This post by PrestoPundit's Greg Ranson outlines them, courtesy of a speech that Sen. Obama made the other day in Denver. He points out that it's not just the "road to serfdom," it IS serfdom to force middle school, high school and college students to perform public service for 50 to 100 hours a year whether they want to or not.
Obama said:
When I'm President, I 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. This means that by the time you graduate college, you'll have done 17 weeks of service. We'll reach this goal in several ways. At the middle and high school level, we'll make federal assistance conditional on school districts developing service programs, and give schools resources to offer new service opportunities.This speech probably sounded better in the original Russian, along with the tag phrase "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." Or it could have been in Italian or German, because the fascist movements in those countries also had mandatory youth service programs. Maybe he could call them the "Obama Youth." I think Komsomol has already been used.
Note also that Obama would make the program mandatory for all of the states by threatening to withhold federal education funds for any school district that didn't fall into line, much as the federal government said it would withhold road funding from any state that didn't raise its drinking age from 18 to 21 a couple of decades back. We all know how that turned out: The rights of adult Americans between the ages of 18-20 to legally drink were taken away under federal duress.
"So what?" you ask. "Why should I care if the government forces kids to do public service?" Answer: Those kids are American citizens, too. If an Obama regime can force them to perform mandatory "volunteer" work "for the common good," then it can force YOU to do the same. The old Niemoller thing about "First they came for the Jews..." Well, Obama's coming for the kids first, figuring that you're not going to speak up for them. And when the Obamans come to demand your service, what will you say then?
An infringement on the constitutional rights of ANY American is an infringement on the rights of ALL Americans, and it would seem that such mandatory public service for students would violate either the Fourth Amendment ("The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.") or the Fifth Amendment (..."nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;") or both. Forcing someone to perform mandatory community service is definitely a deprivation of liberty, and could be construed as an unreasonable seizure of their person as well.
Now, I don't have any problem with people performing voluntary public service out of the goodness of their hearts. I don't even have a problem with convicted criminals having to perform public service as a sentence for minor crimes. But I have a huge problem with a potential President who apparently believes that the People belong to the State, and not the other way around. Back when I was in school, we called that Fascism. Guess what? It still is.
