Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Are You Ready for Involuntary Volunteering?

Re: The President's address, going on right now. Maybe he forgot to read this first:

The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution makes involuntary servitude illegal under any U.S. jurisdiction whether at the hands of the U.S. government or in the private sphere, except as punishment for a crime: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
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If you are confused by this post, I just suggest to 'wait and see'. I still remember when the original change.gov website went up last November and there were several clauses regarding the expansion of the Corps in the US. The wording was very suspect, like 'requiring' all citizens to do Community Service, 'requiring' all middle, high, and college students to do Community Service, and so on. Mysteriously those ideas were wiped from the site within a week of it's unveiling, and it reappeared with slightly altered wording such as the college 'requirement' would be for certain students receiving certain types of funding (my guess: If you want a loan, you have to work it off in the Corps). Or the magical list of 'volunteer work' that would be 'requested' of adults of all career fields, even retired seniors, where they will be 'enlisted' to help young students with their various projects. Is it volunteer work if you are required to do it? Is it volunteer community service if you HAVE to do it in order to advance? How will you triple the number of volunteers if they aren't signing up? Is that where the original plans of 'requiring' all citizens from middle school age and up comes back into play? Who knows,,, I am just interested to see what will happen eventually and have put this on a Post It note in my head for future reference.

1 comment:

  1. Leave to the Americans to have liberty built right into their Constitution. Canadians simply have no idea, the government can make us do just about anything.

    ReplyDelete

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