Hard times in America renew the call for mandatory national service
By Steve Cohen, opinion contributor — 04/22/20 04:00 PM EDT
The news clip of the young man on a beach during spring break who refused to stop partying during the COVID-19 outbreak was jaw-dropping for many people — at least until the more horrifying images of overwhelmed emergency rooms, empty streets, shuttered stores and refrigerated trucks serving as hospital morgues overwhelmed our daily news feeds. One didn’t necessarily cause the other, but it sure made us wonder: Were we so self-centered, cynical or ignorant that we couldn’t take seriously the growing calls for social distancing?
The problem isn’t generational. After all, Tom Wolfe pinned the sobriquet “me generation†on the baby boomers back in the 1970s. And there were enough mixed messages from the so-called “adults in the room†in early March to make us wonder what had gone so wrong. Strip away the political mistrust, and we still suffer from a surplus of self-interest and a deficit of shared experience. And most of all, without a commitment to something other than oneself or one’s tribe, there is a gnawing fear that when the next crisis hits, we won’t be any better prepared.
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/493178-hard-times-in-america-renew-the-call-for-mandatory-national-service#bottom-story-socials
