It seemed like a victory, of sorts. Last week the Senate approved a bill to radically expand the AmeriCorps program. The bill initially contained language that proposed a study for mandatory service for all young people in the United States, but this language was removed as the bill moved through the Senate and did not appear in the final version.

Well, it’s baaaaaaack. The language was stripped from one bill, but it suddenly appeared in another. It is now contained in HR 1444, due to crawl across the House floor this week. HR 1444 is sponsored by Rep. Jim McDermott, a Washington state Democrat, and is assigned to the House Committee on Labor and Education.

The bill, under Section 4 (b)6, states:

Whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed, and how such a requirement could be implemented in a manner that would strengthen the social fabric of the Nation and overcome civic challenges by bringing together people from diverse economic, ethnic, and educational backgrounds.

How “mandatory service,” i.e. servitude, strengthens the “social fabric of the Nation” is not explained.

HR 1444, like its earlier parent 1388, includes the prospect of a “public service academy, a four-year institution that offers a federally funded undergraduate education with a focus on training future public sector leaders” and reaches all the way down to primary school, requiring a review of “the means to develop awareness of national service and volunteer opportunities at a young age by creating, expanding and promoting service options for primary and secondary school students and by raising awareness of existing incentives.”

That is, “existing incentives” as determined by the government.

In addition to Obama’s election campaign pledge to create a 250,000 strong national security force as big, powerful and well-funded as our combined U.S. military forces, Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has authored a book (The Plan: Big Ideas for America) that calls for three months of compulsory civil service for all Americans aged 18 to 25.

So it looks like the goblin of compulsory national service has not gone away, it has simply morphed into another bill, soon to be considered by the House.

One thing is for certain: the federal government considers you and your children little more than ciphers to be press ganged into mandatory “service” to a government addicted to wars waged in the name of international bankers.

(3.29.2009 — Stefan Fobes) Posted in Rise of the Global Police State. http://warofillusions.wordpress.com/2009/03/29/mandatory-service-proviso-found-attatched-to-new-senate-bill