Would more of us see the world and its needs as they exist, rather than through the simplified lens of foxy faux news, tour-boat cruises, grandiose self-imagery, military might, and military PARADES?
Would groups like Public Citizen, our military, and Sister Chittister's followers have more supporters, and inch closer to a heaven on earth, if we had a million Americans a year doing voluntary national service through such organizations as:
Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Habitat, Doctors Without Borders, Head Start, Mercy Corps, Oxfam, Americans Friends Service Committee, TechnoServe, Heifer, Red Cross, International Rescue Committee, Mercy Ships, Save the Children, State Conservation Corps, In-Need Schools, Hospitals Therapy Wards, Homes for The Elderly, Prison Education Programs, etc.
This is what implementing People's Lobby's American World Service Corps National Service (AWSCNS) Congressional Proposal would do.
Implementing the AWSCNS could expand by 10+ times the size of Peace Corps and AmeriCorps and expand the staffing and work product of the other organizations outlined in the proposed legislation. It would expand the service staffs of groups that deal with education, homelessness, drug addiction, prison education, veterans in need, blind and disabled, aged and infirm, etc., while simultaneously strengthening America's knowledge and character.
It could renew the once-plentiful admiration in which the world held America, when JFK promised to build a shiny city on a hill and use 100,000 Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) a year (not today's meager 7,500 PCVs) to help do that. It could inspire other nations to emulate their own robust national-service programs and begin shifting us away from addressing needs and stewing problems via costly military involvements, rather than with armies geared to grassroots development and earthly repair.
Bullets costing us more and more... Service builds.
(Image by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) Details DMCA
We need more public citizens, and we need a world-based definition for them. We need other nations to adopt the name and involve substantial numbers of their citizens in such enlightening public national service. We need much more healthy international competition on the fields of grassroots development and much less on bloody battlefields.
In the process, we could find ourselves working closely and peacefully with presumed adversaries. As part of expanding the meaning and number of "public citizens," we should reintroduce Congresswoman Boxer's s HR 1807, which almost created a Joint US-Soviet Peace Corps. If your brain's working at all, you've got to believe that a Joint US-Russian Peace Corps is healthier for the world than a Trump-floated US-Russian Cyber-Corps.
And, if People's Lobby's (PLI) nontraditional-funding mechanisms were used to fund this investment in our people and the future, perhaps no or few taxpayer dollars would be needed. These nontraditional-funding mechanisms could fund the investment in increasing our number of "public citizens" by 1,000,000 a year, making our mega-rich "public-citizen investors" do good while doing well through investing in millions of constructively serving Americans.
If you are a "mega-rich" Forbes-600 type, might it not be smart to invest a tiny bit on the possibility that a Godly judge might reincarnate you into a next life that has no silver spoon?
If we don't blow ourselves up first, some day the earth may have a beneficent democratic world federation, a la sketched in Star Wars and Star Trek. If good judgement allows decades of progressive human history to grow toward democratic world federalism, then the numbers of aware "public citizens" will need to dramatically grow for earth's citizens to function rationally and beneficially, and not be controlled by ill-informed irrationality, powers that benefit from war, and politicians who believe that their primary experience required for governing revolves around brainwashing and chasing votes.
Isn't it time to create an "Involve Me" generation of real-life doers whose "doings" make them informed, character-rich public citizens? How is today's citizenry doing in terms of involved doers who think rationality?
Would our citizenry and policies be better if 30 million Americans had done national service over the last thirty years? Would the world be worse or better off if George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, as well as the unflinching followers of Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, and Steve Bannon, had spent a year or two serving in one of the organizations listed in the American World Service Corps National Service (AWSCNS) Congressional Proposal ?
Ask your Congress persons, why shouldn't we institute robust, voluntary national service and thereby dramatically raise the public-policy IQ of a growing the number of aware and involved "public citizens" worldwide?
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