Forcing people to work against their will is something out of a communist dystopia, but that isn’t stopping a Democratic presidential candidate from calling for exactly that.
Self-help author and Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson wants to reinstate mandatory national service to fight climate change. The plan would force young people ages 18 to 26 to spend one year of their lives “combating climate change.” Just how recruits would do this is unclear, as Williamson’s official website and her interview offers few details. Even so, the little that is known about this plan should cause anyone who cares about personal freedom to reject it outright.
Naturally, Williamson is trying to make it sound like the national mandatory service will offer everyone plenty of options, enabling each person to do just what he or she wants for the full year. Her official campaign website states that service could be in a variety of areas according to one’s talents and desires. However, she fails to note the obvious fact that young people are likely to find some mandatory service opportunities more desirable than others.
What happens when one field has too many volunteers, and another has too few? Intervention is inevitable at that point. While Williamson thinks it’s all good because those working will be compensated, not everyone needs or even wants this assistance. Teens and young adults from wealthy families, for instance, won’t be interested in paid room and board. The compensation plan is at odds with her stated goal of “creating high-quality union jobs that pay prevailing wages” and offer benefits.
It seems Williamson, who has made a name for herself due to her odd “healing crystals are real” sort of rhetoric, has embraced climate change hysteria just to one-up her rivals.
Mandatory national service isn’t the only way in which Ms. Williamson would increase government on the lives of ordinary citizens. Her plans to phase out the sale of new fossil fuels in vehicles by the year 2035 is downright unrealistic. This plan, coupled with her stated goal of decimating the oil and gas industries, would eliminate hundreds of thousands of good jobs throughout the United States.
