I’ll return to my series on Texas Education soon, but I want to share some thoughts after digesting the rhetoric from both national political conventions.
My first and over-riding thought was how baffled Adam Smith and William Jennings Bryan would be if they had somehow been able to return to this world for the last two weeks and had attended these conventions. Neither would understand the split that has occurred in American politics over issues they studied and championed, and both would be shocked at how misunderstood and misapplied their ideas have become.
Smith, the Scottish professor of Moral Philosophy, built his ideas about economics and government in his Wealth of Nations on the foundation of his description of the inherent moral nature of man in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. For the last 250 years, both proponents and opponents of the system of capitalism and free markets that evolved from Smith’s writings based their viewpoints on an analysis of economic behavior that was independent of the morality so central to Smith’s theories. Smith would not have understood either Marx or Rand. To him, the individual pursuing his or her self-interest did so within a context of morality and responsibility. Smith’s total view, in turn, was consistent with the type of system that developed during the 18th and 19th Centuries in the United States—the one de Tocqueville observed and explained in his Democracy In America.
But today, we are more the children of Marx and Rand, than of Smith. So, we see the answers to our problems solely through the lens of rugged individualism, or social-justice collectivism, when both individualism and community are needed for a society of free people to thrive using capitalism and free markets. In essence, our misreading of Smith has set up a false choice between individualism and community that de Tocqueville believed we had avoided.
As a self-proclaimed answer to this false choice, William Jennings Bryan emerged as a political force of nature in the 1890s. Arguably, as one of the early proponents of a form of Progressivism, he was the most influential politician from the 1890s to the 1920s who never became President—though he tried four times. He set out to impose community on rugged individualists through his “applied Christianity,” which was derisively called “Bryanism.” Bryanism called for the federal government to become the source of social justice through interventionist and redistributionist economic policies, and by enforcing a common standard for public and private moral behavior. Between the 1930s and the 1960s, the Democratic Party abandoned the social conservatism of Bryanism, while fully embracing the economic portion of his social justice views.
Meanwhile, in the late 1970s, the social-conservative heirs to the morality of Bryanism turned to the Republican Party to promote their agenda, and they joined economic conservatives to support Ronald Reagan’s “New Republican Party” plan to re-establish a modern society upon the Smith/de Tocqueville model of society. In fact, what Reagan understood was that the real choice for sustaining and improving our free society is not between individualism and community, but between the role of individual morality and responsibility and government regulations and programs in creating and maintaining community among free people. The Smith/de Tocqueville model that Reagan tried to reinvigorate provided the right answer for that real choice.
But instead of disappearing into history, the remnants of Bryanism are alive and well. They are divided into two warring camps still trying to resolve the false choice between individualism and community with wrong or incomplete answers that depend on the exercise of federal government action, and that create strange fissures within both Progressivism and Conservatism in this country.
President Obama’s acceptance speech doubled-down on the economic social-justice model of Bryanism. He recognized that our society is built on both the freedom of the individual and the interdependence of communities, but he embraced the false choice between the two. Then, he sought to answer the false choice by providing community artificially through more government interventions, while rejecting any role for private, individual, moral character and responsibility in shaping and preserving a community. Such an approach provides a wrong answer to the false choice, which will worsen all of the social pathologies that have arisen over the last century, and further isolate neighbors as autonomous wards of one or more federal government programs.
Where are the Republicans in this debate? Unfortunately, we are still arguing between the social conservatism of Bryanism and the economic conservatism of traditional and libertarian Republicans, when Smith, de Tocqueville and Reagan would have told us the choice we are arguing about is false, too. Both are needed for our model of government to work, and we need to stop fighting among ourselves over this fundamental point.
Instead, we need to come together and seize the opportunity we’ve been given to change the debate in this election. By shaping the debate around “community” and the social-justice model, Obama has handed us a rare opportunity to break out of the old paradigms and to reveal the false choice between individualism and community that we have been given over the last century. As we reveal the false choice, we must argue for our Smith/de Tocqueville/Reagan model of a free society and government—an argument we have not made coherently for at least a generation because of our own internal arguments. We need to take the “You did build that” theme, and expand on it with our ageless ideas of creating and maintaining “community” through individual, private, and local action; by showing that the individualism of moral people creates community among neighbors, and that such communities are protected and promoted by local private and public entities, rather than by a federal bureaucracy.
All of the groups we need to persuade to vote for our ticket need to hear the falsity of the choice and answer the Democrats have long promoted, and hear the real argument for the Smith/de Tocqueville/Reagan model that made us exceptional: Latinos and other new immigrant groups who have come to this country to build a better life; African-Americans who have been abandoned to under-education, under-employment and over-incarceration; and women and young people, whose prosperity depends on the economic growth and support that strong neighborhoods provide.
Unless some whiz kid around Romney and Ryan figures out how to make this argument effectively, Obama’s argument will win by default because the false choice has become engrained in our national thinking, and the mood of the country is looking for answers. They’ll embrace even wrong answers to false choices if we don’t show them the choice is false and the answer is wrong, and what is really the right path. We won’t just win this election by doubling-down on social conservatism or rugged individualism, nor do I now think we can limp into the election just focusing on jobs, the budget and government reform. Instead, we need to show why our answers to jobs, the budget and government reform will improve the condition of this country, and to do that we need to address the interrelationship between basic morality, individualism, and strong communities for the success of our model of society and economic growth—an interrelationship that our founders, Smith and de Tocqueville understood and promoted. Then, we need to challenge our neighbors to rebuild this model of society with us.
If Romney articulates the Smith/de Tocqueville/Reagan model effectively, shows why it is relevant to the problems we face, shows how it can work, shows how it will improve lives in the 21st Century, and challenges us to embrace it, he’ll win in a landslide. If not, the public may decide to let their money ride on the wrong bet they made four years ago.
this article missed the point that most Constitutional Conservatives today believe. "Community" as our Founders saw it was Family first, then your church, village/town, county, State and finally the Federal gov. in that order and with the power in the same order.
Bruce, I agree, and I've made that same point in other posts–as did Reagan in his speeches about a "New Republican Party" in 1977. But the point of this post was not to rehash that detail, but to talk about the false choice between individualism and community that liberals keep arguing.
Excellent article, Ed.
“…the individualism of moral people creates community among neighbors”
What happens when we as a society become more and more amoral? Does the Smith/de Tocqueville/Reagan model break down?
Good observation, Mark.
The answer is that the Smith/de Tocqueville/Reagan model can’t work without a re-assertion and re-commitment by individuals to participate in, and guide the lives of their families, neighborhoods, churches, schools, civic associations, and local governments. And to do that effectively requires a re-embrace of the importance of moral character and responsibility. The more amoral and autonomous we become, the harder this will be—and the easier it will be to simply delegate our responsibilities to bureaucrats. But, if we truly believe in the liberty of the individual over the intervention of the state, we have to make these changes in our own lives or the social-justice “do gooders” will fill the vacuum with more government.
Lost in all this is the notion that true liberty takes work. Over the past 50-75 years, the growth of the governmental bureaucracy at the federal level and in the states has encouraged and even coerced people to forego the hard work in favor of the easy path of letting someone else take care of them. This has now become institutionalized in too many so that getting them to once again be reliant upon themselves will be very difficult.
The Mormons are actually very good in this regard, caring for themselves and their community with minimal outside help.
Those on the left see themselves as exceedingly moral, btw. Listen to their rationale for expanded social programs. Their mistake is that charity through coercion is not charity or moral; it is theft at the point of a spear.
Well said, duane.
You would have to say that too many Conservatives don’t know how to properly explain to non-conservatives about their principles. The message that government has been the cause of more problems than it has ever solved. That self-interest in your success is nothing to ashamed of, that self-determination is something to strive for. That too many social programs keep people reliant on government while not helping them will a path out of poverty. It’s in the hands of us to change the path this government and the people are on.
Are there voters likely to be predisposed to continuing the march to an even more directive federal bureaucracy, without really understanding the consequences?
Sure.
I am convinced however that there is an even larger body of the electorate that is thoughtful and thirsty for a better way ahead and many of those are even prepared to make personal sacrifices to sustain the Smith / de Tocqueville / Reagan view of moral individuals that sustain caring communities. Romney could win in a landslide when he begins to articulate a moral plan — I do not believe at this point that Romney is capable — both he and Ryan are products of the status quo. For Romney to naively state in the past couple of days that he has decided there are good parts to what is called Obamacare is proof. Our medical care system has become so expensive because of too much gov’t fiat meddling.
I have most of my life lived as an individualist and have given and shared time and treasure to sustain caring in the communities where I have lived and I know how important these values are.
The national debate on all this has become sterile. Those in the MSM who decide what the focus of national news will be this week and next are schooled and trained as professional antagonists and are confrontational in action. If one is involved in the least way in community support activities there are countless stories of selfless actions to sustain caring communities — those stories are too good natured and uplifting to make what passes for news.
The everyday folks of these United States are the most generous and supportive to people in need in the history of the planet — towards each other and to the less fortunate around the planet. As an example the private response to Katrina has never really been told — the MSM decided to focus on what FEMA under Bush did not do. The astonishing natural recovery by nature from the oil spill at Macondo is likely never to be seen or discussed as it should — those stories would make FEMA and the US Dept of the Interior useless and very costly appendages.
Sustaining the values that have made this country the best last hope of mankind is the burden and challenge of local communities — witness the tidal wave of change that is occurring at the state and county level across the nation — regardless of party affiliation of those in elected office. It won’t happen overnight — it may take as long to reverse the trends of the past 90 years as it took to get to where we are — I believe the shift has begun and I sure know that I push in my own way to accelerate the change.
While I agree whole-heartedly with your commentary, I can't but think that converting the Smith/de Toqueville/REagan model into digestible soundbites that independent swing state voters will be understand, appreciate and act on is a Herculeant task for any candidate, more so for the Romney/Ryan team.