Americans Give Up Their Independence
Insight - 12/08
Challenging as it may be, try to shuffle the dispiriting Florida electoral frolics off to a corner of your cerebellum. Equally challenging, try for the moment to purge from your mental radar screen your opinion of William Jefferson Clinton the man and consider the governing philosophy by which he has presided as president for eight years — and how it reflects on a citizenry that twice voted him into the White House. Such an exercise is, of course, dispiriting.
In late fall, Clinton was asked if he’d be taking a break from his chores before the voting. No, said he: “I’ll stay here to Election Day if I have to, to do right by the American people, because my first job is to take care of them.” Let’s go to the instant replay and the last clause of that memorably horrifying utterance — “… because my first job is to take care of them” (emphasis added).
How in the name of Jefferson, Hamilton and the rest of the dead white male Founders could a modern U.S. president so repudiate the basic premises of this once-sturdy republic? Or worse, is he even aware of so grievous an intellectual fumble? It’s nearly enough to make one contemplate seeking political asylum in, say, Belize. That the Clinton notion of governance is condescending, patronizing and arrogant is obvious; that it also seems to fit the mood of too many of us is appalling.
Former senator Russell Long of Louisiana was given to reciting an ironic rhyme: “Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, / Tax that fellow behind the tree.” Extend that sentiment to entitlements — cut back on those pernicious federal favors, but not mine, for heaven’s sake! Consider, too, the ferocious aggrandizement of the central government, the entangling web of laws and regulations, “guidelines” and grant requirements that has intruded into every corner of daily life. And add the divisive concepts of group rights and victimhood — from sexual harassment to zero-risk safety, with state and local governments adding their clauses and provisions to expand the federal reach.
The United States has become, or is well on its way to becoming, the ultimate bureaucratic state while still singing the songs of liberty and individual autonomy.
This ominous net of governmental control is not the result of Clinton’s eight years in office, but he has been the effective expression of this shadow. Historical perspective can trace the growing might of government decades back — to Woodrow Wilson’s mobilization of central control during World War I, to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s often ruthless New Deal — indeed, the template can be argued as extending to the Civil War and President Lincoln’s desperate effort to save the Union by the hammer of unalloyed federal power.
There have been, true enough, interludes of resistance, the encouraging two terms of Ronald Reagan. But they have been just that, interludes, sand castles of which the subsequent tide left scant trace.
But Clinton’s egregious sound bite adds the rhetorical and symbolic cap to Washington’s unrestrained definition of its role — not just in the executive, but the legislative and judicial branches as well. Protests at this accelerating corrosion of traditional freedoms there are, certainly, though more and more the cries are dimmed by what only can be called the acquiescence of a majority of Americans.
Though only half of the nation’s eligible voters bothered to exercise their sacred franchise, in the astounding narrowness of the popular vote, those who did seemed to express a preference for a government to take care of them. The salami-thin margin hardly can be interpreted otherwise than as endorsing the pervasive mantle of federal influence. It was, after all, only a matter of degree between the parties and their candidates, between “compassionate conservatism” and hard-shell collectivism.
One explanation for this supine acceptance of heavy governance may be found in the trend through much of this century toward centralization and what James Bryce in The American Commonwealth a century ago called “the Fatalism of the Multitude.” This fatalism, wrote Bryce, involves “a loss of resisting power, a diminished sense of personal responsibility and of the duty to battle for one’s own opinions.” In that diminution, power invariably will be gathered into fewer hands which, in turn, further will erode individuals’ sense of responsibility. Just keep piling the entitlements and the grants and the myriad largesse of Washington into the trough and we’ll all live happily ever after.
Well, that’s a glum outlook, and the United States is nothing if not resilient. Perhaps we can adopt Lear’s weary admonishment to his grasping daughters: “Be better when thou canst; mend at thy leisure.” Assuming that leisure will be available in a world both envious of and hostile to this fretful land. |
