Why Democrats need the World Service Corps

Why Democrats need the World Service Corps.

1. “We can do better!” has become this season’s Democratic campaign mantra. Well, Democrats, if that’s true throw some beef on the sandwich you want voters to inhale that will win the hearts and minds of both couch potatoes and activists.

In what has morphed from preemptive warring to terrorist-religious-civil wars, there are no better ways to win American and foreign hearts and minds than by having Democrats lead in passing the World Service Corps (WSC) legislation. The WSC, which would have a million Americans volunteers annually serve in their choice of the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity, Head Start, Doctors Without Borders, Red Cross, International Rescue Committee, OxFam, Mercy Corps, and State Conservation Corps, shows American voters and the world how Dems “can do better.”

2. “Democrats have no plan. Show us your plan,” is the often-heard Republican response to Democratic criticism of Republican policies.

Well, putting a million peaceful, productive, cost-effective Americans into fundamentally building nations is a bold plan that Republicans can’t lightly shrug off. If political leaders want to reduce terrorist recruitment, build good will, and raise the world’s political understanding, then offer voters this plan.

3. Where’s the Dems’ JFK when they and the world needs one?

In a thousand days, JFK invigorated and inspired not just America, but the world. The poor, suffering, and humbled of America, as well as the world, quit seeing Ugly Americans once his Kennedy Corps of PCVs began working diligently on building the foundations of nations.

Will the Dems lead America with a Kennedyesque program in an era when Americans are uglier and weapons of mass destruction have proliferated? If there is a time when the Kennedy flair and vision is needed, this is it.

Kennedy’s administration didn’t flinch at entering a New Fr0ontier. Today, we have a New ‘More Dangerous’ Frontier that requires entering, taming, and building. Will today’s Democrats continue to flinch?

Will that leadership come from Democrats or from the emergence of a daring, adventurous, inspirational Teddy Roosevelt in the Republican Party?

4. Are Democrats better managers?

Statistically, America has as much poverty today as it did when LBJ launched the 1964 War on Poverty. In addition, today we have added:
• Crazed terrorists, proliferating in a world able to package and deliver WMDs via shoe leather, cargo tankers, jet planes, or poisonous vials that have brought devastated buildings and thousands of dead to America.
• Our increasing use of sky and water as an environmental sinkhole that has had Mother Nature respond by replicating large swaths of America into regions in need of a Marshall Plan.

Why wait for more WMDs, bombs, and devastations? Why wait to attack poverty, to rebuild ravaged areas of America, to involve Americans in peaceful, patriotic service, to stem the escalating recruitment of terrorists? Why do Democrats hesitate in what an FDR would have seen as needing to be done?

Good managers put their best resources into attacking a problem before it becomes overwhelming. FDR’s New Deal reversed years of poor Republican management to put lots of low and middle class Americans to work solving their own problems.

Decades ago, Kennedy envisioned a million Peace Corps volunteers dealing with world problems and international understanding– so that today’s military and cultural imbroglio could have been avoided. Today, only about 180,000 have served Kennedy’s dream. Where have the Democrats been in implementing one of the most visionary, peaceful, and effective development programs in history?

LBJ launched the War Poverty, built jobs out of the Job Corps, boosted poor children out of poverty with Headstart and now those programs weather on the vine for lack of leadership and law that supports them.

The WSC cost effectively addresses the goals of the War on Poverty, as well as those of the New Deal and New Frontier. It would put can-do Americans, with or without a feeble FEMA, to work rebuilding, repairing and preparing for the next Katrina. It sends peaceful Americans to rebuild, repair, and prepare for the next Tsunami or Pakistani earthquake. It stems terrorist recruitment and eases the burden hung on our soldiers.

Will Democrats:
• Lead the nation in seeing the common sense connection and need for the WSC?
• Offer the helping hand that lifted struggling people into a growing middle class as FDR’s New Deal, Kennedy’s Peace Corps, and LBJ’s War on Poverty did?

5. “We’re the party of the middle class,” is a refrain expressed by Dems. What, however, are Dems offering the low and middle classes? Income disparity between them and the ultra rich has grown astronomically over the last decade. Pell Grants have fallen. Hours of work has grown, while average earnings, educational, and job opportunities has shrunk.

Do low and middle class Americans need more?
• Habitat improved and less poverty housing?
• Headstart and Teacher Corps volunteers and teachers?
• Americorps volunteers?
• Ready and able Red Cross volunteers?
• More State Conservation Corps?
• College scholarships?
• Rewarding service options and experiences?

Will Democrats understand how the WSC helps their constituency – and lead the WSC proposals into implementation?

6. An increasingly heard Democratic lament is, “Most major news paper chains are owned by Republicans, news networks are owned by Republican leaning corporations, and only this year have Democrats entered the monopolized-by-right-wingers talk radio field.”

Well, if you are concerned about Americans obtaining a “fair and balanced” account of what is happening at home and abroad, send a million WSC volunteers to serve in pockets of need. In an age of cell phones, laptops, blogs, circles of friends, and family communications, let those millions on-the-ground volunteers report the true story Dems believe is not being reported by today’s corporatized and slanted media.

7. Democrats complain that the un-funded mandate of No Child Left Behind, cuts in Pell Grants, and increasing income disparities is leaving tens of thousands of low and middle class students behind.

The WSC will significantly boost Headstart, Americorps, and Teacher Corps volunteers who can help teachers make sure No Child is Left Behind. Although those who serve in the WSC may garner in experience more than the equivalent of a Ph.D., another part of their reward will be a service completion educational grant covering four years of community and state college tuition.

This gives Americans struggling to educate their children an incomparable service and learning experience, while providing them the financing to move them up the degree ladder.

8. When Republicans attack the perception that Democrats want to get out of Iraq more quickly than Republicans would like, they ask, “Where’s your plan?”

A major part of the Democratic response should be campaigning for, passing, and implementing a robust WSC.

Through the nations of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen, Oman, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, & Pakistan about 420,000,000 people reside. In 2005, how many Peace Corps volunteers worked in this seething region? 39.

Imagine if we had one million WSC workers serving over the last 20 years, as Kennedy dreamed. Would first hand experience with peaceful, can-do Americans have defeated or stymied the spread of irrationalism from hate preaching madrasses? Would a larger, stronger, more educated middle class exist in those nations today? Would that have precluded much of the terror emanating from that part of the word and our need to send our soldiers to die there?

Had Democrats kept Kennedy and Shriver’s vision alive, something closer to the WSC might have been working for decades. But they dropped the ball.

Are Democrats ready to revive the Kennedy dream, to reuse Robert’s borrowed quote, “Some people see things as they are and ask, ‘Why?’ I see things that never were and ask, “Why not?” Are they ready to enter an increasingly dangerous frontier that America and the world must quickly and boldly explore? Or are they too tired and beaten down to offer anything more than talk and timid, tepid solutions?

9. “The Democrats have no fire. They don’t stand for anything. Between then and the Republican it’s just tweedle-dee and tweedle-dumb.” That’s an often heard complaint by Independent, Greens, and wavering Democrats looking for a reason to stand-down or stand-up for Democrats.

Well, the WSC energizes those wings of the party that can make Democrats soar. The WSC invigorates Americans with more service-to-country outlets and growth opportunities for young, baby boomers, retirees, and Vets. It provides financing mechanisms that Americans feels is fair, transparent, and should be more often used in an increasing economically disparate American society.

And, if Republicans continue to lag on supporting the WSC proposals, then Democrats should carry the vision of our need to do a mission without missiles. With delays in its implementation, the WSC becomes an increasingly tough and dangerous job. But when implemented it, like the Peace Corps, will be the toughest job its volunteers ever loved.

10. If Democrats want to take back the government, they must campaign to establish an understandable, practical, hands-on program that gives Americans an outlet to address a world of needs and grow stronger in the process.

The WSC proposals will win votes. Almost every thinking, concerned American will see Homeland Security reasons to support it. And the children of those who don’t support it will grow up to be much more knowledgeable of the world and America’s needs than their parents.

11. As Spring 06 approaches the Democrat’s poll numbers are promising. But Democrats face a moneyed public relations juggernaut Roving to blanket media with bumper sticker phraseology that voters often support at the ballot box.

Democrats need more than just defense and bad play calling by Republicans. They need a political offense that citizens enjoy playing in or watching. Americans do not like playing in questionable wars. They like building and team play. They will like the WSC, and Rove will have a tough time blanketing the WSC with negative imagery.

12. And the final reason?
You are part of the government. Just do it -- before Oprah does.