Renewing Blue-Collar America

My fellow Americans,

I'm here today to put America to work in a way we haven't for sixty-five years now. I'm proposing a plan to reinstate the draft. But this will not be your typical draft. Sure, those we draft can join the military if they so choose, and if they qualify. But the biggest part of the draft will be for the civil service. And for that civil service, we won't just be drafting 18-year olds. Others who are older, up to age 60, can volunteer too.

The civil service I propose will renew Blue-Collar America. This is the America we all know and love. It's one whose values we all share. We value hard work. We value learning a trade and becoming good at it. Most of all, we value those who take care of themselves, and take care of each other too.

America wants to roll up its sleeves. I want to harness that enthusiasm. So I propose we create a workforce for the 21st century. We need blue-collar help. Once Congress institutes this draft, everyone drafted will learn a trade. After they're trained, these new civil workers will serve the United States as tradespeople for three years.

These trades won't just be the trades we're all familiar with. We'll be creating new trades, too. Some of these new, blue-collar trades we'll borrow from the military: medic, for example. Others are professions we're reclassifying as trades. The occupation of computer programmer, for example, shouldn't be a white-collar job. You don't have to go to college to learn how to program a computer. Programmers are just some of the builders of the 21st century. They're just building online. Same with database administrators, or those in computer networking.

We also need other kinds of building trades, of course. We need trades to construct a nationwide high-speed rail system. In fact, we need all sorts of 21st century transport. We need a smart electrical grid. We need ways to generate power renewably. We need to rebuild our bridges, our roads and our ports. We need people to renew and protect the water supply. We need to reclaim towns that are abandoned and convert that land to farmland, or its natural state. Those who are part of the new draft will learn state-of-the-art methods to do these things.

We also need blue-collar trades in other fields. We need field healthcare workers--like the medics in the field the military, they won't be white collar. We need organic farmers. We need foresters, and conservationists. In short, we need to give all the working people of America the skills they need to build the 21st century we want.

To implement this plan, we can use the same system the Department of Defense uses to receive, train and utilize its enlisted ranks. We'll expand that system dramatically. That's why we need the help of our Armed Forces too, not to mention the help of our existing civil service.

It will be the most massive training and retraining program we've ever embarked on. So we'll need a lot of teachers, too. That's why I'm hoping some of the volunteers, those who have already been in the workforce, can become teachers. And I'd invite people who already are teachers to help too.

America, I invite your help and guidance to make this unprecedented effort possible. Learning and using a trade, not to mention sharing your knowledge and teaching someone else a trade, is one of the most important ways you can contribute to your country. We can't just talk about a 21st century--we need to build it. In the coming years, I look forward to rolling up my sleeves and working side by side with you. Let's get to work.

Pandora