Liberals and progressives don't get off the hook that easily. Knowing that there is a role for government in the lives of the people we must have a more comprehensive and nuanced view of the purpose of government be it local, state or federal. Knowing this, there must be a clear underlying purpose for this institution we as a group value.
Obviously this one essay is not going to answer this question, but the intent here is to get the conversation going; to spur those of us on the political Left to define what it is we think the government should be tasked with. By knowing this and being able to articulate it we take away one of the conservatives complaints about us Dirty F'ing Hippies, namely that we want everything to be run by the government.
For me the purpose of government is inextricably bound up with the law. Government is there to create and enforce the laws of a society. Law is, at its core, the pursuit of balance, what we commonly call justice. It starts with the premise that was immortalized in the Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men were created equal"
It is that idea which led the Founders of our Republic to break with the King of England and declare a new nation. To the Founders the purpose of government was to preserve the balance of equality for all citizens of a nation. The tool to do so is the law, enacted by the people themselves, in our case, through their representatives.
I agree with this concept, the purpose of a democratic government is and always must be the balancing of power between actors in a society. The problem with this concept of government is that it can be incredibly complex; the number of interests and their relative power makes this balancing act one that is not amenable to being reduced to a sentence like "Government is the problem, not the solution". This in turn makes the selling of this concept much harder.
Still there is a concept that might be small enough to be functional and personal enough to be resonant. The role of democratic government is to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. There are plenty of examples that can be used to bring this concept home to the voters. Nearly every one of us is in some way a minority. Whether is our gender identity or our lack of religion or our ethnicity or our political views, there is a time when we have felt the oppression of the majority. This is the time when the role of the government is clear.
The promise of the Founders, that all of us are equal, inherently makes this the role of government. Those colonists in the late 18th Century were very clear, the pursuit of happiness must be protected, not proscribed by the government. They left it up to the people of their new nation to decide where to draw the lines on this, as there is always a tension between individual desires and the collective needs of a society, but they focused on the rights of individuals because they knew that majorities have enough clout to protect their own interests. In the pursuit of individual liberty, the Founders recognized that an individual is always a minority.
I think that there is a need to reassert the balancing power of the government in terms of business. With re-emergence of mega-corporations (after all Teddy Roosevelt broke up the trusts) we have another powerful actor in our nation that has power disproportionate to the individual. The Citizens United decision while, perhaps, in line with the law and the wording of the Constitution it was completely at odds with the intent of our Founders.
The unbalanced power of money is one which was underestimated by our Founding Fathers. They did not anticipate that there would be so pervasive a corporate culture as the one we find ourselves in today. It is also probably the case that they, in their fervor of patriotism for their new nation, never expected that elected representatives of the people would be so willing to vote against the interests of the people and in favor of the interests of the powerful, nor that a large number of the people would support them in doing so.
There will always be some discontent with the idea of the government as the arbiter of balance. After all, when a decision goes against us, we are likely to be feel it unfair or biased, but given that we will always need a government, it is one of the things that we have to put up with. While those on the far Right rail that we in a deep tyranny, the reality is that we have the freedom to do most, but not all, of the things we would like.
As a people we can speak our minds at will, up to and including arguing for the violent overthrow of the very government that protects our right to advocate its abolition. We travel where we like, when we like (and can afford it); we are allowed to determine our religion or lack of it. In return for this we do have boundaries which we must live in. This is the case in any form of government. Short of going off into unclaimed wilderness and doing everything for yourself by yourself living in a society, even one that prizes liberty, has always meant abiding by some limits on the actions of its members.
This is the balancing act, how to find the maximum liberty for the people as a whole, while limiting the freedom of individuals only as much as required to keep the society functioning. It is the purpose of government to balance power, to prevent the weakness of an individual from being overrun by the majority or powerfully rich. It is the purpose of government to keep the interests of powerful from wrecking havoc like the BP Oil Disaster. While it may chap the hides of the conservatives the fact is without the use of this balancing power they would not be able to speak as they please, advocate what they will or pursue their liberty.
So, there are my thoughts on this issue, what are yours? What do you think the purpose of a government is? If we can distill our disparate ideas down to a single theme, then we will be a good step further in reasserting control of our nation and redeeming the promise of its founding.
The floor is yours. |
