One of our regular visitors sent the letter in the bottom section of this blog regarding correspondence to a school regarding their child’s mandatory volunteering, that’s right, mandatory volunteering to participate in a car wash event to raise funds for the school.

What’s wrong with a statement like mandatory volunteering?

Read below and see if you agree with the letter writer.

From Arthur Lechtholz-Zey

I was quite proud of my father today when he handed me a copy of a letter that he and his girlfriend submitted to her son’s school in response to a call for mandatory volunteering. Here it is, with only a few spelling and grammatical changes (and some names censored for privacy):

To Whom It May Concern:

We are the parents of [future Objectivist child] and are writing to you in response to the package we received from you regarding the May 4th Car Wash event.

We would like to share some thoughts with you regarding some of the paragraphs in this letter we find rather disturbing.

Though we appreciate your excitement about your fundraising event, we find it appalling when the words “mandatory” and “volunteer” are used in the same sentence. This fascist/communist/totalitarian mentality is abhorring to us as human being who lived through the horrors of the Soviet Union’s disastrous experiment in building a “workers’ paradise”.

The tenor of your letter, therefore, invokes the feeling of profound disgust in us, for it is reminiscent of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and “1984”.

We categorically refuse to participate in any event when we are “required to volunteer.” It is conceptually absurd, and its fundamental meaning is insulting to our liberties as freedom-loving individuals.

In short, we will not participate in the Car Wash event, not sell the tickets (enclosed), and for sure, will not “give [you] 2 solid hours” of our previous time. We would rather spend this time picking lint out of our bellybuttons than participate in your event.

However, we still think that regardless of your misguided action, your intentions are fundamentally good. Despite Goethe’s identification that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”, we would like to offer you support in the form of good advice: We suggest that you turn your sense of duty and fervent volunteerism into a more productive venture and potentially raise thousands of dollars for your worthy cause.

Go ahead and spice up the event: All the moms should don skimpy bikinis and actively engage in car washing by themselves. The cars will actually come out cleaner–first, because of the adult touch being more efficient than a bunch of fifth-graders smearing dirt; second, because many good-natured motorists would want to wash their cars a few times in a row.

There would be a lot more good, clean (so to speak) fun and a lot more money and clean cars for the neighborhood. There would be less water waste, and that is really good for the environment. And we all want what’s good for the environment, don’t we? The small augmentation of your event would help all of us avert the upcoming apocalypse that would otherwise be caused by global warming.

Please feel free to not contact us, nor bother or harass [future Objectivist child] in any way, shape, or form.

Really Sincerely,

Igor Zey and [Objectivist girlfriend]