Aug
25
2012
Every Man for Himself Versus We Are All in This Together
Author: Gary HartThe history of American politics might be described as a struggle between the individual and the community or, if you like “isms”, individualism and communitarianism. These are both powerful and legitimate human instincts and are not necessarily incompatible. The struggle is between those who turn one or the other instinct into an ideology. Individualists (always “rugged”) think communitarians are closet socialists, and communitarians see the individualists as Darwinistic Ayn Rand advocates. We are all in this together versus every man for himself.
The communitarian instinct prevails in times of peril. Neighbors rally around individuals or families who suffer tragedy. A school bus monitor bullied by uncivilized students received hundreds of thousands in unsolicited donations. Television networks feature stories about those who are “making a difference.” The apparent theory behind “a thousand points of light” was that massive social ills could be solved by private charity. In the Western frontier even distant neighbors collected to care for the widow, repair a fire-damaged cabin, or round up a herd.
Even before the Depression-inspired social safety net, earlier Progressives (mostly young reform-minded Republicans) rallied the nation against predatory corporations and in support of those left out. Since no one has yet devised self-administering health and retirement programs, the size of government increased during and beyond the Franklin Roosevelt era. Predictably, individualist ideologues railed against “big government” but shied away from voting to eliminate the popular and necessary safety net. “Privatization” has been the most recent variation. And after our economy began to plateau following enactment of Great Society programs for the poor, anti-big government arguments found new support among individualists. The Big Government we were against was that part of government concerned with poverty. Both parties now compete for the middle class. There are no Robert Kennedys reminding us of the one-in-five children in poverty. Out of sight; out of mind.
There may be liberal media and political figures advocating socialism. If so, I don’t know who they are. But there are clearly voices and political figures on the right who want to do away with the institutions that make us a civilized society in the interest of rugged individualism. Concern for the poor is not socialism. Nor is the search for a fair health system available to all.
As someone with strong communitarian instincts, and one of a disappearing breed of idealists, I continue to search for the balance of individualism that releases personal initiative and healthy ambition and concern for the greater society, the common good, compassion, and the national interest. It is not only possible it is necessary to reach that balance, to retain our individualism while continuing to create a genuinely civilized national society. An America of every man for himself is not an America I recognize. A nation is more than an arena for raw personal ambition. We either have common interests or we do not. We either care for those left out or we do not. We are more than a capitalist economy; we are a society and a nation.
August 25th, 2012 at 12:46 pm
In this post Senator Hart shines a telling spotlight on two critical strains of our political history, the often dueling impulses of individual versus the community–a historical struggle that the political writer E.J. Dionne has recently addressed in a very thoughtful fashion in the book, Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent–as well as how political leaders/aspirants for office respond to this historic divide. Indeed. For all the labels that are applied to politicians—liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican, etc, etc–as we seek to understand them and determine what kinds of leaders they will be, there is, in my view, nothing more telling than how they approach the quest for public office, whether they seek to pit one part of the electorate against another in their quest for an electoral majority and the pursuit of power or whether they seek to find and build upon our common ground and shared interests as they seek support aimed at allowing them to govern. These are in fact two very different—and very telling–approaches, ones that offer two very different visions of the kind of leader they will be. The distinction is something that that we, as voters, as citizens, and as Americans, should not fail to recognize.
August 27th, 2012 at 12:16 pm
Only a Statist can write an article and title it as it was. One extreme or the other. Roughing It self sufficiency or ever upward super-ordinate Force in the hands of an elite. Nothing in between. Either complete selfish anarchy or a wise and fair allocation by an enlightened elite. Of course the author is one of those elite and justifies the allocation of Power and Force to himself. Without Kennedian Camelots, how ever shall we survive? Specters of starvation and poor living without hope but for the “reallocaters” who have the prescience to truncate one person’s value system for the “efficient” redistribution of value to another. Or is it our mortal souls at stake? Which Hell will descend upon us if we don’t behave just so?
Statists prosper by sewing fear. Fear that individual decisions cannot be tolerated. Only through collectives and Force can happiness be found. The Right with its thumping of Bibles and the Left with its actuarial charts put together by “experts”. Without them the world will invade us, without them we will starve. They will think for us, the will tell us what to do. They will tell us aaallll about the boogey-man and caress our fearful brow about how only they can protect us from him.
The Keepers of the welfare and the wielder of warfare. And they ultimately are one in the same because they have to be. You can’t have one without the other. And we individualists, REAL individualists, know better. We know that building and producing and caring and sharing aren’t a government program. We know that all government is is Force, and we may allow for its existence as long as it provides protection of life and property. We know that fealty and brotherhood and bonds of love aren’t the province of politicians and bureaucrats who exist by scaring people into surrendering their freedom for security. And we can sacrifice for each other out of love, not out of FEAR and FORCE.
August 28th, 2012 at 6:35 am
As defined by Brad, “statist” hardly defines someone elected twice by the moderate to conservative voters of Colorado. Ayn Rand and Frederik Hayek define an extreme, much like every man for himself, much more than John Kennedy does. Promoting the General Welfare is a defining purpose of our Constitution, not a liberal purpose. Every president from Washington to Obama, including Reagan, have believed in the role of the United States government in achieving that purpose. That would seem to make them “statists.” No one on this blog site, including its author, is advocating fear and force. So I’ll let other readers decide who is and who is not stating an extreme position.
August 28th, 2012 at 9:27 am
It will be interesting to see whether Southern Republican Governors requesting federal disaster relief assistance, much of which will go to the poor and homeless, will be called “statists”.
August 30th, 2012 at 4:56 am
It’s interesting how “Big Government” always means Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the National Endowment for the Arts, etc. It never means the Defense Department or the Justice Department.
Chris Matthews made this observation last night — the GOP is moving away from Conservatism as defined by Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, and towards Objectivism, as defined by Ayn Rand. However, the GOP is pretty selective about the parts of Rand’s philosophy it embraces. The laissez-faire economics (little or no regulation, little or no taxes) is gospel. however, her rejection of faith-based politics and military interventionism seems to have been forgotten.