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All modern societies operate on two different levels of social organization - the informal level (non-official institutions such as families, communities, churches, private organizations etc.) and the formal level (official institutions, i.e. state and federal governments. My Law and Society professor pointed out that while the informal level of organization accounts for the majority of our social control (personally I dislike this term; it sounds very Orwellian but really means the sum of customs, norms, traditions, and laws that enable a society to live in harmony) Americans almost always appeal to formal social institutions to solve our societies multifarious problems. If there is a natural disaster people immediately call on FEMA, despite the massive amount of aid that private charities and churches provide (such as in the aftermath of Katrina). Conservative Christians, who often despise big government, nevertheless appeal to that big government to further their agendas. Looking to the government to solve social problems is what has caused government to grow so large in the first place. Beginning in the early 20th century, though this effort was most pronounced in the post-war era of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, leading public figures believed that through government societies could be engineered using "scientific" knowledge from the social sciences. Social science research continues to be a huge influence in law-making and judicial decisions. While social science is central to understanding how society functions and how we can make good and effective laws based on moral principles, it has often been accompanied with utilitarianism and a heavy-handed elitism. Efforts to engineer society are almost always aimed not at achieving moral improvement but at creating the kind of society that those in power want.
It is frightening to consider how little influence our elected representatives actually have in the day-to-day operation of our government. Bills that are passed by legislatures are long, complex, and purposely vague so that their actual interpretation and implementation is left to a network of administrators and bureaucrats (who aren't elected) and politicians can deflect blame for programs gone wrong. Many conservatives (or people who style themselves as conservatives) think the solution is a "return" to rugged individualism. This belief among "conservatives" is precisely why I am opposed to movements such as the Tea Party. Individualism has not decreased in America, it has grown rampant. The paradox of big government is that it produces individualism. Since people automatically appeal to giant, impersonal government bureaucracies for help community ties are severely weakened. People are selfish by nature and when big government erodes the bonds of informal social control with increased formal social control the individual is severed from all meaningful social bonds and becomes individualistic and narcissistic. This has been especially toxic since throughout the past 200 years human autonomy has been ideal. Thinkers such as Locke and Thoreau taught people to think of social bonds, not as natural or necessary elements of human existence, but as contracts that people willing enter into and can willing leave.
The death of community that the heavy reliance on formal social institutions has brought about is paralleled by the death of civic responsibility. How often to we seriously care about our communities? How often do we help the poor in our neighborhood, engage in church activities outside of worship, organize community events, or even get to know our neighbor? Americans focus primarily on their own self interest or their political interests. Often, though unwittingly, the lifestyle of average American contributes to the problems that they want to see solved. This lack of civic responsibility has created a culture that is lonely, insecure, self-centered, consumerist, shallow, and trivial.
If these trends are to be reversed (and they can be reversed. Americans need to stop thinking about the inexorable movement of history. We as individuals help create history) conservatives need to stop talking about individualism and start talking about community. This is precisely what conservatives across the pond have been doing with their Big Society initiative. Republicans need, like the Tories have already done, to stop talking about giving individuals back their "rights" and start talking about empowering communities to take over the responsibilities of a bloated federal government. Increased individualism only increases a vicious cycle; individualism, having had their informal community bonds cut by formal institutions, will increasingly look to those formal institutions. I will close with an anecdote which will serve to reinforce my point. 100 years ago, despite the fact that drugs were produced and legal, the US had no narcotics problem. Today, despite a boom in formal, government opposition to drugs through widespread education programs aimed at young people, commercials, and the DEA, the US continues to have an enormous narcotics problem. It is a problem that raises hell for our Latin American neighbors to the south. The difference between now and 100 years ago is that informal social control, the most effective kind of social control, is being replaced by generally ineffective formal social control. The reason I don't smoke pot isn't because it's illegal or a program in high school told me not it. It is because my family and my church has taught me not to.
I think you're incorrectly inter-twined two issues that aren't the same. I agree with your larger point that "community" is required to enforce ethics and morality. However the Tea Party, conservatives, etc. are correct in advocating for the abolition of large swaths of the federal nanny state. Only by ridding ourselves of the enormously intrusive federal nanny that minutely regulates every aspect of our lives is it even possible to form a community.
ReplyDeleteEven starting a community organization itself is a HUGE morass of federal bureaucracy. You want to be a religious organization? Fine, but you'd better have your 501(c)(3) paperwork correct with every i dotted and every t crossed. And don't even THINK about having a political opinion of you're lose that status and be taxed up to your eyeballs so you can't function. You want a develop in the community? Don't destroy any wetlands. Or any threatened species. Or structures on the National Historical Registrar. Or cover too much porous land for water runoff. Or block someone's "natural energy" (i.e. sun - this actually happened in California). Or not fill all the right paperwork. etc. etc. etc. It just goes on an on. It's an insane mess that must go.
The government wants to supplant God and "the community" the arbiter of standards, ethics and morals. Only by setting itself up as the institution by which all ("properly limited") rights are granted instead of being endowed by our Creator does government get what it wants - which is control of every possible aspect of your life from birth to death. Look at the tax code. HHS. Healthcare. EVERYTHING is about controlling EVERYTHING in your life.
If you return to principals of individual liberty and individualism, you permit people to self-organize around common causes and beliefs. You further empower them without bounds to advocate them to others. That's how your community will come about. But you can't have a community anymore without ridding yourself of the collectivized socialist nanny state first.
I think we're agreeing on the same essential principle; federal government needs to be smaller and communities need to be stronger. But where I disagree with you is that if we just let individuals be individuals then community will magically appear. When Tea Party people say we need more individualism they are utterly misguided. There is more individualism now than there ever has been before. That is the paradox I am trying to elucidate; individualism and Big Government go together. I'm not dreaming this up it is a historical and sociological fact. The same people who were responsible for enlarging the domain of the federal government, the pogressives, were the same people that strived to give more power to the individual people. Tea Party "conservatives" envoke this mythic American past where the "rugged, American individual" reigned supreme. Sorry Sarah Palin, there was no such time. What everyone forgets is that there was no more individual liberty before Big Government than there was after. Communities, local governments, and states had more liberty but not individuals. The people in your community exercised as much control over your life through informal means as the government does now through formal means. The difference was that people in your community actually cared about its members and was a great deal more effective in promoting the public good than the federal government.
ReplyDeleteI went to a lecture Monday night with two state house speakers who made a good point about power. Power is like energy; it can't be made or destroyed it can only be transferred from body to another. If you take that power away from the federal government, which I by all means support, it has to go somewhere and that somewhere needs to be communities. We need a return to civic virtue. Conservatives forget, as they bask in their misguided populist aura, that most Americans favor ransacknig the federal government for all its worth to further their own interests. Again, the rise in Big Government has gone hand in hand with the rise of individualism. Politicians like FDR had a wide mandate to pursue all of his policies because the people wanted "job creation" or some such thing. Now maybe when the Tea Party says that individual liberty what they really mean is that they want community. Perhap the disagreement here is with rhetoric, not policy. I am all for repealing ObamaCare, bringing the unions to heel, reducing government management of the economy, etc. I am against preaching of "individula liberty" and "individualism." The number of rights we have has exploded over the years and we need to get it out of people's heads that they have a right do what they want so longer as to doesn't hurt (a very ambiguous term) anybody else. Which is what, as far as I can understand, what politicians like Ron Paul advocate (who won straw poll at the CPAC).
Personally, and this might outrage some people, I'm not sure I believe in "individual rights." Such a notion is tied to Lockean political theory, which I vigorously disagree with, where the lone individual enters into a social with the government. If you study history or anthropology at all you know this scenario is a pure pipe dream. Humanity's "state of nature" is not lone individuals but families and communities. Nobody chose to form these institutions they are part of human nature. We are, as Aristotle famously said, political animals, meaning we are coummunity animals(in Aristotle's case the Greek polis) and are meant to preserve the common good. I think there is even less grounds for Lockean social contract theory from the point of view of faith. People keep saying that the Bible gives us rights but this notion is completely foreign to any Christian living before c. 1700. No such idea is found in the writings of Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, or Calvin. The Bible gives us duties, the chief two of which are to love God with all our heart, soul, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves (perhaps a third is to have dominion over the earth and multiply). Hence we reject tyranny because tyrants (e.g. Gadaffi) don't love their neighbors as themselves. So both from a historical/sociological perspect and a Christian perspective I would much more like hear politicians talk about decentralizing and streamlining government so that we can form communities that preserve the common and civic good. Precisely what policies we enact to make that possible I don't know. I'm merely putting forth principles.
ReplyDeleteThe reason that you don't find Luther, Calvin, et. al. writing about individual political liberty and rights is because it wasn't an issue in the same way at that time. However Calvin and Luther both stressed freedom for the individual to disagree with the Catholic church. At the time, Catholicism was an all-encompassing socio-political structure the same way our government is today which Calvin and Luther both took strong stances against. In fact, the works of Calvin and Luther were only advanced through the relatively liberal societies of Geneva and Saxony.
ReplyDeleteTo be clear, I am not taking the words "individualism" or "liberty" to me carte blanche to do whatever one wants. Anyone who claims liberty is freedom from all restrictions is a fool and doesn't understand words. Man is still held to the law and the morals of natural revelation. By and large, Europeans were relatively free in terms of minute controls over their daily lives. Most laws were about either things mala in se or taxes. If you paid your taxes and served your army conscription, you pretty much were left alone and did what you wanted. I'm not romanticizing things because life was much much harder than we have it today. But if you look at the breadth of human history, overall a pluralistic post-modern society that we have today is one of the least free. We are saddled with mala prohibita most of which exist for nonsensical reasons, catastrophic national debt that will haunt my grandchildren and a lurch towards "rights" which is just by-group tyranny. If the choice is between more of what now passes for civic government and individual liberties, reduced government and the freedom to pursue any community or societal grouping I want then I'm all for it.
I'm not claiming the Bible is a political manifesto for my liberty. I view personal liberty from overbearing government as the best way to pursue community building. I view personal liberty (from dominion of men) gives me the free-est way to do as God wants. The Bible is full of advice on money, property, ownership and how we should pursue those things. I'm not claiming any sort of prosperity gospel here, but God intended us to own things, to do so responsibly, and to do so for the good our ourselves, our families and our neighbors. A society that closes every avenue I have for that or, at least, makes me not want to participate for fear of legal or societal retribution isn't right and denotes lack of liberty.
Ok, I think we're saying nearly the same thing. I think where we are getting tripped up is in the terms we are using. When I say individual liberty I do not mean the abscence of the pervasive and over-arching authority of the State. What I mean by individual liberty and individualism is the notion conceived of by Locke and perpetuated by 19th century intellectuals such of Thoreau whereby the individual is autonomous and all social bonds that he enters into are of his own free well (i.e. social contracts). Such a notion, especially as espoused by Thoreau, is utterly opposed to both the Christian faith and true conservatism, both of which emphasize that man has natural duties and natural authorities over him. This is the idea that is not found in Luther or Calvin. The notion that the State should be pervasive and all-powerful is, I agree, in conflict with their ideas (though to speak of the 16th century Catholic Church as a socio-political behemoth is quite incorrect; nation-states were rapidly erroding away the power that the Church possessed in, say, the 12th or 13th centuries).
ReplyDeleteIt is this kind of individualism that I speak of increasingly in correlation with big government. Increasingly the most significant social bond is between the individual and the State. The individual gives the State a mandate to rule in return for nanny-big government. He exchanges social libertinism for economic bondage to the State.
Now, I must disagree with you if you want to call "Westnern Civilization" prior to 1800 a bastion of individual liberty (as I use the term). It is absolutely true that Western Civ prior to then (except, perhaps, Bourbon France) was free of Big (State) Government. But individual liberty as Locke or Thoreau (or any 20th century democrat) would conceive of it? Hardly. True the monarchies of Europe (and hence the state) did not intrude into individual life BUT communities, the Church, and the most immanent nobles did all the time. You forget that guilds dominated urban life and they controlled prices, employment, and production. Could you get away with sexual liscense, abortion, disobediance to parents, disrespect, etc. in a pre-modern village without serious repercussions? No.
The point I am trying to make is that in pre-modern times the basic socio-political unit was the community. Communities had relations with the State. Now, beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries but especially post-1789, the nation-state has attempted to eradicate community bonds so that there are no longer community-state relations but individual-state relations; such is the ideology of the nation state. The individual plunders the state for his own gain and flaunts his libertinism in exchange for a very powerful national or federal government. The paradox that I am getting at is the 201th and 21st century man is both free and less free. In liberating himself from overbearing parents, stupid community elders, or fundamentalist preachers (I am being sarcastic of course) he has become the slave of the welfare state. He is free to follow his desires but his desires are increasingly influences by a cultural elite that is determined to "engineer" society as they see fit.
ReplyDeleteSo I enthusiastically embrace a smaller State. I support the kind of liberty that allows communities to exercise greater autonomy. But the kind of liberty that people like Ron Paul call for I do not support. The kind of individualism that libertarians want is either going to lead us down the road of social disintegration and anarchy or the domination of another large and powerful institution (say Big Business).