National service?
0 comment Sunday, August 31, 2014 |
So much of the 'news' lately reported in the old media, and even in the blogosphere, seems to be so much distraction from some of the rather unsettling things that are happening quietly, unbeknownst to most Americans.
I've alluded to this 'national service' plan which has been in the works, but few details have been publicly discussed, so there was not much to say about it except that I find it to be wrong in principle. However the Senate has just passed the bill which is called the GIVE Act.
The senate voted 74-14 in favor of the bill.
HR 1388
GIVE Act
Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act
The link above gives only a summary of the bill, and not the complete text, but I invite my readers to take a look at it.
The House version of the bill passed a few days ago, as WorldNetDaily reported, and with no less than 70 Republicans voting for it.
The House version is here.
Here is one part (among many) which is rather unnerving:
SEC. 1304. PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES AND INELIGIBLE ORGANIZATIONS.
Section 125 (42 U.S.C. 12575) is amended to read as follows:
SEC. 125. PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES AND INELIGIBLE ORGANIZATIONS.
(a) Prohibited Activities- A participant in an approved national service position under this subtitle may not engage in the following activities:
...(7) Engaging in religious instruction, conducting worship services, providing instruction as part of a program that includes mandatory religious instruction or worship, constructing or operating facilities devoted to religious instruction or worship, maintaining facilities primarily or inherently devoted to religious instruction or worship, or engaging in any form of religious proselytization.''
There's also a related bill here.
Somehow in light of what these measures suggest, I can't help thinking of what a certain person said some months ago:
"Barack Obama will require you to work."
"He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation and that you move out of your comfort zone. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage."
"Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual � uninvolved, uninformed � you have to stay at the seat at the table of democracy with a man like Barack Obama not just on Tuesday but in a year from now, in four years from now, in eight years from now, you will have to be engaged."
These plans seems disturbingly open-ended, and though it looks as if the idea is primarily to indoctrinate young people (or further indoctrinate them, more accurately), the bills even mention programs for seniors over the age of 55. If we consider the quotes in the paragraph above, it sounds as though this 'service corps' will not just be another little VISTA program or something which provides busy work for idealistic young people, but something that sounds unsettlingly compulsory as opposed to voluntary, and it looks like it is meant to touch everybody, not just a 'commiitted' few.
Any reactions? Comments?

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