Well, the Obama Regime and its lackeys in Congress have passed legislation increasing “opportunities for national service” for young and not-so-young Americans. However, I’m left concerned about two things about this bill.

The nation is close to a major civic breakthrough. By a 321-to-105 vote last week, the House approved an ambitious bipartisan measure to enlarge the opportunities for Americans of all ages and income levels to participate in productive national and community service.

A similar plan is now before the Senate. A favorable vote this week would help speed a worthy initiative to President Obama’s desk.

Essentially, the measure is an expansion of AmeriCorps, the existing domestic service program. It would increase the number of full-time and part-time service volunteers to 250,000 from 75,000 and create new programs focused on special areas like strengthening schools, improving health care for low-income communities, boosting energy efficiency and cleaning up parks.

Volunteers receive minimal living expenses and a modest educational stipend after their year of service. The bill raises the stipend to $5,350, the same as a Pell Grant. Special fellowships would be available for people 55 and older, as well as summer positions for middle- and high-school students.

Now please understand – I think service to the community and/or the nation is a great thing. I’m the son of a career military officer. My brother is a cop. I’m a teacher in a public school with a high percentage of minority and socio-economically disadvantaged students. My family is all about giving back to our community and our country. I don’t object to any of that.

But let’s get down to brass tacks here. I see two problems in this – one related to the potential for job destruction, and the other related to the evisceration of individual liberty.

First, let’s consider that increase in volunteer positions with a small stipend attached. That seems to me to be a potential destroyer of good jobs for unemployed Americans. After all, I’d have to presume that these jobs are already being done by people. Are we going to fire these workers? Or are we creating entirely new jobs – work that is needed and could be done by full-time employees who would then not be payments from unemployment or other entitlement programs.

Second, there is this aspect of the plan.

Under section 6104 of the bill, entitled “Duties,” in subsection B6, the legislation states that a commission will be set up to investigate, “Whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed, and how such a requirement could be implemented in a manner that would strengthen the social fabric of the Nation and overcome civic challenges by bringing together people from diverse economic, ethnic, and educational backgrounds.”

Section 120 of the bill also discusses the “Youth Engagement Zone Program” and states that “service learning” will be “a mandatory part of the curriculum in all of the secondary schools served by the local educational agency.”

“The legislation, slated to cost $6 billion over five years, would create 175,000 “new service opportunities” under AmeriCorps, bringing the number of participants in the national volunteer program to 250,000. It would also create additional “corps” to expand the reach of volunteerism into new sectors, including a Clean Energy Corps, Education Corps, Healthy Futures Corps and Veterans Service Corps, and it expands the National Civilian Community Corps to focus on additional areas like disaster relief and energy conservation,” reports Fox News.

This isn’t volunteerism. And it is far outside the mainstream of American tradition, and I’d argue it runs afoul of the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution. After all, it would be imposing involuntary servitude upon every young person as a condition of their being enrolled in school – something that is mandatory under the laws of every state. This is not military conscription in time of war – it is social experimentation and indoctrination mandated at the national level. Indeed, it is reminiscent of the use of students as unpaid farm labor in Castro’s Cuba, or of the Hitler Youth. And I say that as the former coordinator of the mandatory senior service project at the Catholic school where I taught early in my teaching career (a program which I find unobjectionable because student was obliged to attend our school under penalty of law).