Tough to have real freedom in a nation full of selfish people

I have never really understood the people who argue that there should be less and less government and more and more freedom.

To me it seems as if their argument boils down to one thing -- man is basically good and the more freedom we give him, the better he will be.

Let's examine that thought for a minute. We have lessened regulation and/or restrictions on nearly every aspect of our culture, so should me assume that our movies, television, music and books are now better, more uplifting, more celebratory of the human spirit?

Did you see Miley Cyrus's performance the other night?

I don't even want to think about who found that uplifting. Of course, Cyrus is just following in the footsteps of Lindsay Lohan, Britney and Jamie Spears and a host of others.

I don't want to be too condemnatory about how that contributed to our culture, but let's just say that if "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" appeals to our better angels and our higher instincts, Ms. Cyrus appears to be aiming only below the waist.

Of course it's difficult to find much these days that doesn't try to stimulate us or scare us. If you walk out of a movie and you aren't shivering with fear, sexually aroused or both, odds are you're watching something that wasn't made by a major studio.

What disappoints me is that this country never seems to be able to strike a happy medium for long. We go through periods when people are very idealistic and want to contribute to society, and then through periods where all they want is for society to contribute to them.

There are some among us -- I'm one of them -- who believe our country would be far better off with mandatory national service. I'm not talking strictly about the military; people could work in hospitals, in schools and in all sorts of other situations that would help the community. Two years, maybe. Some people would say it doesn't do any good to compel people to serve, that it's no good unless it's what they want to do.

The thing that seems wrong to me about that is that it assumes no one can ever really learn. I've known people who were pushed into doing things they didn't want to do. In some cases, they learned a lot and really expanded their own horizons.

In World War II America, the rich served alongside the poor, a far cry from Civil War America, where someone called to service could pay $300 to hire someone to take their place.

In our current volunteer military, no one has to do anything he doesn't want to do. And we end up with a military made up of the poor and uneducated defending those who, as Dick Cheney once put it about himself, have different priorities.

No matter how much money you have, no matter how much property you own, you're not the person who created this country and made it what it was at least for a while -- the last best hope of mankind. And even if your ancestors did build it, that shouldn't give you a free ride for the rest of your life.

I don't want to force anyone into the military, but there are plenty of other worthwhile jobs that need to be done. Folks could help out in hospitals or schools or they could work in community centers that are always shorthanded.

There wouldn't be much in the way of salary, but there could be benefits after the period of service the way we did things under the old G.I. Bill. But the biggest benefit would be the same thing that happened during World War II, when people got to see how the other half lived. All four of President Roosevelt's sons served on active duty. The Kennedys lost their oldest son when his plane went down.

In World War I, my grandfather -- a poor boy from Ohio -- served with Robert McCormick, the owner of the Chicago Tribune. They kept in touch for decades after the war.

I know there are people who will look at the way black people were treated and the roles to which women were limited and say this wasn't as good a country then. But in so many other ways, the first 60 or 70 years of the last century were so much better. Opportunity was real, and there really were people who grew up poor and through hard work made successes of themselves.

We had more government then, but when it comes to the things that really mattered, we had more freedom too. That's what the ideologues will never understand.