CHANGE.GOV: America Serves - Work Brings Freedom

Obama: CHANGE to a different liberty

What constitutes the "change" Barack Obama wants to bring? Did you ever hear a reporter ask him that, during his campaign? Did you ever see a clear picture of the change, from the mainstream media? Unanswered questions abound. Now that the popular (not electoral college) votes have been cast, Obama is already beginning to tell us -- and this spurs further, very serious questions.

Are you prepared for the change? See a new site, called change.gov. There, after kicking butt just two days prior, Barack Obama has started taking names. How is Senator Obama, not president at this time, nor actually president-elect, empowered to use a ".gov" Web site, to press his semi-reported, semi-hidden agenda?

How does he want us to change? Here is one way he wants us to change, copied from his (our?) new site. The bold/red in the text is my highlight. Reading these lines carefully will not require much reading between them.

America Serves

"When you choose to serve -- whether it's your nation, your community or simply your neighborhood -- you are connected to that fundamental American ideal that we want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness not just for ourselves, but for all Americans. That's why it's called the American dream."

The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start.

According to Obama, the American dream is called "the American dream" because, as he has determined, we want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans and if you want yours, somehow you are responsible for the fulfillment of the dreams of all others. You want what he says you want and that means many of you will serve through programs that government provides, so all Americans have life as you have life, liberties as you have liberties, and if you wish to pursue happiness, you will pursue the happiness of all others, as provided by state or state-partnered organizations.

"When you choose to serve..." he is quoted above, but choose? Not so much, for those who would have an education. Evidently, conscription into serving the state seems to be the shining path, for these. Just what will the Obama required youth be required to do? And what training will the state dispense for them -- something "consciousness raising," akin to the radical indoctrination of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge? What becomes of the many American students and minors' parents, who will simply disagree and not wish to participate?

Obama answers: if one is to be allowed the freedom to gain an education, he must serve through the state, in ways proscribed by the state, those granted service by the state.

Liberty? For all?

Now, what is this about retirees and the elderly? Retirees will be "encouraged" to serve through state-proscribed ways. How will we be so induced? To do what? Will we be provided certain state services only if we have been serving the state, ourselves? And once central government begins so serving the elderly (and the elderly thus become dependent upon state services) for how long will the state choose to go on spending to serve us, as age raises the costs?

The coming answers to these questions could seem innocuous to some, as Obama's initial "community organizations" become state-directed venues of our work. But will the groundwork be thus laid for further changes in the services we must yield to the state, for the sake of our "liberties?"

As government is granted power to require services from an individual, or as government is permitted to generate a dependency of the person upon such services, the person's liberty is relinquished to the state's power over him. Any tyranny is all tyranny, wherever it appears and the results of that evil become mere matters of degree. Government being permitted to dispense "liberties" based upon our proscribed service is a tyranny which may begin smallish, but be easily "ratcheted up."

ARBEIT MACHT FREI -- "work brings freedom." -- those were words hung in places that Americans liberated much too late for far too many, two generations ago, after a new government changed the essentials of its civilization.

To Barack Obama, freedom depends upon our work for collective liberties. To America, freedom is the gracious gift of God to each person from the start and "inalienable" means unyielding and unchangeable. We seem to be in an essential conflict, beginning two days after the elections.

Photo of Dachau prison gate provided via Wikipedia

Update: 11/8/2008

The America Serves page on the CHANGE.GOV site has been changed. It now reads:

America Serves

"When you choose to serve -- whether it's your nation, your community or simply your neighborhood -- you are connected to that fundamental American ideal that we want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness not just for ourselves, but for all Americans. That's why it's called the American dream."

The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by setting a goal that all middle school and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year and by developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start.

I learned this from the blog page:

You Decide 2008: Contradictions in Obama's "America Serves" plan (Update)

November 7th, 2008, Posted: 3:20 pm by Nate

By no means are all questions answered. The middle and high school "goal" still appears to be "over the top" by half, at least. As to the bigger picture, as inferred in last night's article, where government, especially federal government, gets into the business of influencing what constitutes community service and its rewards and what by exclusion does not, the state intrudes upon the decision making liberties of a free people. (This is similar to taxing someone so much that he no longer has nearly as much money for carrying out his faith as one normally would in giving "tithes and offerings.")

Was this merely a matter of text too hastily and sketchily published? I am not at all confident at that. I recall the apparent test case of governmental intimidation of anti-Obama free speech in Missouri, during the campaign -- also the apparent test case of Obama calling upon Nevada volunteers (including numerous ACORN volunteers, presumably) to "get in their faces." If those were indeed experiments to discover what kind of push-back Obama would get, this could also fit that pattern.