MARINA DEL REY, CA--President Bush's call for "national service" is immoral and un-American, said Alex Epstein, a writer for the Ayn Rand Institute.
      "My call tonight is for every American to commit at least two years, four thousand hours over the rest of your lifetime, to the service of your neighbors and your nation," said the President in his State of the Union address.
      "America," said Epstein, "was founded on the idea that each individual is a sovereign being with the moral right to his own life and to the achievement of his own goals. This is the basis of the political idea that the individual possesses inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. American individualism and freedom are incompatible with the notion that people are servants who owe their lives--or any portion of them--to the state or their neighbors."
      "The collectivist belief in the supremacy of the group over the individual is the foundation of the national-service ideology, which regards the individual as a servant to the nation," said Epstein. "Every totalitarian society in history," Epstein warned, "has rested on the premise of man's alleged duty to the state."
      "The attacks of September 11," concluded Epstein, "should remind Americans of what makes our country great--its proud devotion to individualism and freedom. To defend America, we must embrace not the subjugation of the individual to 'national service,' but his sovereign right to the pursuit of his own happiness."

ARI executive director Dr. Yaron Brook is available for interviews on this topic.