Answer this: What’s the difference between the United States and Yemen?

Sorry if you answered “economic prosperity.” In fact, you’re wrong. The difference is that Yemen recently ended its rules establishing compulsory military service. Alas, yet again, our country has fallen behind that economic and civil rights giant of Yemen, since Congressmen Nick Smith, R-Mich., and Curt Weldon, R-Pa., are doing quite the opposite, pushing for a bill (H.R. 3598) requiring a six-month mandatory “boot camp” for American teens.

The boot camp won’t be military service, but instead will focus on physical fitness, vocational training and community service.

While each of these goals could feasibly benefit our nation as a whole, there are definitely questions as to whether it is a good idea to enact such a boot camp. Well, actually, no, there really aren’t. It’s a terrible idea, one of the worst and most unconstitutional ideas that’s come from the mouth of any American.

The first problem, and one which Smith even admits is a serious issue – no one knows how much this could end up costing. But even if it only cost $1 for each teenager it sent to camp, it’d still cost too much. And we’ll get to that issue of constitutionality soon enough.

The second problem with this plan is the bitter irony of it. You’d think if anyone realizes how bad an idea it is to force Americans into service, it would be someone who was drafted and sent to Vietnam. However, Nick Smith has disproved this theory. He stated that one of the primary reasons teens aren’t joining the military is that they’re afraid of doing something they haven’t done before.

He may be right. For instance, I’ve never killed a Taliban commander by slicing his larynx with my Navy SEAL-issued knife. I’m even a little afraid of doing so. This is clearly a personality flaw on my part, and one that must be eradicated as soon as possible.

However, I think Mr. Smith and I are even, because there’s something he hasn’t done. While I’ve never joined the military and experienced that, I’m ahead of him in that I’ve read the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. It’s one of the more popular amendments, since it prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.

Unless Smith establishes a law that makes being a teenager criminal, sending them to a teen internment camp and forcing them to do community service would definitely stand in violation of this, not to mention exceed the powers given to Congress in the oft-overlooked founding document of America.

Smith describes the importance of his farm upbringing as instilling the discipline that he needed, and that this boot camp could instill the same in young Americans.

Again, there’s little doubt that Americans could use discipline.

Boot camps for teenagers work wonders, if old episodes of “Scared Straight” or “Jenny Jones” prove anything. But there’s no reason that everyone in the country needs to be scared into service or patriotism. I take pride in the fact that our country hasn’t resorted to simple indoctrination to discipline people.

If I wanted to be placed in a military-style boot camp to make myself experience military life, I would enlist.

I could, theoretically, be an army of one, and at that, be the weakest army this side of France. I can make that consideration whether or not I’ve been schooled by my government in how to better serve the government.

A good citizen is one who can stand back and criticize the government while still respecting the nature of it. A good American is not one who simply obeys. That may make a good citizen in Egypt or Colombia, but not here.

It would be nice to think we’re safe. After all, there’s no way Congress would pass something so blatantly offensive to the Constitution and to the American spirit. Well, except the Patriot Act and the other legislation pushed through during the Congressional panic-fest in the weeks following Sept. 11.

Nick Smith’s bill could do an important service to American teens. It could wake them up to the possibility of Congress pissing away their constitutional freedoms.

By making them aware of how little some of their governmental leaders care for them and how willing they are to force them into experiences, maybe teens will finally find a reason to vote. The downside is that they’d have to hear about it first. In order to become good citizens, they’d have to already be astute enough to find obscure bills in the Congressional record.

Sorry, American teens. Your Congress doesn’t seem to realize that there’s nothing patriotic about forced submission to governmental authority.

Tim Kearns is a senior in political science from Bellevue, Neb.