 Hi everybody, I'm Chris Lethem, and today's guest is the venerable Jay Fidel here in Tink Tekwai. And we're going to be talking about a very interesting topic. We're going to be talking about national service. Thank you for being my guest today, Jay. Thank you, Chris. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming on this very important topic. It's an interesting topic. And national service, of course, is something that we had as part of the draft. And then we had the Peace Corps. And of course, I think the Peace Corps was a voluntary activity, it's all volunteers. Now, you said to me today, let's talk about national service. So what is it about national service that you think would be, well, let's start with a problem maybe. Let's start with that. What do you think is the problem that we need to solve? I think it's the dissociation of the American public with the government. Nobody feels any connection with the government or the country. Everybody goes through life, all of life, and their children's life. And so far we've had, since what, in the middle 70s, when we gave up the draft. That's, gee, my goodness, that's almost 50 years, it is 50 years, 40 years. Yeah, that's right. 40 years, 40 years without a draft. And people, generations have gone by, you know, two, three, four generations. And nobody thinks about it anymore. Nobody thinks about defending their nation, helping their nation, being involved in the process of their nation. The government, the country seems to be a party adverse to most of us, to a lot of us. We protest what they do. We complain bitterly of some people, you know, try to avoid paying taxes, which is the only lingering connection for a lot of people. And so I think what we have is a country that is dissociated, dissociated with itself. I remember when I was in junior high school, and World War II, Vietnam was still going on. I was afraid. I mean, I was afraid that I was going to be drafted, sent to Vietnam, and end up in a body bag. I had nightmares about it, and it's a very scary thing. It was one of those things that sort of, my night terrors as a teenager was, because my uncle went there, my father went there, you know, it was horrible experience for them. They came back. Suddenly screwed up from the whole thing. It wasn't a well-run war. No. It wasn't a well-motivated war, it was a bad war all the way around. And so, you know, we got rid of it because it was so unpopular. But you know, the unintended consequence of that, of course, now is that our young people now grow up, they have a sort of, it's us versus them mindset. We do have an all-volunteer service, you know, our military is all-volunteer. I still think we have the Peace Corps or some variation of the Peace Corps out there. You do. We're having a show in the interim. You know what the inside guys call the Peace Corps? What? Piscorps. Piscorps. Which is the way it's pronounced in some countries where it exists. Piscorps. Yeah. I like the Marine Corps. Yeah. Yeah, same thing. Yeah, yeah. You go back to, you know, the point of the end of the draft reflected the dissatisfaction with the Vietnam War, which had an effect maybe that nobody realized at the time. It alienated the younger generations, not only then, but in the years to come. Just as you said, you know, 10, 20, 30 years later, kids were still having night terrors over the possibility of being drawn into a stupid war. That's what it taught us. All of us and our children's children. And you know, I don't think the people who were responsible for the war at the time realized the length of the shadow that it would cast on this country. Well, and also if you think about it, I mean, it wasn't the wealthy that went into, that got drafted. I mean, they went to college. Though the parents had money, there was money for them to go to a major university or a minor university or a junior college. They didn't get drafted. It wasn't fair. And it wasn't fair. It was not fair. It wasn't fair on so many levels. Yeah. It drafted only men. It drafted only women. And so, you know, if you were a poor or a young middle class guy or, you know, a sub-middle class, you kind of saw this looming fate of ending up in a combat zone. Yeah. And getting killed. Yeah. For reasons that were not nearly as clear as World War II was. Right. Yeah. So, you know, the unintended consequence of all of that, I met the guy, the lawyer who worked for the Department of Defense, who was instructed to take it apart. It was his job to unravel the draft. And he did. And he was proud of his work. It was a big, you know, point in his life professionally. But actually, I had an argument with him about it because I thought it was not well motivated. It should have been fixed, not terminated. And as a result, you know, we were left at that moment in time with a peace score that was struggling. By then, the peace score had kind of unraveled. Vista, you know, and domestic service, that had unraveled. And still, I mean, it's of no consequences, very little consequences these days. Right. And there was really no national service for anyone. Where in other countries, perhaps more successful in this way, there is national service. And you don't have to be on the battlefield. You can be doing it in many ways. But you are bonding up to the country. You're doing your share. You begin to understand that the country needs you, that you are part of the country and the country is part of you. We've lost that. And that's why I think losing the draft was a huge mistake. It should have been reformed rather than terminated. That terminated. And of course, this happened during the Nixon administration. And that had its own consequences, of course. But if we were going to reimplement a national service program, wouldn't we find ourselves, wouldn't the powerful elite have the ability to come in and lobby about how that piece of legislation would be developed? I'm reminded of the Civil War, where for $300, and most people didn't have $300, you could buy your way out. That was really unfair. And it meant that people at the low end of the economic spectrum, they were the ones who fought the war and died on the battlefield of Gettysburg, what have you. Very unfair. We would have to be much smarter about it if we were going to do a military draft. And we would have to be much smarter about deploying troops into a battlefield that was dangerous to the point of scaring everybody away. I don't think we've mastered that. And I don't know how we do that exactly. But I think you ramp up, I think. If you ask me, how can we restore the notion of national service? Well, first of all, you make opportunities for people to serve the government, such as the Peace Corps. And you pay them. And maybe it's not involuntary. Maybe it's voluntary, at least for a while, at least to see how it works. But you have to build a structure. There has to be infrastructure to something like this. I agree. There has to be a lot of thought and effort put into building a structure where you have authority at the top that's not going to abuse this opportunity. And it's going to put people to work in a value-added means. So my question is... This is not impossible. Right. Do you write out a high school, or do you wait until they have a couple years of college so that they have more skills, more assets? Do you give them the option? Does it... Is it one year, two years? You know, if you locked you and me in a room for a couple hours, we'd come up with a program. I think we could. You know? And maybe it would be after high school, and maybe I would pay for your college. Or it would be after college, and I would pay you for the fact that you already had a college education. And then the fact that you have more skills after college that you could bring to the table. Yes. Or maybe you didn't have the money to go to college, you were then given the opportunity to attend classes and develop a trade that you could then use, say... A trade? ...as a Peace Corps volunteer. Yeah, I think Peace Corps graduates, if you will, have been quite successful in our world. But we have some other... We have some other problems, though. We have a crumbling infrastructure. Do we put them to work rebuilding our infrastructure? Domestically. Domestically. On highways. Well... Do we put them to work in areas where it's going to be costly to hire contractors where we could use younger people who could develop that trade in building roads and bridges and get the experience that they needed, or do we work it more like a... Well, what they do in Germany, for example, you come in as an apprentice. Do we build out a government service apprentice project? Because to me, you kill two birds with one stone. At least two birds. Maybe more. If it's an apprentice-style program. The word apprentice calls to mind Donald Trump. Remember him? Yes. And the fact... And he's talking about building infrastructure. Right. So, Donald, if you're listening, I hope you are, you know, most of us listen to you. We have no choice. Yes. But, you know, maybe you should listen to us once in a while. And the thought would be, if you're going to do this thing about building infrastructure, you should build the infrastructure of an organization that brings young people in voluntarily to do national service. And you pay them. And you give them a life. You give them training. You make professionals out of them. And a few years later, you know, they can go out for the business community much better prepared to deal with it. And everybody is connected. They are connected with the country. The country is connected with them. We all feel part of the same program. The problem there is how to integrate those people, those kids, if you will, with the corporate contractor structure of the people are going to build these highways and build these bridges. And I think it's doable. You just create sort of a class of domestic workers, domestic construction workers. See this competition already with unions. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, well, yeah. See, they're in life throughout. And you give them a special, you know, like internship arrangement. And you pay them less, but you have them do national service that way. And you'd have to get by a lot of political obstacles. But I think it would be very good for the country. And probably good for the mission of building infrastructure. Well, and here's the thing. What you're doing is you're not just investing in infrastructure. You're investing in people. You know, one of the great things about our space program is that we invested in not only building spaceships, we built, we invested in people and helped people develop incredible skill sets that, by the way, we have lost. Those people have retired or have passed on. And the things that they could do, there aren't people today who can do the things that they did. Which is amazing. You think computers can solve all these problems, but you know, sometimes computers aren't creative. At the end of the day, it's people. I mean, I think the military has lost a lot since the draft went away. And I think of that guy, Snowden. You know, Snowden was dealing with the highest level of national secrets, had the very high classified classification. He didn't have access to just about anything he wanted access to. And the clearance, you know, and all that. And he wasn't worth it. He wasn't prepared for it. He wasn't trained for it. He wasn't committed. He wasn't loyal. Sorry. I mean, I don't sympathize with him at all. He can claim whistleblower, but we can't have a nation of whistleblowers. We have to have a nation that actually works together on stuff. So anyway, you know, to me, all these contractors out there, there are 1.5 million top secret clearances in this country, and a great number of them are not even the people that are subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Right. Both secretaries. If they work on a military base and they type letters, they have to have a secret clearance. It's a sieve. Yeah. And, you know, we can't really operate in a global environment with a sieve. We've got to have people who we know are loyal and committed and all that. And sorry to say, but I believe that the best way to do that is to have them in uniform, as part of the Uniform Services and subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and just as committed as they can be. And you get that either by voluntary service or you get it by drafting, just like in the good old days. So either way, you're going to step on some little yellow footprints somewhere in the world. I'm not going to have Snowden's in my military force. Well, we're going to take a break, and we're going to, talking with Jay Fidel here about national service. And we'll be right back here with Think Tech Hawaii on the economy news. Aloha. Hello. This is Martin de Spang. I want to get you excited about my new show, which is called Humane Architecture for Hawaii and Beyond. And it's going to be on Think Tech Hawaii from downtown Honolulu on Tuesday afternoon's 5 p.m. And we're going to talk about, to make architecture more inclusive on the islands, which is one of the definitions of humane, which is being tolerant of, you know, many people of nature, of many other influences. So we're going to have some great guests, like today's guest, for example, my collaborator David Rockwood, who is the author of the awesome manifestation of humane architecture in the background. So see you on Tuesdays, 5 p.m., and I look forward to... Well, that's just special. Hi. Hi, I'm back. I mean, today's guest is Jay Fidel, and we're talking about national service and maybe conscripting folks to come back and do work for the government, not necessarily for the military, but doing things that we may need domestically that would be beneficial to, as Trump says, making America great again. I was in the Marine Corps. You know, I can talk about the experience of how I went down to the Marine Corps Recruiters' Office. And when you go down to the Marine Corps Recruiters' Office, how nice they were to me, especially the Marine Corps Recruiters. This guy was like my long-lost brother. That's his job. That was his job. And so I went through the APs, and they did the final hygiene inspection and health check. They sent me on a plane to San Diego, California, and there I was met by a very grumpy guy with a drill instructor hat who told me to shut up, sit down, sit in the bus, and don't make a peek. Nothing like the recruiter. Yes. That's right. And so that very long bus ride from the airport to Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, has a long drive. The whole thing about food camp breaks you down. That was, yes. It breaks you down, and then it builds you up, and it makes you another kind of person. And in many cases, a better person. Well, it was, let's say, it was a bit of a shock. Just because when the bus pulled in there and stopped, we saw it laid out in front of us a whole grid of footprints on the pavement. And the guy gets on the bus and he screams at us about how we have about a heartbeat to get our butts off the bus and get our feet on the little yellow footprints to stand to position attention and do not make a sound. The only thing we were allowed to do is breathe. So what were they, what did they intend to do with you then? I mean, what was the purpose of all of that? Well, I think the first was to gain control. I think in the very beginning it's all about gaining control, and it's identifying, you know, it's a little bit like Sun Tzu. I don't know if you know the story of Sun Tzu, and he brought out the emperor's maidance and he was going to show the emperor concubines. He was going to, the emperor had asked him to show the importance of drill and why drill was important. And so he tried to train the concubines how to drill. And the concubines just laughed. So he went over and he killed the emperor's favorite concubine right there, just killed her. And of course then when he said, right face, all the concubines burn right, yes, yes, yes. So I think it was all about, you know, sort of gaining initial control. But it does make you a different person, right? You know, I think the Marine Corps training is unique to some of the other services only because it is, there's no holds barred. You can have three drill instructors screaming at you all at the same time. At the same, at the same, in the same instance, though, they are trying to help you develop a mindset of excellence. It's all about excellence. It's not just all that business about killing, it's excellence. It's actually working toward a goal and achieving the goal without hesitation in total confidence and self-reliance. Yes. You are always, it's always, there's never enough time to get anything done. They never give you enough time to accomplish the thing that you're supposed to accomplish. So you're always in a high-stress scenario. I call it kindergarten for combat, okay? Bootcamp is kindergarten for combat. It's a stressful environment. You don't have enough time. You never have any control over anything that's going on in your environment. You're being told what to do, where to sit, what to learn, be able to absorb information, put it out there. Would you say that a conscripted military force in our experience, in the national experience, is a better qualified force than a volunteer force? I wouldn't say so. I wouldn't say so. But what I would say is, if you have a conscripted source, what you can do, though, is you could pick what probably, I think should happen, is you take the best of the best out of the conscripted source. Those who have the fortitude, the desire, and willingness to move into, say, a military life, or military service as regulars, yes. Not reserves but regulars. Right, yeah. And then those who aren't necessarily that you would say, hmm, I'm not really sure that this guy would do well here, because really there needs to be a cohesion. So you have a bigger, better pool to choose from when you're choosing your career people. That's right. But you also need... It's very important in combat that you have a cohesive force, you know? And so if you're going to be, have somebody who's not going to add to that cohesion, then sincerely, that's going to be a problem. Even when I'm next to you on the battlefield. That's right. I don't want somebody next to me that I can't rely on, you know? I want to know that that guy that I'm fighting for next to me is also fighting, you know, is fighting, looking after my interest. Did you go because you were drafted or because you went voluntarily? Oh, I went voluntarily. Actually, my initial intent was to go into the Air Force, but just that Marine Corps recruiter was just such a nice guy. Yeah. And he promised me everything I was going to get. Well, at the end of the day, how many years did you spend in? I spent... I spent two contracts with the Marine Corps. So the first one was a four-and-a-half-year contract, and then I extended... I extended and then I signed up again for another four-year contract. Why did you re-up? I was going to college and I was broke. Fair enough. And that recruiter told me how he was going to get me more money first. But it offered you a solution. It offered you a better life. It offered me just... Yes. Right, yeah. So my question, this is really an important thing. At the end of that period of, what, eight years or so, do you feel that you were more patriotic than you were when you started? Was I more patriotic? You know, I was always somewhat patriotic as a kid. I had a certain feeling of patriotism, but there was also a fear there that I was going to not be in control of the situation as a teenager. So I was, yes, I would say I was more patriotic, but I also was much more confident in who I am as a person. And from somebody who had a low self-esteem issues, and I had low self-esteem issues, I grew up in a very poor environment and we moved around a lot. I would say my family is probably under the... If you look under the dictionary, it is dysfunctional. You would find our family name alliterate. You heard it here on the thing. Yes, right here. Yeah, there it is, right there, under dysfunctional. And so it was challenging. I had attended 13 different schools by the time I graduated high school. So that's one of the important things, I think, that a lot of people in the country, a lot of people in the world, you know, they don't have ideal childhoods, ideal situations. They bounce from pillar to post. They have dysfunctionality around them in one way or the other, and they're not really grounded by the time they're ready to enter the workforce. That's right. But the military or dedication to national service can change that. It can. Especially if you come from an environment where there's very low expectations. And one of the challenges is that when you stay in a family environment where there are very low expectations, the opportunity to exceed those and to get into a place where you can move out of that space is really an imperative to success. These days, about 80% of the kids by the time they graduate high school are no longer living in a sort of mom and dad, Aussie family environment where you have mom and dad living together and the kids are all living in the same household. That creates a lot of dysfunction. We now have two girls for every guy in our college system. Guys are failing in incredibly, they're dropping out. They're not going into the college or maybe they're going into trades, but even the ones that get into college aren't graduating. And so we are creating an imbalance. And especially if you think about the need for us to stay in the advanced posture that we're supposed to be in in technology, we are now becoming much more reliant on people from overseas coming in and filling these positions and taking up these opportunities, which weakens us as a nation in my mind. And we're more relying on the government to bail us out if we don't do so well, if we go bankrupt, go off the side, go homeless. We're relying on the government that will take care of us, the social safety net. And so I don't think we have the same sort of national backbone about getting out there, working hard, making a living, making a life. And I think the military or national service in general helps you at least understand the problem. Well, part of the problem I think is the mindset of everybody's a victim. Everybody's a victim of something. Okay, fine, we are victims of something. You know, if you're, you know, if you come from a minority, then you're a victim of the fact that you're a minority, you don't have the same opportunities. On the other hand, if you grow up white and poor, you know, you still have economic disadvantages because you aren't able to maybe go to college and get the education where somebody comes from a wealthy family has. So there are lots of, everybody has their challenges. So the question is, do we, do we, do we say, look, we're better off working from a perspective of giving people a hand up and helping to find success earlier in life? Or because in the back end you're going to end up giving them a hand out? Yeah, I don't think there's any question about what the answer is. The only question is whether people are willing to, you know, leave their comfort zone, willing to take the chance that they, you know, they might be called into a theater of war and hurt or killed, which is another, another kind of issue, and that's a political issue in Washington. But I think, you know, the country would be better if people could, you know, my experience in the service was that I found that it was a great leveler. It was all races, all creeds, all religions, all together, people from all parts of the country, from all persuasions, all in the same bag, all in the same bailiwick. You had to deal with each other. It was totally democratic, and it was totally, it was like universal. All of a sudden, I was not a member of a group from one state or the other or one neighbor or the other. I was a member of a group that was national, in fact international, and I really enjoyed spreading my wings into that group. That really helped me figure out my role in the world. Well, I will tell you, Jay, for me, my first duty station was in Japan, not Okinawa, but in mainland Japan. And when my feet hit the ground in Japan, having had a really not, not so great childhood, I said, this is a chance for me to rewrite my life. I get a do-over. Today is a do-over. Nobody knows me, nobody's ever met me before. What they know about me from this day forward has not only to do with what I present. And it was true, wasn't it? Yes. You really did have that opportunity. Yes. You really took advantage of it. I did. Thanks to the fact that you had gone into the Marine Corps. It changed your life. And I think, I mean, of course, we're talking about the military largely here, but we're also, we should also be talking about, you know, civilian national service where people can have that opportunity. They can see the broader picture. They can feel connected with the United States. They can see that they are part of it. It is part of them. And that we can't afford, you know, not to be the United States. We can't afford to, you know, all be beaten up on the country all the time. That's right. And we're going to lose our country that way. So to me, national service is the way you keep your country. It's the way you keep your country. And for the young people, it's a chance to recast their lives, you know, a chance to start afresh and have opportunities that otherwise would not have been provided to you. Yes. Nothing to lose. Everything. I think everybody wins. I think we just need to get whatever obstacles are in the way. We need to sort of learn how to push those aside because the interest of contractors and unions shouldn't take precedence over the interests of our nation. Thank you, Chris. Thank you very much, Jay. Thank you for being on the show. Absolutely. Thank you for doing it. I'm Chris Lither with Economy NU, and with today's guest Jay Fiedel. We look forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks right here in Tik Tekawaii. Have a great day. Aloha.