In recent years, when the U.S. was mired in two wars that seemed to be ignored by the public at large, some politicos and pundits talked about resurrecting the military draft. As you can guess, the idea didn't gain any traction. We Americans prefer to outsource our wars to willing volunteers. But what about some other form of national service program with a civic-minded goal? Matthew Nisbet discusses an intriguing idea:
Like climate change or poverty, political polarization in the United States may itself be a "wicked" problem, not something we are going to solve or end over the next decade, but rather something we will need to address, manage, and adapt to via a diversity of approaches. Introducing a national service program for high school graduates may be one such effective approach. Here's why. A major enabler of political polarization, as chronicled by journalist Bill Bishop in his book "The Big Sort," is the problem of geographical balkanization. We have always tended to associate and socialize with people who share our world-views and that tendency has accelerated over the last two decades. This is especially the case among the college-educated who are the most attentive to politics and have the best developed mental map for how to consistently interpret new events, elections, and issues through an ideological lens. The college-educated based on their affluence and geographic mobility have gravitated to neighborhoods and regions of the country where they increasingly live with others who vote and think about politics like they do.
Nisbet goes on to say that what's missing "is cross-talk, conversations and interactions that build trust, empathy, and understanding for the other side. Instead, our images of the other are dominated by narratives from our like minded media sources, narratives that are too often outrage fueled rants about the other." The idea of a civics-oriented national service program is new to me. But Nisbet says it has been floated by liberals and conservatives alike. Here's how he describes what it would look like:
The program would send graduates to politically and socially dissimilar communities to engage in AmeriCorps or Teach for America-style community service. In these regions, graduates would work with others from a mix of political and social backgrounds and live and engage with communities not like theirs.
It kinda sounds like a domestic version of the foreign exchange student program. Instead of young American students going abroad to experience a different culture, they would just go to another part of their own country. Interesting concept. Might something like this help reduce political polarization?
