Maybe it’s about politics or maybe it’s about philosophy, but there is a problem at the heart of American public life: neither the left nor the right is serious enough in acknowledging how much our freedom depends upon the service and sacrifice of free citizens.
All sides, of course, pay tribute to those virtues. You could fill thick volumes with speeches in which politicians have praised “the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform.” But both sides have characteristic and revealing blind spots once they move beyond the agreeable boilerplate.
It was unfortunate that it took a unanimous Supreme Court decision last week to force a group of elite law schools to comply with a requirement that they allow military recruiters on their campuses. The law schools’ action was a protest against the armed forces’ “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that discriminates against gays and lesbians who want to serve their country. The law schools are right to object, and they should keep fighting it.
But it is simply wrong for schools to turn their backs on the military at the very moment when our armed forces desperately need recruits. Elite institutions, especially, should be willing to show some gratitude for the sacrifices being made by those men and women in uniform.
Most conservatives trashed the dissenting law schools. They regularly praise the military and increase its budget. But most of the same conservatives refuse to ask their wealthy constituents to pay even some of the resulting tab. On the contrary, conservatives are cutting taxes, telling the privileged back home to party on while others fight for them.
To make matters worse, the Bush administration’s budget, while asking for an increase in veterans’ funding this year, proposed what amount to $10 billion in service cuts over the next five years.
Congress will almost certainly reject many of the cuts. Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., the chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, has said he wants to add $2 billion to the Bush proposal this year.
Ask Americans of whatever political persuasion to describe what the United States stands for and one of the first words you’re likely to hear is “freedom.” Many, in turn, translate freedom into the slogan: “Leave me alone.” Law schools don’t want to be burdened by having to receive those recruiters, taxpayers don’t want to be burdened with paying the cost of war, or of treating our veterans right.
Here is the paradox: Preserving individual freedom requires collective action. There is no way around this, even if we Americans don’t much like that word “collective.” A society that celebrates individual striving and personal fulfillment depends on the willingness of some to serve and sacrifice for the rest of us. And that spirit of service will not thrive unless all of us not only acknowledge our debts but also make some contribution – personal, material or both – of our own.
The recent death of Eli Segal, a key architect and promoter of AmeriCorps, President Clinton’s national service program, brought back memories of how hard it is to sell the idea of service. Segal struggled successfully to save AmeriCorps in the mid-1990s when there were liberals as well as conservatives who were ready to give up on it.
Some conservatives condemned the program as “paid volunteerism,” forgetting that government has a role to play in nurturing active citizenship and offering modest support to those who would serve others.
Some liberals saw AmeriCorps as a middle-class hobbyist’s toy, not worth funding when Medicaid, food stamps and other programs for the poor were on the chopping block.
Segal understood that a good society depends on more than individualism and on more than social welfare programs.
The words “service” and “sacrifice” now carry a heavy discount because they trip so easily off politicians’ tongues. But we can’t afford to be cynical about everything. If we take freedom seriously, we have to take service and sacrifice seriously too.
