Conscription by another name

Radley Balko summarizes the most recent moves towards some new form of civil conscription in the United States:

The Service Nation Summit kickoff event is getting promotional help from Time magazine, whose Managing Editor Rick Stengel is a co-chair. Seems like an odd undertaking for a newsweekly, doesn't it? But then, Time has an annoying habit of crossing over into advocacy on issues its editors have deemed too important to leave to impartial reportage.

Lindgren points out that though the campaign is couched in terms that make it appear oriented toward merely encouraging volunteerism, some of its top officials have a history of supporting a more coercive definition "service," including support for Rep. Charlie Rengel's (D-N.Y.) bill to bring back conscription. Most ominously, one of the group's stated goals is to "[l]aunch a debate about why and how America should become a nation of universal national service by 2020."

Note the absence of the word "if."

Military conscription is indentured servitude. Civilian forms of conscription will be exactly as bad. This follows a discussion the other day where the term "generational welfare" was accurately used to describe most of these farcical initiatives.