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Matthew Ivey

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    Leveraging big ideas

    Returning to our common values through national service

    Matthew Ivey
    Brian Nicholson
    February 17, 2022
    military enlistment

    Nearly half of Americans are in favor of compulsory national service, which could include a stint in the military.

    SDI Productions/Getty Images

    Ivey is vice president of legislative affairs and national security for Freedom Technologies, Inc. and a Navy veteran. Nicholson is a government consultant, adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center and an Army veteran.

    Vice President Harris has been widely criticized for her assessment that “our democracy” presented one of the biggest threats to national security. Perhaps the vice president was more correct than the critics are giving her credit for, but the threat she identified (state laws with the proffered goal of ballot integrity) does nothing to address another insidious harm to democracy demonstrated over the last 20 years.

    This past Sept. 11 marked the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on U.S. soil that resulted in almost 3,000 deaths and injuries to several thousand more. Our response to those attacks ushered in the longest uninterrupted period of combat operations in the nation’s history. Yet, although the 9/11 attacks affronted all Americans, only a small percentage of them have sought military service since that tragic day. But beyond the aggressive exercise of presidential war powers across at least four administrations and decades of congressional acquiescence, the people of the United States must also bear some responsibility for their inaction.

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