No Coercion

BOTH EDUCATORS AND lawmakers have recently taken up an initiative to increase the opportunities for young people to engage in public service. New and augmented programs are entirely appropriate; voluntary youth service, as promulgated both here at Harvard and in Washington, can do nothing but benfit all involved.

But those, particularly recently, who support a Universal National Service plan are missing the mark. A mandatory military or civilian draft program would fail to achieve its own stated objectives. It would foster resentment instead of patriotism, favor the advantaged over the disadvantaged, and divert federal resources from more effective social programs. while the idea of voluntary service is a noble one, such service loses its key component--altruism--when mandated by law. And no matter how effective the results, national service which relies on coercion is an infringement on the freedom of America's youth. We believe that instead, the government would do better to create greater incentives for voluntary service, such as augmenting the new G.I. bill to include education benefits for civil as well as military service.

Nevertheless, such illustrious neo-liberals as Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.) claim that the national service plan will instill American youth with necessary citizenship values, at the same time rejuvenating America's failing social commitment and bolstering her lackluster conventional forces. In one plan, outlined by Rep. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) at the Kennedy School last month, all 18-year-old Americans will choose whether to serve in civil or military service. However, if a youth chooses civil service but has no necessary skills for social programs, such as the Peace Corps or Teacher Corps, he may be sent to the armed forces.

IT IS THIS DICHOTOMY between the civil and military fields that best illustrates the inequality such a draft would foster. While the plan does and should aim at egalitarianism among those drafted, it cannot avoid discriminating against those without certain skills. It would certainly, as did the Vietnam-era draft, widen the gap between the privileged and non-privileged in society.

But even more importantly, a draft of manpower to replace money spent on social programs misses the underlying reasons behind the failure of America's public welfare commitment. As residents of the wealthiest nation in the world, American citizens cannot be allowed to evade their tax commitment to the needy. It is ironic that the politicians supporting national service want to draft 18-year-olds, rather than having the courage to ask the parents of these youths to pay more taxes. More to the point, while these 18-year-olds could derive the same benefits from voluntary programs, no year of training can make up for 18 years of lost education for those who are not educated because lawmakers refuse to spend adequate funds on our schools.

A military draft would also spread money so thin among those who serve that those young Americans who view the military as a pragmatic means to receive scholarships and training would lose out. Augmented incentive programs for both types of service would be far more equitable. More importantly, a military draft diverts America's attention from the need to bolster the peaceful forces of food and diplomacy.

If America's peacetime military draft, which ended in 1973, had not been declared Constitutional during the Vietnam conflict, America's involvement in the undeclared war in Indochina would have been limited. Likewise, without a constitutional partial military draft today, war may seem less inevitable. In the event of a conflict Americans of all backgrounds should be universally drafted; but the nation should not actively prepare for such a possibility.

Americans should heed the call for John F. Kennedy '40, who asked what we could do for our country. And the country should continue to increase the number of ways we can answer, by increasing voluntary service programs. But when citizenship values are mandated in a democracy, they lose their essential worth.