Well, it didn’t take long, did it?
Folks, many of us warned you that Barack Obama’s past involvements with rabid Marxists and leftist groups were no coincidence or mere juvenile flirtations.
From the new Obama website [Now altered, but archived here:]
America Serves
“When you choose to serve — whether it’s your nation, your community or simply your neighborhood — you are connected to that fundamental American ideal that we want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness not just for ourselves, but for all Americans. That’s why it’s called the American dream.”
The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start [emphasis added]
As they used to say in the old movie Westerns: “Them’s fightin’ words.”
Note that in his opening pre-Election quotation, Obama described his “service” programs with the words “choose” and “liberty.”
But now, in the post-Election fine print, he uses the word “require.”
By which he means: “…or else.”
The One intends to force us, and our children, to “serve” whatever causes he mandates. On what moral premise?
That the individual belongs to the state.
Mandatory “service” is just another way of saying “involuntary servitude” — and that is a euphemism for “slavery.” An interesting point of view for a man whose race was emancipated by his alleged hero, Abraham Lincoln.
Let me be very clear:
If the incoming Thug-In-Chief thinks he’s going to force this boy to join one of his Marxist-modeled citizen “corps,” his gang had better come for me heavily armed.
And I suspect I’m not alone in that attitude. It’s an attitude most bluntly expressed by the hero of Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead in his famous trial speech:
I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone’s right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.
I wished to come here and say that I am a man who does not exist for others.
It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.
UPDATE — Well, THAT was quick!!!!
No sooner did I quote from the “Change.gov” website page than Camp Obama changed the wording to eliminate the word “require.” It now reads:
“Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by setting a goal that all middle school and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year and by developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free.” [emphasis added]
Well, it’s encouraging that when you challenge these Stalinist wannabes, they back down fast. Let’s see just how “voluntary” this “goal” will be, eh?
UPDATE #2 — To prove that I was not making up the language on the Obama site, here is the Google cache page of the original wording. Check it out quickly before that also falls under the Obamantra of “Change.”
WELL…WITHIN MINUTES, THEY JUST CHANGED THAT, TOO! [Note the date and time of the cache update.] [Apparently I saw the wrong linked page. It's still there in Google cache, as of 10:30 pm EST Friday night.]
Anyone recall what the Soviets used to do to history books?
UPDATE #3 — Well, Mike LaSalle copied the original page and has posted it here as a PDF, where it isn’t about to disappear. Great work, Mike! At least that won’t vanish.
UPDATE #4 — Instapundit just linked here, so the Obamaniacs’ little effort to rewrite history isn’t going to disappear in the Memory Hole.
