On Monday afternoon I got a blast email from the Obama campaign. I immediately wondered what I was going to be asked to do: Donate to the Franken campaign? Make calls for Jim Martin down in Georgia?
It turned out to be neither. The campaign was letting me know that barackobama.com was directing visitors to volunteer for -- or donate to -- relief efforts to aid the victims of the Southern California fires.
"Throughout the campaign," said the email, "we saw time and again that when ordinary people act together, they can make a huge difference."
Obama's high-tech outreach has been instrumental in getting people across the country to donate millions of dollars and contribute millions of hours working on the campaign. Will it now become a hub for civic action?
Obama has always said that a call to service would be "a central cause" of his presidency. "We will ask Americans to serve," he said in a signature speech in July. "We will create new opportunities for Americans to serve. And we will direct that service to our most pressing challenges."
Clearly, those challenges have never been more pressing in our lifetime. As unemployment hits a 14 year high -- and heading higher -- layoffs mount, foreclosures stack up, and local governments throughout America gird themselves for a coming wave of service cutbacks and hospital closures, we have metaphorical fires burning all across the country. Fires that threaten to turn into a social conflagration.
In the past, Americans could look to the safety net of social programs put in place by FDR during the Great Depression to mitigate the effects of an economic downturn. But, as Steven Greenhouse documented in Sunday's New York Times, the U.S. has become a "far different place" since the recession of the early '80s: unemployment insurance is less generous, welfare has been scaled back, as have job training and housing programs.
These holes in the social safety net make a commitment to service even more urgent. This is a moment where it isn't enough to look to the government; it's a moment where we need to look to each other -- and to ourselves.
Obama clearly understands this. "In America," he has said, "each of us is free to seek our own dreams, but we must also serve a common purpose, a higher purpose... Because, when it comes to the challenges we face, the American people are not the problem -- they are the answer."
This statement speaks volumes about Obama's belief that "government depends not just on the consent of the governed, but on the service of citizens."
We've seen the American people rise to the call of service time and again in times of national tragedy -- witness the outpouring of money and volunteerism in the wake of disasters like Hurricane Katrina or the 9/11 attacks. After 9/11, Americans showed they were eager to work for the common good, to be called to that higher purpose. It was the best of times amidst the worst of times.
And people's willingness to be "the answer" has been on display again in the torrent of volunteers stepping forward in response to the Southern California fires.
"I'm not super-heroic," volunteer Paul Prunty told the Los Angeles Times. "But I know it's not up to anybody else to make the world a better place; it's up to me." "We are them," a Red Cross volunteer said of the fire's victims. "And they are us."
So Obama doesn't need to convince the American people of the value of service; his challenge is finding a way to direct that national impulse into an ongoing effort to deal with the dark days that unquestionably lie ahead.
This will take more than soaring rhetoric and online calls to action. Every president pays lip service to service. Even President Bush, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, declared: "We have much to do, and much to ask of the American people." A month later he echoed the theme, saying simply: "America is sacrifice." Of course, the sum total of that sacrifice turned out to be shopping, going to Disney World, and offering tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.
Obama must turn his words into action and follow through on his promise to emulate FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps, JFK's Peace Corps, and LBJ's Vista.
The president-elect plainly has the right vision for the role that service can -- and must -- play in addressing the urgent needs our country faces. Especially among the nation's young people who were so galvanized by his campaign, but who will now find it increasingly hard to get a job or to be able to afford to stay in school.
There are, of course, some on the political fringes already mounting their pushback, as Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia did, comparing Obama's call for national service to "what Hitler did in Nazi Germany" and "what the Soviet Union did." Jonah Goldberg likened it to "slavery" (of course, Goldberg's latest advice on dealing with the financial meltdown is for Obama to do nothing).
Perhaps one good thing that will come out of the hard times will be a collective willingness to ignore such bleating -- and to do what so clearly needs to be done to ameliorate the human suffering those hard times have brought.
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
And the consequences of the crisis are not just economic -- they're also psychological. In his latest column, David Brooks paints a gloomy picture of the coming psychic toll he predicts will envelop what he calls the "formerly middle class." It's a toll that would be greatly lessened if those heading for "a perilous psychological spiral" would look outside themselves and, at the same time they are trying to improve their diminished circumstances, find ways to serve others even less fortunate -- bringing both perspective and meaning to their lives.
"The ultimate measure of a man or woman," said Martin Luther King, "is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
By reminding us that "our destiny as Americans is tied up with one another," Obama has the chance to do more than put out the economic fires burning all around us. He has the chance to help reconnect us to the ideals of America's founding.
From the beginning, America has been dedicated to "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." But, for our founders, the happiness that was to be pursued was not the buzz of a shopping-spree high. It was the happiness of the Book of Proverbs: "Happy is he that has mercy on the poor." It was the happiness that comes from feeling good by doing good.
If Obama can inspire us to include service to others on our to-do list and, in the process, redefine the way Americans view the pursuit of happiness, his will truly be a transformational presidency.
If you are going to be in the St. Louis area, I will be speaking at Maryville University on Tuesday, November 25th.
Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff
Loading comments… 
Thank you very much for writing this article, as always you are spot-on! One exciting initiative that would answer the desperate call to service our country needs is the United States Public Service Academy. This organizati
It is imperative that these bills pass immediatel
collect the donations don't always do what they should with the money that is donated.
Sometimes people in charge of getting the money for any disaster, seem to think that
they deserve a large salary (out of the amounts collected) for themselves
As to the economy...
who are able to work.....t
collect from the government
have lived off government money for a long time.
This country is so far behind emerging well to do countries, that we need to start building
transporta
There is so much work and repair that needs to be done in America, that the government
could put some of the bail-out money and welfare money and other benefit money to work for
the good of all.
The volunteer work was easy -- I helped move a tent for shade, then went to work sorting shoes, while others did the same with clothes, kitchen essentials
One thing I learned today: when you donate shoes, tie the pairs together (but NOT with duct tape, especially on a nice pair of suede boots). Trying to find a pair amongst a thousand shoes can be done, but doing so is not really an efficient use of time when there's so much to be done.
I don't understand why some of the posters here are saying the Obama campaign was somehow wrong to make it easier for people like myself who feel a responsibi
I say give all American people who have filed a tax return or hold a legal social security card $5,000 dollars a year for the next four years tax free and lower the interest rate to 4% and we will get the economy moving again and restored confidence and hope.
To use an election slogan (IT’S THE CONSUMER, STUPID!) we're giving steaks and filet mignon to Wall Street, the banks and other institutio
Main Street didn’t create this mess Congress is spending AMERICAN TAXPAYER DOLLARS for all these bailouts they should get their priorities straight.
It doesn't matter how much prices drop American consumers are not going to be able to buy!!!
That's because Americans have no real money in their pockets We don’t need more credit cards or loans we need real money in our wallets and fair paying jobs. Otherwise we are doomed to fail.
Enough is Enough. Decade after decade were always bailing out the wrong institutio
Barack Obama is working as hard as possible to get a transition team in place. And he's doing it faster than any President-
If you want to stop Bush before he causes more damage, TELL him what to do - don't wait for the idiot to act on his own. Demand that he listens to Obama not Cheney and Paulson.
I know Americans don't like the French, but there is something to be learned from their "social activism" through civil disobedien
Massive demonstrat
Despite being a couple of "marbles" short of "intellige
The world is on your side. Copy the Europeans and "march in masses" before its too late. Ordinary citizens brought down the iron curtain. Americans have the same power to bring change now.
By the time Obama takes office, you could be in a depression that even Obama can't fix. After all, he's only human - not a Messiah. By helping him and taking to the streets, you'll be helping yourselves
In my experience if you enter another country with the idea that you are a guest of that country, thinks go much more amicably. For example, even if you speak horrible French, if you give it a try and struggle through the locals will admire your efforts and see you in a different and accurate light of showing them respect; then THEY will turn the conversati
Despite the foreign policy horrors of the past eight years, I was never looked upon with animosity. Europeans love Americans by and large; they made it very clear that it was our Bush & Co. government that they vehemently disagreed with, not our people. I never had to pretend to be Canadian.
That attitude will have to change because we voted our major manufactur
They are in control, they loan us money with interest. If it takes years to pay off a credit card debt, owing almost $3 trillion to other countries, it will take the next 50 generation
The stores have so many self check-out stalls. These self Ck-out stalls don't make the foods or other products and cheaper, only put people out of work and young people without a future job.
We stop buying American made products for years and wonder why their children are turning to gangs to beat up 0ld people and women.
If the British had not had the good fortune to have invented radar in the nick of time, the Battle of Britain might have gone to the Germans, and Nazi occupation would have surely followed. As you noted, the French undergroun
That the French did not completely disown us during the childish and embarrassi
Sitting miles aways from the action of this major importance
PE Obama are electing people who does have knowledge to start on day on January 20th, 2009. We the people have been driven over the cliff into a very deep hole. We are so deep, it spread world wide.
Just part of the presidents jobs is the United States being fixed, but we have to also work with other countries so they will trust us again. If not we can go deeper because they can call in their bonds for money immediate. The stock markets has crashed so many time, we don't turn to look at the wreckage any more to look for the bodies.
For it to work, he has to bring Republican
Time to focus on what needs to be accomplish
The core of the Obama campaign was to begin immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq.
That was going to fund the "Health Care For Everyone."
Not a word. . . . just "oh what a mess he's inheriting
And meanwhile, loading his cabinet with lobbyist and Clinton retreads.
But, you folks pulled it off. I've got to hand it to you there.
Yes, Obama has inherited a mess, thanks to Bush & Co.. The total meltdown of the economy is going to have to put health care on the back burner
When the Shrub asked for "Faith-Bas