Ask what your country will force you to do

IBD has another superb editorial, this one about Obama’s plan to force young people to work in the new age Greenie trenches of his socialist imagination:

Obama says that as president he will “set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year.” What he doesn’t say is that he’ll make such voluntarism compulsory by attaching strings to federal education dollars. The schools will make the kids volunteer. It’s called plausible deniability.

In a commencement speech at Wesleyan University, Obama advised graduates not to pursue the American dream of success, but to serve others.

“You can take your diploma, walk off this stage and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should,” he told the graduates. “But I hope you don’t.”

Don’t be another Bill Gates and amass a fortune making people more productive and successful in their daily lives and giving your countrymen a standard of living the world will envy. Exchange your cap and gown for sackcloth and ashes. Leave your possessions behind and come and follow Obama.

“Fulfilling your immediate wants and needs betrays a poverty of ambition,” he opined. Shame on us for being selfish and buying that SUV built by an autoworker trying to fulfill his family’s immediate wants and needs.

“Our collective service can shape the destiny of this generation,” Obama said. “Individual salvation depends on collective salvation.”

We already have a Salvation Army that is truly a volunteer organization. Collective service and salvation is not a classic definition of voluntarism. What Obama has in mind is to turn America into a socialist version of the old Soviet collectives.

And if your idea of service is to join the military and keep others alive and free, forget about it. And never mind about ROTC on campus.

Obama has no place for those who are willing to abandon fame and fortune to lay down their lives for their friends and ours. “At a time of war,” Obama says, “we need you to work for peace.”

With President Obama in the White House, you’ll still be free — as long as your idea of freedom coincides with Obama’s demands on your time, intelligence, and efforts.