According to WorldNetDaily, the U.S. House of Representatives last week approved H.R. 1388, a House Resolution to set up a new “volunteer corps” and consider whether “a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people” should be developed.

Good luck finding a FAIR plan that mandates service. It is my opinion that any “fair” plan that requires service (and is therefore based on coercion) could never exist.

Says WorldNetDaily:

“The legislation also refers to ‘uniforms’ that would be worn by the ‘volunteers’ and the ‘need’ for a ‘public service academy, a 4-year institution’ to ‘focus on training future public sector leaders’. The training, apparently, would occur at campuses.”

“The vote came on H.R. 1388, which reauthorizes through 2014 the National and Community Service Act of 1990 and the Domestic Volunteer Service Act of 1973, acts that originally, among other programs, funded the AmeriCorps and the National Senior Service Corps.”

“Many, however, are raising concerns that the program, which is intended to include 250,000 ‘volunteers,’ is the beginning of what President Obama called his ‘National Civilian Security Force’ in a a speech last year in which he urged creating an organization as big and well-funded as the U.S. military. He has declined since then to elaborate. The new bill specifically references the possibilities ‘if all individuals in the United States were expected to perform national service or were required to perform a certain amount of national service’.”

According to a report by Canada Free Press, the “volunteerism that kept America running since the days of its founding” would be “wiped out with the stroke of a pen.”

The bill was sponsored by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) and was approved in the House by a vote of 321 to 105. As I reported in December, PoliticalLore.com has documented that the original wording of President Obama’s website Change.gov says: “Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.”

Involuntary servitude is a United States legal and constitutional term for a person laboring against that person’s will to benefit another, under some form of coercion. The Thirteenth Amendment makes it illegal, except as punishment for a crime.

Will Obama get away with his plan to draft Americans into the ranks of community service?

The “Republicans” who supported this resolution included:

Yea AL-6 Bachus, Spencer [R]
Yea AK-0 Young, Donald [R]
Yea CA-24 Gallegly, Elton [R]
Yea CA-25 McKeon, Howard [R]
Yea CA-41 Lewis, Jerry [R]
Yea CA-44 Calvert, Ken [R]
Yea CA-45 Bono Mack, Mary [R]
Yea CA-50 Bilbray, Brian [R]
Yea DE-0 Castle, Michael [R]
Yea FL-4 Crenshaw, Ander [R]
Yea FL-5 Brown-Waite, Virginia [R]
Yea FL-9 Bilirakis, Gus [R]
Yea FL-10 Young, C. W. [R]
Yea FL-12 Putnam, Adam [R]
Yea FL-13 Buchanan, Vern [R]
Yea FL-16 Rooney, Thomas [R]
Yea FL-18 Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana [R]
Yea FL-21 Diaz-Balart, Lincoln [R]
Yea FL-25 Diaz-Balart, Mario [R]
Yea ID-2 Simpson, Michael [R]
Yea IL-10 Kirk, Mark [R]
Yea IL-13 Biggert, Judy [R]
Yea IL-18 Schock, Aaron [R]
Yea IL-19 Shimkus, John [R]
Yea IN-3 Souder, Mark [R]
Yea IA-4 Latham, Thomas [R]
Yea KY-2 Guthrie, Brett [R]
Yea KY-5 Rogers, Harold [R]
Yea LA-2 Cao, Anh [R]
Yea LA-6 Cassidy, Bill [R]
Yea MI-3 Ehlers, Vernon [R]
Yea MI-4 Camp, David [R]
Yea MI-6 Upton, Frederick [R]
Yea MI-8 Rogers, Michael [R]
Yea MI-10 Miller, Candice [R]
Yea MI-11 McCotter, Thaddeus [R]
Yea MN-3 Paulsen, Erik [R]
Yea MO-8 Emerson, Jo Ann [R]
Yea MT-0 Rehberg, Dennis [R]
Yea NE-1 Fortenberry, Jeffrey [R]
Yea NE-2 Terry, Lee [R]
Yea NV-2 Heller, Dean [R]
Yea NJ-2 LoBiondo, Frank [R]
Yea NJ-4 Smith, Christopher [R]
Yea NJ-7 Lance, Leonard [R]
Yea NJ-11 Frelinghuysen, Rodney [R]
Yea NY-3 King, Peter [R]
Yea NY-23 McHugh, John [R]
Yea NY-26 Lee, Christopher [R]
Yea OH-3 Turner, Michael [R]
Yea OH-7 Austria, Steve [R]
Yea OH-12 Tiberi, Patrick [R]
Yea OH-14 LaTourette, Steven [R]
Yea OK-1 Sullivan, John [R]
Yea OK-3 Lucas, Frank [R]
Yea OK-4 Cole, Tom [R]
Yea OR-2 Walden, Greg [R]
Yea PA-5 Thompson, Glenn [R]
Yea PA-6 Gerlach, Jim [R]
Yea PA-15 Dent, Charles [R]
Yea PA-18 Murphy, Tim [R]
Yea PA-19 Platts, Todd [R]
Yea TN-1 Roe, David [R]
Yea VA-1 Wittman, Rob [R]
Yea VA-10 Wolf, Frank [R]
Yea WA-5 McMorris Rodgers, Cathy [R]
Yea WA-8 Reichert, Dave [R]
Yea WI-6 Petri, Thomas [R]

Barrack Obama has created change.gov, ‘The Official Web Site of the U.S. Presidential Transition.’ The site lays out his agenda for what he is going to change in the country. The site has been reworked since it originally launched; all that remains is:

“Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by setting a goal that all middle school and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year and by developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free.”

PoliticalLore.com has documented that the original wording on Change.gov says: “Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.”

In a column entitled “Why would a black President want slavery?” libertarian author Gerry Reed examines how President-elect Obama and his chief advisor Rahm Emmanuel both support involuntary servitude in the form of mandatory community service for college students, parents, for grandparents, engineers, and scientists.

Similarly, Chris Brown documents how Obama’s proposed program, the Classroom Corps, uses the terms enlist and draft. Finally, libertarian J.D. Tuccille was one of the first to point out that Rahm Emanuel co-authored a book that calls for compulsory service for all Americans ages 18 to 25.

Involuntary servitude is a United States legal and constitutional term for a person laboring against that person’s will to benefit another, under some form of coercion. The Thirteenth Amendment makes it illegal, except as punishment for a crime.

Will Obama get away with his plan to draft Americans into the ranks of community service? FDR got away with a military draft. From 1948 until 1973, during both peacetime and periods of conflict, Americans were drafted to fill vacancies in the armed forces which could not be filled through voluntary means.

However, even since the end of the draft in 1973, the Selective Service System still exists, should our politicians decide a draft is necessary to fight their unconstitutional wars. The RLC’s Statement of Principles has explicitly opposed a draft and conscription.

TIME magazine Managing Editor Richard Stengel announced that the magazine is helping to lead a major push to make national service a priority in Washington. They are targeting to enact legislation by September 11, 2009.

They hope “to demonstrate the impact that service has — and could have — upon our country and the power of citizens to create large-scale change.” The organization’s long-term goal is to “establish service as a universal American ethic, providing opportunities for Americans to serve at every life stage to address critical issues facing our country.”

Come early next year, the group hopes that the passage of a “new and comprehensive national service act” will be a hallmark of the early days of an Obama or McCain administration. Though the legislation has yet to be drafted, Atwood said it is likely to include increased funding for AmeriCorps programs and more than 3,000 non-profit organizations, public agencies and faith-based organizations.

One of Stengel’s other anti-liberty ideas is a national-service “baby bond,” $5,000 that the federal government would invest in a child’s name at birth that would mature to $19,000 by the time the child turned 20, which would the student could then access in exchange for a year of national or military service.

The $20 billion annual cost of such a program, Stengel noted, would equate to “roughly two months of funding for the Iraq war and about half what the government spends per year on the federal prison system.”

Stengel also called for making national service a Cabinet-level department, instituting a “summer of service” for those about to enter high school and starting a National-Service Academy.

The RLC Statement of Principles affirms that, “We oppose any mandatory draft registration or conscription. The best military must be composed of those who voluntarily assume the restrictions and burdens of military service in defense of the nation and the principles of the Constitution.” The same holds true for national service or community activity. Forcing community involvement through compulsion will not — long term — be a net gain for civic or community involvement.

TIME magazine should stick to reporting and refrain from lobbying.