The Truth Behind "United We Serve"

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 4, 2009--President Obama’s United We Serve campaign is in full swing, with the airing of public service announcements all across the country. What is the real meaning behind this initiative?

According to Alex Epstein, an analyst with the Ayn Rand Center, “This collectivist belief in the supremacy of the group over the individual is the foundation of the national-service ideology, which regards the individual as a servant to the nation. National service is a moral duty, its advocates claim, and the government should teach us that it is an integral part of American citizenship.

“Every totalitarian society in history has rested on the premise of man's alleged duty to the state. It was Adolf Hitler, for example, who preached that ‘the higher interests involved in the life of the whole must set the limits and lay down the duties of the interests of the individual.’ And the proponents of ‘duty’ to the state, although they claim to be patriots, are espousing a view that is fundamentally un-American.

“American individualism and freedom are incompatible with the noton that people are servants who owe their lives--or any portion of them--to the state.”