GIVE Mandatory Service Act Strips First Amendment of “Volunteers”

Rep. George Miller (D-CA), tacked an amendment on H.R. 1388, entitled “Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act,” or GIVE, Obama’s plan to require mandatory service for all able young people. Miller’s amendment will “prohibit organizations from attempting to influence legislation; organize or engage in protests, petitions, boycotts, or strikes; and assist, promote, or deter union organizing.”

In other words, Obama’s “volunteer corps” act, passed by the House with a 321-105 margin and requiring the government to develop a plan for indentured servitude, would deny millions of people their right to oppose and organize against government legistation under the First Amendment.

GIVE will conscript millions of young people, put them in uniforms and send them packing to 4-year “public service” academies where they will be indoctrinated and trained to become “public sector leaders.”

The New York Times reports the Senate voted 74 to 14 on a procedural move that essentially guarantees a major expansion of a national service corps. It’s an historic vote in the sense that a national service corps, an army dispersed to help with education, health services and the environment, would vastly enlarge the notion of “community organizing,” and allow, as Senator Barbara Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland said, for about 7 million people to be engaged in such work.

The bill enjoyed extraordinary bipartisan support, including namely the major co-sponsor, Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, who even mentioned that the Rev. Rick Warren, the evangelical minister of Saddleback Church and author of “A Purpose Driven Life,” was an enthusiastic supporter of this effort, as was Senator John McCain, the former Republican presidential nominee.