Since becoming its leader, David Cameron has changed the Conservative Party beyond almost all recognition. Focusing on so-called ’social justice’, he has embarked on a wide-ranging reform programme. In a major policy announcement, Cameron today unveiled plans for the conscription of teenagers into what he calls the ‘National Citizen Service’. This bold action marks the completion of the Conservatives’ metamorphosis: not to acceptable and laudable electability, but to irredeemable statism, socialism, and suicide.

The New Tory plan is for all 16-year olds to take part in a six-week social engineering programme at the end of compulsory education, which the Tories rightly believe should end at 16, and not 18 as Labour intends to make it. During the programme, the participants would be forced to do rather pointless things like paint community centres and mow grass verges in a vain attempt to gain ‘inspiration’ and ‘respect for others’.

Cameron hasn’t done much to mask the collectivist ideology underpinning and undermining the new policy. Its name says it all really; ‘National Citizen Service’ combins connotations of the socialism of the National Health Serice with the nationalism of national service conscription, adulterated only by submission to the state for participants, and submission to second-class citizenship for those that deign to argue.

The policy has been heavily promoted by today’s Sun, which congratulates Cameron and itself for succumbing to the populism that the Sun has long espoused. Big government, nationalism, and slave labour in the guise of preserving law and order are the Sun’s favourite cocktail.

It will mix people from different backgrounds. North and south, black and white, rich and poor. They will be putting something back into the community.

And if they want to put something back into the community, they’ll do just that, by working through charities, the Scouts, religious groups, or other similar volunteer programmes. This method intrudes on people’s lives, forcing them to do the bidding of the state, regardless of circumstances, regardless of choice. Cameron’s message is, no matter where you live, no matter what your skin colour, no matter what your parents income, you can’t hide from Big Brother.

It will be away of learning respect for our country and each other, just like national service was.

National service was about forcing people to do what the people with guns said: a way to get cheap meat for the grinder of the expected apocalyptic war with the Soviet Union. If you think that’s a fair comparison, Mr Cameron, you dig your own grave.

Whether individuals are leaving school, moving on from their GCSEs to another qualification, or have dropped out of the system altogether, our national programme would take them out of their comfort zone, provide them with a chance to mix with others away from home.

Take people of ouf the comfort zone? So the New Tories think that it’s the role and responsibility of the state to make people’s lives uncomfortable? Misery may be the currency of oppression, but it certainly shouldn’t be the raison d’etre for it.

The Sun picks up where Dave leaves off.

Bookish swots will be shown there is more to life than just exams.

The dangerous intellectuals must learn the values of national solidarity and service to the greater ideal that they can’t learn in books. Well, except in books that were banned during the Second World War. In fact, let’s just burn all the books to prevent subversive decadent ideas like ‘liberty’, ‘education’, and ‘personal betterment’ spreading.

Teenagers will not be forced by law to take part in the NCS. … Instead, it will become so attractive it will become a natural part of growing up.

So the state will force people using ’soft’ power. It’s already been implied that employers will be forced to give preference to participants. They’d probably ban all non-participants going into higher education. They might increase the tax rate for those that refuse to bow to their demands. Or they might just make it compulsory further down the line when people have stopped caring. I wonder who it was that did that…

Der Stürmer’s own editorial urges us to ‘give it a chance’.

The Boy Scouts offered this sort of community training for more than half a century. The Duke of Edinburgh scheme and Outward Bound courses have been amazingly successful.

And, despite the Sun’s ignorant use of the past tense, they continue to be. For a century, the Scouts have done all that Dave wants to accomplish. And they’ve achieved it all without the heavy hand of the state forcing them.

… not all youngsters are tearaways looking for someone to mug. The vast majority are decent, considerate, and appalled by bad behaviour.

After a two-page spread of belligerent idiocy on the part of the world’s favourite newspaper, we get some sense. Not everyone is a tearaway. Most aren’t. So why does the government think it’s its responsibility to employ this one-size-fits-all national service? By forcing teenagers to work, they do nothing but alienate and belittle them: telling them that their libery is a luxury that the state won’t afford them, and that their future will be a future of compulsion, slavery, and misery. When the outlook’s that bleak, no wonder we have so much under-age drinking.

When Cameron told the world, “There is such a thing as society. It’s not just the same thing as the state”, I rejoiced. Not that I disagreed with Thatcher’s assessment to begin with, but it was refreshing to hear that a politician whose very value comes from his centrism was espousing a fundamentally libertarian argument.

This monstrosity of a policy undermines that. It is a concession by Cameron that individualism is dead, and that liberty has lost. It is a surrender of the big citizen to big government. It’s sad that this leaves no major party’s leadership willing to stand up for rights. Fortunately, it matters not one jot to the friends of freedom that Cameron has thrown in the towel. To us, it only proves that we can’t rely on others to make the case for so long as we have voices ourselves.