On 12:51 p.m. on Friday, January 20, 1961, President John F. Kennedy delivered his inaugural address, which included the famous line, "Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country."
You might have encountered the phrase "national service" anywhere from the pages of Time to a bill recently signed by President Barack Obama -- H.R. 1388, "The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, an Act to reauthorize and reform the national service laws."
The idea behind this recent trend is that we need to instill service in our nation's youth -- and with some social pressure, a few speeches from our president and a glitzy ad campaign, we can pressure our selfish generation into giving back.
After all, in this time of recession and national turmoil, what could possibly be wrong with encouraging everyone to serve their communities?
We must recognize that "service" to one's community and nation does not necessarily entail carrying a gun or a shovel for the U.S. government. Dartmouth students should be prepared for a new kind of call to service -- one that draws upon their creativity and entrepreneurial spirit.
On the surface, national service sounds wonderful. Obama's recent $5.7-billion National Service Bill has tripled the size of the AmeriCorps service program, and sets aside large sums of money to tie volunteer work to money for college. Volunteers could pay student loans as they mentor children or clean up city parks. Incentives to serve, however, are only part of the currently-proposed plan -- some argue that making a one or two-year stint in the military or AmeriCorps mandatory would benefit countless communities and instill values of duty and service in our youth before they emerge into the "real world."
While I applaud any call to service, and fully recognize that we often forget to give back to our communities as much as we receive from them, mandatory service is not in our best interests. Mandatory service projects, while noble in intention, will fail in practice. Just as conscription hurts troop morale, mandatory service will produce a few victories at the expense of a generation turned cynical about the virtues of service.
Besides, people already turn out in vast numbers to perform various forms of national service -- and they do it of their own volition. Nearly 61 million Americans volunteered in their communities in 2007, contributing 8.1 billion hours of service of a monetary value of $158 billion. The Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, for example, had a volunteer rate of 39.3 percent (as if you needed any evidence of "Minnesota nice"). Millions of others enlist in our armed forces and serve the highest calling to defend our freedoms with their own lives if necessary.
We must promote duty and social obligation, but do so in a framework that expands the definition of "service." I'd like to focus on the private sector, rather than the public sector or the military, because it is traditionally divorced from our conception of "service." After all, few would compare making money in business to mentoring disadvantaged children when talking about service.
In these difficult times, however, we are thirsting for the entrepreneurial spirit that brought us companies such as FedEx, Microsoft and Intel. These were all start-ups borne out of economic downturns like the one we are currently experiencing. They are just a few examples of companies that provide hundreds of thousands of jobs, empowering growth and higher standards of living in our country and around the world. These entrepreneurial pursuits, especially by the men and women of Dartmouth, should be encouraged. Would it sound strange to you if President Obama's next speech were a national call to entrepreneurialism?
It is my hope that we can find a new nationalism for the United States -- one that eschews the jingoism and foolishness of the past, and instead embraces the power of individuals to better themselves and their communities simultaneously. When government steps aside, and people can see that they are responsible for their communities, ownership and action will take hold.
America needs all the help it can get right now, and Dartmouth students should confidently pursue this calling.
