Deaconsplace's Blog

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

ROBERT GATES: “…I have always that there ought to be some kind of mandatory national service, not necessarily in the military but to show everybody that freedom isn’t free, that everybody has an obligation to the nation as a community. And so it could be military service, it could be teaching in rural or poor areas, it could be nursing, it could be any kind of service projects – the Peace Corps, whatever, but a period of service – working in our national parks or something – but a period of service that basically gives back to the nation that has given its citizens so much.”

I went to school with Bob Gates; also in Boy Scouts and church. I think we’ve known each other from the age of five. But after high school we lost contact, not that we were really good friends anyway. I followed his career from the time he started with the Central intelligence agency. That was about the time I entered the Army and served in Vietnam. Needless to say he’s had an illustrious career. I believe he is a pacifist at heart but his upbringing and circumstances prevented him from following those instincts. So I found that interesting when in the above paragraph, he references the Peace Corps as service to country. I’m also with a returned Peace Corps volunteer, serving two years in Bulgaria as a small business development specialist from 1993 to 1994.

But it isn’t service to country as a community referenced above that interests me. Mr. Gates refers to the office repeated phrase freedom isn’t free.