Freedom or Required Community Service

12/02/08 - HumanEvents by Thomas Sowell   --> Source

[edited] Ultimately, other people are free when they can do things that you don't approve of, and you are free only when you can do things that others don't approve of.

The vision of the Left has many requirements. One of the most innocent-sounding is that students do "community service". You cannot graduate from some high schools across the country, and you will not be accepted at some colleges, unless you have done activities arbitrarily defined as "community service."

Schools arrogantly commandeer young people, not leaving them and their parents free to decide how to best use their time. They see your own notions as arrogant, as to what is or is not a service to the community.

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Working in a homeless shelter is widely regarded as "community service", as if aiding and abetting vagrancy is necessarily a service to the community, rather than a disservice.

A community is not better off with more people not working, hanging out on the streets, aggressively panhandling people on the sidewalks, urinating in the street, or leaving narcotics needles in the parks where children play.

Handing out benefits to people, who have not worked for them, breaks the connection between productivity and reward for them. But, that connection is unbreakable for society. You can make anything an "entitlement" for some people, but nothing is an entitlement for society as a whole. Food and shelter do not exist unless they have been produced by somebody.

"Entitlements" for some people require forcing other people to work for their benefit. As a bumper sticker put it: "Work harder. Millions of people on welfare are depending on you."

Supposedly, students are to get a sense of compassion from serving others. In practice, students receive a propaganda experience to make them receptive to the Left's vision of the world.

I am sure those who favor "community service" requirements would understand the objections to this if high school military exercises were required.

The essence of bigotry is refusing to others the rights that you demand for yourself. Bigotry is incompatible with freedom, even though many on the Left would be shocked to be considered opposed to freedom.