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This spring the President signed into law The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. You should pay special attention to this law because much of it specifically targets young adults. Secondary schools, for example, are offered federal funds in exchange for developing their “service-learning” curricula, encouraging more high schools nationwide to develop service requirements. Under such programs, while studying, taking the SATs, and pouring energy into extra-curricular activities or part-time jobs, increasing numbers of students will also have to perform mandatory service.

And this policy will not be limited to high schools. Service requirements will also be instituted at an increasing number of universities as federal funds from this bill entice them to create or expand their own service initiatives. Because the bill encourages integrating “service-learning” into the curriculum, many universities will develop academic programs dedicated to inculcating a service mentality. In addition, students will be encouraged to work in a “Summer of Service” and to make longer commitments to Americorps.

What do all these initiatives mean to you? They mean more than just spending a summer in a soup kitchen or a year in a South American village, although these are not small matters. Many students need that time to work to pay down their students loans or to take summer classes. Should such requirements be instituted at your school, you may find yourself torn between doing what’s best for your scholarship, career, family, or finances—and giving one of these up to fulfill a service requirement.

And yet this new law has been hailed as a great example of bipartisanship because across the political spectrum there is a consensus that Americans, especially young Americans, should be willing to serve, to do more for others. In other words, everyone seems to agree that you have an obligation to sacrifice for others. But do you? And should the government be forcing you to do so?

Today many Americans accept such a duty and believe that making others one’s primary focus in life is noble. According to this view, you should focus not on the highest pinnacle you can achieve or what brings you the greatest fulfillment, but on how you can best serve others. Following this premise, service programs aim to harness and exploit the virtues of youth—energy, idealism, motivation, and passion—by means of yoking them to the burden of everyone on the planet who has an “unmet human need.” No amount of energy or resources is enough to fill this yawning abyss, and the consequence of such a system will be the sapping of virtue and ability.

It will be the best in you that will be exploited, and it will be the best of you that will be the most harmed. Today, one can do amazing things at a very young age; those of you who have a drive to learn, to create, to produce, to innovate—you will lose the most under this system. Not only because of the hours, weeks, or years that may be stolen, but because of something irreplaceable that may go with them—that benevolent feeling of being in control of your own path.

When you are forced to relinquish your time for service requirements, you’re being told that your life doesn’t really belong to you. Your hobbies, friends, and career aspirations all must take a back seat to unchosen obligations. Those who are tempted to argue that young people having less time for personal interests is not a big deal, or who attempt to justify national service initiatives by saying that some get a value from such work are ignoring the basic principle. It is fine that some people choose to do a bit of volunteering, but that cannot justify forcing everyone to do so. Each individual should have the freedom to decide to what he devotes his time and energy.

This attempt to conscript the lives of young Americans is the proposal of politicians who believe they are better qualified to decide how you spend your time than you are—and that they have the right to do it. But the purpose of government is to protect our rights, not to decree by legislative vote how we spend our time or what morals we should adopt in our private lives. Accepting service as the ideal will damage the lives of young people while simultaneously undermining the proper moral foundation of America: the right of each individual to make his own life and happiness his primary concern.

Remember George Tiller, the recently murdered Kansas abortion doctor? Today we learned that his entire clinic, one of only a few in the country to provide late-term abortions, is closing down.

An opponent of abortion has succeeded in killing and intimidating yet another pocket of brave doctors who committed their professional lives to a woman's right to choose the course of her own body-even in the hard cases.

Of course, anti-abortion groups have been quick to publicly denounce the murder as "vigilantism." But there's a reason why no one is really surprised when an abortion doctor is gunned down in cold blood.

The "pro-life" movement fervently believes that a fetus holds the same right to life as you and me, and so a pregnancy cannot be terminated at the decision of the woman experiencing it. But what is the source of this view? Anti-abortionists are unable to ground their position in a rational conception of rights. All they can hope for is that an unknowable God imbues a fetus with a mystical soul from the moment of conception. There can be no proof and no knowledge with respect to such a claim, as it based solely on religious faith. In imposing their religion on the rest of society, anti-abortionists are sacrificing the actual rights of women and doctors.

Because anti-abortionists cannot provide rational reasons for why a fetus holds the same rights as an actual human being, or why this supposed right outweighs the rights of the female carrying the fetus, it is no surprise that so many opponents of abortion resort to name-calling and intimidation tactics in advancing their agenda. It is also no surprise that they seek to exert a more sanitized form of force, in the form of governmental coercion, against these women and doctors.

Force is the only alternative to reason and rational argument. "Pro-lifers," by virtue of the religious source of their conviction against abortion (whether acknowledged or hidden) reject a rational means of persuasion. The end of such a road is, unfailingly, a smoking gun.

It is my pleasure to announce that The Undercurrent will be running a special summer issue in time for the national Tea Parties on July 4th.

Please consider ordering some newspapers. Either go to http://the-undercurrent.com/order and order with PayPal, or e-mail your name, address, and the number of copies you need to contact@the-undercurrent.com.

If you are going to OCON this summer and are planning to attend the Boston Tea Party, you also have the option of picking up your papers at the Boston Seaport Hotel. Please e-mail us if you want to take advantage of this option, rather than having the papers shipped to your home.

The papers are sold at cost and will be delivered before July 4th. However, if you would like to distribute but cannot afford to do so, please let us know. There is a good chance that we would be able to find a donor to sponsor your distribution efforts in such a case. Don’t hesitate to send a request by email to: contact@the-undercurrent.com.

An alternative or supplement to distributing papers is handing out TU flyers. There are several designs available on our website at http://the-undercurrent.com/participate. Two of the flyers help to explain the current financial crisis and solutions, while another is intended to generate interest in TU.

From all of us at TU, thank you for your interest and support.

In my previous post I argued that non-discrimination laws were immoral. But you might still wonder what we can do about the many irrational employers who might discriminate in the workplace. Without such laws won’t many employers consider race and sex unfairly? Won’t there be businesses that choose not to hire certain individuals based on their sex, like women for instance? Or simply choose not to pay them as much as men? In such cases, isn’t the government justified in enforcing reverse discrimination as a means to ending discrimination?

The answer is twofold. The first part of the answer is simply no, the government is never justified in forcing people to make what it regards, rightly or wrongly, as “rational”. No initiation of force by one human being (or institution) against another can be “justified”—such force inherently rejects the realm of reason and justification for the “might makes right” law of the jungle. A rational government is justified only in protecting individual rights, not in forcing people to be “good” to themselves or each other. [See here, here, and here for fuller explanation of this point.]

The second part of the answer is that even though it is not the government’s role to punish these people, it does not mean that they should not and will not be punished. They should be and are punished, both by the market and by the moral condemnation of rational individuals.

Think first of the practical consequences of a business that, for example, hired men only, or only served African Americans, or paid all of their employees based on what sort of ancestry they have. Running a business this way would mean that the best working employees, rather than being promoted, rewarded, and recognized, are left discouraged and under-utilized, and in many cases driven to leave the company. The company pays a real price for its discriminatory practices.

The full extent of the price depends on the extent to which rational individuals throw their weight behind what they regard as moral, and against what they regard as immoral. It is we as individuals, not government, that bear the actual responsibility for promoting the good and discouraging the evil we encounter. The power of public endorsement or condemnation is not to be underestimated.

Just ask yourself: Would you eat at a restaurant that only served white people, or that designated a special section for non-whites? Would you shop at a retail store that refused to hire women on principle? Would you buy a car from a dealership that refused to sell cars to gays? It is your job, not the government’s, to “vote with your feet” by endorsing certain values through your chosen actions.

There are cases in which people will ignore discriminatory practices, and a business may be able to temporarily thrive despite its irrationality. If a department store announced that it was militantly anti-homosexual, perhaps enough people would be indifferent to that fact that they would continue to shop there. But the response in such situations is not to go running to the government to force the department store to hire and sell to gay people. Tempting as that may be, the gun of the government is not the solution to every social ill. The solution is to advocate and educate the public—to work to bring awareness of the issue, and to encourage boycotts.

So long as we as individuals advocate for moral ideas and causes, in the fullness of time any business practicing discrimination will suffer as a result of that practice—and in a free market it would almost certainly fail. Such a business would not withstand the double assault of efficient competitors more focused on making profits than practicing racism, and the principled boycotts of a vocal and discerning minority of customers.

If we truly want to live in a world that does not unjustly discriminate on the basis of factors such as race, gender, sexual orientation, then we should work to create such a world. In encouraging rather than discouraging discrimination, the seeming shortcut of anti-discrimination legislation is part of the problem, not the solution.