Michael Gerson is wrong: National service will increase resentment, division

Now, I happen to think that “resentment” and “division” are good things when directed at the State — but the point is, Gerson doesn’t.

All State-sponsored Hitler Youth-y tree planting does is raise up a new generation of “big government”-loving sheep, who’ll be even more insufferably smug than they already are.

The truly cool people will skip it, not content to waste valuable drinking, smoking, guitar playing and business-starting years doing the State’s menial chores and getting paid with other people’s extorted tax dollars.

And evoking William F. Buckley as some kind of great moral arbiter on this of all issues shows that Gerson is uncharacteristically out of touch on this one.