February 03, 2010
The American Nation is Greater than the American Government
We get the impression that some people think nothing happens except at the direction of government. America is criticized for its foreign aid, for example, which although massive in absolute numbers is a small percentage of GDP in terms of official government aid. Paradoxically, we also hear that the American involvement around the world is too big. Both those statements are false, but the reason that the same people can utter them w/o obvious thoughts of inconsistency is that the American nation is not the same as the American government.
Nothing too much
Any society has at least four big building blocks that command the energy of the people: government, non-governmental/voluntary organizations, business/economic firms & traditional institutions. Almost nothing important or useful happens w/o an interaction among all or most of them, but the relative weight of each varies greatly among societies and over time in the same society. (1)
The U.S. has been unusual in its reliance on self-organized groups, private firms and even private individuals to do tasks often monopolized (and often done poorly) by governments in other places. In that way, it has achieved a better balance among the components of the nation. There was a certain degree of self reliance and contempt for authority in the American character from early times. Alexis de Tocqueville noticed that nearly two centuries ago and it was evidently already well established by the time he made his observations. It is not because the American government was corrupt or ineffectual. In fact, American governments (Federal, state and local) were well organized and run by contemporary world standards, but they often stood aside and let the people solve problems for themselves. (2)
Getting more than promised is better than getting promised more
Even today, the U.S. government is a relatively smaller part of the American nation than is the case in most other places. C&J lived overseas for more than sixteen years total and visited dozens of countries for extended periods. One thing we noticed about almost every place outside the U.S. is this. Most places you are “guaranteed” things that are not considered rights in America, but you cannot always get them. In America you are guaranteed less, but you can usually actually get your hands on it. Really getting something you want or need is usually better than having the right to it in the abstract.
An example illustrates – I (C in this case) was very frustrated with day-care in Norway. When we signed up for day care for our daughter, we were assured that day-care was a kind of right. When we asked when our daughter could start, I was told about the multi-year waiting list. When I asked about private day-care, I learned that there wasn’t any – at least none officially sanctioned – because the government provided it as a right. Returning to America with our son at about the same age, we found good day-care within a week, although I guess we had no right to it. (Norway has one of the world's most honest and well-funded governments, BTW, so it is a matter of overreach, not incompetence.)
The same goes for lots of things. If you count only services provide officially by government, the U.S. looks bad. If you count all the services provided by the total nation, we do very well. You have to look at the whole picture. That is why even people who are very critical of the U.S. often want a visa to come here.
When the authorities "big foot" the rest, it takes more effort but less gets done
This is not mere chance or coincidence. When one part of a nation gets too big, others atrophy. It is possible to achieve less by working harder in the wrong ways.
I had a boss once. She was a woman who did the work of at least three employees. She was amazing, smart, organized and energetic. She had only one big flaw, and it was big. She discouraged or even destroyed the initiative of others, since she was highly critical, demanding and quick to defend her turf and prerogatives. Indeed, she did the work of three, but when she managed a unit of five or seven people, nobody else did anything. More correctly, they spent their time avoiding her, doing the make-work she assigned and ducking her wrath. Her “work of three” also suffered as her staff expanded since the more people she had in her unit, the more time she had to devote to watching and punishing others. Pretty soon nothing at all was accomplished, although there was a great deal of activity and bloody effort.
She complained when she was reassigned. The guy replacing her was a lazy screw up, she complained. In fact, she called him “Mr. Sluggish.” He didn’t take the job seriously enough, she said. Sure enough, after she left activity dropped like a stone. But after a little while productivity rose phoenix-like out of the ashes. People started smiling again and new ideas started to become common. Mr. Sluggish didn’t seem particularly engaged. He didn’t do the work of three. On some days he didn’t even do the work of one, but the unit did the work of many.
Mr. Sluggish understood what my hyperactive former boss could not. He was not lazy or a screw up. He just understood where and how to deploy his efforts. Creative people do not like to be told exactly what to do and in any really complex situation no leader can legitimately tell them in great detail anyway since nobody can anticipate all the challenges and opportunities they will face. You have to let people use their own best judgment in a system that is robust enough to shrug off mistakes rather than one that seeks to avoid all error, and along the way also avoid most error inducing innovation. The best leaders are those who create conditions where others can innovate, prosper and imagine something better.
Government should be like that too. It should not do for people, but make it possible for them to do for themselves. There is a useful division of labor and a balance. To paraphrase Mark 12:17, we should render onto Caesar (government) that which is Caesar’s; render onto God that which is God’s; and leave everything else to the people and the private sector. Everybody is a lot better off in the long run.
**** ****
1. Extreme cases, illustrate the point. Government accounts for almost everything in a place like North Korea and the authorities work actively to delegitimize or destroy competing power structures. Where state power breaks down, such as in Somalia or Afghanistan, people fall back on traditional relationships such as family, religion or tribe. There have been commercial republics, such as Venice, the Hanseatic League or even 17th Century Netherlands where trade issues dominated almost everything else. I cannot think of any countries that have been dominated by NGOs or voluntary organizations, although those things have certainly had important influences on politics and policy. Anti-Slavery organizations were instrumental in British policy in Africa in the middle of the 19th Century, for example.
2. Some of this reticence is explained by the frontier nature of American society, but other frontiers in places like Latin America or Russia did not produce similar societal organizations, although Australia did. Perhaps it has something to do with the transplanted British traditions (cf Albion’s Seed or the relative lack of other dominant traditions, such as a universal church. Suffice to say that the frontier experience in Montana was different from the frontier experience in Siberia.
Without American government, there would be no American nation. Any attempt to separate them from each other is pure sophistry.
Posted by: David R. Remer at February 3, 2010 09:13 PMC&J
Thanks for pointing out that the US forign aid amounts are just not that big. That budget is often the butt of attack from thoses that do not know better.
If by American involvement around the world,you are refering to American military involvment,then I must disagree. Last I looked we had something like 500 bases outside the country. We spend more than the rest of the world conbined on the military. I understand that there is a price to be paid for empire and we do have responsibilites but we are not getting a good deal. The MIC developes its own momentum.
Please ,spare the quibbling about whether or not we have an empire. That many bases,that much spent on the military by a country protected by oceans with friendly nieghbors can only mean imperialism. The questions are whether or not the empire is moving the world in a positive direction, at what cost domestically, can we accomplish the same goals more economically, what are the goals,etc.?
C&J - nice commentary BTW, I agree with what you say - it is all interconnected and when that balance gets out of wack then we end up with the kind of chaos we have today.
Bills - try looking at how many bases have closed in the past 10yrs overseas as well as the number of them here in the states. You do realize that there are NO active duty AF bases in New England anymore and the Air Guard does the majority of the air refueling for mil acft going across the pond? Our last subhunter acft just got shipped off to FL and we have rivers here deep enough for subs to come inland as has happened in the past.
To have an Empire we would need to actually overtake and occupy other nations lands - no just be there in a so called Peace Keeping or Terrorist Hunt capacity. Rome had an Empire as did England and several others. The US method is to spread the word of Democracy like a religion almost in order to ahve access to natural resources ie OIL in foreign lands. Why use our reserves when we can use up someone elses? Of course this is all done under the heading of preseving our National Security as well. God help us if Obama actually gets the urge to use those Nukes he seems so fond of these days - BTW those B-52’s that were deconfigured to conventional warfare have been reconfigured back to ALCM capability. Now doesn’t that make you feel safe!
Posted by: Kathryn at February 4, 2010 06:24 AMBills
Foreign aid is not a big part of out GDP and it is true that Americans think it is much bigger.
BUT U.S. OFFICIAL foreign aid is much greater than that of any other country - because our GDP is so big - and Americans are significantly more generous as individuals. The Gates Foundation, for example, gives more than most countries do.
Anyway, that is a tangential subject. I just get annoyed when people use absolute measures for bad things (i.e. carbon etc) and use GDP for % for good ones (i.e. generosity).
The non-tangential point is that MOST things are done by people outside the government. We have to remember that.
Our university system is an excellent example of a mix between government, private, NGO and traditional organizations. I complain that it costs a lot to go to school, and the system can be tweaked, but there is no better system.
Posted by: Christine at February 4, 2010 07:26 AMChristine said: “Read carefully. We need all parts of the nation.”
Good. Your reply comment stands in contrast to your article’s statement: “that the American nation is not the same as the American government. “
The American nation is MORE than the government, to be sure, but the American nation would not be what it is without our American Government. So there is an equation there between government and America, that cannot be denied. In fact, the argument can easily be defended that the fact that the American nation IS more than the government is in great part due its Constitutional form of government.
Like I said: “Any attempt to separate them from each other is pure sophistry.” Given your comment’s reply, it would appear you are not attempting to separate them, and hence, your writing is not engaging in sophistry.
But, let’s be clear that the reason America enjoys the fruits of free market capitalism, and individual freedom and entrepreneurial freedom, is precisely due to the Constitutional government which protects and defends that free market capitalism, even from its own monopolistic tendencies and greed driven bent, the GW Bush years noted as exception, of course.
Posted by: David R. Remer at February 4, 2010 09:07 AMChristine, this poses an enormous problem for Republicans who dislike government and democracy. Since, America can’t be separated from government, and since, Republicans say they despise any growth in government, its services, or programs, in defiance of the public’s choice to embrace and demand retention of those services and programs, Republicans are mired in a logical trap of their own making, that of disliking America by disliking its government, and disliking voters who both demand government services and programs in return for their tax dollars, and who took power away from Republicans.
Democrats had their power taken away, and they worked long and hard to court the American people’s demands and restore the people’s faith in Democrat’s respect for democracy (will of the people), as well as to earn their confidence in Democrats willingness to address the massive debt and deficits and torn economy left behind by Republican rule.
What are Republicans doing to win back confidence and trust? NADA! Nothing, except to poison the well of bi-partisanship and taking every opportunity to deny tax payers a functional government that can work for them.
Holding up health care reform, holding Obama’s agency head nominations, holding up environmental protection legislation (Cap N Trade), and holding up virtually every other attempt by Democrats to fulfill their campaign promises to the people except our role in Afghanistan, is what Republicans are doing. That, Christine, does not engender trust or confidence, and the polls show it in abysmal approval ratings of the GOP.
Methinks the GOP’s philosophy has finally been exposed as the anti-American, anti-democracy foundation it has evolved into since the end of the Reagan and Bush I, eras. Only you Republican supporters can exert the pressure on the GOP to force them to rectify and turn back this ideological evolution toward anti-government, anti-democracy, anti-American behavior.
Using the filibuster to halt government in its tracks, is rule by the elite minority to serve that minority’s ends, which is about as anti-democratic as any Party can get in America. Stop your GOP leadership from engaging in these anti-American activities, and your Party may begin to restore public confidence and trust in it again.
Posted by: David R. Remer at February 4, 2010 09:29 AM
Considering the facts that our founding fathers created the Senate fillibuster and that originally Senators were basically appointed rather than democratically elected seems to suggest that it was an attempt to insure that capital and an elite minority could maintain control over the legislative process. While the Senate is now democratically elected, it is not called the mult-millionairs club just for a lark.
Has the fillibuster been used to try to control the excess of capital? Yes it has but, by and large it has been used to control what capital would call the excesses of the people.
Posted by: jlw at February 4, 2010 04:06 PMjlw,
The filibuster, the ability to delay legislation by a Senator or Senators debating the legislation for as long as they could stand and talk it to death, was actually, as we now see, made worse by the 1917 passage of the cloture rule (Woodrow Wilson’s urging). The cloture rule of course allowing a filibuster to be ended by a 2/3 majority vote.
Today, Republicans are demonstrating how they can very nearly shut down the passage of any legislation which they, the minority, choose to. Rule by the minority toward the aim of preventing government from governing, is the result we are all now witness to.
I am all for restoring the original filibuster rules, requiring a Senator to remain on their feet and in the chamber talking, to retain the floor and control of the debate, and do away with the cloture vote, altogether. That idea has supporters, but, nowhere near the support to make it happen.
The problem with rules and laws is that eventually they can be perverted toward ends never intended, by someone crafty and creative enough and willing to sacrifice the good intents of the original law or rule. Which explains the volume of written works on law in the Library of Congress, and the absolute need for every other American being employed in the legal field in one way or another (figure pulled from thin air to make the point). :-)
Posted by: David R. Remer at February 4, 2010 04:52 PM
Christine, the America that Tocqueville saw and commented on is long gone. It was also an age when absolutely everything that a dollar sign could be attached to was subjected to exploitation and extinction was not a concern. Anything that got in our way including Indians was given the same treatment. Had that not been checked, the buffalo, the grizzly bear, trees and many other things would have gone the same route as the passenger pidgeon.
Today, we have enslaved ourselves to a mass consumption materialistic society and have accumulated trillions upon trillions of dollars of debt. It has it’s perks, no doubt about that, but it also blinds us to many problems that we cause on behalf of maintaining our lifestyles. It is as if we think we can do anything in support of our way of life and any negative consequences created by our actions will just fade away. They don’t just fade away. Those problems almost always come back to haunt us and usually cost us more to correct.
We have delayed cleaning up polution and it now costs more to do it. We have ignored the condition of our infrastructure and it is going to cost us dearly.
Abroad, we have prefered strong men and dictatorial governments rather than democracy. Iraq and Iran are perfect examples and it is costing us dearly in lives and treasure. We promised the people of Afganistan that we would provide them arms to defeat the Soviets and we promised them that when they drove the Soviets out of their country we would help them modernize their country and bring it out of the Dark Ages. We reneged on that promise and as a result the country fell into a civil war that ended with the Talaban in charge. Is that decision costing us more now or less?
Our way of life is not what I would call self reliance. It is more like cross your fingers and hope that nothing really bad happens.
One can propose that the American Nation is greater than the American government. One can also propose that the concept of American Nation is greater than the nations people.
Posted by: jlw at February 4, 2010 05:28 PM
David, I believe cloture is 60%. I uuderstand your position and agree for the most part. The Republicans are determined that they will not concede to any set back, no matter how minor, to the course that they and the Democrats have legislated over the past few decades.
I also know that there are quite a few in this country that would not mind if the first black presidents Administration was considered
ineffective or a failure. I sincerely hope that is not an unofficial plank of the Republican Party.
Considering that Obama is merely trying to tweek, in a center-right manner, some of the excesses of the of the legislation past during the last two presidencies and that the health care legislation is primarilly Republican proposals lends credence to the unofficial possibility.
Posted by: jlw at February 4, 2010 06:11 PMDavid
Sorry if I didn’t make it clear. The American government is part of the American nation, but the American nation is the greater. The government is subordinate to the nation. The nation is subordinate to the government except to the extent that it grants its powers.
I agree that the American government helped make the American nation what it is today. My contention is that part of the wisdom of America has been that the government has been better balanced with the other parts of the nation. Government has been a partner more than a task master in America. This was NOT the usual arrangement. In earlier situations (and even many today) the government thinks it owns the people.
Maybe you remember the Prussian king Fredrick the Great. He called himself the “first servant of the state.” That sounds like a reasonable and humble idea, until you think about it. If the king is the first servant of the state, it more or less implies that all inhabitants are servants of the state. That is in fact, what Fredrick probably meant and it was the political theory that “subjects” owed service to the state but that the state was somehow above them.
Our freedom goes back to the Declaration of Independence. The government is a means to an end. It is a way for the people to achieve what they need. It derives ALL of its legitimacy from that. None of us are servants of the state, except if we actually work for it and then it is only in that employment sense.
Re Democracy – conservatives embrace democracy. We see it as a total way of life, however, not something we vote on once every couple of years. We also understand that freedom is much more than the majority ruling. People need to be secure in other ways too from the depredations of government, even if the majority wants it. That is why we have a Bill of Rights.
Re – what the Republicans are doing – they are behaving according to the rules of our institutions and our democracy. In the case of health care, they probably have the majority of Americans behind them. Every American has the right to resist the dictates of government within the law. That is what they are doing. I am proud of them.
I read in the paper this morning that Harry Reid is having trouble getting 51 votes for any of his health care packages. There is no popular mandate for this change and if a majority won’t even vote for it, you cannot blame Republicans. I am glad they have the strength and the courage to oppose this juggernaut. The people can vote again in November. Let’s see what they think then.
If “the people” are upset with Republicans presumably fewer will be elected. If, on the other hand, they are mad at Democrats, they will lose. It really is not something you or I can argue. It will either be true or not no matter what the two of us decide.
Re tax dollars – that is a nice way to put it, but it is technically not true. Nearly 50% of Americans pay no net Federal tax at all and the lowest 20% of Americans actually gets significantly more than they paid in. In fact, a challenge for democracy has always been the way that people act less responsibly when spending somebody else’s money.
jlw
To paraphrase Churchill, America is the worst possible place, except compared to everything else.
re the concept being greater than the actual people - I have never encountered anything in this life, nor ever heard of anything besides the Lord God himself, that is not better in an imagined form than in reality.
Posted by: Christine at February 4, 2010 10:22 PMjlw, yes, today it is 60%. In 1917, when the rule was passed, it was 2/3 majority, from my reading of the history of it. Not sure when it was changed to 60%, but, obviously, 66% made it a pretty rare occurrence, indeed, rendering the rule ineffective for the most part. Likely the reason it was amended at some point.
Posted by: David R. Remer at February 4, 2010 11:46 PMChristine wrote: “The government is a means to an end. It is a way for the people to achieve what they need.”
You are sounding awfully liberal here, Christine. Or, is your reference to ‘the people’ hiding a definition commonplace in the GOP, that government is a way for certain people to achieve what they need, while the majority are excluded? Corporations for example (Recent S.C. ruling on corporate campaiging), or, the majority and minority Parties serving their own ends hoodwinking enough others into believing their ends are also being served, or, that other Republican favored minority, employers, and unions with far greater numbers be damned?
If you truly mean ‘the people’ in the democratic sense of the majority, then I applaud you. If not, then I understand your meaning clearly and disagree entirely with the implied meaning of your comment coming from a Republican defender, as it does.
The majority (or more accurately the potential for mob rule) was to be checked by the republic and representatives predominantly versed in Adam Smith’s concept of “enlightened self-interest”. Which meant that these representatives would serve the people’s majority needs provided the people’s needs would not undermine the principles set out in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, or the integrity and viability of the nation.
Similarly, representatives were to represent the interests of their states and district constituents provided those interests did not undermine the nation upon which the States depended, nor the Constitutional principles and Bill of Rights that contemplated the corrupting influence of power over defenseless individual or minority groups of citizens.
As you say, a balance was sought that would ensure individual protection from the powerful, as well as sanction the exercise of power to insure the integrity and continuation of the union of the States. That balance has always been challenged at every turn in our history and is still being challenged today. That balance has never been reached and maintained in our history either, just as our nation is very out of balance today with respect to our politics, our government’s integrity, and the nation’s continued viability as a United States of America.
It was not foreordained that the North would win the Civil War. But, for a single small change in the historical events of that period, the South could have won, and these United States would not exist today.
The point being, the United States got lucky in 1865. Our nation’s integrity is again threatened by economic challenges and the opportunity costs of the trajectory of our national debt going forward, not to mention being the object of religious terrorism and global climate change which is already taxing States with the need to build higher Oceanic retaining walls on their coasts at at time when such states are already in defiance of the law and forced by the Great Recession to carry deficits. Whether or not our nation is capable of overcoming this threat to its integrity and balance, is anything but a foregone conclusion.
Obama is absolutely right out there teaching Americans that we cannot afford any longer to put politics ahead of governance, and ideology ahead of pragmatism which solves problems well enough to allow us to move on to the other challenges. It is the Republicans and a few dozen conservative Democrats who are impeding our nation’s government from this requirement to solve problems, not to perfection, but, good enough to allow us to move on to the other threats and challenges before they overwhelm us and our nation’s future.
Posted by: David R. Remer at February 5, 2010 12:20 AMDavid
By the people I just mean the people. It is a artificial concept. We measure it through our democratic institutions and through the choices people make in the market.
Democrats sometimes seem to equate “the people” with the poor people. I figure the poor make up around 20% of “the people”, about the same number as people I might call “the rich”, so we have to account for the rights of both groups and I would not “fight for” either in the political sense.
I figure that people want different things. The government that creates many options is best. It should keep to its core functions and not make a big deal about equalizing outcomes among groups of “the people”.
“The government is a means to an end. It is a way for the people to achieve what they need.” This comes from our founding documents. It is conservative or liberal depending on how instrumental you want to make it. If you define “the people” as I do to include all of us, rich and poor, I don’t think there is much justification for the redistributive policies often advocated by Democrats and a lot more for the opportunity creating freedom advocated by Republicans.
Posted by: Christine at February 5, 2010 08:05 AMChristine said: “It [Government] should keep to its core functions and not make a big deal about equalizing outcomes among groups of “the people”.
First, thank you for a reasoned response and reply to my inquiry regarding definition of “we the people”.
I would disagree with your comment above however, by amending it to read: “[Government] should keep to its core functions and not make a big deal about equalizing outcomes among groups of “the people”, UNLESS those outcomes threaten the union or the viability of the nation’s future.
Wealth disparity and rising numbers of poor both threaten the nation’s union and future viability going forward. Gov. Perry of Texas has made public comments in support of Secessionist’s concerns, and some in Alaskan government have made similar statements courting the secessionist crowds. And to much wealth concentrated into too few hands of a nation bottlenecks and chokes that nation’s economic potential and wields too much influence over government wrenching it away from democratic principles of one person one vote.
These are real and palpable threats evident in our society today and they must be addressed if our nation’s union and future viability are to remain secure. That security of the union and its future viability lie at the core of the Constitution’s intents for our government’s responsibility and obligations, reinforced by the Civil War, and the race, poverty, and police power centered civil unrest of the 1960’s and early 1970’s.
Posted by: David R. Remer at February 5, 2010 09:56 AMI think it’s worthless to think of the two as separate. There is no nation that exists without at least some kind of government, and no government that can truly exist unless it controls territory.
The truth is, we’re part of the government, in real terms. We govern our own lives to a large extent, and this is as it should be.
Freedom, though, is not the absence of government. It is the fair restraint of government, of corporations, and of other citizens from undue interference in our lives.
Some rights, some freedoms are statutory, written out in laws. These can be changed as majorities see fit. Other freedoms are constitutional, laid out as inviolable by anything less than an another amendment or a changed interpretation of constitutional case law.
To reduce it to simplistic notions of the absence of government does a disservice to the daily challenges and complex issues of American’s freedoms.
To say Government or the nation are bigger is mere rhetorical flourish. In fact, the government and the nation it governs are effectively one, and the degree to which government works is the degree to which it works together.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at February 5, 2010 08:22 PMStephen
To say that we are part of the government is a scary concept. Check into the Fredrick the Great concept.
The government is our servant; we are not servants of the government. That was one of the things our revolutionary government was all about.
I understand your point that for practical purposes the difference sometimes is obscure. But the concept is indeed important.
Please don’t attack the straw man that anybody around here advocates absence of government. As I tried to explain, the components of the nation work best when they work together in proper balance.
But it is possible to change or even dispense with any PARTICULAR government, which demonstrates the proper relationship.
Recall the line from the Declaration - “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”
Posted by: Christine at February 5, 2010 08:48 PMHTML Formatting Tips:
<strong>bold text</strong>
<em>italicize text</em>
<u>underline text</u>
<strike>strike text</strike>
<a href="http://domain.com/link">link text</a>
<blockquote>quote text</blockquote>
By clicking the "Post" button you agree to abide by the Rules For Participation.
