Introduction
To advocate good government is
to recognize the indispensable role that political authority plays
in a healthy community. To advocate limited government is to
understand that not everything necessary for a community to be
healthy is the responsibility of government. A good but limited
government is one that serves its citizens by exercising well its
particular task and refraining from other tasks. Essential to
government's particular task is ensuring that other social
institutions are free to exercise their own particular tasks.
Identifying the proper tasks and limits
of various social institutions is bound up with a society's
understanding of the good life and the good community-its moral
vision of its defining goods and purposes. The case for good,
limited government is therefore incomplete if it proceeds only in
terms of the effects upon individual freedom or the fiscal
implications of expanded government programs. Governing is a moral
task, and the size and scope of government have moral implications
for society, including its members' ability to fulfill their
ethical obligations to one another.
The primary task of government is
administering judgment according to standards of justice. Because
law by its very nature concerns moral judgments, a government that
stands under the rule of law presupposes the existence of a moral
order, expresses the social concept of that order, and in turn
encourages the fundamental moral principles of a society,
particularly regarding justice. Citizens' assumptions and
expectations of government therefore shape not only their national
character, but also their approach to issues like poverty and
economic justice. Moreover, our assumptions about government
influence the formation of the social bonds required to cultivate
virtue, and thus sustain freedom, as well as the way citizens think
about and relate to neighbors in need.
Sustaining limited government and
freedom turns on the question of how virtue is cultivated and which
communities and institutions are most appropriate for this task.
Local forms of association, especially the family and religious
congregations, generate the thick, personal bonds that unite and
motivate individuals toward the good for themselves and others. The
proper exercise of political authority articulates a society's
understanding of good through law and enacts judgment upon those
who violate it through certain acts of wrongdoing. Citizens thus
render a proper level of trust and appreciation for the crucial
role that good government plays in a healthy society.
As government assumes greater political
authority, however, it is more able to shape the terms of public
discourse and draw to itself expectations and levels of trust
beyond those appropriate to good government, often at the expense
of smaller institutions of civil society. Such a shift in the
public's attitude toward expansive government can weaken democracy,
given that diversification of authority among local associations is
a strong check against government tyranny. Moreover, not only does
unhealthy reliance upon government social programs discourage
genuine compassion and personal relations between wealthy and poor
citizens, but the cost of funding such programs actually threatens
future generations with unsustainable debt. A good but limited
government will thus acknowledge that other social institutions are
better able to cultivate virtuous citizens, care for those in need,
and further true democratic freedom while exercising its own
crucial responsibility to protect its citizens and social
institutions from injustice.
Virtue as the Foundation of
Freedom
All political communities, including
nation-states, are held together by civic bonds or "ties that
bind." As the motto of the United States-e pluribus unum,or
"out of many, one" -implies, the kinds of obligations that unite
its many members into one people are of critical importance. These
bonds often take the form of moral obligations that we owe one
another as members of the same community.[1] To fulfill such obligations,
citizens require certain virtues. A virtuous citizen is one
whose habits and skills enable him or her to fulfill the
responsibilities necessary for securing the community's goods.
As Americans, we tend to place high
value on the goods of freedom, prosperity, and security. The habits
needed to achieve these goods include trust, cooperation,
self-sacrifice, hard work, and a sense of responsibility for
others. Francis Fukuyama has demonstrated how healthy communities
depend upon the acquisition of "social capital" in the form of
trust, loyalty, honesty, and dependability.[2] These are key virtues for
people in their capacity as members of the American community, and
they are, as the Founders understood, a necessary support for
ordered liberty.
"Only a virtuous people are capable of
freedom," declared Benjamin Franklin, who echoed James Madison when
he wrote, "To suppose that any form of government will secure
liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a
chimerical idea." [3] Moreover, in his Farewell Address, George
Washington asserted that "virtue or morality is a necessary spring
of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less
force to every species of free Government." [4]
The question of both securing freedom
and sustaining limited government thus turns on how virtue is
cultivated and which communities and institutions are most
appropriate for this task.
The Cultivation of
Virtue
America's Founders recognized that the
fundamental institutions of family and religion as well as local
associations were best suited to foster virtuous citizens who
fulfill moral obligations toward each other and thus sustain
ordered liberty. Family and religious congregations are best suited
for character formation because they are able to:
-
Exercise the authority and discipline
necessary for pursuing good,
-
Motivate members to seek the good for
its own sake,
-
Offer the personal goods generally
considered most worthy of pursuit, and
-
Involve people directly with one
another for an intrinsically communal purpose.
In particular, the Founders stressed
the important role of religious institutions in moral formation.
The belief in a "God All Powerful wise and good," claimed Madison,
is "essential to the moral order of the world." [5] The Founders believed not
only that freedom depends upon virtue, but also that virtue is
encouraged and cultivated by religious commitments. Washington
declared in his Farewell Address that "reason and experience both
forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion
of religious principle." [6]
The Latin root of religion is
religio, meaning "to bind." Religious communities bind
people vertically to God and horizontally to one another in
personal ways. These social bonds not only depend upon, but
actually help to generate trust, cooperation, submission to proper
authority, self-sacrifice, and a shared pursuit of and
participation in the good. Consequently, such faith communities
have a significant capacity for shaping virtuous character.
Religious congregations provide a
helpful example of how the four criteria mentioned above function
in the cultivation of virtue.
First, faith communities can
exercise the authority and positive discipline needed to achieve
the good. Discipline is pressure that spurs one on toward a goal
when he might otherwise not be inclined toward it. Discipline in
the hands of a knowledgeable and caring authority is a form of
care. Such discipline as care can be exercised hierarchically
(e.g., by a pastor or priest) or through egalitarian relationships
(e.g., by a small "accountability group" or partner). It can take
the form of a word or action behind us pushing us ahead when we
would tend to turn aside from the pursuit of the right objects-a
loving hand on our backs that compels us forward when distraction,
laziness, ignorance, error, or inordinate passions tempt us off
course.
Second, communities of faith are
able to cultivate within members a personal desire to do what is
right rather than acting only out of submission to authority or
fear of punishment. In particular, churches aim to cultivate proper
desires through worship, which is the practice of assigning and
expressing ultimate value to what is most worthy of attention and
sacrifice. Religious worship focuses a congregation' s attention
and desire upon a transcendent God who is the source of goodness
and virtue. Ideally, focusing one's moral vision upon God will
motivate him or her to desire the things God desires and to pursue
them even when nobody is watching or commanding it. This means that
an apprentice in virtue will be not only pushed in the proper
direction from behind, but also drawn forward by desire for the
proper ends.
Third, a local congregation can
offer personal, substantial goods, including fellowship, emotional
and spiritual support, physical and financial assistance in times
of need, and a sense of meaningful membership or participation in a
transcendent purpose. Such goods are among the objects that many
believe to be the most worth pursuing in life. Churches and
religious communities thus have the ability to evoke tremendous
energy, effort, desire, determination, and sacrifice among their
members in pursuit of the goods they offer.
Fourth, because these particular
goods are social in nature, people pursue and enjoy them together
with others. Such goods are communal at their heart-they imply
relationship with another. Involvement with others is not just a
means to securing them, but the very mode of their experience and
enjoyment. They are not usually pursued for entirely self-centered
reasons, but reveal joint concern for others who also share in the
good. Congregations thus have the ability to bind members together
in horizontal relationships in pursuit of common goals.
In addition to religious congregations,
the institution of the family is crucial in the cultivation of
virtue and moral sense. Here individuals experience direct,
continual character training in the context of several persons
acting as a single unit in which moral authority, at its best, is
exercised by those who love and desire the best for each
member.
But religious congregations and
families are not alone. Sports teams, orchestras, schools,
professional guilds, neighborhoods, acting troupes, and other
voluntary associations can function as local moral communities in
similar ways.[7]
A basketball team, for example, can train members in virtue through
the discipline of a wise coach, the positive motivation of the love
of sport, and the necessity of working together with teammates
toward a common goal of victory in competition. Through such
activity, players learn what it means to trust others, work
together, train hard, submit to authority, identify and coordinate
different personal skills, accommodate the errors of others-and
rely on accommodation of their own errors by others-and seek the
good of the group above oneself. Moreover, because every position
is important, sports teams enable individual members to make
particular contributions which they can recognize as significant.
According to sociologist Robert Nisbet, small, purposive
communities are thereby able to exact effort, allegiance, and
sacrifice from individuals with "evocative intensity." [8]
Because they bind their members in
personal, cooperative ways in pursuit of common goods, family,
religious congregations, and other institutions of civil society
cultivate the indispensable virtues of a healthy democracy.
Government therefore not only fulfills an important aspect of its
task of justice, but also indirectly supports the cultivation of
virtuous citizens by respecting the authority of local civil
society institutions and protecting them from unjust
interference.
Why the Nation-State Cannot
Generate the Ties Needed to Bind a Free People
The effective exercise of political
authority depends upon and gives expression to a moral order of
right and good among a people. It requires, to some extent, a
shared understanding of the good life and the good community by its
subjects. In a large, pluralistic context of differing perspectives
and faiths, agreement about the common good is likely more
difficult to reach than it is in smaller, voluntary associations
and communities. The common goods offered by the nation-state are
less capable of engendering the thick, personal bonds that unite
smaller institutions like families and congregations. Instead, the
state is left more dependent on fear of punishment as a means of
motivation.
What has come to distinguish the modern
state from other institutions and authorities in society is its
monopoly on the use of legitimate physical force.[9] The national government has
the legal right to imprison those who break its laws, and this can
serve as a powerful motivating force for obeying its commands
(e.g., to pay taxes, to register for selective service [for males],
to answer summons to court, to provide employees with a minimum
wage, to refrain from murder or theft, etc.). The authority of
government and the pressure it applies in appealing to force can
function as forms of discipline, which can play an important role
in spurring citizens to pursue the good.
Virtuous citizens, however, are
motivated by a desire for the good; they are drawn forward by a
love of the right objects, not merely pushed from behind by the law
to fulfill certain obligations or avoid certain misdeeds.
Government can undergird aspirations for political goods such as
justice and equality, but it is not as equipped as other
institutions to cultivate virtuous desires for many other important
ends.
National governments do not, for
example, attract citizens to the good of compassion with the same
power as other social institutions because they bind citizens to a
sovereign state, or to an impersonal law, rather than to other
citizens directly. In the words of John Paul II, "one cannot give
oneself…to an abstract ideal" but can only "give oneself to
another person or to other persons." [10] Personal connections to
and participation in other human lives have more power to inspire
sacrificial acts of care and compassion than do impersonal laws. As
Martin Luther King, Jr., explained, laws can restrain the
heartless, but they cannot change the heart.[11]
The modern nation-state also fails to
unite citizens with the same "evocative intensity" as other
institutions because of the common goods it is understood to offer.
In recent decades, the political goods of liberty and justice-two
hallmarks of a healthy democratic society-have been reduced to
hollow, individualistic notions of autonomous choice and various
rights claims. Increasingly viewed today through the lens of
entitlement and right to privacy, these goods are less socially
cohesive and morally binding, especially compared to the individual
responsibilities and social obligations upheld by religious and
other local communities. Modern, impoverished notions of freedom
and rights tend to view the obligations we owe others in
negative terms: the right not to be interfered with
or harmed. An emphasis on individual freedom framed in negative
rather than positive terms-i.e., freedom from others rather
than freedom for pursuing common goals with
others-does not, by itself, foster a healthy sense of
responsibility or trust among citizens.
People are most likely to sacrifice for
the good of another when they feel a positive sense of
responsibility for that person or to some higher subject.[12] In the
modern liberal milieu of radical individualism and rights divorced
from responsibilities, it is more difficult for the nation-state to
unite citizens by invoking something more than the common pursuit
of individual autonomy and security. The lack of a more unifying
purpose tends to lead to the weakening of the ties that bind people
together horizontally-the ties required to sustain true
freedom.
Ties That Bind: Horizontal
Versus Vertical
When the horizontal ties that bind
citizens to each other weaken, individuals become more likely to
reach for the support of vertical ties to the government. The
result is a vicious cycle: As the federal government grows bigger
and assumes more responsibility for fulfilling the moral
obligations among citizens, it can further undermine the perceived
significance and authority of smaller, local institutions. It can,
in other words, weaken the institutions that foster social bonds
that are strong enough to generate virtues like trust and
responsibility. Excessive bureaucratic centralization thus sets in
motion a dangerous cycle that precipitates not moral virtue but
individualism and social decay.
The resulting atomization severs
freedom and justice from the communal conception of good in
relation to which they derive their particular meaning, flattening
them conceptually to license and procedural adherence to the
written law. That leaves society vulnerable to corruption: "Life
organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend
itself against the corrosion of evil," asserted Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, which is why "[i]t is time, in the West, to defend
not so much human rights as human obligations." [13] Human obligations-more
personal and primary than legal obligations-best provide for the
meeting of true need, the achievement of real public good, the
resistance to oppressive power, and thus the securing of lasting
liberty.
It should therefore not come as a
surprise that the strengthening of vertical ties to the
federal government has coincided with a weakening in the horizontal
bonds of civil society institutions. "The history of the Western
State," laments sociologist Robert Nisbet, "has been characterized
by the gradual absorption of powers and responsibilities formerly
resident in other associations and by an increasing directness of
relation between the sovereign authority of the State and the
individual citizen." [14] As centralized government has claimed
responsibility for more goods and functions, it has absorbed the
allegiance once placed in other institutions. As Nisbet
asserts:
In any society the concrete loyalties
and devotions of individuals tend to become directed toward the
associations and patterns of leadership that in the long run have
the greatest perceptible significance in the maintenance of
life…. Family, church and local community held the
allegiance of individuals in earlier times…because these
groups possessed a virtually indispensable relation to the economic
and political order.
As the nation-state has assumed the
"determining role in our institutional systems of mutual aid,
welfare, education, recreation, and economic production and
distribution," allegiance to smaller forms of association has
declined.[15]
How Big Government Shapes Public
Imagination
Today the United States government
claims responsibility to provide a vast number of goods and
services, which increases its potential to influence the attitudes
and expectations-the public imagination-of its citizens.
-
The national government provides all
citizens with protection of basic freedoms, national security and
defense, a judicial court system, federal prisons, immigration
control, stable financial markets, free trade, and a national
currency.
-
It also aims to provide a reliable
infrastructure, public schools, affordable energy, clean air and
water, safe foods and medicines, innovative technologies, postal
service, national parks and recreational sites, arts and humanities
programs, emergency relief, space exploration, a national library,
railroad corporation, archives, and botanic garden and numerous
other goods.
-
In addition, federal social programs
supply money, food stamps, housing, prescription drugs, medical
care, transportation, training, counseling, rehabilitation
programs, and other forms of care to the persistently poor, the
provisionally poor, the elderly, the sick, the addicted, the
immobile, the unemployed, the uneducated, the undereducated, the
unmarried with children, children without parents, and children who
are parents.
On the other side of the equation, the
government expects citizens to render due allegiance in a variety
of ways. At a minimum, the government asks its citizens to pledge
allegiance to its flag; to value certain concepts such as
individual freedom, religious liberty, popular sovereignty, and
private ownership; to obey the rule of law and the rulings of the
judicial process; and to be willing to fight and die for its
defense. Most Americans comply with such requests for allegiance,
viewing them as both prudential and patriotic measures.
In other areas, government does not
ask, but requires, certain actions. Citizens must pay taxes, meet
official regulations, and obey specific laws to avoid fine or
imprisonment. Most citizens also acknowledge these kinds of
demands as necessary for a functioning nation-state (even if they
disagree with specific policies and laws).
What goes less noticed is the subtle
influence that the government's power of enforcement wields on the
public imagination. The official, explicit, first-order authority
to mandate payment of taxes and to enforce laws carries informal,
implicit, derivative powers. These include the power to promote
certain causes, prioritize certain risks, endorse certain values
and beliefs, uphold certain standards, encourage certain
expectations, and define and interpret certain terms. For example,
the government dictates that American taxpayers must contribute to
certain retirement savings mechanisms established by the
government; give financial support to value-laden programs (such as
diversity training in government agencies); and bankroll supposedly
secular public schools whose curricula are inevitably embedded with
assumptions about the true, good, and beautiful.
Moreover, the expansion of government
carries over into the power to define influential legal categories
and terms-such as what counts as discrimination,
secular, and marriage. It also shapes social
expectations and outlooks among citizens-such as where to look for
assistance (the welfare state); who to blame in times of crisis
(FEMA, the President, the Federal Reserve); and what people are
entitled to by right (privacy, cheap prescription drugs, same-sex
marriage, etc.).
The central place the government
occupies among serious public discussions and debates about such
issues as health care or welfare testifies to its centripetal
influence over the thoughts and expectations of its citizens.
Public discourse often implies that the national government is the
primary-if not only-institution responsible for addressing pressing
issues that face us as individuals and communities.
Rather than asking who should
take responsibility for an issue (whether, family, neighborhood,
government, religious congregation, etc.), the public debate too
often blithely assumes that the answer is government and instead
focuses on how it should address the problem. For example,
when the issues of health care and welfare are raised in public
discourse, they are often referenced in terms of "the health
care debate" or "welfare reform" in general, with government as the
implied referent. Seldom does public discourse acknowledge the
possibility of other institutions taking an important role in
addressing such issues: Seldom does it include talk of "this
congregation's health care debate" (i.e., the discussion going on
among a group of religious co-congregants about how they will
address the health care needs within and around their community) or
"that neighborhood's welfare reform" (i.e., the projects a
community has undertaken to form a network of mutual support and
interdependence for those in need). Government crowds out other
institutions from the public imagination, and this is reflected and
reinforced by prevailing public discourse.
In short, the powers to pass laws and
collect taxes entail the power to define, to some extent, the terms
of public understanding, involvement, and debate. In this way,
government has power to help shape citizens' thoughts, words, and
deeds and influence where they place their trust, hope, and
expectations.[16]
Policymakers and government officials
should neither ignore the power that comes with the exercise of
political authority nor pretend that government's task can be
morally neutral. A good but limited government should acknowledge
that it governs according to a certain conception of good and right
but has a limited role in bringing about or realizing that
conception. The government's responsibility vis-à-vis the
good and right is judgment: The government judges social
relationships and activities in light of a moral vision.[17] This
differs from a more expansive understanding of government's
role-the kind that justifies the nanny state, whereby, for example,
the state replaces local, non-government initiatives that actively
pursue public goods with its own programs.
Misplaced Allegiance Threatens Democracy
Citizens' cultural allegiances to
family, church, and local associations, claims Nisbet, are some of
"the most powerful resources of democracy." [18] The diversification of
authority and allegiance among social institutions helps to prevent
any one institution from becoming too powerful. In the words of
19th century French priest and political writer Felicite Robert de
Lamennais, "Who says liberty, says association." [19]
A healthy democratic society trusts its
government to exercise certain defined tasks. Citizens actually
weaken democracy, however, by placing in the government the
trust, hope, and loyalty that properly belong to local
associations. Government officials encourage this erosion when they
use rhetoric that implies that they can "save" people from
society's most serious problems by top-down social engineering or
that government programs are primarily responsible for overcoming
these ills. This comes close to utopian thinking, implying that the
state has omnicompetence that rivals God's.
When government exercises power outside
its proper boundaries, not only does it assume responsibilities
that it is not qualified to fulfill, but it also undermines its
legitimate task of protecting freedom and justice. By taking over
the functions of smaller institutions, rendering them less socially
relevant, government weakens the check against tyranny that
diversification of authorities provides. A nation-state avoids both
explicit and implicit establishment of religion when it encourages
citizens to give government only the amount of trust, hope, and
loyalty it deserves without diminishing their trust or allegiance
in other institutions and authorities. The trust and loyalty that
are appropriate to government derive from the indispensable role
that it plays in promoting justice and punishing injustice in
society, a function without which the social bonds and cooperative
behavior that comprise healthy communities would be
jeopardized.
In sum, the authority that citizens
vest in government carries significant moral implications. The
amount of responsibility ceded to or claimed by government can
shape attitudes, motivations, expectations, and even the terms in
which we debate public issues. Moreover, the government can
influence the cultivation of character and the strength of social
bonds by protecting virtue-forming institutions such as the family
or religious congregations against unjust interference from other
institutions, including the state.
Another important aspect of the
government's moral influence upon society is its contribution
toward a pervasive mentality that interprets the state's
responsibility toward its citizens through a hyperindividualistic
lens of entitlement. The case for a good but limited government
should also recognize the deleterious effects of this mentality and
the corresponding cost of government-funded social programs on our
moral vision and the social relationships that bind us
together.
The Problematic Notion of Government as
Provider
The moral vision according to which
government officials make judgments about the common good entails
fundamental ideas about human nature, justice, moral obligation,
and responsibility. Given the power of government to shape the
attitudes and discourse of its citizenry, the particular moral
notions dominant in government not only depend upon, but also
contribute to and reinforce the moral vision of the larger
society.
A conception of broad government
responsibility to provide for those in need has exercised great
influence since the days of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. This in
turn has fed a notion of individual entitlement. "Necessitous men
are not free men," said President Roosevelt in 1944, expounding a
long list of goods that government should supply its citizens to
ensure their freedom and security-which he called a new bill of
rights-including decent housing, health care, and a good job.[20] Those who
conceive of government responsibility and individual rights in this
expansive way argue that the nation's responsibility to care for
its citizens in need calls for more, not less, government power,
authority, and spending. They often therefore justify ballooning
federal budgets on moral grounds, assuming that corporate care and
concern for other human beings must correlate with spending more on
government-funded social programs.
A closer examination reveals that
raising federal spending is not the only way that we can
corporately address need, nor is it the most just, effective,
compassionate, or responsible way to meet our moral obligations to
those in need. The idea that individuals are owed an
ever-increasing number of rights by the government weakens the
concept of justice by approaching it only from the side of the
isolated individual. Moreover, the "care" provided by government
social programs-often in the form of impersonal checks-is less
holistic and humanizing than that provided by smaller, more
personal approaches.
Beyond being less just and
compassionate, expensive government social programs can lead to
additional unhealthy moral consequences, including damaging
dependence on government handouts and unsustainable budget deficits
for future generations. Finally, this "government as provider"
mentality can foster a sense of resentment among taxpayers, sapping
our propensity to give and receive gifts and misconstruing the
social obligations that bind us together, thus further weakening
the moral fiber of our nation.
The Entitlement Mentality's Incomplete Notion of
Justice
Voluntary sacrifice of one's time or
money to give to the poor, the sick, and the elderly is a virtue.
Indeed, one could argue that healthy communities depend upon some
members giving to other members who are in need. And it is
certainly proper for those in need to ask for help from others.
However, the notion that people are entitled to or deserve other
people's time or money is not the best moral rationale for giving
to those who are in need.
Among many religious traditions that
emphasize charity to the poor, such as the Christian faith, the
motivation is more about exercising generosity than about
recognizing what another deserves. The injunctions to give to the
poor, feed the hungry, care for the sick, etc. are usually
identified in Christian Scripture as the proper response of those
who have received from God grace that they did not deserve.
Voluntary, generous giving to those in need is an essential
component of biblical justice, which comes from the same Greek word
often translated as "righteousness." The biblical focus is on the
proper relationship of the giver to God and to those who are in
need, not on the merits of the needy.
Politically speaking, the modern
Western conception of rights that shaped the American founding
developed in a context of reciprocal rights and duties. To identify
a right was to identify one's valid claim to a share of the
particular goods of a community, including protections of certain
freedoms. Rights were not severed from the right
relationships among a community-relationships between fellow
citizens and between citizens and the common goods of their
community.
Today, federal programs like Medicare,
Medicaid, and Social Security tend to foster a conception of rights
stripped from their corresponding duties and community context,
suggesting instead a notion of individual entitlement. Such an
incomplete conception of rights weakens the concept of justice by
approaching it only from the side of the isolated individual,
abstracted from the web of social relationships and
responsibilities that should inform a fuller sense of justice.
Recovering a more complete sense of
justice would provide a different grounding and justification for
extending aid to those who are in need, whether through private or
public means. True justice is better served by policies that
articulate and encourage community responsibility and voluntary
giving than it is by those that are ordered according to the logic
of entitlement.
The Entitlement Mentality's Ineffective
Compassion
The word "compassion" means "suffering
with," while care implies acting in ways that provide assistance
while avoiding harm. Compassionate care is the kind of aid or
attention that comes alongside those who suffer and acknowledges
their dignity. In contrast to government social service programs,
the myriad unsung heroes who come alongside those who suffer and
give of themselves voluntarily and often without compensation
better express justice, responsibility, and compassion and can
provide more holistic and humanizing care by fostering face-to-face
interaction and relationships with those in need.
Not only does increasing the funding
for government programs not generate more compassion among
citizens, but it can create unhealthy dependence on government on
the part of recipients. Truly effective compassionate care
addresses the nature and cause of the targeted problem. Until
recent welfare reforms, government anti-poverty programs primarily
addressed material needs. The problems of the underclass, however,
although often exacerbated by poverty, are not caused primarily by
material hardship. If they were, a wealthy nation like the United
States could readily solve them by simply subsidizing the poor
enough to raise them above the poverty line; after four decades and
$9 trillion, the welfare state would certainly have been a
success.
Rather, as Marvin Olasky argues in his
book The Tragedy of American Compassion, the problems of the
underclass are rooted in the needs of the human spirit.[21] That is why
churches and smaller communities in generations past were effective
in caring for the poor in their midst, as Olasky shows: They
addressed needs of the human spirit through personal, holistic
means. Whereas most federal entitlement programs provide those in
need only with an impersonal check, local communities can provide
personal accountability, positive role models, challenging
inspiration, emotional support, and a sense of long-term hope.
Thus, one of the ways the national government can facilitate the
possibility that the needy will receive humanizing compassion and
holistic care is to discourage dependence on impersonal handouts
and create the legal and institutional space for religious
ministries and other charitable social service organizations to
flourish.
The very rationale of the welfare state
encourages certain behaviors and discourages others in a way that
may harm those who drink deeply from this well. Continued reliance
upon an impersonal source of funds, requiring minimal
accountability, cultivates habits that often correlate with vice or
dysfunctional behavior. Without tying participation in economic
goods to social expectations of initiative and industriousness,
courage and creativity, patterns of illegitimacy and
irresponsibility prove difficult to break.[22]
The Entitlement Mentality's Short-sighted View of Social
Obligation
Society has a moral obligation to help
the poor, the sick, and the elderly.[23] However, government-funded
programs fail to meet such obligations in the most just or
compassionate way, and the rising cost of funding these programs
also ignores other moral obligations-namely, those directed to all
citizens, including the needy, in future generations.
At present rates, it is projected that
entitlement spending will nearly double over the next decade:
Medicare is expanding by 9 percent annually, Medicaid by 8 percent
annually, and Social Security by 6 percent annually. By 2050,
spending on these three programs combined will come close to the
same percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP) as the entire
2006 federal budget.[24]
The resulting economic burden on future
generations will be neither just nor responsible nor caring. As a
concern of justice, Social Security and Medicare recipients do not
receive the actual money they "invested" through taxes earlier in
their lives, but rather draw from the money that present workers
pay into the system. This means that these programs will
essentially demand that our children and grandchildren pay for our
retirements-at higher costs and with a smaller ratio of workers
to retirees. By shackling future generations with unsustainable
debt when alternatives and reform are possible, the national
government fails to fulfill its constitutional responsibility to
"secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our
Posterity" (emphasis added).
Rather than offering true care,
continuing the present rate of spending on entitlement programs
increases the likelihood that many people, including the future
poor, will be much worse off. Further, if sustained deficits
depress the economy generally, more people will become dependent on
government programs that are unable to deliver what they
promise.
The Entitlement Mentality's Distortion of Our Vision of
Moral Responsibility
Government social service programs also
shape the way citizens think about and relate to neighbors in need.
These programs encourage a vision of their recipients not as
holistic persons with dignity, but as bundles of costly needs or,
worse, wretched dependents. On the other hand, such programs
support a view of the wealthy in impersonal, financially
reductionist terms-not as responsible servants, but as revenue
sources.
This influences how we think about our
obligations to help those in need. Government checks do not promote
personal connections among citizens; no human face or direct
personal request motivates the giving. As a result, paying taxes to
fund government handouts often fosters a sense of resentment among
taxpayers rather than a desire to help others. Instead of a
compassionate "suffering with," government programs more
often generate among the middle class a sense of "suffering
because of" the poor. This "suffering" is often not as much
financial hardship as it is a feeling of unjust interference by the
government in the disposition of one's hard-earned wages. Mammoth
spending on government programs encourages a particular social
mentality that does not strengthen the moral fiber of our nation
and may actually contribute to its weakening.
This mentality sets up a social
relationship where one side perceives aid as a forced penalty
rather than a voluntary offering and the other side views aid as a
right rather than a gift. A gift creates a kind of momentum of good
will that has the potential to bind both giver and receiver in a
more personal relationship. The giver is motivated by the desire to
help or please the receiver, who, in turn, is usually motivated to
give back, at a minimum, an expression of thanks. If conditions
permit, the giver often has a vested interest in seeing that the
desired objective of the help is achieved (e.g., that the recipient
uses the gift to purchase food instead of illegal drugs or is able
to get a job after completing a job-training course). By the same
token, the receiver often desires to demonstrate good stewardship
of the gift (i.e., that he or she does not waste but uses the gift
toward the ends for which it was given).
Federally funded social service and
entitlement programs do not generate this dynamic. Government
mandates that citizens pay taxes or face stiff penalties, and the
receipt of benefit checks is impersonal. Additionally, the sense
that government owes people money as their legal right undercuts
the motivation to feel or give gratitude for its receipt. Whereas
civil society is often characterized by a dynamic of willingness
and thankfulness, excessive government spending exacerbates a
mentality of resentment and entitlement.
A good but limited government makes
judgments about relationships of justice within a society. It is
morally problematic for those judgments to be conditioned by an
individualistic entitlement mentality in which we are owed more and
more rights and services by the government.
Not only does excessive spending on
government social programs foster resentment rather than
relationships between wealthy and poor, but it is also less
personal, less humanizing, less holistic, and less compassionate
than most community-based approaches. In addition, this mentality
of government as provider undergirds the welfare state, which
oversteps the proper bounds of the national government and weakens
within societal institutions the authority that belongs to them
within their own realms of competency. The judgments of government
should issue from a broader moral vision of society, in which
rights as well as responsibilities, opportunities as well as
obligations are identified according to a full-orbed conception of
just relationships within a community.
Conclusion
The moral nature of governing and the
moral implications for society of the nature, size, and scope of
government are inescapable. The case for limited government will
therefore inevitably need to take these moral considerations into
account. A government that understands its main responsibility to
be that of administering judgment in terms of justice will play an
essential, and essentially limited, role in sustaining a healthy
society. A good but limited government will both exercise the
authority it is competent to wield-i.e., the power to use
legitimate force to defend right-and provide conditions of justice
in which local associations can exercise the authority that rightly
belongs to them.
The moral case for good but limited
government rests on the competency of other institutions to provide
for the needs of citizens and to cultivate the virtues necessary to
fulfill the moral obligations that sustain a free society. Not only
can the fundamental institutions of family and religious
congregations, as well as other communities of civil society,
provide more personal, humanizing, holistic, and compassionate
care, but they can better engender the trust and responsibility
required for citizens to fulfill their moral obligations to each
other.
Families and churches, as well as such
other institutions as schools, businesses, sports teams, community
orchestras, professional organizations, neighborhood watch
committees, and faith-based and other nonprofit groups, bind their
members not to abstract laws, but to other people. They are
premised not on individual autonomy, but on the authority of
knowledgeable and competent parents, pastors, teachers, coaches,
conductors, and other leaders with the power to discipline. They
motivate not solely by fear but by trust, and they are united not
only by their opposition to unjust interference, but also by
substantial positive goals, commitments, and convictions that they
share in common.
It is therefore the responsibility of a
modern nation-state that desires to bind its "many" into "one" to
limit its power and its purse, leaving primary responsibility for
moral formation in the hands of local moral communities. Only these
associations and institutions can foster true justice and
compassion for those in need-a fact that makes them essential for
the cultivation of virtuous citizens and the prevention of
governmental tyranny.
-Ryan Messmore is William
E. Simon Fellow in Religion and a Free Society in the Richard and
Helen DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage
Foundation.