Here's the scenario:
It's 2011. The United States has passed a version of the Universal National Services Act requiring all people - men and women - between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service. This service can be in the form of strengthening the homeland defense, rebuilding infrastructure, public service (police, EMT, firefighting), or military service.
Would you willingly serve, begrudgingly serve, protest, or fight (sabotage actions, join a paramilitary militia, or turn to anarchy/terrorism)? If you do serve, where would you choose to serve? If you protest or fight, where and how? Why would/wouldn't you serve?
Personally, I don't know what I would do.
Let me state at the front that I do not like this country (the United States, in case you're confused), but I cannot legally leave (I have been denied a passport several times now, all of them citing security concerns, then referring me to DHS where I'm stonewalled). I have my reasons, and don't want to start a debate about it. So with that in mind:
As someone who is basically trapped here (lol, I'm not taking a boat to Haiti, kthx), I feel as if I would be a slave to the political class of this country - being forced to serve the betterment of a country I cannot consciously support. I might be one of the few people pushed to an extremist agenda if this were to happen; but, I also value my own life and want a better future for myself and my family (the rest of you, as far as I'm concerned, can fuck off and die). So, with that in mind, I might choose protesting ... of course, I'd feel silly just standing around, yelling about something as mundane as "rebuilding infrastructure" when this isn't protesting a draft so much as it's protesting something Washington DC will spin as "the betterment of America."
In my eyes, I'm not rebuilding a country so much as serving a political classes agenda. In my eyes, it's the new slavery.
Ultimately, someone like myself might choose sabotage - working on infrastructure, while repeatedly fucking things up in an attempt to waste money.
How about you? Thankfully, with something as complicated as this, there's no wrong answer