Considering mandatory public service | Letter
Published 1:30 am Wednesday, August 5, 2026
PBS TV recently aired an episode of “Firing Line with Margaret Hoover” in which decorated US Army general Stanley McChrystal spoke compellingly about the importance of character in military and national leadership.
He also brought up a subject that I have been thinking about for years: the importance of giving every citizen the “privilege” of national service for at least a year. Acknowledging that most of us have been given the gift of our American citizenship as an accident of birth, McChrystal feels that all too often we lack appreciation for the myriad benefits that status provides. You don’t value what you’re not invested in, he asserts.
After his decades of military service, McChrystal says that he wants this experience of national service for every one of us. This is least of all for the national park renovation, highway cleanup, etc., these service teams might provide, but for the change in perspective the experience could give every participant.
Admitting that “the experience isn’t necessarily enjoyable,” he readily admitted that he himself did not value his own service experience “in this way” in his first few years in the Army. But now, witnessing the obvious hate and general “othering” that appears to motivate too many of us today, worldwide, he states: “You don’t like the people you don’t know.”
But a major benefit of living and working with others of both sexes and all nationalities, races, religions, and economic and geographic backgrounds over many months – as would result from such a mandatory AmeriCorps-like experience – could result in a “repetitious reminder” that you just might share some of their perspectives if you’d also experienced their “life journey.”
These thoughts registered particularly with me in that, after loudly resenting being drafted after college in the 60s, I too have come to appreciate the widened world view those five years in the Navy have given me.
John Butte
Lopez Island
