Jonah Goldberg, the son of l’affaire Lewinsky superheroine Lucianne Goldberg, has a job writing columns for the Los Angeles Times. He is probably the stupidest person in the entire country to have one of these plum positions with a major distribution paper. I mean that. He’s practically an idiot. Other conservative columnists make bad arguments all the time, but they know they’re doing it and most of them are quite effective in spewing their lies. Goldberg isn’t effective at all. His arguments are laughable and of the kind you hear from uninformed neighbors at block parties. Take today’s offering for example:

There’s a weird irony at work when Sen. Barack Obama, the black presidential candidate who will allegedly scrub the stain of racism from the nation, vows to run afoul of the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery.

For those who don’t remember, the 13th Amendment says: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime … shall exist within the United States.”

I guess in Obama’s mind it must be a crime to be born or to go to college.

In his speech on national service Wednesday at the University of Colorado, Obama promised that as president he would “set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year.”

He would see that these goals are met by, among other things, attaching strings to federal education dollars. If you don’t make the kids report for duty, he’s essentially telling schools and college kids, you’ll lose money you can’t afford to lose. In short, he’ll make service compulsory by merely compelling schools to make it compulsory.

The rest of his column isn’t any better. Nowhere in his column does he mention that we had a draft in this country for a good part of the 20th-Century, not to mention during the Civil War. Comparing the draft to slavery is insulting but it would make more sense than comparing government-compensated volunteerism to slavery. You can read about Barack Obama’s actual service proposals here. I can tell you one proposal that is going to be very popular with parents.

Require 100 Hours of Service in College: Obama will establish a new American Opportunity Tax Credit that is worth $4,000 a year in exchange for 100 hours of public service a year.

If you want that $16,000 discount on a four-year university education, you’ll need to volunteer 400 hours. You will be getting paid $40/hour for ‘volunteering’. In Jonah Goldberg’s universe, this is slavery. Can the Los Angeles Times hire Digby or something? This is just embarrassing.