2014: “Citizenship is like a muscle that can atrophy from too little use; if we want to strengthen it, we need to exercise it. We need to support leaders who ask more of us and not those who simply promise us more. We need candidates who will cross the aisle in support of a big idea for renewed citizenship.”
The time has come
McChrystal was neither the first nor the last to recommend an emphasis on national service; in 2007, Time magazine devoted an entire issue to the idea. But as our divisions become more evident and more damaging to a shared sense of national purpose, McChrystal’s call becomes more important. His exhortation to make a year of service “appropriately voluntary but socially expected” becomes an idea whose time has come.
“Every young adult should be called to yearlong service, whether as a tutor or mentor in one of our country’s 2.3 million classrooms, a conservation worker in one of our country’s national parks or wilderness areas, an aide to one of the 1.5 million Americans who require hospice care each year, or one of numerous areas of high unmet need,” he wrote. “Such service should provide a moderate stipend to ensure that people from any background could participate, count for some sort of course credit in college and be designed to help make it easier for a service member to get a job.” And, of course, military service is one of the most noble and beneficial ways in which to contribute to your nation.
It should be noted that in one simple paragraph, McChrystal provided more policy detail than Donald Trump has unveiled in an entire campaign. It also should be noted that McChrystal has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate for Trump, but this week said that he would decline any role in a Trump administration.
This month, Will Bardenwerper wrote about national service in a guest editorial for The Washington Post: “Would the experience lead to instant national harmony? No. But it would help us to humanize those whom we may otherwise be conditioned to disdain by partisan insiders and their media enablers, who perversely benefit from the increasingly corrosive status quo.”
Indeed. Because the goal should not be to reach agreement on the issues facing this nation, it should be to develop a shared sense of duty. It should be to remind all Americans that the United States and its ideals are larger than individual concerns and self-serving desires. While this nation approached World War II by demanding sacrifice on the homefront in the form of product rationing, by this millennium we had devolved to the point where we sent soldiers to war while providing tax cuts to those at home.
Take back your country? The best way might be to focus on giving back to that country.
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