Beau February 20th, 2009
And now, for something completely different, a reading recommendation.
Do you ever wonder the Why of things? I do that a lot…
For example…
Why must our government subsidize- no, in fact reward- poor financial behavior by giving millions of taxpayer dollars to many of those who probably can’t afford their mortgage anyway? Or to the banks who propped up those mortgages? Okay, we’re all in this together. My neighbor’s foreclosure affects my financial life too. But why not offer financial incentives to those who are financially responsible?
Why does the FCC need to hire 4,000 callcenter workers to explain how to receive digital television signals, and yet we expect our citizens to raise children, drive cars and take out enormous mortgages all by themselves?
Why do some people think it’s a good idea to place a device in my car that monitors how many miles I drive, and tax me on each of those thousands of miles each year commuting across rural America for work, travel or tourism and for such needs as to buy groceries and take my children to school, church, cub scouts and sporting activities?
Why do some people want to restrict free-speech and use national government control to regulate radio content?
Why do some of the most evil people in the world seemingly have more rights and privileges than millions of victims of such evil people?
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So many questions. I find myself recently thinking about what might be the evolutionary path for this Great Republic we call America over the next several decades. Opposing views and ideologies will always be present in in our political discourse, and yet I wonder if there really isn’t a quiet revolution of some nature taking place?
In considering my many questions, I happened upon an inciteful recent essay by Christopher Oleson, Senior Fellow at the Westchester Institute, who begins by examining that very question:
“Aristotle, in the fifth book of his Politics, noted that political revolutions sometimes take place unobserved due to the fact that they occur over a long period of time through slow incremental changes in the constitution of a political community. This happens, he noted, œthrough gradual relaxation of the principles ordering a community such that œeven a small change can be a cause of revolution. For when they give up one of the details of the constitution, afterwards they also make another slightly bigger change more readily, until they alter the whole system. Thus, in the end, there comes into being a noticeably different political order without any outward subversion of the official system of government.”
Mirroring my own feelings, he goes on to describe and contrast viewpoints written by Alexis de Tocqueville from Democracy in America.
“Rereading Tocqueville™s magisterial account of the American democratic experiment recalled this [Aristotle’s] passage to me, for after having put down Democracy in America, I could not quite shake the feeling that something like what Aristotle was describing must have taken place with respect to our own political institutions.” (Emphasis mine)
Maybe this does not seem very engaging, or too extreme to consider in some way. But I would offer to you that indeed this is exactly the question we should be asking ourselves right now, especially considering our individual political views and ideologies. The heart of my own yearning for understanding involves precisely what Mr. Oleson has centered upon: The consquence and long-term ramifications of the evolution away from local, or small government, and the migration to a larger national or central government. Oleson continues by describing what Tocqueville cited as crucial:
“Tocqueville™s America looked somewhat different, and this difference, he argued, was a crucial bulwark of American liberty. I am referring to the importance of the reality of local government if the people are to be authentically free and self-governing. Tocqueville referred to local government as œthat fertile germ of free institutions. œThe strength of free peoples, he wrote, œresides in the local community. Local institutions are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they put it within the people™s reach; they teach people to appreciate its peaceful enjoyment and accustom them to make use of it.
As Oleson further describes the local experience of freedom, I find myself very much wondering how America today has moved so far, so fast, from the roots of our liberty:
“In other words, the experience of local and participatory self-government, of citizens of a local community governing and ordering their own affairs in matters truly significant to their common good, is the seedbed of a free society. It is the primary place where a free people exercise their liberty, form socially significant associations, and deliberate together so as to rule themselves in accord with what they think it means to live well.”
It is frustrating, nay, disillusioning to me to see the centralization of democratic power in the national government, and the centralization of media control happening with the major media organizations and communications structures. The internet has certainly helped foster individual retention of expression, and yet I think we have lost something along the way of the nation’s ideals and founding principles. I fear a loss of real and ideological liberty, and our understanding of what freedom is, to the continuing detriment of what this nation will become many years from now. Oleson continues by describing Tocqueville’s understanding of democratic politics of that era:
“This is the meaning, for Tocqueville, of free and participatory democratic politics. And it was precisely because he saw Americans living this kind of local and substantive political life, first in their townships and then in their individual states, that Tocqueville came to regard the citizens of the United States as a genuinely free, self-governing people, and not the passive subjects of a distant, bureaucratic, and centralized power.”
Looking at our personal situation, we live in a rural area, with a vibrant small town serving the needs of the community. It’s not too far to travel and find more diverse metropolitan pursuits, but we enjoy living where we do, as well as the sense of community and local structures that exist to serve people’s needs. And yet I find the above passage striking in that we have often assummed our heritage as Americans exists on a similar basis across the nation when in fact it is less and less so. Oleson also describes a greater fractioning of liberty, where Tocqueville wrote from personal experience how freedoms may erode over time.
“Tocqueville saw this dynamic at work in the dangerous version of democracy that had taken shape in his own beloved France and warned that it was unfortunately the perennial temptation of every democratic nation. If not vigilantly resisted, he foresaw the emergence of a novel form of benevolent, democratic despotism, œan immense, protective power which is alone responsible for securing [its citizens] enjoyment and watching over their fate. That power is absolute, thoughtful of detail, orderly, provident, and gentleIt gladly works for their happiness but wants to be sole agent and judge of it. It provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, makes rules for their testaments, and divides their inheritancesThus it daily makes the exercise of free choice less useful and rarer, restricts the activity of free will within a narrower compass, and little by little robs each citizen of the proper use of his own faculties
Such a vision may seem too surreal or practically extreme on the basis of our individual lifetimes and day-to-day experience. After all, we seek good! We want a better country, cleaner air and water, safer streets, financial security, a more peaceful world… we only want what is best, right? To make the world a better place?
And yet how if not for the action of creeping, extreme and misguided despotism did the horrendous events leading to the Holocaust unfold? And we don’t even see it! How do millions perish in Darfur and millions more starve across Africa in recent years under the watchful eyes of the United Nations? How is the world today being shaped by a desire for social equality? How are countless millions infected and die of malaria in Africa each year when we have great means to combat it, yet do not for fear of the social environmental consequences of pesticide use? How do the terms “social justice” or “economic justice” fit into the constructs of a free, democratic Republic based on the rule of law?
So many questions. Through the last century- more recently the last decade, we find ourselves struggling through dueling paradigms, a move toward a more European model of social order, contrasted with a struggle for the very roots of the Great Republic itself. Today we continue searching to define the kind of nation we will be generations hence. Personally I find myself struggling to understand why people do not yearn more for independence and freedom, but rather seem to embrace government control and sponsorship of the ideas and actions we should be handling at a more personal or local level. I do not believe that only government can support long term structural equality. Big (centralized) government has failed and continues to fail, critically, at the individual level. And it is the individual level at which all else begins. Oleson describes what, for me, is the chief concern:
“Tocqueville himself was not unaware of the centralizing drift inherent in democratic peoples whose passion for equality outstrips their love of freedom and thus continually increases the centralization of state power. The problem with such centralization is that it robs people of their freedom, saps them of their capacity for self-rule, and reduces them to passive and needy subjects of a vast bureaucracy.” (Emphasis mine)
A centralizing drift… have we not seen that taking place these past years, especially the past few months, and in terms of the financial tumult taking place? Is this a temporary occurence, or some quasi-permanent shift in the political and socio-economic landscape? Is it inevitable?
Oleson concludes by considering the political changes we’ve seen and wonders what Tocqueville may have to offer in light of “…the commitments we have lost, and the threat we face now in a looming, omnicompetent nanny state.”
I don’t think we’re quite there yet. Looming is a good word however, and we’re going a lot faster in that direction than I ever imagined. Personally I don’t like it, and yet there’s nowhere on earth I would rather live. It’s true- I’ve seen most of it. Okay, a very large part of it. Freedom and the rule of law simply do not exist across the world as it does in America. Nor do many other things. Of course for some of you that may be a good thing. I kind of like the 2nd Amendment for example, but it scares the heck out of folks in some other countries. I’ll admit America’s not perfect, no nation is. But I believe it’s the best thing going.
I don’t expect that I may ever find satisfactory answers to my questions. But I’ll keep asking them. In addition to asking ‘why’, perhaps it’s time to consider Mr. Oleson’s thoughts toward reading Tocqueville once again.
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And as for rewarding poor financial behavior? Seems pretty simple to my son’s second grade teacher. She’s got this neat little box in the front of the room. It’s called the treasure box, and it’s filled with lots of neat little doo-dads that little kids like and, if they do well, they get to pick from each week. It provides an external reward or stimulus to help motivate young kids to behave and accomplish tasks, especially for those who haven’t developed their intrinsic motivational skills as yet. Ideally, we hope our kids will grow up and learn right from wrong, how to do things for themselves, to make healthy choices, and because they want to achieve, grow, etc. Hopefully they grow up to become productive, contributing citizens of our society. But should we reward their poor choices and behaviors? No.
I’m not going to debate the merits of using a treasure box in a classroom to motivate kids, especially since I can hardly imagine what it’s like to be an elementary teacher these days. But I do like the second grade teacher’s rules… You don’t go to the treasure box unless you get your work done each week, and you behave properly within the classroom. Seems to me America’s treasure box is being emptied for a lot of the wrong reasons.
