Not Your Sweetie

Samela on Clark's National service speech:


it seems a radical break. If I'm not wrong, what he's saying is that America's presence in the rest of the world will no longer be the sole province of corporations and the military. It will be the genius of individual Americans serving under the auspices of the government: microbiologists, writers, teachers, doctors, filmmakers, etc. That banded together as a Reserve Corps of human talent helping to solve problems here and abroad, we can actually change the power structure and the direction of America's relationship to the world.
It's an empowerment of the people ... THROUGH the government. It's the antithesis of the 'what can Washington do for me' mentality operative since Reagan (give me my money back, reduce my taxes, give my kid a voucher) and the beginning of a new mentality: how we can take back the government by giving to it. And take back power from corporations and other entities. (Water problem in an African nation? Don't send Halliburton, send us!) It's the antithesis of 'government is the problem not the solution,' which so needs to be changed. It's a reminder that we ARE the government. This is not some half-assed charity, faith-based, ladies' luncheon volunteerism. This is asking artists and scientists and machinists and mechanics and engineers to take back the country and work to make it ours again. The more I think about it (if I'm not hyperbolizing), it's really fairly remarkable, if it were to work.
And even if it doesn't, the sentiment alone is the kind of out-of-the-box, big-picture thinking that at least can give us hope and change the perspective. And it tells us that we are all important to the well-being and security of the country. Not just politicians or businessmen or soldiers who make the decisions for us... but frontline musicians and artists, teachers and scientists, workers and caregivers. In some way, it is what we sometimes call a "paradigm shift." And if any country were ever in need of a new paradigm, it is ours. This is pretty out of the box.