Society is a contract, and the government’s duty is its balance. When individuals agree to sacrifice freedoms for the benefit of many, therein begins the contract, and thereafter lies its balance. The burden of balancing state economic support with laissez-faire ideology, and balancing social welfare support with individualism, lies mostly with the federal government. Luckily, its citizenry, that is you and I, can hire and fire those making critical decisions regarding these issues. Often in times of economic crisis, our citizenry looks upon the federal government to make large expansions in power to aid and assist them. This is often accompanied by mentally dissociating the coffers of the federal government and the paycheck of the citizen. People today are more ready to arbitrarily part with their money than ever before. Mentioning an increase in taxes draws applause, something I find quite awkward. To forget that the citizen’s money and the State’s money are inseparably related, and to feel a sense of entitlement to or from the federal government, is to begin that dark journey down “the road to servitude” that Alexis de Tocqueville warned us about in 1840.
There comes a time, of course, for the government to act with a moral duty toward its people during a time of struggle. It is also the government’s duty to maintain moral clarity during a crisis. This applies to foreign policy as well; the Iraq War proved to abort any feasible, congruent foreign policy in a post-9/11 world, and its origin may prove to be the death of the American statesman. During times of economic crisis, the urge to undertake vast social program expansion may exist, and may be necessary to a certain extent, as some intervention by Franklin Roosevelt’s Administration was necessary when it implemented the New Deal. Expansion emboldens our federal government, and drunk off the money its citizenry is more than willing to depart with, it may undertake a wide variety of programs it could never support. In the case of the New Deal, policy doors were opened that may never be shut.
David Hume warned in an epigraph, “It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” Freedoms slip away as the government and its people become more interdependent on each other. As the people feel entitled to new protections of all sorts, their economic freedoms begin to expire, as the government needs more money from its people. Being a learned people, we become trained to the world we live in. Entitlements slowly kill motivation, responsibility, and any State policy based on common sense and incentives. The State thrives while the individual falters, and economic freedom gives way to economic security.
It is the State’s responsibility to balance security with the freedom of its people; often, strengthening one weakens the other. This is the burden of the State; to balance the laws of the nation with the liberty of its people. Often, security and peace are used simultaneously in policy talks; although both are related, I believe there are two distinctly different ways to achieve both security and peace. From freedom, there is a natural progression toward democracy, and then from democracy to peace, and then from peace, to security, with laws not to infringe the rights of the individual. This is how free countries bring about security; it is not guaranteed, however. In contrast, countries that do not enjoy freedom will have security thrust upon them with laws first, bringing relative peace, as long as the laws of the nation are unbroken. These laws protect the State, and not the individual. Laws, in themselves, are not evil: to quote John Locke, “The end of law is, not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of laws, where there is no law there is no freedom. For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others; which cannot be where there is no law.” Laws are not incongruous with liberty, as the two are dependent on each other, caught in a delicate balance.
True freedom can only be achieved with the chance of endangering individual security. As George Will puts it, “Happiness is a function of fending for oneself. Happiness is an activity; it is inseparable from the pursuit of happiness.” For the State to guarantee otherwise is to march its citizens down a dark path in which they relinquish first their economic freedoms, and then their social freedoms. This happened shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. This was also the goal of many dictators prior to World War II. Consider the words of Italy’s dictator, Benito Mussolini, in 1929:
“The State, as conceived by Fascism and as it acts, is a spiritual and moral fact because it makes concrete the political, juridical, economic organization of the nation and such an organization is, in its origin and in its development, the manifestation of the spirit. The State is the guarantor of internal and external security, but it is also the guardian and the transmitter of the spirit of the people as it has been elaborated through the centuries in language, custom, faith. The State is not only the present, it is also past, and above all future. It is the State which, transcending the brief limit of individual lives, represents the immanent conscience of the nation. The forms in which States express themselves change, but the necessity of the State remains. It is the State which educates citizens for civic virtue, makes them conscious of their mission, calls them to unity, harmonizes their interests in justice; hands on the achievements of thought in the sciences, the arts, in law, in human solidarity; it carries men from the elementary life of the tribe to the highest human expression of power which is Empire.”
It was the stated intent of Karl Marx, and then V.I. Lenin, to abolish the State by bringing the proletariat into power, that is, the Middle Class. This is the current stated intention of Latin American Communism as well, claiming it wants to empower its mestizo race. Looking back on Communist Russia, we can see the state was not abolished, but instead empowered, and we can now see the corruption of Latin American Communism in Venezuela, as a dictator tightens his grip on his people daily. Words may be used to deceive a nation, speaking to our hearts, and not our minds. Ernesto “Che” Guevera spoke such words, discussing moral duty in 1965, in what was to be his last public appearance: “The socialist countries have the moral duty of liquidating their tacit complicity with the exploiting countries of the West.” Karl Marx spoke of the evils of capitalism, with an alienated working class and a clear division of labor in the workforce. These are issues that the State must confront, and must intercede to prevent human rights violations, monopoly situations, and unfair working conditions, and to ensure the nation is not an “exploiting country.”
The State must also utilize moral clarity to protect the rights of the individuals of the working class, without flashy language to simply draw votes. In fact, the citizenry should be cautious when politicians speak of “strengthening the Middle Class;” Robin Hood economics will impede production and creativity throughout the nation. Citizens should also beware of increased interdependence with government. The “father of modern conservatism,” the Englishman Edmund Burke, expressed his concern over his government’s economic power in 1774, while discussing American taxation: “To join together the restraints of a universal internal and external monopoly, with a universal internal and external taxation, is an unnatural union; perfect uncompensated slavery.”
So, what is to be done? We look at our economic situation, coupled with the current over-extension of the federal government and the future proposals that officials are trying to sell to the American people, and it is painfully obvious taxes will be raised to pay for social programs, both the new ones and the old, dying ones. How did we get here? Friedrich Hayek, the libertarian economist, explained in 1944, “We are ready to accept almost any explanation of the present crisis of our civilization except one: that the present state of the world may be the result of genuine error on our own part, and that the pursuit of some of our most cherished ideals have apparently produced results utterly different from those which we expected.” This is true today, but a new burden exists: How do we move forward now, in 2008?
To propose discontinuing some our current social programs is seen as cold-hearted, and in some cases, simply impossible. For example, every American who reaches 65 years of age expects to collect Social Security, and free Medicare health insurance. There is a sense of entitlement here. It would seem a heinous crime to discontinue welfare checks to those unwilling to seek out jobs. It would seem even more callous to expect those on welfare to submit to random drug testing, like all other government employees, subject to the same screening. Soon, this country will be calling for universal health care, as yet another entitlement program. Where does this end? The recently-deceased William F. Buckley stated that his life’s mission was to “stand athwart history, yelling, ‘Stop!’” All of us need to look down this road, for as Ronald Reagan stated in a 1964 speech I’ve borrowed from before, “Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.”
It is time for people to start asking the hard questions: How much is this going to cost? Where will this take the country? What will this program do to the American spirit? Most of those asking these questions will obviously be the “intellectual conservatives” and the libertarians, but I think it is time for college liberals and working class Democrats to do the same. This country was founded on economic ideals far different than those of today. Consider Jeremy Bentham’s words, from 1798: “The general rule is that nothing ought to be done or attempted by government; the motto or watchword of government, on these occasions, ought to be – Be quiet… The request which agriculture, manufacturers, and commerce present to government as that which Diogenes made to Alexander: Stand out of my sunshine.” These sentiments are echoed in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, with positive-individual rights, and restraints put on the State itself: “Congress shall make no law…” Returning America to her ideals transcends partisan politics. As Natan Sharansky concludes in his book, The Case for Democracy, “We must recapture moral clarity by recognizing that the great divide between the world of fear and the world of freedom is far more important than the divisions within the free world. At a time when freedom and fear are at war, we must move beyond Left and Right and begin to think again about right and wrong.” At some point, people must stand up for freedom and take a chance, reject the Nanny State, and live the American dream.
“Nothing is inevitable in America. We are the captains of our fate. We’re not a country that prefers nostalgia to optimism; a country that would rather go back than forward. We’re the world’s leader, and leaders don’t pine for the past and dread the future. We make the future better than the past. We don’t hide from history. We make history. That, my friends, is the essence of hope in America, hope built on courage, and faith in the values and principles that have made us great. I intend to make my stand on those principles and chart a course for our future with greatness, and trust in the judgment of the people I have served all my life. So stand up with me, my friends, stand up and fight for America – for her strength, her ideals, and her future. The contest begins tonight. It will have its ups and downs, but we will fight every minute of every day to make certain we have a government that is as capable, wise, brave and decent as the great people we serve. That is our responsibility, and I will not let you down.” – from John McCain’s victory speech, 4 March 2008