Just one month after he tried to rewrite John McCain's record on Iraq, Jonah Goldberg is trying to whitewash his own past when it comes to serving his country. Today, Goldberg compared Barack Obama's call for national service with slavery in a bilious Los Angeles Times op-ed that conveniently forgot to mention either Iraq or military service. Convenient, that is, because Jonah Goldberg apparently believes such service is for suckers.
His sensitivity on the issue may have something to with his own past comments on the subject. Back in February 2005, Jonah Goldberg explained his own principled decision not to join the American forces in the Iraq war he so enthusiastically supported:

"As for why my sorry a** isn't in the kill zone, lots of people think this is a searingly pertinent question. No answer I could give -- I'm 35 years old, my family couldn't afford the lost income, I have a baby daughter, my a** is, er, sorry, are a few -- ever seem to suffice. But this chicken-hawk nonsense is something that's been batted around too many times to get into again here."

Fast forward three years and Goldberg's defense mechanisms (rationalization? denial?) kicked into high gear in response to Barack Obama's speech last week proclaiming national service "a central cause of my presidency." In Goldberg's conflicted mind, Obama's goals to encourage service by young Americans amounts to slavery. So just days after the death of legendary GOP segregationist icon Jesse Helms, Goldberg turned to that most Republican of tactics, the inverted race card:

There's a weird irony at work when Sen. Barack Obama, the black presidential candidate who will allegedly scrub the stain of racism from the nation, vows to run afoul of the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery.
For those who don't remember, the 13th Amendment says: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime...shall exist within the United States."
I guess in Obama's mind it must be a crime to be born or to go to college.

Extolling the virtues of American volunteerism, Goldberg claims Obama's vision is instead one of involuntary servitude. In his speech, Obama proclaimed that "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." But to Goldberg, the incentives Obama proposes for students (giving "schools resources to offer new service opportunities" and providing "an annual American Opportunity Tax Credit of $4,000") constitute a form of 21st century bondage:

"He'll make service compulsory by merely compelling schools to make it compulsory."

In his paean to the glories of the volunteer spirit, Goldberg not only distorts Obama's message, but ignores critical elements of it. Obama, after all, not only highlighted Senator Jim Webb's new GI Bill opposed by both President Bush and John McCain. He called for more Americans to join the military:

"But we need to ease the burden on our troops, while meeting the challenges of the 21st century. That's why I will call on a new generation of Americans to join our military, and complete the effort to increase our ground forces by 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines."

As Jonah Goldberg long ago made clear, that kind of volunteerism is for someone else.
Americans can - and should - debate the merits of the national service inducements offered by both Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain and whether or not they will produce the new spirit and groundswell of American volunteerism. For example, the Boston Globe's Derrick Jackson pondered the limits of Obama's national service plan while still favorably comparing to President Bush's post-9/11 call to shop and ""go to Disney World in Florida."
Ultimately, engaging in a discussion with Jonah Goldberg on the topic, as Darren Nichols of TV's Slings & Arrows once put it, is like asking a dog why it likes to lick its a**. But while the dog can't explain his position, Goldberg chooses not to.