Compulsory Service Isn’t American

RUSH: Here’s Peter in Hudson, Wisconsin. I’m glad you called, sir. Welcome to Open Line Friday.

CALLER: Hi, Rush! It’s an honor to talk to you.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: Well, I have a question for you about a class I’m in. I’m in a government class. I’m a senior in high school, and in this government class, we do roundtables once a week run by the students where we talk about different political issues or just issues in government. And this week, I’m running the roundtable, and it’s about postsecondary school mandatory service. Kind of like military internship stuff.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: A lot of European countries — yeah. So I had this idea. I’ve been listening to you for two years, and it’s been great, and I had this idea, this crazy idea that I could call you and ask you what you thought about postsecondary school mandatory service, what you thought the conservative view is and what you thought the liberal view is, since you know the liberals better than themselves.

RUSH: Well, the liberals bring this up now and again.

CALLER: Uh-huh.

RUSH: And they do it within the context of, we all need to give back. They do it in the context of, ‘Well, you can pay off your student loan by helping an illegal immigrant cross the Street or into the 7-Eleven, what have you, stocking the parking meters in San Francisco for the homeless to come raid, you know, any number of good works like that. I’m against anything compulsory. This is the land of freedom and the home of the brave and so forth. We don’t have a draft here. I’m not saying there’s not any value in it. There are a lot of people who could benefit tremendously from the kind of idea you’re talking about in terms of discipline, hard work, getting fit, getting in shape, and so forth. But when you start down the compulsory road, then you’re going to have everybody wearing uniforms, then we’re going to have all these people out sweeping the streets — like I’ll never forget the first view of Beijing that we saw on television when Nixon landed there, all these little ChiCom people just like ants out there sweeping the snow off the streets and so forth because they didn’t have high-tech equipment to do it. But the whole compulsory thing, once you’re talking about people that are 18 and 19, until you have a military draft, I’m not big on that.