But has it really?

Our politicians still speak exclusively in sound bites, boiling complex issues down into handy-dandy campaign quotes that the pollsters have said is what the majority want to hear.

Our corporate employers still squeeze us for every last ounce of production, slashing our benefits and wages while requiring the same amount or more work to be done.

And most egregiously, terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden remains on the loose, plotting more ways in which to viciously murder innocent people.

I could drone on and on about how we've strayed from the noble course of rooting out and utterly destroying terrorist scum and about the evils and ills of our society, but instead I'd like to toss out one idea for positive change that I think would make our nation a better place for all.

It's called the Volunteer Draft and its purpose - aside from making me laugh with its oxymoronic name - is to create a cohesive, sustainable volunteer system in which every member of our society contributes in making the nation a better place.

I've got little more than an outline and an idea at this time, but I doubt we'll be implementing anything with massive societal impacts by Monday morning or whatever, so the details can remain a little fuzzy for now.

Basically, it boils down to a simple requirement: every U.S. citizen over age 18 (or whenever they have completed high school) must put in two years worth of service bettering the community and nation.

The key is that these two years don't have to come immediately after graduation or consecutively. People could choose one of three options: long-term service, mid-term or short-term.

Short-term service would be for people who want to get their two years taken care of immediately upon graduating from high school. They would spend two consecutive years working with whatever volunteer organization was set up to provide two years worth of work or could work with any associated volunteer organization under the umbrella of the Volunteer Draft.

For example, citizens could join and serve their two years in the armed forces. Or they could work with Habitat for Humanity and organizations like that dedicated to helping those in need

Mid-term volunteers are kind of the specialists of the Volunteer Draft. The way I envision this segment working is that the mid-termers would spend six months after high school in training as response squads. I don't know exactly what that would entail, but I'll use Hurricane Katrina as an example.

More than a year after the hurricane ravaged the Gulf Coast, much of the area remains unlivable and people are still struggling to salvage their lives. Under the Volunteer Draft program, mid-term volunteers would be deployed shortly after such disasters for six-month periods, resulting in better-coordinated, long-term reconstruction efforts.

Long-term volunteers would likely make up the majority of draftees and these people would spend two to four weeks a year performing community service of some sort for 52 or 26 years, respectively.

The possibilities are endless as far as service is concerned here, and I imagine most people serving for the shorter segments of time would do most of their work in their own community or assisting nearby communities with projects.

Minimum living wages would be provided for all volunteers during their time of service and no employer would be permitted to punish employees who leave during their term of service. Once a citizen completed their two years of service, they would receive some sort of notification, perhaps a nifty certificate noting their accomplishment and the feeling of satisfaction one can get only from serving the greater good.

There would have to be some organization set up to organize and coordinate the entire program, with an important task being that of making sure that the entire workforce didn't volunteer during April or some specific time period, resulting in an economic disaster.

I'm well aware that this idea in its current incarnation is far from workable. Aside from being little more than a rough sketch of an idealistic plan, there are countless factors of which I'm not considering and probably not even aware. The cost alone to implement such a program would be staggering and the loss of production alone caused by workers on volunteer leave would likely be enough to defeat implementation of such a program.

Similarly, I suspect the overwhelming majority of people would decry such an effort to put them to work helping others in what basically amounts to forced labor camps.

Then again, this isn't a system I realistically expect could work in our current society. Right now, we can get away with supporting a culture that exists almost wholly to serve the self, one in which individual leisure and accomplishment are paramount and the advancement of society at large is left to those on the fringes.

That won't always be the case and when we're finally forced to look beyond our own selfish whims, we'll need to work together of our own volition for the benefit of all.

Either that, or we'll need a few good Volunteers.