David Harsanyi writes:

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson writes that individuals are endowed with unalienable rights to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

There is nothing in there about state-sponsored "public" service and nothing about having to listen to politicians lecture us about what we "must" do to satisfy patriotic obligation. I checked.

Yet, a hobbyhorse of presidential hopefuls is government service. The duo is under the impression that public service trumps your own selfish existence. After all, you only make a living, give to charities of your choice, take care of your own children, buy your own junk and, hopefully, mind your own business.

"Loving your country shouldn't just mean watching fireworks on the Fourth of July," Barack Obama explained to a crowd in Colorado Springs this week. "Loving your country must mean accepting your responsibility to do your part to change it."

Yes. He said must.

Ironically, in most places, Americans are prohibited from lighting fireworks on Independence Day — naturally, we "must" not hurt ourselves. And there are increasingly more "musts" being handed down. (Reason Magazine recently named Chicago, Obama's hometown, the city with the least amount of individual freedom in the nation.)

What we definitely "must" be is selfless — like Obama, who often recounts his own righteous journey. Spurning high-paying gigs on Wall Street, Obama hit the Chicago pavement as a crusading community organizer . . . and then, in meticulous detail, wrote a book about his awesome sacrifice and raked in millions.

Obama claims this experience also opened his eyes to a "citizenship that was meaningful." (Unlike yours.) Imagine if everyone wanted a "meaningful" job? Who would support these quixotic crusaders? Doesn't someone need to produce wealth?

Meanwhile, Roger Kimball notes that Obama's vision of public works turns JFK's aphorism on its head: "Ask not what you can do for your country, but what your country can do to you:"

It’s a long way to Lent yet, but I guess I am going to have to start reading Barack Hussein Obama’s speeches. I caught his latest musings on “national service” thanks to Instapundit, but that came via Jonah Goldberg from PrestoPundit. How is he going to back away, triangulate, move to the center on this?

when I’m President, I will set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year. This means that by the time you graduate college, you’ll have done 17 weeks of service. We’ll reach this goal in several ways. At the middle and high school level, we’ll make federal assistance conditional on school districts developing service programs, and give schools resources to offer new service opportunities.

The real name for this, as PrestoPundit noted, is a return to serfdom, i.e., the intrusion of the coercive arm of the state into everyday life.