Jonah Goldberg: Why Is Ex-Slave Barack Obama Trying To Reinstitute Slavery?

Dumb dumb dumb, dumb dumb dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb, dumb dumb dumb dumb. That is one "dumb" for each paragraph of Jonah Goldberg's Los Angeles Times   column today. For the record, we did not expect it to be "good," in the traditional sense -- we didn't expect to read it at all! But 18 paragraphs of unmitigated "dumb" has a strangely magnetic appeal during this lazy news season. So let's check out Jonah's column, in which he argues that Obama's plan to offer educational aid as a reward for national service is somehow both (a) welfare and (b) slavery. Europe, MTV, "the JFK cult," and Rolling Stone magazine also play bit parts in Jonah's remarkable paean to the God of Shit.

The metaphorical "link" was obvious to anyone with half a brain, of course, but only Jonah has the courage to voice it:

There's a weird irony at work when Sen. Barack Obama, the black presidential candidate who will allegedly scrub the stain of racism from the nation, vows to run afoul of the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery.

For those who don't remember, the 13th Amendment says: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime ... shall exist within the United States."

I guess in Obama's mind it must be a crime to be born or to go to college.

In his speech on national service Wednesday at the University of Colorado, Obama promised that as president he would "set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year."

He would see that these goals are met by, among other things, attaching strings to federal education dollars. If you don't make the kids report for duty, he's essentially telling schools and college kids, you'll lose money you can't afford to lose. In short, he'll make service compulsory by merely compelling schools to make it compulsory.

He adds, many dumb paragraphs later, the following: "No, national service isn't slavery. But it contributes to a slave mentality, at odds with American tradition." Since when is the "slave mentality" at odds with the American tradition, past or present?

Scanning ahead, we learn about the hypocrisy of the "hipster crowd," the two most common trademarks of which are MTV and Rolling Stone , known furnaces of the radical leftist slave mentality:

Perhaps thanks to the JFK cult, which sees the refrain "Ask not what your country can do for you ..." as an all-purpose writ for social meddling, even the idealistic hipster crowd is on board. Devotees of Rolling Stone and MTV, who normally preen like cats in a pool of sunshine over their alleged libertarianism when the issue is sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, see nothing wrong, and everything right, with involuntary servitude -- as long as we just call it "voluntary."

These, of course, are the same Unpatriotic bohemian miscreants who Hate America, a knowledgeable conservative such as Jonah Goldberg might argue. What's the term he fancies? Liberal Fascism? Yes, these are the Liberal MTV Fascists, the Too-Cool Cult of Carson Daly. And a government program that rewards national service with education would not, at all, offer disenchanted young people a greater, more profound identity as Americans -- a start , at least. It would make them slaves, black ones.

 Forced servitude in America? [LA Times]