By serving, we learn. By learning, we grow smartly at home and abroad.
"We have come out of the time when obedience, the acceptance of discipline, intelligent courage, and resolution were most important, into that more difficult time when it is man's duty to understand his world rather than to simply fight for it." Ernest Hemingway, 1946
There are political reasons why the Obama-Biden administration should help introduce and implement People's Lobby's American World Service Corps Congressional Proposals.
· Big problems exist in the world. Our uninformed public policies have contributed too many of those problems. Big problems need big solutions. The AWSC Congressional Proposals create a bigger army to address those problems than any other related congressional proposals now being considered.
· The AWSC gradually builds over a seven-year period to its 1 million-person corps. Staying at that 1 million number for 20 years, the AWSC will:
o Field 21 million AWSC do-gooders over 27 years.
o Release our military of some nation-building chores it is increasingly asked to do.
o Win hearts and minds, reduce poverty, and eliminate ignorance that too often forces our 1.4 million active military into fields of blood and gore.
o Raise our public policy IQ as to how to address domestic and international needs so as to refrain from future costly policy blunders.
o Involve rich and poor, young and older (18-70+), the U.S. and other nations in serving, learning, doing, and building a sane Global Community.
o Avoid the political bickering and legislative roadblocks that arise around calls for mandatory national service by using the voluntary AWSC's size to produce the desired impacts of mandatory service.
o Provide choices and unmatched training to many of those struggling in today's economy.
o Avoid the cost, time consumption, and political opposition that come from trying to create new do-good government programs by relying on existing governmental programs and non-governmental organizations (NGO) to wisely use AWSC volunteers.
o Help pay the "rent" we owe for the space and resources we use in the world.
It is not the I.Q. but the I WILL that is important in the education of individuals as well as in the education of a nation.
III. Fourth of a nine part series from the AWSC report, which has been sent to the Obama-Biden team.