More than ever, we need mandatory national service

On Nov. 6, the day after the presidential election, I asked a group of my students why Donald Trump won. "Because so many people hate people like us," one of them replied.

He wasn't wrong. The best predictor of how you planned to vote was whether you possessed a college degree. People who haven't graduated from college represent the majority of Americans, and they backed Trump by large margins. As Trump famously quipped, he loves the uneducated. And they love him back.

They also disdain the cultural snobbery of college-educated Democrats, as my student correctly sensed. We proclaim the right thoughts to have, the right food to eat and even the right pronouns to use. And our enemies have had enough of it.

What can we do to heal this "diploma divide"? I've heard colleagues say that we should send more people to college, so they learn how right we really are. But that simply reinforces the GOP suspicion that higher education is a conspiracy to create more Democrats.

Instead, we need to create a shared educational experience for everyone — whether they attend college or not.

I'm talking about required national service, which would teach different Americans that they are part of one nation. In our hyper-polarized times, that's the only thing that can bring all of us together.

The United States ended its military draft in 1973, after a panel appointed by Richard Nixon recommended an all-volunteer army. It wasn't long-haired hippies who ended conscription; it was libertarian Republicans, who argued that compulsory service violates "the freedom of the individual to determine his own life."

But in America, some people have more freedom to determine their own lives than others. And when service isn't mandatory, people with fewer life choices are more likely to choose it.

That's why Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy and New York Rep. Charles Rangel — two of the most liberal members of Congress — opposed ending the draft. As Kennedy argued, an all-volunteer army would result in "poor people fighting rich men's wars."

Rangel would later sponsor four bills to mandate national service. His proposal would have required all men and women between 18 and 25 to work for two years, either in the military or in a civilian capacity. If you didn't want to be a soldier, you'd have to serve in other ways.

"It'll be the Peace Corps for our own country," Rangel said in 2011, referencing a hurricane that blew through the Gulf Coast a few years earlier. "From helping to rebuild New Orleans, providing security at our nation's ports, or working in areas of extreme poverty in this country, there are plenty of jobs that will not only help our young adults learn about their country, but also provide them with invaluable experiences and training that will enrich their lives."

As a former Peace Corps volunteer, I can confirm that my two years abroad taught me about the world and transformed my life. But I also know that my own country has enormous needs, which we could tackle more effectively if everyone was required to help.

Children are still suffering from the learning loss they incurred during the COVID-era shutdown of schools. At the other end of the age spectrum, senior citizens often can't find — or afford — the care they need. And homelessness has spiked to a record high.

There's also a need for more soldiers in the military, which fell short of its recruiting goals by over 40,000 last year. That's why Donald Trump's last defense secretary, Christopher Miller, has suggested that the U.S. institute a new national service requirement. And other GOP leaders — including Vice President-elect JD Vance and Sen. Lindsay Graham (S.C.) — have indicated that they're open to the idea.

But it drew a quick rebuke from Trump, who avoided military service by claiming he had bone spurs. Compulsory national service was "ridiculous," Trump tweeted in June, and journalists who insinuated that he might support it were engaged in another "failed attempt" to "damage" his electoral prospects.

Actually, most voters favor mandatory national service. In a 2023 survey, 75 percent of Americans between 18-24 said they would support a required term of service so long as participation in the military remained optional. And 60 percent of people in the study said that Americans were too divided, and that they would benefit from a "common experience."

A century ago, at another polarized moment in American history, Harvard philosopher William James made a similar point. If everyone had to engage in national service, James wrote, "no one would remain blind as the luxurious classes now are blind, to man's relations to the globe." Building roads and tunnels — or washing clothes and dishes — young people would "get the childishness knocked out of them" and "come back into society with healthier sympathies and soberer ideas."

That's exactly right. The diploma divide has prevented us from developing healthy sympathies with each other. The only way to generate soberer ideas — and to overcome our childish aversion to the other political team — is to put everyone to work, on the same team. And for the same nation.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He served in the Peace Corps in Nepal from 1983 to 1985.