This commentary was originally published in the New Hampshire Bulletin on February 9, 2026.
By Dan Weeks
Twenty-five years ago, as a youngster in high school wondering what would come next, I came across an old idea: national service.
Sure, I had done my share of volunteering at church and around town, but I had never considered serving my country full-time as part of some common project. Until a pair of unusual experiences opened my eyes to the power of national service, both as an end in itself and a means to the end of solving some of America’s toughest problems.
The first experience began with an unexpected invitation from our nation’s largest veterans service organization, the American Legion. Together with 99 other high schoolers from all 50 states, I traveled to Washington, D.C., for a week of hands-on learning about American democracy and the military at Boys Nation. We ran mock elections based on platforms, not party. We wrote and debated legislation on issues that mattered to us. We practiced military traditions like the Color Guard. And we visited the three branches of government and Arlington National Cemetery, where members of my family are buried. Inspired by these examples of national service, I went on to tour the military service academies and contemplate a life in uniform.
The second experience came on the heels of my public high school graduation in 2001. Rather than head straight to college or work, I followed the advice of my Grandpa, a former Army officer in World War II, and signed up for a year of full-time service with AmeriCorps back in our Nation’s Capitol. Our corps of 50 young volunteers at City Year Washington, D.C., came from small towns and large cities in every region of the country. We were high school dropouts working to earn our GED and college grads en route to law school, and everything in between. We were rich and poor, religious and atheist, liberal and conservative, straight and gay, Black, white, and brown. But in spite of our many differences, we were unified by our commitment to make our country better by helping kids from poor families succeed in school — not to mention our common experience navigating an expensive city on meager stipends while juggling part-time jobs.
Days into my AmeriCorps year, these two alternative streams of civil and military service collided in my mind. When the Pentagon was struck at 9:37 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, across the river from where our corps was training, I watched dark plumes of smoke fill a bright blue sky and knew things would never be the same. While much of the city sheltered at home, I felt compelled to walk the streets of Washington — eerily empty but for the National Guard troops protecting the White House — and waited in line for seven hours the next day to donate blood with other AmeriCorps volunteers. Listening to taps at night from the Navy base next door to where I lived took my breath away.
Although a part of me longed to enlist in the armed forces then and there, I remembered my Grandpa’s words about serving my community and renewed my commitment to AmeriCorps. In the process, I experienced the power and privilege of national service, and came to appreciate how many different forms it can take. Although our sacrifice paled in comparison to that of my peers who risked their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq, I was grateful for the chance to be a small part of nation-building at home by leading a service-learning program for low-income kids.
The national benefits of national service
Today, America’s need for national service to tackle tough problems at home and abroad — and bring our people together — is greater than ever.
Although our military remains the envy of the world, its power lies less in hardware and technology than in the brave men and women who put on the uniform and serve with integrity. As America confronts active and emerging threats to peace in the 21st century — from Russian aggression in Europe to persistent instability in the Middle East to the destabilizing effects of climate change and mass migration — we need more courageous citizens with diverse skills and backgrounds to continue the centuries-old tradition of service. Recruiting across the major branches was far behind goal in recent years, especially in the Army Reserve, although 2025 showed evidence of a rebound for active duty components.
These human service members bring something no AI can: a moral understanding of the imperative of “peace through strength” and a commitment to the officer’s oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” The power of a military firmly rooted in the rule of law — including international humanitarian laws America helped promulgate after defeating fascism in World War II and ratified under the U.S. Constitution — cannot be overstated as a force for stability and peace in the 21st century. It is part of our nation’s compelling combination of hard and soft power that has so far prevented another world war and maintained a global system highly conducive to American interests.
Even as we work for peace and security abroad, we cannot overlook the many challenges facing America at home, which call for a complementary form of national service. After generations of upward social mobility, our economy no longer seems capable of delivering the American Dream for children from poor and working-class families — especially as the cost of basic needs like housing has risen sharply over time. Our public education system was once the envy of the world but American students now rank 12th in science and 28th in math out of 37 developed nations. In low-income communities with poorly-funded public schools, fully one-third of all students do not finish high school, setting them up for a lifetime of poorer health and $36,000 less in annual earnings compared to their peers with college degrees. The cost to society of a single high school dropout is estimated at $456,000 in today’s dollars, on account of higher rates of crime, joblessness, and dependence on social services.
Beyond such educational inequities and declining social mobility, communities from coast to coast are increasingly battered by climate disasters, with billion-dollar storms, wildfires, and droughts now occurring once every two weeks — seven times more frequently than when I was a kid. These and other environmental hazards are disproportionately concentrated in low-income communities, where Americans are also much more likely to get sick and die from fossil fuel pollution.
Fortunately, deploying highly trained civilian volunteers through AmeriCorps programs like City Year, the National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC), and FEMA Corps can help address these challenges in a highly cost-effective way. In spite of limited government support and awareness, hundreds of thousands of patriotic young citizens raise their hand each year to serve with AmeriCorps and around 200,000 are granted placements in 36,000 locations nationwide, directly aiding more than 5 million Americans in need.
Their impact has been well-documented through independent research across the six focus areas of education, economic opportunity, disaster response, environmental stewardship, public health, and veterans and military families. City Year alone has been shown to boost educational outcomes in hundreds of high-poverty schools, meaning more American kids graduate high school and realize their God-given potential as productive members of society.
To say that AmeriCorps is a good deal for taxpayers would be an understatement. According to the independent consulting agency ICF, AmeriCorps programs return $17.30 in public benefits for every $1 in government spending, with a federal investment of $1.48 billion in the last available budget (2024) or one 1,000th the current military budget. When I served in AmeriCorps, the living stipend we corps members earned (in lieu of a salary) was around $3 an hour, plus $5,000 toward the cost of college after a year of service. Although it isn’t much higher today, that hasn’t stopped millions of young Americans from signing up to serve since AmeriCorps began in 1993 until the present day. Sadly, their service and any hopes of expansion are under threat today, as the current administration abruptly slashed congressionally-approved funding for AmeriCorps last spring and put tens of thousands of volunteers out of work. Some of the funding was restored last September on orders from a federal judge.
Polarization and the threat to democracy
But national service is more than just a means to the end of American security abroad and expanding opportunity at home. It is also an end in itself.
That is true for the more than 2 million individual Americans currently serving in the U.S. armed forces, and the roughly 200,000 who annually commit a year or more of service with AmeriCorps, before the recent cuts. The ethic and skills these service members develop have been shown to expand their own life opportunity and make them the kind of active and empathetic citizens we need today.
Which brings me to the crisis of political polarization and individual isolation that threatens American democracy itself.
By all accounts, America is more divided than we have been in generations. According to a recent New York Times/Sienna poll, political polarization now ranks as the single most important problem facing the country for young Americans and independents, and the second most important problem for the population as a whole, behind the economy. In fact, the poll found that a large majority of registered voters — 64% — believe our country’s political system is too divided to solve our problems, while just 33% had faith that it could. This pessimistic view of American politics held true regardless of party, age, race, and education.
Other surveys from across the spectrum have found the same, or worse. According to a Fox News survey during the last administration, 95% of Americans are concerned about political divisions within the country, with 38 percent saying they are “very concerned” and another 45% saying they are “extremely concerned.” Even more respondents in Fox’s nationwide sample said they were very or extremely concerned about the future of American democracy and the future of the country in general. In fact, we are so divided as Americans that the only thing nearly all of us (93%) agree on is the urgent need to reduce divisiveness in America, according to the nonpartisan nonprofit research group Public Agenda.
There is no silver bullet to cure the dangerous divisions that pit us against one another. But a growing body of evidence finds that national service can effectively reduce political polarization while producing higher voter turnout and other forms of civic engagement among those who serve. The process is simple enough: Civil and military service bring young Americans together from every background and corner of the country, as relative equals, for a shared experience outside their comfort zone. Their commitment is not to a particular cause or ideology but to the nation and its people as a whole. In the process, those young volunteers grow in empathy and learn that what unites them is far greater and more important than what divides them. They also learn that working together across stubborn (and often stupid) divides as not as hard as they may have thought.
For these reasons and more, national leaders from across the political spectrum like former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew have called for a year of paid national service for every young American. Shifting from today’s voluntary model, where millions of young people are unaware of service opportunities and subject to social media-drenched tribalism and partisan isolation, to near-universal service would be a game changer.
As retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal wrote in Time Magazine, solving America’s toughest problems “requires trust and consensus — the hard and disappearing work of democracy. … Through a serious commitment to bridging our differences and restoring our confidence in solving big challenges together, America can reignite the energy needed to make our country what it can be” through national service.
Eric Liu, the CEO of Citizen University, put it even more bluntly in Politico: “Give tens of millions of young Americans that kind of cross-pollinating, solutions-oriented, stereotype-busting, face-to-face experience year after year. In a single generation our political climate will be detoxified and the body politic rejuvenated.”
What can we do as concerned citizens? Although many of us have left our youthful years behind, opportunities to both serve and build the service movement abound. In addition to advocating for national service with nonpartisan organizations like Voices for National Service and the Service Year Alliance, middle-aged and older people can join AmeriCorps Seniors (pending funding cuts) or sign up with countless independent nonprofits in our own communities. The armed forces also welcomes citizens in their 30s and even 40s who are physically able to serve, especially in Reserve and National Guard units that have struggled to maintain their numbers.
And let us not forget the young people in our lives, who look to us for guidance on how to build not just a better life for themselves but also thriving communities in which to raise families of their own. For them, a new standard of universal national service in either civilian or military roles can pave the way to a brighter future. It is an old idea whose time has come.
As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reminds us, “Everybody can be great because everybody can serve.” Indeed, service is the path to more than human greatness: It is the path to an ever greater nation, marked by “liberty and justice for all.”