Time Essay: After Proposition 13, Volunteers Needed

The oldest military wisdom advises: "Never volunteer for anything." Americans have traditionally ignored the precept. The U.S. has been famous as a nation of volunteers—minutemen, barn raisers, candy stripers, charity collectors, Rotarians, Elks, D.A.R. committeewomen and radical activists. "Probably in no other country in the world," writes Sociologist Daniel Bell, "is there such a high degree of voluntary communal activity, expressed sometimes in absurd rituals, yet often providing real satisfactions for real needs." Gunnar Myrdal once observed: "It is natural for the ordinary American when he sees something wrong to feel not...

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