Wow. Really pissed off posters. Wonder if some people have nightly dreams that run like an hour of Fox News.
I agree with Michele that this is necessary. The fact is, most Americans today never perform community service. I don’t know if there is a negative connotation in the minds of the American people because it is made mandatory when it is ordered by the court, whether they don’t feel comfortable dealing with strangers less fortunate, or whether the idea of actually interacting in a way that doesn’t earn a paycheck for a couple of measly hours scares the piss out of them.
People seem to forget that serving the community is a very American ideal.
Here are some examples: Kiwanis, Lions Club, Shriners, Girls Scouts, Boy Scouts. Hell, Rosie the Riveter from WWII! Those parades we all watch to see American flags wave? Most hands holding that flag are in service to the community.
There was a time in American history that we actually cared for our neighbors and believed that benefiting the neighborhood we lived in was a civic duty and a matter of American pride. Now we fear everyone, wish horrible things on our neighbors, and sit in our houses wondering why “no one cares about me as much as I do”.
You have to consider the fact that Obama got his beginnings as a civil servant helping to better the lives of the poor and homeless in inner-city Chicago. That man is now at the country’s highest public office. The presidency is the highest office an American can acquire to serve his country. So of course he wants Americans to be more involved. Because more and more today, we just don’t care about our own country enough to sacrifice anything as easy and simple as a little time.
We claim citizenship as our birthright but forget that our forebears considered the label of American as a privilege. I think that starting new forms of corp service is a great idea, and having incentives to get people involved seems like a fair trade because (I feel) as a people we just don’t care about the American sitting next to us anymore. We’re disconnected.
Civic duty is not a Marxist ideal. It’s a universal ideal. Perhaps we need to start paying attention to who we are and where we live again.
