[AVNevis]

Speaking as a High School freshman, I have absolutely no problem with this. It is not a draft, but community service. It seems that since the community has been paying for your education for so long, you ought to give something back. Plus it could teach kids to keep volunterring well into adulthood. However, this might be the only thing I actually agree with Kerry about. Hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day. And besides, by election day he might have another position, or two, or three, or four.

[sailor4321]

Do you have a problem with a draft for military service? I mean, from a philosophical point of view --- not do you support the idea of implementing a draft right now.

[babygene]

Well here's the problem, young fellow...

A young person can't earn enough in two years to pay for four years of collage. For that matter a young person without an education can't earn enough to pay his room and board and medical each year to say nothing about a car, dates etc....

[DmBarch]

Speaking as a High School freshman, I have absolutely no problem with this. It is not a draft, but community service. It seems that since the community has been paying for your education for so long, you ought to give something back. Plus it could teach kids to keep volunterring well into adulthood. However, this might be the only thing I actually agree with Kerry about. Hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day. And besides, by election day he might have another position, or two, or three, or four

One of the freedoms in the US is to try to be the success that you want to be, what used to be called "you can do anything you want." The flip side of that is usually ignored - it is that you don't have to do what you don't want to do. The fewer things we are forced to do, the more free we are. This has been a silent bedrock in our society.

Wait till you find that your idea of "community service " is not acceptable to the school board because it is faith based, unisex, or somehow outside the new norms according to them. No matter how nice it sounds, the fewer requirements, the better. And the budget to pay for all this - from tax hikes on the folks that provide most jobs outside the government. And you can bet that the wastage in these programs will be substantial. How else are we going to find places for the otherwise unemployable nieces and brothers of the Democratic party functionaries?

[TommyC1]

I have to disagree with you. Unlike you, at one time I was subject to the draft and it certainly is slavery. (I wasn't called up, but I would have gone if I was. Even so, I define forced service as slavery nontheless.) We don't need the draft today(thank God) for military purposes because the professional Volunteer Armed Forces are far superior to a drafted force.
Drafting every high school student is a massive misallocation of the Nation's youth resource. I reiterate that it is slavery imposed by the government on a free people. This program, along with the other proposals, is a thinly disguised effort to channel young people's natural intellectual search at an impressionable age into government-approved and controlled thoughts ideas.
If you want to volunteer, go to it, but don't force others to do it if they don't want to. It is naive to think that "community service" is really valuable if it is forced.

[Bonaparte]

What is the cost of sending 500,000 people through 4 years of college? Only counting books and tuition, I come out with a figure of approximately 9,000,000,000. Add in the additional bureaucratic hours required to administer this program (all union scale, btw) and that 9 billion figure takes a leap.

You do not yet have a tax burden hanging like a millstone around your neck. But you will and then you'll know why nobody here wants to add more give-aways and more bureaucratic layers, all at our expense.

And what of those who are not academically competitive? Do they just do the "community service" and get sent along to college anyway? If not, then isn't there going to be groaning about "discrimination"?

Of what, exactly, will this "community service" consist? What organizations will get the grants (more tax-payer expense, btw) and whose agenda will be served?

None of this has been clarified, none of it has been spelled out. Like all of kerry's proposals, it's short on detail.

[TigersEye]

The real problems with this is not whether there are any good ideas in it or not. The first problem is that Kerry talks out of both sides of his mouth. He'll be for this one day and against it the next. There is no plan behind it at all because it was never anything but hot air to mine some votes.

The second problem is that Kerry and the DNC have just initiated a campaign of "Bush plans to reinstate the draft" scare tactics fabricated from whole cloth. And here it is, freshly scrubbed from the Kerry Campaign website, his own proposal to create a draft.

[steve-b]

It is not a draft, but community service.

"Community service" is meted out as punishment for a crime that is not sufficiently serious to require prison time. Kerry wants to treat you like a criminal.

[El Gato]

It is not a draft, but community service. It seems that since the community has been paying for your education for so long, you ought to give something back.

It's a draft, as long as the service is not voluntary.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Militia service was once manaddorty. In fact something like a widespread militia, with the active force and something like the current reserve and guard recruited from that militia. It would consist of some basic training, and then fairly infrequent refresher training. No technical training, other than that required to operate the most basic systems: assault rifles, grenade launchers, maybe up to something like Javelin antitank and stinger anti-air systems. It works for the Swiss, although we'd have to recruit many more of these militiamen to active service.

Of course that would all cost money, money that the Dems would rather give away, and that the Repubs would just as soon not spend at all.

[roaddog727]

"It is not a draft, but community service."

Depending on what quota needs filling at any give time, you may well not get to choose the service you would like.

So, you wanted to sign upfor the peace-corps today? Sorry - all full. You get prison guard. Thanks for your service!

Sorry for my sarcasm.