I absolutely love how you countered that reply. You are eloquent and well informed, and our world need people like you who understands the basic principles of personal liberty and responsibility. I admire your way of getting your point across, with a very good analysis of your opponents rhetoric, and extremely well formulated answers.

Thumbs up from Norway

My respectful umbrage has driven me to reply.

Are you mentally handicapped? How about physically? If not, then why are you all so afraid of becoming a part of your own government?

Your response suggests that only those who are physically or mentally handicapped should be weary of being ordered to do tasks by their government. In this way, you hold very similar views to Samuel Cartwright, who, in 1851, coined the term “drapetomania” to explain the physical and psychological deformities that drove slaves to run away from their plantations. The desire for freedom is not a mental or physical handicap.

Furthermore, I don’t feel it is necessary to debate the merits of forced servitude (though in the rest of my response, I may indulge). This is the myth of the “happy slave populations” that was debunked by W.E.B. DuBois and many others. Allowing one group of people to force another group of people to labor against their will is simply wrong (except as punishment for a crime).

It’s a liberal action being undertaken to ensure that we, the average middle class citizen/joes who make up the majority of the population, stay in tune and on top of our governing bodies.

I’m not sure why you italicized the word liberal, but in worldwide politics, the term liberal means “a person who favors a political philosophy of progress and reform and the protection of civil liberties.” It wasn’t until FDR that it came to mean the growth of government for the good of the people. There is nothing liberal about forcing people to serve the government, and is a total abrogation of one’s civil rights.

Your suggestion that either forcing people to serve in the military or serve in an “underserved school” is a way of making sure people are “on top” of our government is facially inconceivable. This isn’t being “on top,” it’s being “on the bottom” of our government - in the most servile posture possible. The government routinely takes 30% of everything people own on an annual basis - this should be enough to perk some ears! In any event, soup kitchen work isn’t going to bring you up to speed on HR 1955.

Forcing the average American to take part in their own government(note that civilian occupations are discussed, military service being optional) is the only real way to get to the masses of American citizens with their heads in the sand, the forcing those masses to realize the gaping differences between a functional government and the American government seems like one of the only sane political ideas that I have heard, of late.

Forcing average Americans against their will to be so encroached upon that they will act out nebulous metaphors like “pulling their heads out of sand” is the ONLY sane political idea you’ve ever heard of?? This simply cannot be true, and also, conditioning people to serve at the president’s direction is not going to “wake people up.”

So before you’re filled with dread or spite or libertarianism over the aspect of being forced to partake in governmental duties . . .

Libertarianism, as I practice it, is the simple idea that one person’s freedoms end where another person’s begins. This mindset has no conceptual similarity to “dread” or “spite” as your sentence suggests. If these emotions should manifest themselves when one’s freedoms are trampled upon, then this result simply justifies not having trampled them in the first place. Also, the duty of the government is to secure your freedom - not to feed the homeless (that’s all of our moral obligations) - so I don’t consider this “partak[ing] in governmental duties” or “taking the governmental sacrament” or any such nonsense.

. . . is our obligation to partake in the system that allows us to live as we do, and strive to improve it and take it’s reins away from those who would strive to monopolize it for their own ends.

Now we agree. But whereas I believe it is my personal obligation, you believe I must be forced against my will to do so. There is an important difference. There are already ample opportunities for both you and I to go out into the community and give our time and talents. I suggest we heed the call. I hate to consider my attitude toward the same should the government ever require me to do so.