Making the free world such a remarkable place to live

Matthew Continetti has an excellent description of the relationship that most Americans, as reflected in the poll numbers and is consistent with my own personal experience, are feeling toward their government, right now. And for good reason.

People power: A wake-up call for America's political elites

"Congress returns this week, and here's hoping that its members, Democrats in particular, learned a little something from this summer's town hall meetings. The lesson to be drawn from these occasionally raucous events is that America is on the verge of--or already knee-deep in--one of those moments that periodically roil the country and rearrange our preconceived notions about public life. And not a moment too soon.

Popular outbursts serve as a check on, and corrective to, our elites' behavior. The people know things the elites forget or don't want to remember. The political class is supposed to serve the people, not the other way around. As Gerald Ford said after assuming the presidency on August 9, 1974, 'Here the people rule.'

For a while now, the message from Washington has been that we know what's good for the public, whether the public likes it or not. One after another, both parties have attempted to foist a series of grand reforms on a skeptical populace--in areas ranging from Social Security and immigration to energy and health care. Politicians have made decisions affecting millions of lives without accountability and oversight. The upshot has been more government, more debt, and--coming soon to a 1040 form near you--more taxes. No wonder the public is anxious.

It should hardly come as a surprise that the public views American elites with suspicion and disdain. Ordinary Americans have a point when they assign blame for the current mess to Wall Street CEOs, federal regulators, corrupt politicians, and gullible reporters. When Americans look at the economic landscape, they see dismal growth, high unemployment, and large deficits. But when they listen to the president and Congress, they hear that 'stimulus'--borrowing ever more from tomorrow to spend today--will work like some kind of magic cure. They hear that this perilous moment is the time to build a 'new foundation' with even more expenditures and taxes through 'cap-and-trade' and Obamacare. It's as if spending and debt are no problem; as if it's fine that the federal government--which failed in its fundamental duties to build guardrails for the financial system--owns large chunks of that system; as if the political, financial, and think-tank elites have proven themselves worthy of the public's trust."

The truth is that many political folks are also wrapped up in a political moment that ordinary citizens have clamored for, as much as they are, rightly, I believe, clamoring against it, today. It's a classic case of "Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it." Watching this period, I can see how despotism maintains itself. Public support for power to find magical solutions to all kinds of problems is not terribly difficult to come by, apparently. People tend to be seriously naive about power and what it can do and what it can't do, is my experience. The hard part is undoing what has been done. And the lucky thing about a democracy is that we can openly challenge arrangements that limit our say over our own lives. And we do, thankfully. As much as we get it wrong.

The truth is that Americans have as much responsibility in this era of romance with big government as much as their representatives. They are both wrong, I am convinced, that power can do the things they want done absent the consent and commitment of ordinary folks and that it doesn't frustrate the best efforts, in the process. That's the beauty of a democracy. Even when noone wants to take responsibility for their mistakes in this or any matter, there is always someone to check them and another opportunity to turn the ship around.

One thing is for sure. Political elites and most Americans need to get straight what many Americans have been getting straight this past summer. We do need to help one another when we need it. And we do need to be willing to show courage when others need it.

But, to do so, we cannot wait for a paternal government to force us or one another to make those things happen. We must be freely responsible for our own lives, first, and to build the strength necessary to share that strength with others. And that cannot happen when we are persistently looking to the goverment to build that strength for us and when we are the only ones who can do that for ourselves, in our lives, and it cannot happen when we are perpetually taking weaker routes and pretending that we are being stronger than we are.

Real strength comes from within. Not from the largesse of government. Not from defeating an opponent. Not from feigning superiority in any matter to compensate for self-doubt about where strength more real might lie.

Real strength is the kind that we build for ourselves and from within ourselves that does good because it is the right thing to do, not because someone else or something else is looking over our shoulders or compelling our will. Especially when that someone or something else might be and often is wrong. With real strength comes the humility to acknowledge that you might be wrong, which leaves you more humble in the use of power over the lives of others, not more emboldened. Those who romanticize power as an elixir to fix all problems are engaging in fantasy and conceit about their abilities and the abilities of power to do more than it can. They are not strong, no matter how much they pretend to be so. And the results of their efforts have failed in spades, absent the voluntary efforts of peoples, like the American people, to fulfill worthy visions out of a sense of honest commitment to the needs of others. To pretend otherwise is to demean those efforts. And, sadly, that is exactly what we have been doing for the last 10 years, in particular. But, really, for much of humanity's history.

Freedom is the heart of liberal values for a reason. Because it is the value that best respects the choices and self-determination of all people more honestly.

And no amount of cynicism about our capacity to manipulate others for our own more self-centered purposes will ever compensate for that genuine commitment that made America and all liberal democracies great, no government oversight necessary. Government has limited purposes it does well. We have assigned it responsibilities that it cannot sustain that we need to engage in more thoughtful discussion about how they might be maintained in a more sustainable and financially and otherwise healthy fashion. Most of the major liberal democratic governments have had serious problems financing these worthy efforts, as much as their and our insatiable appetites. All of them will need to face this fact if we are to build programs of real strength to genuinely care for our neighbors in need.

But, first and foremost, Americans and others need to look into themselves and ask themselves what they need to be doing to help build the strengths necessary to share with their family, friends, and neighbors before they look to government to provide those things for them.

"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country," was as good a way of putting that as any.

That is the spirit Americans and the world are missing, today, as we rush to care for the needs of others but fail to consider the benefits and the necessity of expecting people to contribute their own efforts to guarantee more safe, healthy, well educated, financially secure, freely chosen and responsible lives for everyone. Ordinary Americans, ordinary Iraqis, ordinary Afghanis and ordinary peoples around the world find themselves in that same position, with more or less freedom to do that successfully being the most important distinction between their existences.

If despotism, terrorism, and tyranical forces of all kinds are to ever end, we will all need to end our fantasies of power swooping in to fix our problems that only our own efforts and the efforts of friends and neighbors can ever finally resolve. That kind of confidence and the efforts that come with it are our only hope for the kind of solutions we are looking for, if we will only offer them up.

And that world is one we can and will rightly be proud that we created for our children. Because it is that world, alone, that will allow them to live safely and freely to pursue the kinds of ambitions that make the free world such a remarkable place to live.