Is the Government Our Enemy?

Ronald Reagan's conservatism insisted that the government is the enemy of the ordinary citizen. When the government makes its appearance you had better watch out. Contemporary conservatives still hope to reduce the scope of government involvement in the lives of ordinary citizens. This is an attractive position. Everyone has stories of being frustrated by the demands of official bureaucracies. There is very little any citizen can do even with his or her private property without the intensely annoying need to ask permission from some government bureau.

But government does not only regulate where we often feel regulation to be unnecessary or even destructive – destructive of citizen initiative and self-determination - government also supports significant portions of the population. In some parts of the country such as coal country in Kentucky, more than half the population is supported by government payments for food, for healthcare, for housing. (NYTimes, Saturday, December 22, 2018)

One would think that the people who effectively live off government support would not vote the Republican ticket. They would not buy the anti-government propaganda because they know that were it not for the government, specifically for the federal government, they would starve and so would their children. In different parts of the country the jobs that maintained parents and grandparents – jobs in the mines, in steel mills and in manufacturing, well-paying, skilled jobs that maintained previous generations - are no longer there. Those jobs did not make anyone rich but they maintained families without too many financial worries and they created a working class that took pride in their accomplishments. The paycheck they took home at the end of the week, they felt, was earned by hard work and by skills they slowly learned on the job.

But now these jobs are gone and for many there are no other jobs available, other than temporary work that rarely lasts. In some of these areas about half the people are pretty much out of work and live, as we would say, "on the dole."

The surprising fact is that in spite of their dependence on the government, many of the citizens support the conservative position and vote for Donald Trump, regarding the government that actually keeps them alive as their enemy. One of the sources of Donald Trump’s support is actually in areas where work is scarce, does not pay well and many people are dependent for their livelihood on government handouts.

Not surprisingly that has perplexed a lot of observers. How could people dependent on the government be hostile to it? The explanations usually offered are that these segments of our population are mostly poorly educated, not very intelligent people who voted on their feelings instead of thinking about where their real interests lie. It seems undeniable that they vote against their most pressing self-interest and no one would do that if they were paying attention or if they had average intelligence.

However reasonable that explanation may seem, it has left many people uncomfortable. Why should our political enemies all be mentally deficient? Is there no one on our side who does not fail to think hard about political choices and is inspired by random emotions instead of careful thought? The explanation that poor people support the champion of the rich, Donald Trump, because they are plain stupid does not appear to be satisfactory.

Observers who hesitate to question the intelligence of conservatives sometimes try instead to explain their apparent voting against their own interests by portraying them as victims of propaganda. The poor people who vote against their own interest, it is said, are confused by the constant drumbeat of propaganda in the media, in entertainment, and in religion in favor of capitalism, in favor of the system that enriches some and leaves many others without work they can be proud of. But of course accusing people of being deceived by propaganda which would not for a moment deceive you and me is drawing an invidious distinction which is no more acceptable than calling conservatives stupid.

Now comes a professor from Cornell who, in a recent book, argues interestingly that the hostility against government does not only consist of hostility to government regulation – although that is an element in this conservative stance. (Suzanne Mettler, The Government Citizen Disconnect). The hostility to government is a result of putting people on the dole, paying for their food and lodging, making them completely dependent on various government bureaucracies. The complaint of workers in coal country, in towns supported by steel mills or heavy manufacturing plants is that there is no work for them. Working, especially if the work requires skills, supports self-esteem. Doing a good day's work that produces valuable goods, that leaves you tired at the end of the day gives you satisfaction. If the work requires skill you can be proud of having those skills and of doing what not everyone could do.

But those jobs have disappeared and no one in the government is at all concerned to bring them back or to replace them with comparable work. Just giving out of work miners or workers in the steel mill money so they can live and feed their children these miners and workers see as profoundly disrespectful. No one cares about their lives, no one cares about whether they can do work that is a real contribution, whether they can stand tall for being workers in what ever industry.

This is an interesting and important insight. It raises questions about what the role of government should be. Many people , especially on the left, are perfectly content to think of the government as a dispenser of funds to support the livelihoods of ordinary citizens. The role of government is to help people. But here now is a different conception of the role of government. It needs to create the conditions for citizens to have good lives, lives that satisfy, lives that one can look back on proudly with the sense that one has made a contribution to the betterment of all, that one's life had been worth living, that one’s goal had been more than simply not starving or freezing as a homeless person. What is valuable is not merely biological existence but life as a member of a community where one makes a contribution that is needed.

Given current economic realities, given the rise of robotics as a serious threat to human activity, no one, including governments, may be able to find good work for everyone. If that is so, governments need to be the agents of finding alternative activities for everyone to do their part in the life of their communities. What such activities that government might foster would look like is not totally clear. On the one hand, there is necessary work, for instance, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, that the government should set in motion by financing it (instead of enriching the super rich through tax cuts.). On the other hand, the New Deal Projects like the Civilian Conservation Corps, or the WPA suggest how to think about creating good work.

Merely objecting to the government is not helpful here. If the role of government is going to change in a positive way towards enabling people to have good lives instead of merely staying alive, we need many different positive suggestions and reflections about them. Significant social changes is needed to resolve the challenge of men and women whose work has disappeared.

The people who may seem to vote against their own self interest are not unintelligent, they are not confused by propaganda. They need their society to care enough about them to develop new possibilities for leading lives that are worthwhile because they make significant contributions to this society.

The Debate over the Role of Government

One serious difference between progressives and conservatives is their estimate of the value of government interventions. In conservative theory, government has only one function and that is to secure the liberties given to us in the Constitution. Any other government action is illegitimate and should be ended.
The view of the role of government at the other end of the political spectrum is much more generous. Progressives tend to look to the government to equalize life chances in our society. Its role includes passing legislation to promote equality of opportunity and to guarantee, as far as possible, a productive and happy life to all citizens .

But in pursuit of equality of opportunity, the government often gets involved in programs that do not benefit the intended beneficiaries and instead puts money in the pocket of shady operators.

A recent example of that is a government program that provides significant financial support for persons who want to study law. The government is prepared to give substantial loans to law students. The goal of this program is obviously to enable people with limited financial resources to train for and enter a lucrative and respected profession, the law.

Unfortunately this program didnot meet its goals but instead saddled many people with very large debts without opening a legal career to them. Here is what happened. Once the loan fund was available many law schools, especially for-profit law schools but not they alone, raised their tuition. Thus people who attend law school with the help of the government loan fund may end up owing more than $150,000.

The schools not only raised their fee but also lowered their admissions criteria in order to take in more tuition money. As a consequence the supply of lawyers increased while the demand for lawyers remained the same. At the same time there were more lawyers who lacked the ability to pass the rather demanding examinations one needs to pass in order to be allowed to practice law. More and more law students, saddled with a large debt, failed their bar exams and thus could not practice law. The money they spent on tuition, not to mention the interest on their loans, was wasted.

This attempt to to equalize the opportunity for entering the legal profession is a complete failure. It damaged the lives of those it hoped to help and instead put money into the pockets of unscrupulous law schools.

Cases like this one bolster the conservative outlook. In attacking government activities designed to increase equality of opportunity – affirmative action in education and hiring are the most notorious examples of that – conservatives point to cases like the law school tuition loan program to prove that such programs do not work but, instead, do tremendous damage.

It is not difficult to find many other cases where government, especially the federal government, has tried to improve life for American citizens but has failed. The "No Child Left Behind" Act is one well-known example of that. The constant testing of students has not been nearly as beneficial as originally expected.

But it is important to remember that not all government programs fail. One of the earliest government moves to reduce racial injustices was made by Pres. Truman in 1946 with the integration of the armed forces. Separate military units for whites and for African-American were abolished. Soldiers,  regardless of their origins or the color of their skin, now served together. In the 1950s began the efforts to integrate schools, a program that encountered many difficulties and failures but has made a significant difference. So has government insistence that citizenship rights, such as voting or holding public office, are owed to all Americans not only to whites.

There are much more established government functions which are usually overlooked in these the debates. Since medieval times governments have tried to make sure that coinage and money were trustworthy. They have supervised scales and measures to make sure that consumers were not cheated by unscrupulous grocers or butchers. Consumer protection has been a government function that everyone, except some business people, have supported wholeheartedly. We have always believed that the government, that is local government, should be in charge of the education of our children. Private schools are understood to be tools for stratifying our society by promoting inequality.

    We seem to be caught between two alternatives neither of which is fully satisfactory. We can devise government programs to to help our fellow citizens who are suffering. The price we pay for that are other government programs that do more harm than good. Or we can resist all government programs and leave the poor or those challenged by undeserved adversity to their own, inadequate devices.

    But these are, of course, not our only options. In many, not in all, situations the choice is not between having government programs and not having them. There is always the third possibility of communities rallying and providing assistance by their own efforts to those who need it.

    One familiar example of that are schools. In some communities citizens do not merely hand over their tax money to the school board and then let them do whatever seems best to them. Instead citizens remain actively involved in running the schools to provide the education they want for their children. Active citizen supervision makes the schools better along the lines desired by citizens.

    Many observers see a dilemma between an activist government that often fails and a conservative government that fails its needy citizens. But that dilemma exists only as long as we are unwilling to be active citizens in our own communities and help provide the services that we want for everyone. Schools are one example. So are food banks, clothing depositories, shelters for the homeless, refuges for battered women, and rape crisis centers. These are often provided by local efforts, largely financed by local contributions and staff, in part, by local volunteers.

    Citizens who are willing to give of their own time and share their own resources can do much to provide good services that a community needs without relying on the work of often inept government bureaucrats.

    Activist citizens may improve government services by supervising particular programs and raising questions about ineffective or damaging ones. The questions about the law school tuition loan programs, for instance, were  raised in an editorial in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/opinion/sunday/the-law-school-debt-crisis.html?_r=0).

    Citizen prepared to be active either in their communities or in keeping a close eye on government programs  are essential to a proper functioning of our social-political system. Both the endless complaints about government inefficiency or the kneejerk call for more government programs to solve new problems come from citizens unwilling to play their proper role as activists in their community and in the nation.

What to do in Afghanistan?

No one seems to know what to do in Afghanistan. There are huge debates within the military. The White House is thinking about the options. More and more voters oppose sending more troops. No doubt the situation is very difficult. But one difficulty most of us have is that we have very limited information about Afghanistan and the situation there.
Every now and then, though, we get a glimpse of the reality of Afghanistan and what we see is a mixture of Alice in Wonderland and Gilbert and Sullivan.
A recent newspaper report relates how the Afghani constitution provides for provincial councils. Every province is supposed to have a council elected by the inhabitants of the province. These councils were elected when the people voted recently. There is only one problem. There is nothing for these councils to do. Every province is run by a governor appointed by the national president. The provincial councils may neither pass laws nor make decisions about spending money. They have no function. Some of them never meet.
The same Constitution provides for the election of district, municipal, and village councils. But villages and municipalities are run by village elders who consult with the male leaders of the locality after Friday night prayers at the mosque. These local councils, supposed to be elected later this year, promise to have the same future as the provincial councils; they will be completely useless.
How did Afghanistan get this Constitution that clearly does not fit its actual institutions? After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, a conference was held in Bonn, Germany under UN auspices to discuss the future of Afghanistan. The conference picked Afghani leaders who would write and later approve a new constitution. This constitution was written, supposedly, by Afghani experts but you need not look very closely to see that a lot of American “ experts” had significant influence on the process. The Afghanis voted for the Constitution and then proceded to govern themselves pretty much as they have done for a long time.
But every step they take is, apparently, closely supervised by a long list of American nongovernmental organizations. The article mentions the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University, the National Democratic Institute, USAID ( which pays for a significant portion of these useless elections), there is the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit and the Aid- Effectiveness Program of Oxfam (usefully located in Boston).
Most members of the Provincial Councils are twiddling their thumbs after spending money and effort to get themselves elected. One notable exception is the brother of Pres. Hamid Karzai, who “made a reputation for himself by holding news conferences denouncing ineffective international aid.”
What a story! We try to establish democracy in Afghanistan by participating actively in writing their constitution for them. The constitution we write elects many people who would have no job to do. Many NGO bureaucrats anxiously watch over this constitution adopted by Afghanistan for the sake of American support and approval. In the meantime, the people in the provinces, towns and villages of Afghanistan continue to follow their established forms of government including their own forms of local consultation.
One of the two goals of American policy in Afghanistan, according to Gen. McChrystal, is to strengthen the Afghan government. Which government is he talking about – the government we imposed on Afghanistan or the government that actually governs the country?