Only You...

Can Prevent Social Disintegration

I’ve been promising a series of immodest and inconvenient centrist proposals for saving our sagging society. So here we go: There is no easy way to do it. There is no quick fix…But I think I’ve found a practical way to start. In fact, I’ve found an idea that Donald Trump and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez both favor. Here it is:

Manage and conserve our forests.

No joke, as Joe Biden might say. It is a small example of what should be a fundamental principle of American civic life. Let me explain:

In 2018, after the deadly Camp Fire in California, Donald Trump challenged the environmentalists who blamed climate change for the blaze:

"You gotta take care of the floors. You know the floors of the forest, very important...There is no reason for these massive deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor."

And then, again, after more forest fires in 2020:

"Maybe we're just going to have to have them [the state of California] pay for it because they don't listen to us. We say you've got to get rid of the leaves, you've got to get rid of the debris, you got to get rid of the fallen trees."

These comments were mocked by environmentalists, as they should have been. Too simplistic, as ever. And Trump was wrong about the larger issue of climate change…but he was sort of right, too, about forest management. Just ask Ocasio-Cortez who proposed a Civilian Climate Corps in 2021 which would do precisely what Trump wanted. It would unleash a paid ($15 per hour, plus health care) army of young people (300,000 of them, but it doesn’t have to be that many) to work forest conservation projects on public lands and also “planting trees, soil erosion control, flood prevention, and building dams.” Those who did it for a year would receive a $20,000 college tuition stipend.

Joe Biden, in his remarkable ability to not inspire Americans—in this case, to miss the forest for a few stray twigs—proposed a watered-down American Conservation Corps in 2023. Nice idea, but Ocasio-Cortez’s plan—which probably needs to be modified, massaged, introduced gradually, monitored—was not only better, but it points the way toward a profound, but necessary, change in American citizenship…and also, in the long term, to the way our government works.

For openers, though, AOC’s idea would have immediate social benefits. It would throw a bunch of young people—of different economic and geographic and social backgrounds together—in the service of a larger cause, a cause which even Donald Trump nominally supports. I’ve always tried to promote these sorts of programs. My Iraq and Afghanistan war experiences after 9/11 made it hyper-clear to me what the U.S. military has and the rest of us have lost: a feeling of community, of purpose, of mutual responsibility (even in the pursuit of a questionable mission). You can’t have a working democracy without those…and they are the values we’ve somehow misplaced in our 75-year festival of consumerism, prosperity and selfishness. Machiavelli believed that ozio—indolence—was the greatest threat to a republic; he considered virtu—rigor—the opposite of ozio. We need some virtu badly.

And so, for me, the most important thing we can do to regain a national sense of unity and purpose is to serve together—serious service, across all aspects of governmental activity. If it works for the military, which performs the crucial work of national defense, it can work in every arena of public work. But it must be taken seriously. And it must change the essential culture of how we go about our business.

As Maryland Governor Wes Moore says, Service will Save Us.

So:

• What if some form of national service was the only way to pay off student debt?

• What if some form of national service was a requirement for anyone with an advanced degree? (What if, for example, you couldn’t become a licensed architect without serving a few years as a building inspector? Or a cosmetic surgeon without a few years in an urban or rural health clinic? Or a criminal lawyer without four year as a cop?)

• What if we made a national effort—as the American Exchange Project does on a small scale—to get high school graduates from red states and blue states working together for the common good?

• What if government work was something each of us did for a few years, rather than something we paid other people to do until they burned out and got cynical? (Answer: The public might gain a better idea of how government works, and how to make it work better. We might have more of a common stake in our national success. We might have an idea of the spiritual joy that comes from being part of something larger than ourselves. We might make some new friends, in other parts of the country, as my dad did in the Navy during World War II. We might become more tolerant.)

• What if different, specific forms of national service were a required apprenticeship for any kind of government work—for teachers, for police officers, for first responders? What if you could only be hired as a skilled full-time government employee if you showed real aptitude during your apprenticeship? In any case, we certainly need to put more idealistic workers in our schools, police forces and emergency rooms.

• What if each of these services required a boot camp, involving physical fitness—a great way to get the endorphins flowing—and specific job-related training? As the military historian William McNeil argues in his wonderful book, Keeping Together in Time, muscular bonding—dance and drill—are essential to the building of a successful society.

I could go on, I could get way more specific…but there’s another question: Why does everyone seem to favor national service but no one does anything about it? Why do national service advocates stick to relatively simple t-shirt and litter-bag stuff? (Then again, shouldn’t the students in local schools be responsible for keeping nearby parks clean?) Why don’t service advocates make the argument for a full-fledged regime that would revive a national spirit of citizenship, but also might produce a more effective and efficient government? I’ve been riding this hobby horse for 40 years now. Nothing ever happens. Why?

Well, two reasons: On the not-so-deep-state left, the existing bureaucracies and public employees unions oppose any form of public service that performs real work and thereby takes away union jobs. You might check out the cynical teachers union campaign to kill the Teach for America program. On the right, the assumption is that any sort of national service would be peripheral stuff…and a waste of money.

The one recent President who really cared about service was Bill Clinton. He created AmeriCorps, which even Trump couldn’t kill. It exists today, over 200,000 strong—and doing fine work across the country. (I especially like the idea of the Senior Corps: for those of us who are able-bodied and have a robust retirement income; tutoring a low-income kid should be a requirement for receiving a full Social Security check.)

I had a conversation with Newt Gingrich back when AmeriCorps was proposed. He was opposed to it, no surprise. But I said, “I could change your vote by simply replacing a single word in a single sentence of the legislation.”

“Oh yeah?”

“What if,” I said, “instead of saying that AmeriCorps volunteers could not replace existing public employees, it said: can only replace existing employees?”

I wasn’t being entirely serious—some middle way would be optimal—but it launched a valuable series of conversations Gingrich and I had about the notion of service. At one point, I told him that the janitors union in the New York City public schools had negotiated a fat contract with the city, which included a free SUV for each janitor and a noxious work rule: they only had to mop the cafeteria floor once a week. What if the students had a responsibility to help with the cleanup? Newt got clobbered—unfairly, I believe—when he ran for President and proposed this idea. The reactionary left complained that Newt wanted poor kids to scrub the floors. Actually, the real power of the idea was for all kids, especially rich kids, to take responsibility for the messes they made.

The possibilities for creative service are limitless, but they would require a fundamental change in the way our culture works. That is very difficult. It is also absolutely necessary. Our political culture has become slovenly. Politicians often talk about our rights as citizens, but rarely about our responsibilities. The two are inextricable. As William Bennett once said before he became a Trump tool: If a politician doesn’t ask anything of you, then don’t give them anything—and especially not your vote. Wes Moore, the Governor of Maryland and an Afghanistan combat veteran, understands the importance of promoting responsibilities along with our rights. He has taken a modest, but wonderful first step. Other politicians should follow suit.

I am convinced that the best, radical centrist way to revive our democracy is to infuse our society with an ethic of service. It’s timed to stand with Donald Trump, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Smokey the Bear: Only We Can Prevent a National Conflagration. It would be the better part of patriotism.

I’ll be posting more inconvenient centrist ideas in the coming weeks. At some point, I’ll open a chat room for paid subscribers to kick around these proposals. If you support this effort, please consider joining the Sanity Gang: