There is no challenge greater than the defense of our nation and our values. The men and women of our military - from Fort Carson to Peterson Air Force base, from the Air Force Academy to the ROTC students here on campus - have signed up at a time when our troops face an ever-increasing load. Fighting a resurgent Taliban. Targeting al Qaeda. Persevering in the deserts and cities of Iraq. Training foreign militaries. Delivering humanitarian relief. In this young century, our military has answered when called, even as that call has come too often. Through their commitment, their capability, and their courage they have done us all proud.

But we need to ease the burden on our troops, while meeting the challenges of the 21st century. That's why I will call on a new generation of Americans to join our military, and complete the effort to increase our ground forces by 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines.

Just as we teach math and writing, arts and athletics, we need to teach young Americans to take citizenship seriously. Study after study shows that students who serve do better in school, are more likely to go to college, and more likely to maintain that service as adults. So when I'm President, I will 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. This means that by the time you graduate college, you'll have done 17 weeks of service.

In today's society, there are really two arenas where there is significant mixing between the classes - public education and the military. One reason why I am so unwilling to give up on public education (even if some liberal friends don't like my hypothetical solutions) is that I think it vital that the children of the well-off get raised alongside the children of the rich and the children of the poor to the extent we can do so. Our sons benefited hugely from being raised in a public school system (an excellent one) that nonetheless contains a mixture of wealthy kids, upper-middle-class kids, plain middle-class kids and some blue-collar kids. By comparison, the kids of my friends who are getting 'better' education in private schools are - I believe - coming out worse for the experience....

I'd like to see this principle extended, and based on raising my own sons, think that taking a year or two between high school and college to do some kind of public service would be a good thing for most kids. Some might choose to join the military. Others would perform other kinds of community service. Those who needed it might attend two years of an academic boot camp, designed to make sure they could read and calculate effectively when they got out. We'd have a surplus of undertrained 18 year olds afoot, and we'd have to figure out things to do with them. Parks need supervision, community organizations need workers, much of it - like the WPA - will be make-work. But to a big extent, that might be a better thing than paying universities to babysit them.