Opinion | Service can save America, and Minnesota can lead the way

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America has a quality-of-life problem. The frustrating thing is that the government has already solved the problem, but hasn’t widely implemented the solution.

At a time when our politics feels exhausted — culture wars on one side, executive vendettas on the other— Americans in the sensible middle simply want government to get back to its most basic purpose: improving people’s daily lives.

Across parties, there’s broad agreement on where we’re struggling. Our health insurance system is broken. We aren’t building enough affordable housing. College costs are crushing. Public schools are faltering. Younger generations despair at their prospects compared with those of their parents. The American dream itself feels threatened.

I know the government can create communities of abundance because I’ve seen it firsthand. As a young officer in the U.S. military, I lived on bases where single-payer health care, universal public housing and even government-owned grocery stores weren’t pipe dreams. They were reality. I saw a workforce pipeline where, every few weeks, a diverse cross section of America completed boot camp, gained specialized skills through advanced trade schools and were placed in good middle-class jobs as engineers, mechanics, drivers and pilots – roles our country needs in peace as well as in war. And when my service was finished, I saw for myself how the GI Bill allows veterans to continue in higher education without the crush of debt.

If we can do this for soldiers, why not for citizens?

First, Americans mistrust entitlements. In Minnesota, we are reckoning with fraud in welfare programs and debates on who deserves to receive them. On our way to rooting out fraudulent providers in housing, child care and disability services, many needy families may be tragically denied these benefits entirely. But we don’t slow them for soldiers. Their service converts their benefits from charity to earned reward.

Second, our national identity has fractured. Red states don’t want to subsidize blue states and vice versa. In Minnesota, we battle against the rural-metro divide and the challenge of assimilating legal immigrants into the American project. This week, after the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis by federal ICE officers, pundits rushed to spin her death into a political narrative, often before mourning her humanity or the crushing reality for her son, who left school that day an orphan. Without a common civic experience, our country is growing more divided and less secure.

The good news is that service has forged the American identity before. The Buffalo Soldiers who bled for the Union earned for all Black Americans the right to vote. The women who filled factory jobs in World War II proved their strength and pried open doors for their daughters’ careers. Once the Army integrated, lunch counters inevitably followed.

Military service is noble, but it isn’t the only way to serve, and it isn’t the only service our country needs. Whether through AmeriCorps, Peace Corps or something new, we need more Americans to fix crumbling bridges, to respond to climate disasters, to tutor struggling students, to save lives in remote hospitals and to protect public safety on our nation’s toughest streets.

John F. Kennedy inspired a generation of Americans to serve with the immortal words of his inaugural address. Today, Washington stokes our anger but not our nobility, stirring grievance instead of greatness.

Crucially, this corps would offer our newest neighbors — including the Somali community whom President Donald Trump has so publicly maligned — a visible platform to demonstrate their commitment to our shared home, showing skeptics that they are not merely beneficiaries of the safety net but active builders of the Minnesota project.

Voluntary service like this is noble, and Minnesota can reward it. Gov. Tim Walz, or whoever succeeds him, could offer service corps veterans first-time homebuyer assistance, lifetime priority for state-subsidized child care, free tuition at state schools and access to matched savings accounts — rungs on the ladder to the middle class.

Other states could follow Minnesota’s lead, recognize each other’s programs and create a reciprocal national framework. In time, national service could be a worthy, expected and prestigious rite of passage. A modern social contract. Those who serve could earn hiring preferences for public jobs or affirmative action in elite college admissions. We could see a day where the first question in any job interview might not be “Where did you go to school” but rather “Where did you serve?”