The Lemur is publishing a selection of the most original, compelling, and persuasive final op-eds written in Fall 2025’s Public Policy 301: Political Analysis for Public Policy-Making, taught by Dr. Deondra Rose.
When my grandfather was drafted in 1966, he expected to be sent to Vietnam. Instead, the 32nd division of the 105th Brigade Armored Cavalry was deployed to Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the “enemy” was his fellow Americans.
It’s hard not to draw parallels between my grandfather’s domestic deployment and President Trump’s mobilization of National Guard troops to “quell violence.” In the modern era, the idea of mobilizing a full-on draft of the nation’s own people, particularly in the hands of an executive that seems set on gaining as much power as possible, is downright dystopian.
And yet, when we recognize ICE raids, National Guard deployments, political violence, and hyperpolarization as symptoms of rapid democratic erosion, it becomes clear that the United States desperately needs a renewed investment of its citizens in public life. Compulsory service, whether military or civil, is the best way to secure this reinvestment.
Compulsory service can take many forms. While the U.S. has historically relied on conscription strictly for military purposes, other countries offer more expansive models. Denmark requires residents to serve either in the military or in a civilian program that may involve teaching, public works, or caring for the elderly.
There is no doubt that the U.S. has enormous unmet needs that a national service corps could fill. An aging population is in desperate need of home-based care. Our environmental response teams lack the staff to respond to natural disasters. Much of our infrastructure is rooted in our previous civil service programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps, which was disbanded 80 years ago. Mobilizing young Americans to assist in these efforts would simultaneously close labor gaps and equip participants with practical skills, workplace experience, and a sense of purpose.
But there is a greater “infrastructure” crisis within the United States that conscription may address: the erosion of our social infrastructure and mutual trust. In an era where our positionality determines our political views and our algorithms polarize them, shared, real-world experiences across social boundaries are increasingly rare. Yet such exposure is precisely what helps rebuild civic bonds.
The military, AmeriCorps, and similar federal service institutions are among the most racially, socioeconomically, and geographically diverse environments in the United States. Service puts people in close proximity to others whose backgrounds and beliefs differ profoundly from their own. Mandatory service would expand that opportunity to an entire generation and could serve as a desperately needed antidote to our ideological silos.
Of course, creating such a program would be a massive political lift. Housing, transporting, and employing roughly 2.2 million 18-year-olds each year requires an enormous up-front investment. A service requirement would also disrupt long-established educational patterns in the U.S. which feed most high school grads directly into higher education. Like all massive social shifts, the students and the higher education industrial complex will adapt to changing tides. And if we’re willing to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure bills, perhaps tying some those funds to projects that will pay massive physical and social dividends is a better long-term use of taxpayer dollars.
Naturally, the political moment complicates the argument for conscription. Right-wing advocates have framed mandatory service as a cure to America’s “man problem.” Similarly, recent national guard deployments raise fears over how such authority and manpower could be abused.
These concerns are not trivial. But my grandfather’s deployment did not occur in a political vacuum, and waiting for the “perfect” political moment to reclaim compulsory service from its right-wing baggage is its own form of abdication. Our democracy will continue to erode if we allow immediate partisan anxieties to eclipse the long-term civic benefits of universal service. Our very inability to imagine a unifying national project outside of a partisan lens is itself evidence of how badly we need one.
Participating in and preserving our democratic system has always required some level of sacrifice. At every critical juncture in our nation’s history, citizens have stepped up to defend values larger than themselves. Today, we face an enemy that is more intangible than those of previous generations but no less dangerous: the slow corrosion of civic trust and democratic norms.
A universal service program asks something meaningful of every young American, not for the benefit of a party or administration, but for the future of the country itself. That is a value worth fighting for.
Jordan Phillips is a junior at Duke University.
