Texas commissioner of higher education, Raymund Parades, wrote a commentary published by the Austin American Statesman in which he extolled President Obama’s speech at Texas A&M and its focus upon “community service” quoting Obama as saying such “binds us to each other — and to our communities and our country.”
Parades asserts: “In Texas, community service by college students should be a key part of our statewide strategy for improving our economic competitiveness and raising our quality of life.”
And herein is the problem: Thanks to leftist and communist propaganda, most Americans no longer understand free-market capitalism at a fundamental level.
When engaged in work in a free market you are doing “community service” of the ultimate type. You are serving your fellow man in a way he appreciates so much, that he values your service more than the unit of trade (money) that he compensates you with. Work is community service of the highest order – it is not coerced and neither is the person paying for it coerced to accept it or pay for it.
When people say “community service” they almost always mean slightly, or fully, coerced service that is not valued enough by those being “served” that they would be will to buy the service either with money, time, or effort, on their own behalf. Volunteerism is different but true volunteerism is inherently not systematic which is what the community-service advocates want.
It’s not true “service” the left want. Proof is that Parades himself advocates “paying students to engage in service either on campus or in the community.” American’s used to understand capitalism and, they called that a “job”.
Robert Pratt is host of the top rated Pratt on Texas radio program which can be heard at www.PrattonTexas.com
