[geeks] 4th Amendment Gone

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Thu, 01 Apr 2004 @ 14:06 -0800, N. Miller said:

> I have tossed around the idea with friends on numerous occassions
> whereby positions in Congress are filled by draft.  Each and every
> American, barring those with chronic illnesses or mental disability
> would be required to do 4 years of service.  As an alternative,
> individuals could chose military service over Congressional service.

The problem though is that that will flood the military with people,
since there are only N positions in government available.

I assume you didn't mean to imply only federal government service
though.

If people don't want either, there are literally thousands of jobs
that need to be done in civil service, and often go undone because
few people volunteer.  

For example, you could do your tour of duty surveying for the USGS.

It would increase people's sense of belonging to their country, it is a
relatively safe form of nationalism, and it would generally be useful
work.

Most people waste more than 4 years of their life on stupid or usless
pursuits, so I don't see it as that much of a burden either.

> Individuals could chose a second 4-year stint, separated by a minimum of
> 4 years, should they like doing the work well enough to want to put in
> additional service.  This limit would not apply to military service.
> 
> The downside of this is the power that "career bureaucrats" would then 
> wield in the system because of the high number of inexperienced
> legislators.
> However, I don't think the problem is insurmountable..

Me either, and in fact, better education would help teach people to be
good legistlators.

A system like this would encourage schools to change to teach good
citizenship all around, including government processes.

Maybe people would finally learn that the USA is a republic...

-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- [governorrhea: a contagious disease that
spreads from the governor of a state downward through other offices and his
corporate sponsors]