© Charles D. Hayes
I grew up immersed in locally based politics. Most often
this was expressed as us versus them in regard to people who showed any
signs of being politically progressive. We felt that our group had a franchise
on moral truth. The key word here is felt.
We weren’t doing a very good job of thinking. Our intentions may have been
noble, but our views were skewed locally and our antagonistic posture imposed a
greater emotional tax on us than it did on the ones we opposed. Unfortunately
this ethos is still pervasive in America.
Over the years, I’ve learned that
digging deep beneath conventional textbook history is the best chance we have
to create enough dissonance in our minds to rethink antisocial political
attitudes that are based entirely on feelings. When we do that, it becomes
clear that mainstream Americans celebrate a past that didn’t happen as is
commonly believed, a West that never was, and an economy that doesn’t work as
promoted. After all, much of what we believe about ourselves is based upon what
we’ve been told happened
historically.
In the early days of radio and
television, limited transmission focused public attention and gave everyone something in common to talk about.
Today, people use technology to switch between gadget-driven isolation and
ideological echo chambers.
In a little over a century, we have
gone from a strong ethos of self-restraint to one of self-indulgence and
instant gratification. Even so, the nineteenth-century Emersonian idea of
self-reliance remains a very important part of our folklore. Self-reliance is
an individual aspiration to be encouraged because, when it is genuine and not
hype, it is the communal grease of authentic guidance that can make the wheels
of cooperation turn without squeaking bitterness and resentment.
That said, the Horatio Alger notion of widespread success
being mostly due to rugged individualism is a myth. The American frontier did
indeed include lots of hard-working individuals, but by today’s standards, this
epoch was far more socialistic than is portrayed in popular culture, especially
by Tea Party conservatives.
Socialism in America in the
nineteenth and early twentieth century was a movement fueled by despair and by
people like writer Jack London, who sought to stop the savage exploitation of
the working poor. The term socialist
was always treated as pejorative, but it didn’t become radioactive until the
Cold War. As a result, it still evokes an irrational and overly emotional
response, regardless of the context.
The phrase “We the people” in our Constitution is
socialistically aspirational because the implication is that we are all in this
thing called America together. The Cold War, however, overtly prejudiced us
against those things we depend on collectively by associating them with an enemy
considered diabolical. The experience rendered millions of our citizens
incapable of stilling their emotions long enough to reason with any sense of
objectivity about anything that appears to be tainted by association with our
former nemesis.
And yet, those things that make our
lives both possible and worthwhile—like our military, Social Security,
Medicare, the Veterans Administration, and our legal, regulatory,
transportation, and postal systems—are overt acts of social cooperation. Giving
a community control over aspects of the production of things that affect their
daily lives is not an evil act. Moreover, our military makes it clear that a
sense of patriotism more powerful than self-interest is commonplace in public
institutions.Federal funding was the real pay-dirt of the American frontier, as sociologist Stephanie Coontz points out in The Way We Never Were. Frontier settlers owed their very existence to huge federal land grants, railroad expansion, and many other government actions taken to seed prosperity.
Settlers could get a 160-acre homestead for as little as ten
dollars. Sharing work and tools with neighbors was a predominant way of life.
Even volunteers for civic projects expected to be compensated by the
government. Most of the families that were isolated and truly alone ended their
adventure in failure.
In 1945, another massive expansion
of government spending combined with high taxes made it possible for record
numbers of people to enter the middle class. Rural electrification, construction
of the Interstate Highway System, the GI Bill, the FHA, and many other programs
like them made America the envy of the world. For lack of a better term, let’s
call these historical occurrences facts.
It is also undisputable that some of our highest rates of
economic growth occurred during a period of high taxes. And yet, no matter how
many times these historical occurrences are mentioned, those who would rather
not believe it choose not to.
When an ethos of self-indulgence
overrides self-restraint, the goodwill necessary to continue the cooperation
that made this country a place of envy disintegrates. When you add the
ethnocentric impulse to believe that one’s group is special and that most
others are undeserving, the result is an us-versus-them mentality by an
opposition so emotionally enraged that they would rather shut down the
government than cooperate.
Some of our most successful corporations reward their
permanent employees with wages so low that they expect taxpayers to subsidize
them with welfare and food stamps. This is not an exercise of freedom; it’s
more feudalistic than capitalistic, and the practice must stop. Any business
that relies on social contempt so that the public will turn a blind eye to the
institutionalization of poverty doesn’t deserve to survive.
Our social relations are problematic
because we are a tribal species. The cooperation necessary to function
successfully as a sovereign nation depends upon how big and how diverse a tribe
our citizens are willing to accept. That’s what a civic education in American
idealism is supposed to achieve. In a nutshell, our ideals are supposed to
trump our genes and tribalistic selfishness. Our common allegiance is supposed
to supersede our local differences.
If social relations were software, core American ideals
would be a virus patch for the ethnocentric tribal bug most commonly expressed
thoughtlessly as them. That was the
hope and the promise of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution,
and it’s the affirming value of the Pledge of Allegiance.
Allowing ruthless politicians to
provoke us emotionally so that we view those with opposing political opinions
as the embodiment of evil is egregiously self-destructive. Both conservative
and liberal values are crucial for attaining and sustaining democracy.
Cooperation is just as important as self-interest, and in many cases much more
so.
“We the people” is the founding principle of the American
tribe. It is nothing to be ashamed of or squeamish about. If it’s not a social
aspiration, what is? If not “we the people,” then who or what is more
important? Politicians who forget the people they are supposed to represent and
citizens who are easily distracted by divisive politics and fail to hold their
representatives accountable pose the greatest threat to America’s future.
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