Serve America Act, Americans to volunteer
Serve America will be a charitable disaster
Last week, 78 United States Senators voted in favor of the Serve America Act, which will spend $5.7 billion over the next five years to pay people, and in many cases force them, to volunteer. I was not one of the senators voting for this measure. For all its overwhelming bipartisan support, Serve America is about as dangerous a piece of legislation as can even be contemplated.
What makes America America is not our government or economy, but our civil society. It is those organizations, the “little platoons” of democracy, that really make our nation go: The Boy Scouts, United Way, church socials, food drives, and little leagues.
While our large institutions continue to let us down – in Washington and New York – our civic, charitable, and religious organizations thrive. These organizations make our country better, to be sure, but that is
mostly because they make us freer. They meet needs and solve problems without inviting the bull of government into the china shop of our local communities.
Our Founding Fathers understood this. They empowered the federal government to do a few things only, with the understanding that individuals, families, and small voluntary associations would take care of
the rest. After all, smaller government requires bigger citizens. Alexis de Tocqueville of France captured this essential American creed when he visited the young United States in the 1830s: “They [Americans] do not deny that every man may follow his own interest; but they endeavor to prove that it is the interest of every man to be virtuous.”
It is out of virtue, after all, that one leads a Scout troop, teaches Sunday school, or coaches a little league team. The virtue motivating these activities – and millions like them around the country – is like a
stone thrown in a pond, whose wave ripples far and wide in every direction. The volunteer sees the immediate impact of his own exertions. Every new volunteer frees up veteran volunteers to engage other challenges, multiplying an individual’s impact. Kids grow up seeing the grown ups in their community giving of themselves with no thought of receiving anything in return.
It is these organizations, these voluntary – almost spontaneous – associations that build individual character and community cohesion by binding neighbors together in virtue. The key element is not the output,
but in the input; not the result but the effort and the motive.
Government intervention in social problems is not like a stone thrown in a pond, but like a cinderblock dropped in a puddle. However well intentioned, government intervention in our civil society will do three
destructive things.
First, by paying people to “volunteer,” the government will poison the essence of genuine service and, inevitably, volunteers’ personal investment in their work.
Second, government money always has strings attached, which will unavoidably divert the allocation of time and money away from those causes deemed politically or morally “incorrect” by the government. (Do you think crisis pregnancy centers or the Boy Scouts will be high on President Obama’s list of “national service” priorities?)
Meanwhile, faith-based charities will lose out on volunteers to those organizations blessed with the official imprimatur of “national service.” The end result will be a transfer of funds and manpower from religious to secular “charities” and the politicization of virtue.
And third, government-controlled charity will inevitably lead to social apathy among the individuals who staff private charities. The more “service” is seen as another one of those things government takes care of, individuals who previously felt a personal investment in the success of local non-profits will divert their time and attention elsewhere. (Don’t believe me? When was the last time you gave a lot of thought to paving a local road or cutting the grass at city hall?)
The authors of Serve America mean well, but their good intentions would invite the Trojan horse of government “compassion” into the one American institution – civil society – that still works the way it’s supposed to.
We forget to our peril the fact that civil society works precisely because it is everything government is not: Small, personal, responsive, and accountable.
And yet, Serve America or something very much like it will be coming soon to a local charity near you. Volunteers will become federal employees. Their activities will be pre-approved by politicians. They will report to bureaucrats in Washington, and answer not to people in need but people in power.
Watch out for falling cinderblocks.
| | Senator Jim DeMint
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U.S Senator Jim DeMint, since his first campaign for Congress in 1998, has proven to be a principled leader that has fought to secure South Carolina’s and America’s future.
Elected as South Carolina’s 55th senator in 2004, DeMint quickly established himself as one of the most effective conservative leaders in Washington, seeking to enact innovative solutions to improve America for future generations. He has been a tireless advocate for smaller government, individual liberty, a strong national defense and traditional values.
The senator and his wife, Debbie, reside in Greenville, South Carolina and are the proud parents of four married children and are also doting first-time grandparents.
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