Goldberg Equates Obama Service Plan to “Forced Servitude”
Posted by Matt Ortega · July 8, 2008
Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg, who voiced his support to disenfranchise voters nearly a year ago, wrote the most absurd column in the Los Angeles Times in which he compares the national service plan offered by Senator Barack Obama (D-Illinois) to slavery.
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.”
Goldberg, who voiced his support for disenfranchising voters in another Los Angeles Times column last year, is obviously clueless about the Thirteenth Amendment and the Obama plan.
First, the Thirteenth Amendment describes the difference between “free labor and unfree labor.” The Obama plan is not free labor. It includes expanding existing programs like AmeriCorps by three-fold, and the Peace Corps, among others.
Furthermore, it offers college students a $4,000 tax credit for 100 hours of community service. Obama would set a goal of 50 hours for high school and middle school students. The plan does not make that a requirement. The service is entirely voluntary but the Obama plan is to emphasize community service to the young people of America and urge them to become active, engaged citizens. Ostensibly, this is something Goldberg supported in the same column he argued to disenfranchise voters.
Also, it is quite clear that Goldberg did not even examine the plan itself, which is descriptively titled “Universal Voluntary Citizen Service.” The second word in the title of the plan makes the entire Goldberg column moot.
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July 9, 2008 at 10:06pm
[...] columnist and editor-at-large of the National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg, touted his terrible Los Angeles Times column about the voluntary national service plan offered by Senator Barack Obama [...]