Topic: Universal National Service
Why National Service Is The Wrong Idea Steve Love proposes that the U.S. adopt a compulsory National Service plan for illegal immigrants. This article shows why it's a bad idea.by Walt Thiessen
(libertarian)
Friday, September 14, 2007
Steve Love wants to enslave illegal immigrants for two years (perhaps we should call them indentured servants?) as a solution to, "Illegal immigration, the cost of the Iraq war, labor shortages, inner-city crime and drug use, English as the national language, [and] costs of prisons."
It's difficult to tally up all of the ways that this is a bad idea, because there are so many of them, but I'll take a stab at it.
It Violates The Non-Aggression Principle
Let's start with the basics. As a libertarian, I deplore initiated force in all its forms. All crime is essentially initiated force, but that doesn't seem to stop people from proposing more initiated-force ideas for the "public good." The fact is that we can't expect to see any progress on most issues until we give up the idea of initiated force as a tool of social organization, but non-libertarian advocates don't seem to comprehend this basic fact.
It's Unconstitutional
Then there's the Constitutionality issue. I have no doubt that U.S. judges can be counted on to find some way to justify the sort of intrusion into personal liberties Love's proposal requires. The Constitutional issue I'm raising, therefore, isn't whether or not the Supreme Court will uphold if it is enacted into law, but rather whether or not such a program is permissible under the Constitution based on what the Constitution actually says. It's sickening to have to make this distinction, but the honest truth is that Federal judges over the years have been complicit in the politicians' various efforts to overcome and undermine the Constitution on countless issues, all in the name of the "public good," of course.
So what exactly does the Constitution permit?
Presumably, Love is counting on Article I, Section 8 which says in part that Congress is empowered:
"To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
"To provide and maintain a Navy;
"To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
"To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
"To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;..."
But Love is not proposing to raise an army to defend the country. He is proposing to raise an army to teach them English. That doesn't qualify under Article I, Section 8.
Add in the 9th and 10th amendments, and it becomes clear that the Constitution actually prohibits the creation of programs such as Mandatory National Service.
For those who haven't looked at their Constitutional parchments lately, the 9th amendment says, "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." In other words, just because a right is listed in the Constitution doesn't mean that the right isn't protected. All rights are protected. The 10th Amendment says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." In other words, if it's not in the Constitution, neither Congress nor the President or the courts can simply grab an unlisted power and claim it as their own. If only the courts actually read and enforced the 9th and 10th Amendments, our country would be in much better shape than it is in now.
Anyone with a sixth grade reading ability who actually reads the Constitution in its entirety can tell you that Mandatory National Service is clearly unconstitutional.
It Doesn't Address The Concerns of Immigration Opponents
Immigration is an issue that both left and right define poorly, because it's more than one issue. On the one hand, you have illegal immigrants from Mexico. On the other hand, you have Al Qaedda operatives trying to enter the U.S. to do horrible things like turning airplanes into bombs. People who raise the immigration issue fail to differentiate between the two kinds of immigrants, which is the main reason why it's such a hot issue. Sadly, most solutions put forward these days tend to trip over their own feet by waffling back and forth between the two sub-issues without carefully distinguishing them. Love's solution only addresses the issue of illegals from Mexico.
The problem with his solution, of course, is that those who object to illegal Mexicans in the U.S. do so primarily because these same illegals are placing a heavy strain on the "social safety net." They effectively add to the cost of government by leaps and bounds. Opponents of illegal immigration are also upset that these Mexicans broke the law, and they want the law enforced because it's the law.
How does Love's proposal deal with this? He proposes to increase the financial burden on the government (which eventually ends up in the laps of taxpayers) to the tune of billions of dollars, according to Love, while doing nothing to actually reduce the other costs already incurred.
How does Love expect opponents of illegal immigrants to accept his solution, since it increases the government burden rather than reducing it (the very thing immigration opponents are most upset about)? His answer is that the cost of the program must be measured against "the cost of illegal immigration, housing convicts, community blight, drugs use and crime and the social fragmentation associated with ethnic divisions; and the value of the benefits UNS would bring to society."
But he's wrong. The only way you can presume to measure costs that way is if you assume that the government is empowered Constitutionally to be involved in all those issues in the first place. But as I showed, the Constitution does not empower the government in that way.
He also ignores the fact that the financing comes from taxpayers regardless of whether they individually want to "invest" in his program or not. This is also wrong. Taxes for this kind of "good deed" are really nothing more than public banditry, transfers of money from those who earned it to those (like Love) who think they have the right to spend it, all in the name of "doing good." One might think that Love could have learned by now from all the other failed government programs that have made things worse rather than better using this formula, such as the various poverty programs, jobs programs, Welfare, public works programs (particularly from the 1930s), etc. Most have produced more harm than good on balance. Unfortunately, he assumes the opposite and ignores historical fact.
It Does Nothing To Reduce The Cost Of The Iraq War
His next "solved" issue is the cost of the Iraq War. If this wasn't so serious a problem, his solution would actually be funny. How does forcibly enlisting illegal immigrants into national service reduce the cost of the Iraq War? Love doesn't actually say.
In truth, it would have no impact on the cost of the Iraq War at all. NPR did a report in 2006 about a study which showed that the true cost of the war will likely exceed two trillion dollars, with most of the money going toward, "replacing worn or destroyed military equipment, paying interest on the debt used to finance the war and providing lifetime care for disabled veterans."
How is Mandatory National Service by illegal immigrants supposed to reduce this cost? The notion is laugable. Besides, the true cost of America's presence in Iraq isn't just measurable in dollars. It's also measured in countless lives lost (which is definitely not funny at all), none of which will be saved by requiring illegal immigrants to go to boot camp.
Fighting Inner City Crime by Forcibly Teaching English???
Love assumes that the major source of criminal behavior and drug abuse in this country is by illegal Mexicans. Besides the clear racism of his claim, he provides no data to substantiate it.
Even if it were true, the question remains whether "boot camp" education would effectively teach English to illegal immigrants without detrimental effects. Public education, that bastion of coerced learning long lauded for improving literacy in this country, has actually dramatically reduced literacy since before coercive public school was instituted!
"Under any view of the subject, it is reasonable to believe, that in the common schools, private schools and academies, the number of children actually receiving instruction is equal to the whole number between five and sixteen years of age."
Remember, coerced public education was not mandated until the late 19th Century. All of the education prior to that time was voluntary. The source cited for the above quote is an article in The Freeman which also states:
"An item in the Journal of Education of January 1828 gave this account:
"Our population is 12,000,000, for the education of which, we have 50 colleges, besides several times the number of well endowed and flourishing academies leaving primary schools out of the account. For meeting the intellectual wants of this 12,000,000, we have about 600 newspapers and periodical journals. There is no country, (it is often said), where the means of intelligence are so generally enjoyed by all ranks and where knowledge is so generally diffused among the lower orders of the community, as in our own."
Reading materials at that time were often difficult to master. If you have doubt about this, try reading Thomas Paine's Common Sense or The Rights of Man, or any of the popular novels of the Scottish author Sir Walter Scott. Both authors sold very, very well in America. Their works require exceptional ability to read, yet millions of copies of their work were sold in the U.S. to a population that numbered just under four million in 1790. Someone was buying and reading all those books!
"Barely one-third of public school students performed at grade level on the 2001 English Language Arts exams. 1.5 to 2 million adults in NYC need literacy services....(NYC Mayor’s Office)."
In addition to the damning factual evidence, there's also the anecdotal evidence. Look at all of the people who are so poor at doing math. Basic math skills required to balance checkbooks are beyond a large number of people. Ask any bank teller or officer, and they'll tell you how amazed they are at how many people don't (or can't) regularly balance their checkbooks. I say that this is true primarily because people are forced to study math in school regardless of whether they are individually developmentally ready to do so, and the net result is that they develop a life-long aversion to the subject, which causes them problems later in their adult lives.
There is every reason to believe that mandatory "boot camp" programs to force illegal immigrants to learn English will lead to similar problems in the future.
The Military's Record on Preventing Drug Use Is Dismal
"If you had visited a typical military unit in 1983, about one out of every four service members would have used illegal drugs.
"If you had visited the same unit in 1998, about three out of 100 service members admitted to using drugs.
"Between 1983 and 1998, the fraction of service members admitting to frequent drug use dropped from 23 percent to 2.7 percent. Officials say there are many reasons for the drop."
Sounds impressive right? But then, look at this excerpt from an article which appeared in NORML News in 2002, four years later:
"Despite a 'zero tolerance' policy and pervasive drug testing, drug use among the military personnel has increased after a 20 year decline, according to a report in the San Diego Union Tribune. According to the paper, 17,000 people have been discharged from the military for positive drug tests since 1999.
"The Navy has discharged more people (3,407) for drug use than the Army, Air Force and Marine Corps combined, an increase of 47% since 1999. The number of persons failing drug tests increased 82% in the Air Force, 32% in the Army. All together, more than 3 million urinalysis tests were given last year in the military.
"Apparently there is some discretion being exercised by some commanders, who give first-offenders a second chance. According to the report, for example, 8,948 Army soldiers tested positive for drug use, but only 1,262 were discharged."
If the Army's pattern of discharging about 1 out of every 7 who test positive is representative of the military as a whole, and if 17,000 were discharged, the data suggests that about 120,000 military personnel have had positive drug tests!
"In contrast, the rates of heavy alcohol use did not show a significant decline between 1980 (20.8%) and 2002 (18.1%), although the 1998 survey showed a significant decline from the 1980 rate of use (i.e., from 20.8% to 15.4%). When we examine the trend in heavy drinking over the eight surveys, we see that heavy alcohol use increased from 1980 to 1982, was relatively stable between 1982 and 1985, decreased significantly between 1985 and 1988, remained relatively stable with some up and down fluctuations between 1988 and 1998, and then showed a significant increase from 1998 to 2002. Overall, the heavy drinking rate for 2002 was very similar to the rate when the survey series began in 1980."
What happened between 1998 and 2002 with drug use? Nothing significant. So where did the discrepancy between the DOD report and the San Diego Union Tribune report come from? I suggest that what really happened is that the DOD played cute with the wording of their initial report. The report said, "in 1998, about three out of 100 service members admitted to using drugs" while, "in 1983, about one out of every four service members would have used illegal drugs." There's a world of difference between what people admit to and what they actually do where illegal activities are concerned. In truth, there is no reason to believe that the military has achieved any real reduction in drug usage over the 20 year period, as the 2002 news report demonstrates just four years after that. The military is well known for getting the exact answers it wants from its enlisted personnel at all times, regardless of whether those answers happen to be true. Just ask any drill seargeant.
That's the problem. When you force people to do what you want them to do, you are not as likely to get the result you want. The most you can hope to do is cook the numbers to make it look good to your superiors.
The military's record regarding the policing and handling of illegal drug use within its own ranks precludes it from serious consideration from running a program such as Love proposes.
Prison Costs Lower With National Service? Not!
Of course, this inevitably leads to Love's claim about reducing the cost of prisons. I guess we're to assume that if you force drug addicts to join the military, they're no longer in prison (a very doubtful assumption!). He's proposing to reduce the prison population by increasing the military population.
The U.S.Department of Justice reports that the average national cost of keeping prison inmates was $22,650 in 2001.
Costs have risen almost 20 percent in 2006, making it likely the expense per service member has topped $400,000.
So while there will be a nominal decrease in prison costs this will more than be made up by military costs that are 20 times higher on average! Of course, we won't have to buy each of the illegals an M-16 rifle. That should knock a few thousand off the final cost.
Did you like this article? If you did, Thumb It! 2 thumbs so far
The views expressed in this
article are those of Walt Thiessen only and do not represent
the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Walt Thiessen is
solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an
employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
Want to comment on this
article? Leave your comment here. Your email address is
required to track your comment. However, we will neither
publish your email address nor distribute it to other
organizations or persons. The only reason we might use
it would be if we needed to contact you regarding your
comment. All comments are subject to our
terms of use policy.
