Dan Carol

National Service

So yesterday I noted how one challenge in the post-Katrina world was overcoming the fact that so many citizens had lost faith in the ability of our core institutions - be they governments in times of disaster, or schools, or churches - to deliver the promised goods.

Arguably the institution that folks now trust the most to do an effective job - be it disaster relief or fighting dumb wars for politicians - is the US military.

Weird eh. But name another institution that has offered true affirmative action in the last generation? And has racially integrated itself at both the grunt and the leadership levels? And has consistently improved its readiness, training programs and technology? Throw out all the $640 hammers for Halliburton and other forms of corporate welfare for star wars contractors, bad Bradley fighting vehicles and the like and the US Army looks pretty damn good.

So where am I driving other than to provide a little fun fodder for some posts and flames from incensed fellow liberals? Well, I look ahead to 2008 and beyond and think that national leaders who are selling the old line from the obscure horror film called The Stepfather ("we need a little order around here!") are going to be in great public demand. Now so far, the Iraq debacle has not exactly been a great launching pad for new Colin Powell's and Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf's, but in time they'll come.

Looking beyond mere political handicapping and personalities though, I think the real question post-Katrina is how progressives can embrace and engineer a new form of national service that both honors the military and lays the groundwork for a broader version of Americorps.

We all remember Americorps - it kind of peaked in the early Clinton era but then kept getting a big budget crew cut from the Gingrich-Delay Congress in the years that followed.

But what if we had a national call to action to weatherize the 13 million homes that are eligible for federal assistance? Could young Americans and older Americans with skills be brought into a national service corps that was all about building energy independence as part of the Apollo Alliance vision of a smarter war on terror? Could citizen-to-citizen diplomacy be inspired by such a program, so that Arab-Americans could be recruited to "sell" our values abroad a bit better than Bush flack Karen Hughes? Could liberals get comfy with required national service for all Americans in one form or another to re-build our infrastructure - and create new social capital and institutions that would make Robert Putnam the Bowling Alone guy happy?

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Posted at 10:50 AM, Oct 18, 2005 in Environmental Justice | Progressive Agenda
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