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66
2
6
3
From Williamson Evers, National Service: Pro and Con,
Stanford, Ca.: Hoover Institution Press,
8
1989.
NATIONAL SERVICE AND
ITS ENEMIES
Charles C. Moskos
National service proposals have traditionally failed to attract sustained
policy attention for two seemingly contradictory reasons. Many propos-
als come across as vague and incomplete, omitting any serious discussion
of such crucial matters as administration and costs. Other proposals are
too formal and detailed, tending to ignore the social and historical
experiences of actual service programs. All this changed, however, in
the late 1980s with an outpouring of legislative proposals on Capitol Hill
and editorial commentary across the country.
The catalyst for these developments was the Citizenship and Na-
tional Service Act of 1989 introduced by Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.),
Congressman Dave McCurdy (D-Okla.), and other congressional Demo-
crats. Shaped by the Democratic Leadership Council, this legislation was
both concrete in form and philosophical in content.¹ Although the bill
did not move forward, its rationale and proposals coupled with the
stature of its sponsors made it the focal point of much contemporary
debate on national service.
This essay hypothesizes that this debate can be illuminated by
looking at the opposition to the national service act. The opposition's
distinguishing feature is that it comes from two directions: libertarian
conservatives and conventional liberals. Another source of opposition is
the human resources establishment within the Office of the Secretary of
Defense. Although that office's opposition to national service parallels
NATIONAL SERVICE AND ITS ENEMIES
192
the support of the marketplace military favored by the libertarian
conservatives, the specific focus of the military requires separate treat-
ment. I will address the main arguments raised by opponents and offer
rejoinders. My intention is not to defend all types of national service,
but rather to keep the argument focused on the program envisioned by
the Democratic Leadership Council and specified in the Citizenship and
National Service Act.
The Nunn-McCurdy bill presented a nonmandatory program of
comprehensive national service, embracing both civilian service and a
citizen-soldiery. The bill would thus create a Citizens Corps of young
people to perform such service for one or two years. The military side
would include a new lower-paid citizen-soldier track for short enlist-
ments coexisting with a professional soldier track, basically the present
system. The civilian side would consist of expanded versions of the Peace
Corps, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), and conservation
corps plus a new component of social services overseen by a corporation
for national service and a local network of councils. Such social services
would be administered through existing voluntary associations and state
and local government agencies.
Both citizen-soldiers and civilian servers would receive subsistence
pay during the time of service, followed by generous vouchers for
federal student aid or job training on completion of service. Students
who perform some form of national service would become the main,
though not sole, recipients of federal student aid. (Exemptions are made
for those over age 26, for hardship cases, and for persons for whom no
service position can be found.) This moves away from the present
program under which the government gives $9 billion each year in loan
subsidies and grants to college students without asking anything in
return-a GI Bill without the GI.
The Nunn-McCurdy bill is based on three core principles. The first
is that civilian and military service in peacetime have equivalent value.
The second is that national service starts with the value of the service
performed, not with the presumed good it does for the server. The
third is that citizenship entails duties as well as rights. Each of these
principles has in some way offended the interests and convictions of the
libertarian right and the conventional left.
The notion that civilian and military service are antinomies can be
traced to William James, often described as the progenitor of national
service. James's 1910 essay "The Moral Equivalent of War" set the tone
of the discussion for decades to come when he called for the same
heroic and noble qualities in civilian service that he associated with
warfare. But by opposing what he termed the peace-party with the war-
Charles C. Moskos
193
party, James set up a contradiction that handicaps national service to the
present day. Contrary to James, the virtue of military service rests not
in its martial values, but in its character as one of the deepest forms of
citizenship obligation in a democratic society-a quality true of civilian
service as well. Military and civilian service, if not quite a seamless web,
are, to the degree they contain civic content, cut out of the same cloth.
There has been some confusion among national service supporters
about who is supposed to benefit-the server or the society-from the
work performed. We have a military to meet a pressing national need,
not to mature young people or improve their character. The same
standard must be applied to civilian service. Focusing on the service
invokes civic sentiments; focusing on the server invites negative stereo-
types of the qualities of the server. Indeed, only when national service is
cast in terms of meeting a genuine need can its positive, but necessarily
derivative benefits for the server be achieved.³
In modern times both libertarian conservatives and conventional
liberals de-emphasize the role of the citizen duties in favor of a highly
individualistic rights-based ethic. Whether political theorists favor an
activist state handing out benefits, as liberals do, or a state that needs to
be curbed, as conservatives do, the view of citizenship remains the same:
individuals exist apart from one another bound by no meaningful
obligations.⁵ The Nunn-McCurdy bill points to a more balanced and
nuanced formulation of citizenship duties and rights. To the degree
practical, recipients of 'axpayers' money should earn that money, espe-
cially when it is being used to increase the lifetime earnings of its
recipients. The linchpin of the Nunn-McCurdy bill is to extend the
principle of the GI Bill-an education or job training benefit for military
service-to civilian service.
THE CONSERVATIVE CRITIQUE
The conservative critique of the national service act centers on three
core issues and one facade argument. The facade argument is that any
program along the lines of the Nunn-McCurdy bill is somehow un-
American, akin to the Hitler Jugend or the Russian Komsomol. Any
reading of U.S. history, however, that ignores the recurring connection
between citizen duties and rights is intellectually dishonest. How can one
dismiss the militia system of the colonial and early republican era, the
common defense and general welfare provisions of the Constitution, the
mandatory public schools of the Northwest ordinances, the partial
conscription of the Civil War, the mandatory officer-training require-
NATIONAL SERVICE AND ITS ENEMIES
194
ments of the early land grant colleges, the twentieth-century drafts in
both peace and war, the Civilian Conservation Corps of the New Deal,
the alternative service provisions for conscientious objectors, or the
Peace Corps and VISTA? The history of the United States shows that
notions of civic obligation periodically expand and contract. At certain
times national service is held out as a civic ideal; at other times it is
dismissed as misguided or utopian. Let us now turn to the more salient
conservative criticisms of national service.
A Compulsory Scheme That Could Reinstate the Draft
This is a warranted fear. The system being proposed offers to
national servers strong inducements-postservice educational and job-
training benefits-that are much less available to those youth who do
not serve. But the transition from the comprehensive (but nonmanda-
tory) system proposed here to a compulsory program would be a
momentous step that could not come about without widespread support.
Such support would exist only if the comprehensive program were
widely viewed as a great success. It seems perverse, then, to argue against
a voluntary national scheme on the grounds that it might prove too
successful.
More to the point is the objection that a comprehensive national
service program could serve as a cover for reinstating a military draft.
Indeed it might. But it is virtually unimaginable that a compulsory
civilian program would be legislated (even presuming constitutional
obstacles could somehow be overcome) before enactment of military
conscription. If the draft were to come back, however, the prior existence
of a voluntary national service program would surely create strong
pressures to make that program compulsory for men, certainly, for
women, probably. But why argue that any form of national service
should be avoided because it might make a draft more palatable? Surely
a palatable draft is better than a nonpalatable one. Again, the success of
a program ought not be used as an argument against it.
Exorbitant Costs and a Massive Bureaucracy
A mandatory program involving millions of young people could
certainly become a bureaucratic and financial nightmare. But the Nunn-
McCurdy bill envisions a highly streamlined administration building on
historical precedents and sucessful programs. Citizen-soldiers-approx-
imately 100,000 annually, or one-fourth of the total annual military
intake-would be absorbed into the existing armed forces with a mini-
mum of organizational adjustment. Most of the envisioned 600,000 or
Charles C. Moskos
195
so civilian servers would also be assigned to existing institutions—
nonprofit organizations, schools, and hospitals. Of the remainder,
nearly all would serve in conservation corps, for which there is already
extensive organizational experience at state and federal levels. Any
scheme that seeks to impose a uniform system on a country as large and
diverse as the United States would collapse of its own weight.
Nonetheless, it must be acknowledged that comprehensive national
service will not come cheap. Every 100,000 civilian servers would cost
about $1 billion in public funds-and this does not take into account the
portion of the present federal student budget that would be redirected
toward civilian servers. About one-quarter of the outlay would come
from matching funds from state and local governments and sponsoring
agencies. Still, the federal expenditures would be substantial.
Yet there are some weighty items on the other side of the ledger.
The introduction of a citizen-soldier track to the all-volunteer military
would produce substantial savings in military personnel costs while
strengthening our reserve forces. Anything that gets people out of the
American underclass will lead to long-term reductions in costs associated
with welfare, unemployment, and crime-though admittedly there is no
sure way to quantify those savings. But the ways in which military service
and the GI Bill salvaged otherwise dead-end youth offer some guide-
lines. National service also means savings in the impending costs of
meeting the needs of an increasingly older and infirm population, costs
that otherwise would decimate family savings and stagger the federal
budget.
Market More Efficient than National Service
This view grows out of the conviction that even the most well-
intentioned intervention in the marketplace produces negative results.
This is not a frivolous argument, but it ignores the purpose of national
service, which is to perform work that the market does not deliver, that
is too expensive to be done by standard government bureaucracies, and
that can be done by nonspecialized workers. Indeed, to the degree that
many human services-care for the infirm, aged, and mentally ill comes
to mind-require menial labor combined with compassion, short-term
servers are best suited for these tasks, too often not performed at all.
During World War II, U.S. conscientious objectors performed alter-
native service in mental asylums, bringing an unprecedented humane-
ness to the handling of the mentally ill in this country. Today in the
Federal Republic of Germany some 70,000 conscientous objectors are
assigned to civilian service in lieu of military service. These young men
NATIONAL SERVICE AND ITS ENEMIES
196
are assigned to social services in hospitals and sanitoriums, day-care
facilities for the mentally and physically incapacitated, the ambulance
corps, and, especially, nursing homes for the aged. They operate with a
minimum of extra overhead because they are supervised by existing
welfare and church agencies. Persons across the political spectrum
recognize the usefulness of such Zivildienst (civilian service)-none of
which displaces regular workers. In the United States a program of
proportionate magnitude would involve close to 300,000 civilian posi-
tions in social services.
Any defense of national service must answer two questions. Are the
means employed more likely to achieve the purpose than other means?
Are the means more likely to achieve the purpose at lower cost than
other means? If the answer is no to either one, then the activity is not
suitable for national service. If it is yes to both, then national service is
the practical means to meet societal needs that would otherwise go
unmet.6
THE LIBERAL ASSAULT
The conservative opposition to the Nunn-McCurdy bill was predict-
able because of the right's general apathy toward citizen obligation and
its outright hostility toward inteference in the market. More surprising
was the vociferous opposition of the higher-education establishment and
its liberal allies on Capitol Hill. Underlying the education establishment's
attack was a visceral antipathy to a service-based criterion for federal
student aid eligibility. Indeed, when the GI Bill lapsed after the Vietnam
War and was reintroduced in 1985, the education establishment did not
visibly lament its end or support its resurrection.
The nature of the higher-education establishment's opposition to
the Nunn-McCurdy bill is revealing. For instance, that the proposal
affected only able-bodied, unencumbered young students was lost in a
welter of stacked congressional hearings and outlandish cost estimates.⁷
At a time when students are protesting tuition increases in public
universities and when the student default rate on federal loans is a
scandalous $1.8 billion annually, the American Education Association
and the College Board nevertheless stubbornly defended the present so-
called needs-based system. Even more telling is that the higher-educa-
tion establishment ignored the millions of middle-class families who
need aid.
Opponents of the Nunn-McCurdy bill argued that linkage of federal
aid to service would force only poor students to enter national service.
Charles C. Moskos
197
The proponents of the status quo, however, disingenuously overlook the
regressive nature of the present system. In point of fact, the Nunn-
McCurdy bill is infinitely fairer than the status quo. Here is why.
Negative Trends in Student Aid and Enrollment Will Be Reversed
The percentage of students receiving federal grants dropped from
31 percent in 1980 to 15 percent in 1984. Of that number, the propor-
tion of black students receiving aid declined from 25 to 17 percent over
the same period. This parallels a sharp decline in the percentage of
poor, predominantly male, black and Hispanic high school graduates
entering college over the same time and is accounted for mainly by the
shift from student grants to loans during the 1980s. By putting a GI
Bill-type grant in place of student loan programs, youth service widens
access to higher education.
New Avenues for Underclass Youth
All student aid is regressive by definition inasmuch as it bypasses the
bottom half of the youth population that does not attend college.
Experience with existing local and state youth corps shows overwhelm-
ing enrollment-because of the steady stipend feature-by poor and
minority youth. By expanding such youth corps, national service offers
large numbers of youth, otherwise trapped in poverty, opportunities for
college or vocational training. A civilian youth corps, like the original GI
Bill, would become a way up for many poor young men and women.
Another important consideration is that infusing a middle-class
element into civilian youth corps would preclude the debilitating and
self-reinforcing stigma of programs targeted only on poor youth. A
comprehensive program of national service would call on all our coun-
try's races and classes to take part in a common civic enterprise. If this
possibility is ignored and time is allowed to slide by, the richest country
in the world will enter the twenty-first century crippled by an unem-
ployed, unassimilated, and embittered underclass.
More Student Benefits
The proposed ten-thousand-dollar educational voucher for each
year of civilian service far exceeds the average federal grant (fourteen
hundred dollars annually). Most important, linking national service to
student aid would strengthen the constituency for student aid across the
board. Moreover, the only public opinion survey on the issue shows
NATIONAL SERVICE AND ITS ENEMIES
198
better than three-to-one support for the proposition that students who
receive financial aid for college should be "required to repay that
support through some type of public service."8 Consider this: in 1949
our country gladly spent 1 percent of its gross national product on the
GI Bill-more than $45 billion in today's dollars.
Youths Act for Themselves
Determining eligibility for federal student aid under the present
system is not only complex, but unfair because such aid does not
necessarily go to the most needy, even among the college-attending
population. Families that have not saved money have an advantage over
same-income families that have. By basing eligibility on actions taken by
the youth themselves, national service gives young people control over
their educational future.
Gross Societal Inequities Addressed
The bill is designed to ensure that most servers would work in local
agencies and voluntary associations. Thus national service would
strengthen precisely those institutions in deprived communities where
the need is greatest. The special energies of the organizations that
achieved prominence in the struggle for civil rights could now confront
the difficulties of the black underclass. The preferential treatment on
the basis of income of day care for children, of primary and secondary
education, and in the handling of the aged and sick is one of the shames
of our society. Youth participation in national service would reduce such
inequities more than any other feasible program.
One other point must be made on service-based student aid. An
amendment to the Defense Authorization Act of 1983, sponsored by
Congressman Gerald Solomon (R-N.Y.), denies federal student aid to
men between the ages of 18 and 26 who fail to register for the draft.
The passage of this bill marked a signpost in the effort to restore civic
obligations to those receiving student aid. Opposition to the Solomon
Amendment, as the new law was called, was immediate. Opponents
included pacifists, university presidents, and civil libertarians. The Su-
preme Court upheld the Solomon Amendment among other reasons
because no student is required to seek student aid. The Solomon
Amendment was a reaction, if not a full turn of the tide, against the
notion that student entitlements were unconnected with civic duty.10
Latent union opposition. Although organized labor has not yet taken
an official position on national service, the issue of job displacement is a
Charles C. Moskos
199
serious one. The only acceptable answer is that national service must be
restricted to work that otherwise would not be performed. The whole
rationale for national service is that it meets needs not being filled by
either the marketplace or the government. An extensive Ford Founda-
tion study calculated that 3.5 million useful jobs could be performed by
nonspecialized one-year servers without displacement." Even if this
figure is high, surely a program involving 600,000 civilian slots could be
managed so as to have minimal effect on the regular work force.
At bottom, the labor substitution issue is more a political problem
than anything else; thus it is essential that organized labor be repre-
sented on administrative boards at all levels, much as Franklin D.
Roosevelt defused labor opposition to the Civilian Conservation Corps
by appointing a union leader to head it. Labor must be allotted a policy-
making role in a national service program. In an important sense, a
national service system could even help labor, for reducing unemploy-
ment would tighten the labor market, thereby enhancing union bargain-
ing power in the long term.¹²
Volunteerism One other source of opposition to the Nunn-McCurdy
bill originates from proponents of volunteerism. These groups and
proposals-represented by such diverse initiatives as Campus Outreach
Opportunity League, Campus Compact, Senator Edward Kennedy's
Serve-America bill, and, most significantly, President George Bush's
proposal for Youth Engaged in Service (YES)-differ from genuine
national service. The hallmark of volunteerism is to favor part-time
service and uncompensated work over full-time and compensated ser-
vice. I find singularly unpersuasive the view that only those who serve
without reward are worthy of being called national servers. Only the
extraordinarily idealistic (or perhaps neurotic) would serve without any
recompense whatsoever. Volunteerism proponents also eschew any con-
nection of civilian service with military service; the citizen-soldier con-
cept especially runs contrary to the values of most supporters of volun-
teer service. Yet another distinction between national service and
volunteerism is that the former typically stresses the importance of the
service delivered whereas the latter emphasizes the good done to the
server. Finally, volunteerists oppose linking service to student aid as
such linkage makes use of an element of coercion. That the Nunn-
McCurdy bill unabashedly rewards those who serve their country or
community more than those who do not places the volunteerism estab-
lishment in opposition to the bill.
In congressional testimony in 1989, Energy Secretary James Wat-
kins, a former chief of naval operations, supported both President
NATIONAL SERVICE AND ITS ENEMIES
200
Bush's YES program and Senator Kennedy's bill. Opposing Nunn-
McCurdy, Watkins states, "We believe service should not be financially
compensated by the federal government. We feel that it is inimical to
the very objectives we're trying to instill in young people." Apparently
Watkins did not see any contradiction between his testimony and his
support of the all-volunteer force (AVF), the highest-paid military in
our country's history.
DEFENSE DEPARTMENT CONFUSION
Ever since the inception of the AVF, the Office of the Secretary of
Defense (OSD) has been hostile to any concept of a citizen-soldier.
During the difficult recruiting times of the 1970s, OSD gamely insisted
that high-quality recruits were entering the military-long after every-
one else knew otherwise. OSD then shifted to claiming that no solid
measures linking recruit quality and soldierly performance existed. 14 In
the 1980s, OSD opposed two of the most successful recruiting initiatives
in the turnaround of the AVF-the Montgomery GI Bill and the two-
year army enlistment program. It was no surprise, then, that OSD has
also come out strongly against the Nunn-McCurdy bill and its citizen-
soldier option. The main OSD arguments and rebuttals follow.
GI Bill-Type Benefits for Civilian Servers Will Make Military
Recruiting Difficult
It is foolish to argue that requiring service from college youth who
now receive educational benefits with no service requirement will hand-
icap military recruiting. A survey of youth who were offered the options
proposed in the Nunn-McCurdy bill indicated that half of all male youth
would choose a military option; one in ten, a civilian option; and the
remainder choosing not to serve in any capacity. For women, about a
quarter chose the military option; the same number, the civilian option,
and about half elected not to serve." In brief, the Nunn-McCurdy bill
would create a new reservoir of potential military recruits. Indeed, the
relevant OSD report contradicts itself by stating that military could not
effectively handle larger numbers of recruits.¹⁶ OSD to the contrary,
nothing in Nunn-McCurdy can be construed as affecting the military's
control over entering numbers and standards.
Citizen-Soldiers Would Create Large Training Costs
The citizen-soldiers would be a new stream of soldiers set by the
army's need for two-year enlistments. When reserve components are
Charles C. Moskas
201
included in the analyses (something OSD studies on national service
have failed to do), savings occur in training costs. 17 In point of fact,
reserve recruitment is best met by soldiers with prior service in the active
force. In 1989 Army chief of staff Carl E. Vuono supported an enlist-
ment option of two years in the active force, two years in the ready
reserve, and four years in the standby reserve. 18 That military personnel
trends, for both budgetary and personnel reasons, are moving toward
great reliance on reserve components makes the case for the Nunn-
McCurdy bill all the more persuasive.
Introducing a Lower-Paid Soldier into the Army
Would Cause Discontent in the Enlisted Force
Invidious comparisons, some claim, would be made between those
receiving less pay and those performing the same work and holding the
same rank for more pay. Yet if the lower-paid citizen-soldier does feel
put out, he can join the professional corps. Almost every army in the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization except the United States has a two-
track system much like the one described here. Our peacetime draft
experience shows that many young men accepted short tours in combat
arms over the technical-training advantages of a long enlistment and
even accepted short tours as enlisted men over the compensation and
privileges of longer-term officers.
Why Lose Soldiers Once They Have Been Trained?
This article of faith for OSD human resources analysts does not
stand up to scrutiny. Long-term enlistees are less likely to complete their
enlistments than short-term servers. Even during the best AVF years
about three in ten of those who entered the army failed to complete a
three-year enlistment. Certainly the military is more technical than it
was a generation ago, but it is hard to argue that military readiness
would suffer by having somewhat fewer career soldiers whose work
could be done by an equivalent proportion of citizen-soldiers. In a
citizen-soldier system, those leaving active duty would automatically
enter reserve duty, thus building on the Total Force concept. Resultant
personnel cost savings could then be directed toward the career force,
precisely where technicians must be retained.
Underlying the whole OSD approach and its contract apparatus has
been the myth that the AVF is less expensive than conscription. A look
at some dollar figures (in constant 1986 values) gives us a sense of the
changes in military compensation since the peacetime draft years (see
NATIONAL SERVICE AND ITS ENEMIES
202
the appendix for a detailed breakdown). In 1964 the average personnel
costs for each active soldier were approximately $17,300, compared with
$28,700 in 1986. The contrast in overall personnel costs is enormous. In
1964 the total bill was $79 billion (excluding retirement outlays); in 1986
the total was $100 billion. In other words, we are spending some $20
billion more for half a million fewer soldiers on active duty! Whatever
the arguments against the draft, cost savings is not one. Indeed, it will
be economics more than sociology that will bring the AVF into question.
The philosophy that underpinned the shift to an AVF tended to
define military service in occupational terms rather than in institutional
terms.¹⁹ Such a redefinition of the military is based on a set of core
assumptions. First, there is no analytic distinction between military
systems and other systems, especially no difference between cost-effec-
tiveness analyses of civilian enterprises and military services. Second,
military compensation should be in cash (rather than in kind or de-
ferred) and be linked to skill differences rather than to seniority. Finally,
if end-strength targets are met in the AVF, concepts of citizenship are
incidental concerns. If we are going to have armed forces based on cost-
effective grounds-ignoring moral sentiments and civic dimensions—
then we should hire Third World nationals. and be done with it.
EMERGING PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY AND NATIONAL SERVICE
The national service act seems to have incurred the opposition of
just about every interest group in the country. Yet, even though the
obstacles are considerable, I see three scenarios, not exclusive of one
another, by which national service could be established. One is through
the return of a military draft-a development that would surely create
pressure for some form of alternative civilian service. A second scenario
is for an energetic president to come forward and make the cause of
national service his own. Just as the Civilian Conservation Corps was
inaugurated by Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Peace Corps by John F.
Kennedy, so national service awaits a president who is convinced that
such a program is both good politics and good for the country.
The third scenario is the most problematic, but also the most
desirable because it would foster public sensibilities to meet societal
needs in national service terms. The public-already accustomed to
thinking in such terms when it comes to military manpower, as is clear
from the resilience of the citizen-soldier concept-is becoming more
inclined toward such an approach with regard to civilian service, espe-
cially the conservation corps. The debate over the delivery of human
Charles C. Moskos
203
services that pits those who favor a market approach against those who
support the expansion of government agencies to deliver such services
is becoming increasing sterile. National service means thinking of how
national needs might be met in a different way and apart from either
market arrangements or conventional government delivery of services.
To break out of this conservative versus liberal mind-set means no
less than a paradigmatic shift in American thinking about policy. Yet
such a shift is essential if we are to meet the challenges that currently
confront our society.
For example, national service could help families cope with Alzhei-
mer's disease, which afflicts about 5 percent of Americans over 65 and
20 percent of those over 80 and whose direct costs are estimated at $20
billion annually. The indirect costs are greater: the need for constant
care places severe emotional burdens on relatives. Just to give family
members a temporary break from caring for an Alzheimer's victim-
either through home visits or adult day-care centers-would be a major
help.
In recent years U.S. cities have been inundated with the deinstitu-
tionalized mentally ill. Many of these would be better off back in
institutions, but staff costs makes this financially infeasible. National
service, which would provide low-level personnel for work in mental
hospitals, offers a way out. The alternative is to allow cities to become
increasingly crowded with people incapable of taking care of themselves
and to make Americans increasingly callous toward the plight of the
mentally ill on their doorstep.
Efforts to make standard public transportation available to the
handicapped not only will lead to huge costs for the public at large, but
also will leave untouched the many areas where public transportation is
not readily available. With the introduction of national service, a para-
transit system based on successful local models could become a nation-
wide reality. A cheap, alternative transportation system would not only
be much less costly than where we are heading, but also offer a much
more convenient mode of travel to those who need it the most.
Thanks to acidic paper, every year some 70,000 books in the Library
of Congress crumble between their covers and at least 40 percent of the
books in major research collections will soon be too fragile to handle.
All films made before 1950 are in danger of turning to dust. Preserving
these collections is tedious and extremely labor-intensive. Unless a na-
tional service program comes to the rescue, we are destined to lose a
large portion of our cultural heritage.
The list goes on almost indefinitely, but the point is that we, the
citizenry, must think about how national needs might be met through
NATIONAL SERVICE AND ITS ENEMIES
204
youths' serving their country and community. Political theorists as well
as ordinary citizens are showing a growing appreciation of citizens'
obligations and the importance of shared values. The new interest in
the duties of citizens results from both the inadequacies of Marxism,
with its materialist analysis and collectivist prescriptions, and the inade-
quacies of libertarianism, which offers a similar materialist analysis but
with an insistent stress on the individual. Advocacy of national service is
the political center reasserting itself against the right and the left.
Charles C. Maskas
205
APPENDIX.
COMPARISON OF DEFENSE PERSONNEL COSTS, 1964 VERSUS 1986
(IN 1986 CONSTANT DOLLARS)
1964
1986
Direct Active Duty Personnel
$43.1 billion
$47.8 billion
Family Housing
1.8
2.8
Support*
6.0
11.8
Reserve Components
2.5
6.4
Retired Military Pay
4.2
17.3
Civilian Pay
26.3
31.3
Total
$83.9
$117.4
Number of Personnel
Active Duty Military
2,687,000
2,169,000
Reserve Units
953,000
1,130,000
Civilian
1,175,000
1,112,000
Total
4,815,000
4,411,000
Medical, recruitment, schools
NOTE: Inflation factor: 1964 - 1.0; 1986 - 3.5
SOURCE: Department of Defense, Manpower Requirements Report FY1988 (February 1987),
PP. (VIII 3-4.)
NATIONAL SERVICE AND ITS ENEMIES
206
NOTES
1. In its broad contours the Citizenship and National Service Act of 1989
followed the line of reasoning given in Charles C. Moskos, A Call to Civic Service
(New York: The Free Press, 1988). The main difference between what 1 proposed
and the Nunn-McCurdy bill was my inclusion of high school dropouts in the
purview of youth corps. In the text pertaining to the national service proposal,
I have held to my original formulation.
I wish to acknowledge Will Marshall, a member the Democratic Leadership
Council (DLC) and president of the Progressive Policy Institute, for his ongoing
generosity with ideas and practicalities concerning national service. Marshall was
the primary author of the DLC's Citizenship and National Service (Washington,
D.C.: DLC, May 1988), which foreshadowed the Nunn-McCurdy bill. I am also
grateful to Joel Berg of the Progressive Policy Institute for bringing new thought
to an old subject. Although he does not always agree with everything I advocate,
my debt is deep to Donald J. Eberly, who has been my longtime mentor in the
area of national service. See Donald J. Eberly, National Service: A Promise to Keep
(Rochester N.Y.: John Alden Books, 1988).
2. William James, "The Moral Equivalent of War," in Essays on Faith and
Morals (New York: Longman, Greens, 1942). pp. 311-28. Originally published
in 1910.
3. The insight that rehabilitation can best be served when the agency
involved is not defined as rehabilitative was originally developed with regard to
the latent functions of the armed forces. See Bernard Beck, "The Military as a
Welfare Institution," in Charles C. Moskos, ed., Public Opinion and the Military
Establishment (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1971). PP. 137-48.
4. On the connection between citizenship and national service, see especially
Morris Janowitz, The Reconstruction of Patriotism (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1983) and Benjamin R. Barber, Strong Democracy (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1984).
5. A paradigm-making book that melds the economics of moral commit-
ments with the prevailing utilitarian model of modern economics is Amitai
Etzioni, The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics (New York: The Free Press,
1988).
6. I agree with conservative critics who find unpersuasive studies that
compare the value of work performed by youth servers with what that work
would have cost if done on the market. The question must always be, is the work
important enough to warrant national service in the first place?
7. Perhaps the most irresponsible statement was the assertion of the re-
search staff of the American Council of Education (ACE) that the Nunn-
McCurdy bill would cost the federal government more than $50 billion a year to
serve the same number of people now receiving federal student aid. See William
D. Ford, "Bill in Congress on Public Service for Young People Shows Confusion
Charles C. Moskos
207
About Student Aid and Patriotism," Chronicle of Higher Education, March 15,
1989, p. A40. Although the ACE has backed away from this assertion in private
correspondence, it has not publicly withdrawn its earlier statement.
The libertarian right faces a conundrum with service-based student aid.
Opposed to federal student aid in principle, it nevertheless dislikes the "some-
thing for nothing" feature of the present system. Conservative elder stateman
William Buckley has long proposed that the country's top colleges require
students to spend a year in national service before they enroll.
8. 1983 Gordon Black poll. This New York state survey was conducted to
test public sentiment toward a program like the Reserve Officer Training Corps
for noncareer police officers.
9. A 1989 Urban League conference "lamented the shortage of black men
in youth programs." "Urban League Parley Focuses on Help for Young Black
Men," New York Times, May 4, 1989, p. 11. The connection between such a need
and national service, however, has yet to be made by leading black organizations.
Caring for the infirm elderly is a task that falls almost entirely on women, yet
feminist organizations have never rallied behind national service.
10. By 1987 four states-Massachusetts, Mississippi, Illinois, and Virginia-
had enacted laws linking state college aid to draft registration. A Tennessee law
went so far as to prohibit enrollment of nonregistrants in state colleges and
universities.
11. Richard Danzig and Peter Szanton, National Service: What Would il Mean?
(Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1986).
12. No serious proposal exists to make national service an element of rebuild-
ing the national infrastructure. Yet the Federal Highway Administration figures
that bringing roads up to minimum engineering standards would cost $565 to
$655 billion over the next twenty years. Wall Street Journal, August 30, 1989, p. 1.
13. "Bush Official Rejects Linking Aid, Volunteer Work," Chicago Tribune,
April 22, 1989, p. 4.
14. A valuable summary of the literature dealing with quality/performance
in the military is Juri Toomepuu, Soldier Capability-Army Combat Effectiveness
SCACE (Fort Benjamin Harrison, Ind.: U.S. Army Soldier Support Center,
1981). An insightful account of soldiers in the all-volunteer army of the 1980s is
George C. Wilson, Mud Soldiers (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1989); for
the navy, see Wilson, Super Carrier (New York: MacMillan, 1986). An impressive
treatment of military recruitment in historical perspective is Sue E. Berryman,
Who Serves? The Persistent Myth of the Underclass Army (Boulder, Colo.: Westview
Press, 1988).
15. These and other pertinent data on the positive effects of the Nunn-
McCurdy bill on recruitment are given in Juri Toomepuu, Effects of a National
Service Program on Army Recruiting (Fort Sheridan, Ill.: Research and Studies
Division, U.S. Army Recruiting Command, February 1989). Because the Toome-
puu analysis ran afoul of official policy, his report was initially suppressed. Even
more troubling, high-level studies emanating from the Pentagon do not acknowl-
edge, much less refute, Toomepuu's research findings.
NATIONAL SERVICE AND ITS ENEMIES
208
16. See report attached to letter to Sam Nunn, chairman, Committee on
Armed Services, U.S. Senate, dated July 11, 1989, signed by L. Niederlehner,
deputy general counsel, Department of Defense. The report itself is unsigned
with no letterhead.
17. Toomepuu, Effects of a National Service Program on Army Recruiting.
18. The so-called two plus two plus four enlistment has elements of the
citizen-soldier track contained in the original Nunn-McCurdy bill. This enlist-
ment was introduced on a trial basis in late 1989. Early reports indicated that
the program was hugely successful in attracting young people into the army
who would not have considered enlisting in the army for longer terms.
The concept of a lower-paid citizen-soldier track coexisting with a profes-
sional soldier track has also been proposed by the Heritage Foundation. See
Stuart M. Butler, Michael Sanera, and W. Bruce Weinrod, eds., Mandate for
Leadership If (Washington, D.C.: Heritage Foundation, 1984). p. 253, and Charles
L. Heatherly and Burton Yale Pines, eds., Mandate for Leadership " (Washington,
D.C.: 1989). p. 738.
19. A comprehensive treatment of the tendency to view armed forces in
occupational rather than institutional terms is presented in Charles C. Moskos
and Frank R. Wood, eds., The Military-More Than Just a Job? (Elmsford, N.Y.:
Pergamon-Brassey's, 1988). In addition to the United States, eight Western
nations are comparatively examined.
20. In the strange bedfellows department, conscientious objector groups
have joined with the Pentagon in opposing the Nunn-McCurdy bill. See the
newsletters of the National Interreligious Service Board for Conscientious
Objectors and the Central Committee for Conscientious Objection.
Reaction to the Nunn-McCurdy bill has not been one of unrelieved opposi-
tion, however. The concept received editorial support in the New York Times and
strong endorsement from columnists Mark Shields and David Broder in the
Washington Post, as well as in much of the regional press.
Another philosophical strain that resonates with national service as a concept,
if not in all the particulars given here, is neoconservatism. The first major
publication of the ideas embodied in the Nunn-McCurdy bill appeared in
Charles C. Moskos, "How to Save the All-Volunteer Force," Public Interest (Fall
1981): 74-89. At the Hoover-Rochester Conference on the All-Volunteer Force
held at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace in December 1979,
Sidney Hook came to this writer to express his strong endorsement of the
concept of national service. For neoconservative support of conscription, see
Eliot A. Cohen, Citizens and Soldiers (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985)
and Philip Gold, Evasions: The American Way of Military Service (New York: Paragon
House, 1985).