General Mattis Calls for a National Service Program
I would support a national service program as long as the military is not the only option:
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The nation’s leaders should push harder for America’s youth to participate in public service, including in the military, as the Pentagon copes with recent recruiting shortfalls, former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Thursday.
The retired four-star Marine general called on top leaders across the country to implore public service on young Americans as the nation faces an increasingly volatile world and global power challenges from adversaries such as China and Russia. Mattis visited with some of those young Americans on Thursday during a stop at Georgia Military College, an independent, public kindergarten through 12th grade preparatory school and junior college with associate and bachelor’s degree programs.
“How many times have you heard the elected commander in chief, or your senators, or your governors or other elected officials say, ‘Uncle Sam needs you,’” Mattis told reporters before giving a speech on leadership at the school in Milledgeville, Ga. “I don’t care if it’s the Marine Corps, the Peace Corps, teaching, there’s any number of ways to serve our country … Do we really have an expectation today that each of our young people owes something to the country? I think it’s a lot bigger problem than just in the military.”
You can read more at the link, but I agree with Mattis that a national service program would be beneficial to the country. Mattis brings up the Peace Corps as an option, but I think a national service program should focus more on programs to improve America not a foreign country. A program I think would be beneficial is bringing back the Civilian Conservation Corps that was a that was responsible for building many public works projects in America’s rural spaces.
I also think a national service program should not be mandatory which means it needs an incentive. I think the incentive could be tuition assistance or a small business grant that gives young people an early advantage in life for completing national service compared to those who did not.
Any thoughts from fellow ROK Heads?
We have a national service program where the government offers free housing, food, medical care, and cash.
It’s called “welfare” and it is an “entitlement”.
It’s especially popular for illegal aliens.
And it doesn’t even require any work.
Before there is talk of national service, these people need to be put to work doing the jobs Americans won’t do.
Also of note:
Small business grants are a government fix for problems created by government. Get government out of small business and you don’t need government at all.
Tuition assistance has long ago demonstrated that universities know what you will pay for a degree and they simply calculate all your assistance and raise the price by that much. Assistance has become a wealth transfer from taxpayers to yet another Dean of Diversity with a paycheck equal at least 5 student tuitions… which is odd because almost all universities have a stronger admin to student ratio than an instructor to student ratio even after the numbers are friggered… and that number is frequently stronger than 5 to 1… especially at Yale, where there are more administrators than students.
In the ROK, able bodied males must perform military service between the ages of 18 and 28 years.
Male citizens with minor disabilities (e.g. bone spurs) must perform other forms of civil service.
Conscientious objection to military service has been allowed since 2018.
Conscientious objectors must still perform a period of civil service.
There are other models.
All (male and female) tertiary graduates in Ghana must perform 12 months of national civil service. e.g. building schools, teaching in schools, building roads, digging wells, revegetating former minesites etc.
What this means is they aren’t able to groom alphabet converts without kidnapping and gang-raaping them.
Mattis is no Chesty Puller.
BTW, Stephen digs at Trump but ignores the glorious service records of Clinton, Obama, and Biden.
That adds to his image as just another NPC. But one with a cute overbite.
Kegogi jokes. Very droll Set. Banned since January 2024 in the ROK.
According to Wiki …
The Set animal is usually depicted as a slender canid, resembling a greyhound, fennec fox or a jackal,
Set is the son of Geb, the Earth, and Nut, the Sky; his siblings are Osiris, Isis, and Nephthys.
He married Nephthys and fathered Anubis and Wepwawet.
In some accounts, he had relationships with the foreign goddesses Anat and Astarte.
From these relationships is said to be born a crocodile deity called Maga.
I’ll take the unusual approach here and agree with Mattis (and GI apparently).
A program like this would do a number of things. It would give young people a sense of community (a real sense of community, not just social media circles). It would develop useful skills. And it would provide a valuable service to the community.
I’m all for them being able to opt out if there is some other type of service they are interested in. I think this could be expanded to basic medical experience too (EMTs, paramedics are practically conscripts now their pay is so low….but it is also a valuable service and a stepping stone).
Anyway, my .02
Just speaking for myself, I would have loved this option when I graduated from high school. I went into college without a plan really. But I am not the type to go into the military (and most girls who are attracted to military training seem a little off…I didn’t say all, but most). A different sort of public service program would be great, in my estimation. Our own sons needed a sense of direction like that, and today with so much social media and the aimlessness it brings to society I think it would be a positive thing.
@Chickenhead, I just don’t see how a national service program could be started in America without some kind of incentive. I see no way a national service program will ever become mandatory due to the politics, so there has to be something given for giving 1-2 years of life serving in a program like this. I don’t think tying access to welfare and EBT benefits to national service would work either because too many people dependent on these programs vote and will not support politicians in favor of making them earn those benefits with national service.
That is why I think tuition aid or a small business grant to give people who did national service and edge over those who did not is the most feasible.
@Liz, that is why I like bringing back the CCC because it would get young people outdoors working with a group to complete projects instead of looking at their phones interacting with fake friends on social media. The CCC constructed trails, roads, buildings, and other infrastructure projects, these are all good skills that young people could tap into for the rest of their lives, not to mention the friendships from working on projects together they would form.
Big Government is Marxism.
I’m against it because our courts won’t even prosecute Antifa or illegals who hurt civilians or police officers.
All I see is a Harlequin version of Zimbabwe in the early 1980s.
I am not against some sort of national service.
But it won’t work for the same reasons everything else in America is broken. Anyone not recognizing this as the first roadblock is living in denial.
So, talking about it is complete foolishness until current problems are recognized and the fundememtals are fixed.
Further, national service should start with people taking free money from the government…
…which is what the CCC was.
And people taking free money from the government, along with prisoners and others demonstrating inability or disruption, shouldn’t be voting anyway. Their opinion is counter to the success of the country.
But maybe there is nothing to argue about.
It appears, for reasons ranging from global war to illegal alien wage competition to the AI/robot revolution, unskilled Americans are going to get increasingly hungry.
And, some decisions will need to be made between interest on the debt, a functioning military, and supporting a massive unproductive class watching the productive class doing their “national service” for tuition assistance equal to the increse in tuition or small business assistance that doesn’t even cover the accounting and legal startup costs.
Extreme hardship may burn away the layers of insanity, dysfunction, and misaligned priorities that have built up in America with decades of prosperity.
So, I am voting for a Great Depression II.
And so should you…
…if you really want national service.
This is called a DRAFT to man the military for their continued globalist inspired illegal wars.
In addition to the Draft they will use it as a ‘pathway to citizenship’ for the millions of illegals that have invaded the country.