Leslie Carbone, a wonderful conservative blogger from my neck of the woods, had a great blog asking "How Will the Nanny State Collapse?" I think the entire blog is well worth the read. Some exerpts follow (emphasis added):
Anybody who's ever spent any time with toddlers knows that we are born selfish, ruled by immediate desires, and unable to delay gratification. We take it as a matter of course that others exist to attend to our needs and wants, and consider it a crisis when there's any delay in satisfying them. If our own impulses lure us into discomfort, we wail until somebody else gets us out of it. With apologies to Hobbes, we enter the world nasty, brutish, and short.
Since the so-called Progressive Era, and with escalating intensity, the federal government reinforced this toddler-level sense of entitlement.
Yes, as the perpetrators of the New Deal, the Great Society, and so many other outrages, Democrats bear tremendous responsibility for fostering this sense of entitlement. But they don't know any better.
As they pad behind the Democrats on the road to serfdom, Republicans know better; at least, that's the conclusion that flows from all the lip service they give individual freedom and responsibility. And so Republican shame for expanding the nanny state is tremendous.
Okay, but here we are. People just assume a nanny state. It doesn't matter how we got here, or who's to blame. It is what it is. Shouldn't Republicans just keep on giving people what they expect?
No, for two reasons.
First, it's morally wrong. It is wrong to rob Peter to pay Paul.
Second, it can't work indefinitely. At some point, Atlas will shrug.
The nanny state will collapse. The question is How? Will it collapse because conservatives step up and provide the moral leadership to correct its underlying assumptions? Or will it collapse because it becomes so big that the few providers are ultimately crushed by the many blood-suckers?
We face a kind of Pascal's wager. We don't know whether moral chemotherapy will work, or whether the cancer that afflicts our character is terminal. But we do know what will happen if we don't try it.
My response to Leslie borrowed heavily from Alexis de Tocqueville, one of my most favorite political philosophers who had a great deal of insight into the American condition:
As Alexis de Tocqueville said, “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."
We are rapidly approaching the day that more are supported by government than are taxed by government. No country in the histroy of the world has survived such an arrangement, and, I believe, neither will ours. Add to that another wonderful quote from de Tocqueville: “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
Have we turned away from the Almighty enough that we can be seen as no longer being good? I am not sure, but we are on the way...
We must rebuild the party to provide a real alternative to the maternalistic trends we have persued over the last several decades. The nanny-state must end. Toqueville also provides hope: “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.”
4 comments:
Tocqueville, recounting the code of laws adopted by the colony of Connecticut in 1650, enumerated a lengthy list of capital offenses, including many taken directly "from Deuteronomy, Exodus, and Leviticus." He explains that "the laws of a rude and half-civilized people were carried over into a society of enlightened spirit and gentle mores" where "never was the death penalty more frequently prescribed by statue and more seldom enforced."
The condition of humanity that Hobbes describes in Leviathan as "nasty, brutish, and short" echoes King David who wrote, "Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me." (Psalm 51:5)
The question we should ask is whether a political solution exists to the problem of original sin. We all have a civil duty to vote; nonetheless, legislatures can only pass or repeal laws, which cannot change the heart.
Congress can ban discrimination, but it has not the power to stifle bigotry. It may regulate commerce, but it cannot stamp out avarice and envy.
The prerogative to sanctify souls is God's alone, as He declares, "I will put my laws in their minds and write it on their hearts." (Jeremiah 31:33; Hebrews 10:16)
Republican voters can claim no clear virtue when it comes to dining at the public trough. Ask anyone from America's Greatest Generation if they would be in favor of abolishing Social Security tomorrow, in particular if it meant moving in with their children.
Why this might strengthen family bonds or instill the wisdom of yesterday in the minds of our youth. What could be more dangerous? So, with a feint of virtue, many proclaim that they "don't want to be a burden" and then have the government tax their children to pay for it.
Turn about being fair play, the child bearing generations of this country beget K12 students and then ask that everyone pay, real estate taxes, for life, to fund the public schools. Then, towing a new boat to the lake with an SUV, they proclaim, "I can’t afford to privately educate my kids."
Of course, the real "radicals" of the party ask for school vouchers because, I guess, the government was handing out money anyways, so "we may as well get, some of what we paid in, back."
Ronald Reagan was right when he quipped that "a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on earth." Rest assured, the Social Security Administration and Department of Education are not going anywhere.
Democrats do not have a monopoly on what Ms. Carbone aptly described as "toddler-level sense of entitlement." Any guess as to how many Republican alumni stand approvingly when their alma mater receives a state or federal grant?
So what can Republicans do? Democrats can rightfully call the GOP hypocritical with the raids on the magic cookie jar (assumed mythical treasury without end) having been shameless in recent years. Public confession and candor by party leaders might go a very long way, but ultimately, Republican voters need to let their representatives know that the Constitution is to be revered and illegal spending will not be tolerated.
If there is no longer a substantial constituency that holds the Constitution in high regard, this is all academic and the republic stands in name only.
The road back may be very long. It will take discipline for parents to oppose yearly increases to public school system budgets that far outpace inflation. It will take braver efforts to eschew, first, federal funds and then, state funds. It will take a fearless effort to persuade neighbors that public education should not spend many multiples the budgets of private institutions. And then, one day...(it'll never happen)
Ms. Carbone wrote, "Democrats bear tremendous responsibility for fostering this sense of entitlement. But they don't know any better." Ronald Reagan put it a different way when he said, "the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so."
We should all know better.
Horatio Bunce
Jim, thanks for such kind words, and Anon, thanks for your thoughtful response. You're absolutely right that government cannot legislate sin out of the human heart. What it can and should do, albeit imperfectly, is protect our rights and enforce the natural order of justice whereby virtue yields rewards and vice reaps problems. But what it does now is the opposite: Its policies tend to overturn natural justice and punish virtue and reward vice. So we have our work cut out for us in restoring some sanity to our laws. I believe that we must begin by persuading people why the current circumstance is morally abhorrent, as well as untenable. I think we can do it. I have been very encouraged by the thoughtful calls on the right for the return to our core principles. Let's get to work!
Perhaps sanity can be restored to our laws by enacting sufficient constitutional safeguards to prohibit the legislature, or an imaginative executive or judiciary, from enacting tyranny.
Inspired by the recent efforts for Proposition 8, I propose the passage of a Bill of Responsibilities.
Proposed Amendments...
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of a national healthcare or retirement system, or prohibiting the free market thereof; or abridging the consequences of decisions, or of education; or the right of people conceived to be born.
No public funds from the treasury of the general government shall be used to pay for medical procedures, unemployment or retirement benefits. The general government shall not regulate through tax policy or other legislative means the right of the people to engage in commerce, make investments, give charity, or bequeath property to posterity, nor shall any public funds be allocated to subsidize commerce, insure private investments, or fund religious or other charitable organizations. The right of the people to create wealth and bestow it to their descendants shall not be abridged.
A privilege of Eminent domain shall not be invoked, unless in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion.
No tax or duty shall be laid on labors or investments by the people.
Personal and corporate income or capital formation cannot be taxed.
No persons proposing such amendments shall be overtly maligned by the press, or burned as a witch without a trial by jury.
Horatio Bunce
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