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A Very Serious, Thoughtful Argument That Has Never Been Made in Such Detail or With Such Care
By Jeff Fecke | July 8, 2008
According to Jonah Goldberg, our nation’s first African-American major party nominee is the slaveholder of liberal fascism:
There’s a weird irony at work when Sen. Barack Obama, the black presidential candidate who will allegedly scrub the stain of racism from the nation, vows to run afoul of the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery.
For those who don’t remember, the 13th Amendment says: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime … shall exist within the United States.”
Oh noes! Barack Obama plans to reinstitute slavery?
In his speech on national service Wednesday at the University of Colorado, Obama promised that as president he would “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.”
He would see that these goals are met by, among other things, attaching strings to federal education dollars. If you don’t make the kids report for duty, he’s essentially telling schools and college kids, you’ll lose money you can’t afford to lose. In short, he’ll make service compulsory by merely compelling schools to make it compulsory.
Wha–? Did Jonah Goldberg just make the argument that adding a curriculum requirement for colleges and schools is tantamount to slavery? Really? I mean, by that logic, isn’t compulsory education itself slavery? Does this make No Child Left Behind the Dred Scott decision of the 21st century? And if so, does that mean the anti-choicers have to stop using it as a dog-whistle?
And what of stop-loss orders? Aren’t those men and women conscripted in opposition to the 13th Amendment? Was the draft unconstitutional? Are school dropouts part of the Underground Railroad? How deep does this metaphor go, anyhow?
Well, actually not that far, because it was made by Jonah Goldberg. Indeed, one suspects Goldberg made this argument for the same reason that he wrote Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation from McEwan to Marcotte. It’s wacky and counterintuitive to call a black man a slaveholder.
And so that’s what Goldberg does, ignoring the very obvious facts on the ground, like the fact that my daughter will be required to attend school when she’s in middle school, every day barring illness, whether she likes it or not. And that’s just the requirements from me and her mom — the government also wants her there. For the government to add 50 hours of community service to that time? Pretty minor compared to the roughly 1300 hours of class time she’ll have, not to mention activities and homework. About five hours or so a month. I think if I can work it out for her to do that at the humane society, she could hit 50 hours in the first month.
That’s a little different than having your family clapped in irons, shipped across the sea on crowded, disease-ridden boats where half of you die, only to reach land and have the lucky survivors broken up and sold off to the highest bidder, children ripped from parents, husbands torn from wives, families shattered. And then your destiny is to be brought to work the land as much as your owner requires, or to clean your owner’s house, or to submit to your owner raping you, to bear children who face your awful destiny, to hope only that some day, some how, your people will be freed — and to die without the ability to decide for yourself what your life will be.
Cute argument, Jonah. It’s not quite “The white male is the Jew of liberal fascism,” but it’ll do.
(Via Jesse)
Topics: Barack Obama, Education, Race | 13 Comments »
July 8th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
All true. But I wonder what the point of this program would be. By that I mean: who is he pandering to? I understand waffling a bit on abortion, or telling people you think executing criminals for crimes other than murder is ok (at least he’s not presiding over the actual execution of a retarded man). In terms of getting elected it all makes sense.
But who cares whether these kids are picking up trash on the side of the road? Tuition is through roof anyway. Why torture the kids more?
July 8th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Would protesting outside an abortion clinic count as community service?
July 8th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
It’s clear from the context of Goldberg’s quote that he’s reminding readers that the Amendment banning slavery also prohibits involuntary servitude. Only you paralleled the extremes of chattel slavery in order to trivialize his argument.
Compulsory education, unlike “service,” is for the benefit of the student. Federal law makes similar distinctions. The Fair Labor Standards Act permits an exemption for “interships” that pay less than the minimum wage (or nothing at all), provided, inter alia:
- The training is for the benefit of the student.
- The employer provides the training and derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the student; and on occasion, the operations may actually be impeded by the training.
Unless BHO inverts the definition of “service” to mean something other than, well, service, Jonah has a point.
Now, come to think of it, looking back, hasn’t BHO’s “public service” been pretty much about serving himself?
July 8th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
edh:
YOUR argument presupposes that “service” is NOT for the benefit of the student. Of course it is. There’s more to education than memorizing and regurgitating information on homework and tests. There are life lessons learned through service that will undoubtedly benefit the student as well as society. My mother was the community service coordinator for my sister’s high school in Michigan. Those kids (in the tony suburbs of Bloomfield Hills and West Bloomfield) DEFINITELY benefited from getting out and serving their communities.
Further, it’s likely that the service will not benefit the schools directly (part of your second Fair Labor example).
Lastly, it was JONAH that put slavery front and center in his argument. Fecke extended the discussion, but Jonah knew EXACTLY what he was doing by raising this point. It’s clear that your attempt at Goldberg apologia is designed to obfuscate his silly little tirade.
July 8th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Compulsory education, unlike “service,” is for the benefit of the student.
That is in the eye of the beholder.
I wonder how these Repubs will react when they find out that Obama’s definition of service will actually allow students to volunteer for “conservative” service and with “conservative” causes?
July 8th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
I wonder what Goldberg thinks of Wal-Mart forcing people to work off the clock? My guess is he doesn’t.
Conservatives and Liberals alike have floated the idea of “National Service” in one way or another. There was the idea of a choice between the military or national service floated a year or two ago. Apparently it’s only outrageous when Obama says it.
July 8th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
I’ve been saying this repeatedly–I wish people who comment on education policy would learn what the existing situation is.
I know a number of high schools that ALREADY require community service (including my own, circa 1997). The commitment was something like 500 hours over 4 years.
For some reason, these “national greatness” conservatives like Jonah and McCain have no problem talking about the virtues of the WWII “greatest generation” and their values of civic activism and service, but scream fascism whenever liberals propose programs to encourage these virtues in today’s society.
July 8th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
[...] have already commented extensively on the inanity of Jonah Goldberg’s suggestion that Barack Obama’s call for high school [...]
July 9th, 2008 at 12:28 am
A Darwin,
Service definitionally means someone other than the servant is the intended beneficiary of the service. Perhaps that’s why, until now, we’ve never heard compulsory education called service?
Although there may be some incidental benefit to the servant, that is one odious parallel that can be drawn also to chattel slavery with some measure of accuracy.
I pointed to the FLSA exemption for internships merely to show that a primary benefit test is already established in federal law. That’s where the comparison ends, of course. Notably, unpaid interships aren’t compulsory: the intern determines whether he or she will benefit from the ensuing commitment. At least until 01-20-09.
Finally, slavery was not “front and center” in Goldberg’s argment. At most he used the Amendment banning slavery and involuntary servitude as an ironic introduction to the topic. The crux of his argument was not constitutional or legalistic, but moral, political and ideological. He made no further reference to slavery or the Amendment banning it and involuntary servitude.
July 9th, 2008 at 12:59 am
Brandon,
Did you read Goldberg’s article, or his book for that matter?
First, I’m not sure what a “national greatness” conservative is, but Goldberg scrutinizes McCain among others.
Goldberg: “After all, Obama’s hardly alone. Sen. John McCain is a passionate supporter of Washington-led (and paid-for) “volunteerism,” as is President Bush. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and John Edwards both campaigned for the presidency on compulsory national service.”
Second, rather than harken back to a golden age, the thesis of Goldberg’s book, Liberal Fascism, is that “fascism” was popular in polite society and Progressive political circles in the first half of the 20th Century, and that the Wilson and FDR administrations were at heart fascist in their outlook if not program.
July 9th, 2008 at 6:54 am
We already have this in Canada. The kids who actually do it (many will just find someone in a charity organization to sign off their hours) pretty much always say that they benefitted from it. There’s the obvious things, like it’s fun or they met people from other high schools and became friends. Then there’s the not-so-obvious benefits, like that they appreciate their communities more, it looks great on their resumes, and it increases the number of experiences they’ve had.
Yes, it’s called community SERVICE – so what? It’s still part of an education. There were plenty of aspects of school that I never benefitted from, I still had to go if I wanted to be able to participate in the parts that I did benefit from. For example, I had to stand and say the pledge, I had to stay on school grounds during lunch hour, I had to participate in gym class. Making volunteering part of the curriculum is part of a good education – it motivates kids to go out and have an effect on the world. Isn’t that what high school should be all about?
The point that it is like forced labour is a silly one at best. The parallels between being required to do a small amount of community service as part of your education and being forced to work in a full time (and often over time) job for no pay are far too weak to even bother whining about.
July 9th, 2008 at 8:41 am
Why do people, like jonah goldberg, who make astoundingly ridiculous arguments get their views published? Or, more importantly, why do we even REPEAT their BS????? I mean, I don’t go around repeating the ramblings of the homeless guy on the corner. So why do it on the net?
July 9th, 2008 at 10:04 am
[...] This is a patently absurd argument for the sole purpose of drama-queen’d attention grab (which is why it gets the Malkin award from Sullivan), which Jeff lays out pretty clearly . [...]