Wrong time to implement mandatory national service

There could not be a worse time to implement a required national service to try to mold an individual into a citizen with an ideal.

- James Rosen

Now, with an autocratic president and his sidekick car salesman slashing federal jobs, it would be a disaster. Forced service would further fray our military recruiting, which has struggled to meet targets since the draft ended a half-century ago. Forced service would add costs to a federal budget that Donald Trump and Elon Musk claim is broke. One desperate New York City lawyer, Steven Cohen, puts the annual cost at $187 billion, a price tag he acknowledges is “a lot of money.”

Forced service would further demoralize young leaders already hurt by ruinous ideologies, stubborn inflation and the persistent pandemic. Forgotten from lost school days and painful isolation. Worse still, a mandatory national service program would normalize the scattershot “reforms” Musk and his uninformed, kneejerk acolytes are overseeing.