Want a College Loan? First, Serve Your Country
Pete Buttigieg wants to bring Americans together by making civic work mandatory. Here’s a better way.
More young Americans should be doing this.
Photographer: Citizen of the Planet/Education Images/UIG via Getty Images
Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has made headway in his long-shot bid for the Democratic presidential nomination with an appeal to heal the divisions within the U.S. He’s proposed mandatory national service as a means of forging a renewed sense of national unity from the American mix of ethnicities, religions and creeds. That’s a praiseworthy ambition now that the one-time unifying consensus for spreading American ideals abroad has turned into a source of division.
In the past, national service has been envisioned as a civilian version of a military draft. Both are a way to provide a shared experience for Americans of diverse backgrounds. But the draft was abolished 46 years ago in the U.S. and compulsory service offends the spirit of free association. It also, as Buttigieg seems to acknowledge, has the potential to produce hardship for those who have family obligations or other reasonable objections to participating.