It is a greater honor to be right than to be president— or popular…for statesmanship consists rather in removing causes than in punishing or evading results—thus, it is the rarest of qualities.1
Every time a problem arises in our society, we can expect to hear the same litany of responses: “The government needs to do more”; “There ought to be a law”; “The president, or Congress, or the state legislature, or the governor, or the courts must act—and act immediately.”
Unfortunately, since it took us quite some time to get into the nationwide mess we currently find ourselves in, it may take us a good while to get out of it. The dilemma of juvenile violence will not be solved by passing a bevy of new laws or by instituting a slew of new programs or by establishing a series of new institutions. Indeed, most of the rash of recent shootings in our nation's schools would not have been prevented even if the most stringent gun control proposals, school security systems, or social engineering plans had been in place.
What we really need are not new and more restrictive laws, stronger and more intrusive regulations, or larger and more comprehensive government agencies. What we need are grassroots renewals of those things that originally made America great. The crux of our current crisis is not economic, educational, institutional, scientific, or political. It is cultural. We have loosed upon our children a world of woe—and we have simultaneously stripped them of every moral and ethical apparatus necessary to deal adequately with that woe.
We are prone to look for the quick fix. We want instant relief for that which ails us. But our long experience with politics ought to be enough to tell us that even if a panacea exists, it probably won't be found in the arena of politics and law.
The Limitations of Politics
In many ways, Lyndon Johnson was a prototype of the modern politician who lives and breathes politics. He once satirically quipped, “I seldom think of politics more than eighteen hours a day.”2
The man who succeeded John Kennedy as president of the United States believed that civil government was the most important force in modern life.3 Thus, political power was everything to him. He honestly could not think of anything more significant in life than the wild and woolly machinations of politics. For him such things defined the character of culture and shaped the temper of society. Unfortunately, he was misguided in his belief.
As syndicated columnist George Will once argued, “There is hardly a page of American history that does not refute the insistence, so characteristic of the political class, on the primacy of politics in the making of history.” As a matter of fact, “In a good society, politics is peripheral to much of the pulsing life of the society.”4
Certainly, politics is important. But it is not all-important.
Many who live and die by the electoral sword will probably be shocked to discover that most of the headline-making events in the political realm today will probably go down in the annals of time as mere backdrops to the real drama of the everyday affairs of life. As much emphasis as is placed on campaigns, primaries, caucuses, conventions, elections, statutes, laws, policy proposals, legislative initiatives, administrations, surveys, opinion polls, demographic trends, and bureaucratic programs these days, the reality is that the importance of fellow workers, next-door neighbors, close friends, and family members is actually far greater. Political skullduggery—however much it may or may not upset us—is, in the end, rather remote from the things that really matter. Despite all the hype of sensational turns-of-events, the affairs of ordinary people who tend their gardens, raise their children, perfect their trades, and mind their businesses are more important. Just like they always have been. Just like they always will be.
We do not need to get good laws to restrain bad people. We need to get good people to restrain bad laws.
That is one of the great lessons of history. As G. K. Chesterton aptly observed, “The greatest political storm flutters only a fringe of humanity. But an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children literally alter the destiny of the nations.”5
Again, that is not to say that politics is irrelevant—far from it. Politics is anything but insignificant. The making and enforcing of laws is a necessary component in ordering a good society (although a society is never orderly or good merely because of the making and enforcing of those laws). Unfortunately, politics is not often viewed as a necessary component in ordering that good society. Instead, politics takes on the illusion of something glamorously enticing and powerful rather than a serviceable function of government. We do our nation a disservice by encouraging the hoopla that surrounds politics.
George Will said it well: “Almost nothing is as important as almost everything in Washington is made to appear. And the importance of a Washington event is apt to be inversely proportional to the attention it receives.”6 Even Eugene McCarthy, once the darling of the New Left, admitted as much, saying, “Being in politics is a lot like being a football coach; you have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.”7
Intuitively, citizens acknowledge the empty hype behind politics. According to political analyst E. J. Dionne, that is why most of us are wont to approach politics with more than a little indifference: “Americans view politics with boredom and detachment. For most of us, politics is increasingly abstract, a spectator sport barely worth watching.”8
Dionne says that since the average person “believes that politics will do little to improve his life or that of his community, he votes defensively,” if at all.9
As odd as it may seem, that kind of robust detachment from the political processes is actually close to what America's Founding Fathers originally intended. They feared on-going political passions and thus tried to construct a system that minimized the impact of factions, parties, and activists.10 Citizens were expected to turn out at the polls to vote for men of good character and broad vision—and then pretty much forget about the minute machinations of politics until the next election.11
Gouverneur Morris—who actually wrote the first draft of the Constitution and was instrumental in its ultimate acceptance—said, “The Constitution is not an instrument for government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government—lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.”12
The Founding Fathers established a wise system of overlapping checks and balances designed to somewhat de-politicize the arena of statecraft and its attendant statesmanship—as well as to contain politics to the very limited realm of government.
Though there was profound disagreement between Federalists and Anti-Federalists about how much “energy,” or “lack thereof,” government ought to exercise, there was universal agreement about what John DeWitt called the “peripheral importance of institutional action to the actual liberties of daily life.”13
Thus, the founders worked together to ensure that the republican confederation of states was as free as possible from ideological or partisan strife.14 They were not, however, entirely successful, even though much of our history has been marked by the distinct conviction that what goes on next door is of greater immediate concern than what goes on in Washington. But sadly, those days are no more.
Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of our age is the submerging of all other concerns under politics. And thus, we have succumbed to a Lyndon-Johnson-like dependence upon the comprehensive power of the state. The tragic result has been the politicalization of almost all of life.
Faith, Hope, and Politics
And now abide faith, hope, and politics, these three; but the greatest of these is politics. Or so it seems.
In the twentieth century, the smothering influence of ideological politics is evident everywhere. It has wrested control of every academic discipline, of every cultural trend, of every intellectual impulse, even of every religious revival in our time.
Nearly every question, every issue, every social dilemma has been and continues to be translated into legal, judicial, or legislative terms. They are supplied with bureaucratic, mathematical, or administrative solutions. If something is wrong with the economy, then we assume that the government must fix it. If the health care system is inefficient, then we assume that the government must reform it. If education is in disarray, then we assume that the government must revamp it. If family values are absent, then we assume that the government must supply them. And if government itself doesn't work, well then, we naturally assume that the government must reinvent the government. Whatever the problem, it seems that we jump to the conclusion that the government is the sole solution. Salvation by legislation is our credo.
But this modern notion is a far cry from the kind of worldview the American founders and pioneers maintained. They shared a profound distrust of central governments to solve the problems that afflicted individuals, communities, and societies. Certainly, they believed in a strong and active civil authority—but only in its proper place. Thus every brand of statist ideology was abhorred by them.
Thomas Jefferson warned against the danger of “reducing the society to the state or the state to society.” Patrick Henry argued, “The contention that the civil government should at its option intrude into and exercise control over the family and the household is a great and pernicious error.” Gouverneur Morris insisted that the everyday affairs of society should be designed to avoid what he called the “interference of the state beyond its competence.”15
Generations later, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge would reiterate their warnings: “Government is but a tool. If ever we come to the place where our tools determine what jobs we can or cannot do, and by what means, then nary a fortnight shall pass in which new freedoms shall be wrested from us straightway. Societal problems are solved by families and communities as they carefully and discriminantly use a variety of tools.”16
Sadly, such warnings have gone unheeded in our day.
Believing that the dilemmas of the modern age are simply too grave to trust to responsible parents, free markets, vibrant communities, and dynamic private institutions, modern social engineers have erected a sprawling political and ideological kingdom of Babylonian proportions. And still they insist that the “government must do more.”17 Every time a new problem arises, they cry out, “There ought to be a law.”
A generation ago Robert Nisbet wrote that the “real significance of the modern state is inseparable from its successive penetrations of man's economic, religious, kinship, and local allegiances, and its revolutionary dislocations of established centers of function and authority.”18
Similarly the best-selling Canadian author William Gairdner said, “The essence, logic, thrust, and consequence of the modern state—even when this is not the expressed intention—is the invasion and eventual takeover of all private life by the state.”19
Syndicated columnist Joseph Sobran writes about why this state of government is unhealthy:
The essence of government is force: whatever its end, its means is compulsion. Government forces people to do what they would not otherwise choose to do, or it forces them to refrain from doing what they would otherwise do. So, when we say “government should do x,” we are really saying, “people should be forced to do x.” It should be obvious that force should be used only for the most serious reasons, such as preventing and punishing violence. The frivolous, improper, or excessive use of force is wrong. We used to call it tyranny. Unfortunately, too many people think that calling for the government to do x is merely a way of saying that x is desirable. And so we are increasingly forced to do things that are not genuine social duties but merely good ideas. The result is that the role of state coercion in our lives grows greater and greater.20
A century ago Frederick Bastiat predicted the possibility of a time when politically mesmerized busybodies would “place themselves above mankind.” He feared that they would “make a career of organizing it, patronizing it, and ruling it.” They would “think only of subjecting mankind to the philanthropic tyranny of their own social inventions.” Worst of all, he said, they would “confuse the distinction between government and society.”21
He was right. That time has come.
Antipolitics
Of course, the danger in underplaying the importance of politics is that our detachment can be transformed into outright apathy.
While E. J. Dionne may have exaggerated the case when he declared that “Americans hate politics,” he was not entirely mistaken.22 According to recent polls, a full 75 percent of the citizenry say that they “have little or no confidence in their government.” “Our national temper is sour,” says Simon Schama, “our attention span limited, our fuse short.”23 We have become more than a little cynical and skeptical.
There is no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.
As H. L. Mencken once said: “The intelligent man, when he pays taxes, certainly does not believe that he is making a prudent and productive investment of his money; on the contrary, he feels that he is being mulcted in an excessive amount for services that, in the main, are useless to him, and that, in substantial part, are downright inimical to him. He sees them as purely predatory and useless.”24
Mencken further explained the average citizen's suspicion of and distaste for the government, saying, “Men generally believe that they get no more from the vast and costly operations of government than they get from the money they lend to their loutish in-laws.”25
It is not surprising then that for much of our history, voter registration and turnout have been significantly lower here than in other free societies. Belgium, Australia, Italy, Austria, Sweden, and Iceland all average more than 90 percent participation. Canada, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Israel, Greece, New Zealand, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway each see over 70 percent of their citizens at the polls. In the United States, however, only slightly more than half of the registered voters ever actually make it to the polls on election day.26
Americans have rarely roused themselves sufficiently to get excited about their electoral choices. They generally have found something better to do than vote.
Thus, syndicated columnist Jane Lawrence was hardly exaggerating when she wrote: “Most Americans have yawned their way through what has turned out to be a series of unpleasant exercises in political obfuscation in the last few elections. Perhaps the reason they care more about PTA meetings, zoning hearings, and Rotary luncheons is that in the end, those things actually matter more. It is hard, after all, to get enthusiastic about choices between Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum—or to discern what difference such choices might make.”27
But there is little to justify such tenured ambivalence. The fact is, at a time when government debt, spending, and activist intrusions into our families and communities have grown to almost incomprehensible proportions, our mute citizenship has given the bureaucrats and politicians in Washington tacit approval to lead us ever further down the road to ruin … and so, with pied-piper efficiency and aplomb, they have.
During similar times of distress in our nation's history—following the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian eras, immediately after Reconstruction and the Great War, and most recently on the heels of the New Deal and Great Society episodes—Americans have stirred themselves momentarily from their political lethargy to rekindle the fires of freedom. In the face of impending disaster, the collapse of moral resolve, the encroachment of abusive power, and the abnegation of liberty, they committed their lives and their fortunes to the process of political restoration. They proved that one of the great ironies of the American system is that there are times when politics must be treated as a matter of some consequence so that it ceases to be treated as a matter of total consequence.
Clearly, neither politics-as-usual nor the antipolitics of apathy will be sufficient to wrench us out of our nation's cultural malaise. All indications are that our people are ready for change. We want answers. We yearn for a voice of reason. We are tired of the hype, the hyperbole, and the hypocrisy. We have lost patience with corruption and avarice driving our national agenda while our children are caught in the crossfire of a fierce cultural war. We want action.
Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely expressed for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent busybodies.
Henry Laurens, a member of the Continental Congress and one of the most prominent of the Founding Fathers, challenged his fellow patriots: “At a time when liberty is under attack, decency is under assault, the family is under siege, and life itself is threatened, the good will arise in truth; they will arise in truth with the very essence and substance of their lives; they will arise in truth though they face opposition by fierce subverters; they will arise in truth never shying from the standard of truth, never shirking from the Author of truth.”28
That is a challenge we would all do well to heed—even today, so far removed from the time when it was first issued. May the good arise.