Ok, so over the last few posts, we been discussing what we will need to do to attack our public debts and permanently limit the size and scope of the federal government. It not only will require better budgeting and management techniques; it will require a shift of responsibility from government to the individual, and a re-dedication from each of us to civic engagement—to the re-acceptance of individual responsibility, and the re-commitment to neighborly compassion instead of bureaucratic benefits. For those of you who have followed my posts for a longer period, you know that I have addressed how to do this through processes like the “Tupelo Formula” in our communities, and zero-based budgeting at every level of government.
What I have been advocating is what I understood to be an approach to government based on those principles drawn from the history of our experiences, of which de Tocqueville wrote and Reagan championed: an approach to re-building our society for the 21st Century based on its original purposes and principles—a society built on the foundational relationships formed in families, neighborhoods, congregations, private organizations; facilitated through the activities of free markets and free trade; and then preserved and protected by local, state and federal governments, each acting within their own sphere of competence and responsibility. It is our adherence over the centuries to these original purposes and principles, which has made us “exceptional”.
Creation of our exceptional society did not happen over night. Instead, it arose from the hard work of many generations both before and after the American Revolution, who overcame many obstacles and hardships—and many terrible mistakes. Over the last century, we have been dismantling this society through the aggressive use of government to supply our neighbor’s needs—culminating with the spasm of new government actions over the last two years. We can reverse this trend toward larger and more expensive government, and unravel the layers of bureaucracy we’ve created—that’s actually the easy part. We’ve known what needs to be done, and we’ve known it for a long time.
The real question is whether we have the will and the desire to make the necessary changes in our personal lives required for re-engagement in the lives of our communities. We’ve put off addressing this question for over a generation since Reagan told us it was A Time for Choosing and challenged us to form a New Republican Party. For the sake of our future, we now need to face this question and answer it candidly.
Virtually every piece of data and research about civic engagement and the state of our neighborhoods, as well as the polling data related to our expectations about government, show that even many conservatives may not want to make the lifestyle changes needed to re-engage with our neighbors and re-accept responsibility for our neighborhoods. That is because we’ve come to a moment in our history when we seem to confuse personal autonomy with Liberty, and to value the former over the latter. Remember Liberty is based on a certain type of freedom: freedom from the control of our lives by an anointed elite (hereditary, tribal, political, or religious) and their laws. Liberty is not based on a right to be free from our neighbors, or from forming the bonds needed for a society to exist and thrive. To be able to exercise Liberty and have it endure over time, our freedom must exist interdependently with our mutual responsibilities to our family, our neighbors, our communities, and our country. In essence, freedom without civic engagement is not Liberty, it’s an empty cult of personal autonomy that rots the life of a society.
Through all of the struggles to expand opportunities and wipe away vestiges of discrimination in our society over the last half century, we promoted freedom while we destroyed the civic engagement of middle-class families in African-American and Latino communities, of women in neighborhoods, and of men with their families. We’ve now created two generations of autonomous Americans at one end of the socio-economic spectrum, and two generations of dependent Americans on the other end.
While children of autonomous parents thrived in the suburbs and good schools, many, if not most, children in neighborhoods just down the street—like those in inner cities like Detroit, where 75{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of children drop-out of school before the 12th Grade—never finished school and often served time in jail. Those children ended up under-educated and under-employed, and have doomed their families and their neighborhoods to economic decline, while the children of autonomous parents have entered the new global economy and thrived. Today, most of these autonomous children live far from the home of their youth, travel across the country and across the globe for work, have or will soon have second homes, are as comfortable in an office or flat in Rome as in an office or apartment in Houston, and have developed few ties to the communities in which they currently reside.
Such children are now the second, international generation of personal autonomy. Now, that does not mean that they, or even their parents, don’t care about other people—they usually do. They care about the people in Darfur and in other troubled parts of the world, and would travel across the world for the experience of studying their plight; they care about “the homeless” and other disadvantaged, faceless groups of people, and rally for their causes; but, rarely have they looked into the eye of a neighbor in need and had to help.
The difference between these two autonomous generations and the cohorts they’ve left behind has been further exacerbated by the increasing income and educational disparities within our society. For instance, as has been documented ad nauseum, both the educational performance and attainment levels, and income levels, have dramatically diverged between the top 10{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of wage earners and the other 90{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} over the last generation. What has not been discussed as much, though, is the incredible disparity that has opened up between the top 1{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of wage earners and the other 9{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of the top 10{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}. This small group has become almost a separate civilization unto itself across the globe—not just autonomous from their neighbors, but virtually autonomous from all societies. For this group, an eventual economic collapse in one country or region will not materially affect them—they can just relocate themselves and their assets, and then ride out the storm.
For this “Global 1{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}”, and for a growing number of the two autonomous generations of Americans, the current trend toward providing aid through centralized government entitlements is as beneficial to their lifestyles as those entitlements are perceived to be beneficial by those who receive the benefits. By allowing government to try to care for our neighbors, the Global 1{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} and the autonomous Americans can enjoy the fruits of their freedom without any encumbrance of responsibility. Meanwhile, more and more of the rest of Americans become more and more dependent on government entitlements in their daily lives.
There may be a term for what we are watching develop before our eyes, but it’s not Liberty; and it’s not true to our exceptional heritage.
I’ve recited all of this not to start a class war—because those of us of a certain age are all responsible for having created and fostered this predicament—nor do I advocate going back to some mystical, bygone era that never existed. Indeed, we know how to correct these problems, and it’s not with more government re-distribution. But if we are going to be honest with ourselves, we must realize that for a growing number of Americans across the political and economic spectrum, a return to a de Tocqueville America of civic engagement is an anathema—they don’t understand it, they don’t see how they will benefit from it, and it would require a change to their lifestyles that they don’t want to make.
If I’m right—both about what we need to do to wean ourselves from government and the real obstacles to re-building civic engagement—what do we do?
Again, without creating a class war, I think we first need to realize and accept that even though the “Global 1{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}” has a very large megaphone in our 24/7 media world, they have become so disconnected from the rest of us that they are politically irrelevant to how we address this issue. If we try to build a program around their wishes we will get nowhere. Second, it will be very difficult for those in the two autonomous generations to immediately accept the adjustments to their lifestyles that will come with new responsibilities, so engaging them immediately in this effort will merely slow the process down—and time is not our friend.
Instead, we need to focus, for now, on the rest of us—“Main Street Americans”. We need to begin to promote civic engagement among Main Street Americans who still live, work and raise our families in local communities, and spread that engagement to neighborhoods whose residents have become dependent on government. We need to focus the way we reduce government and re-align responsibilities among the different levels of governments, and between government and individuals, based on Main Street America’s re-engagement in the lives of our communities; including, for instance, how we re-build our infrastructure to provide for as much time as possible for individuals to care for their families and volunteer in their neighborhoods, churches, civic organizations, schools and local governments.
If Main Street Americans succeed in re-building a de Tocqueville America in this century, the problem with the Global 1{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} and the autonomous generation will take care of itself. The result will be like the omniscient voice’s promise in “Field of Dreams”—if you build it, he will come”: if we succeed, the Global 1{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} and the autonomous children will come home, because they will see what real Liberty is, and that it works. America will be where they want to live and work, and together, our children and grandchildren may see the Shining City on a Hill.
"If Main Street Americans succeed in re-building a de Tocqueville America in this century, the problem with the Global 1{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} and the autonomous generation will take care of itself. The result will be like the omniscient voice’s promise in “Field of Dreams”—if you build it, he will come”: if we succeed, the Global 1{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} and the autonomous children will come home, because they will see what real Liberty is, and that it works. America will be where they want to live and work, and together, our children and grandchildren may see the Shining City on a Hill."
I do a lot of reading, and this paragraph qualifies for paragraph of the year, if there is such a thing. What a closing to a great article. Great articles two days in a row Ed.