Month: August 2012

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The Self-Made Man

They say he was a self-made man.

Well, that should absolve the Creator of considerable responsibility.

I can’t locate the author of this wry remark, but it sounds like one of Abraham Lincoln’s one-liners. It surfaced as I was reading about Paul Ryan and Ayn Rand this week, wondering how different he was from me.  I don’t know much about Ayn Rand, but I know one thing: I can’t trust anyone who thinks he or she is a self-made man or self-made woman.

Humility is not a primary requisite to be a politician or an exceptional athlete or performer, but the illusion of self-sufficiency is not a luxury I can afford those who make decisions for me.  Such illusions have brought this country to reckless invasions and dizzying financial risks with other people’s money. These decisions are based on an attitude of invulnerability and so-called “exceptionalism.”  Ironically it also builds on a kind of  “entitlement,”  the assumption that we get what we earn in life.

Tell that to the martyrs, the casualties of war, the victims of congenital diseases, the victims of violent crime.  If these victims were “self-made,” their expiration date was premature.  They might have lived consecrated lives, but they did not receive their just desserts in this life.

We can either romanticize the lives of those unjustly sacrificed or we can learn what we owe the grace of God and the mercy of friends and strangers.  I want to be led by the latter, by those who know their debt and providence, those who know that a “hand up” is not a “handout.”

Power either corrupts or humbles. We have been fortunate to have been led most often by the humbled. I believe that most of our Presidents have left office with this disposition.  The staunchest conservatives, self-made men like Goldwater and Reagan, finished their terms with more compassion for the weak than when they entered politics. Like the aging King Solomon they accepted that “The race is not always to the swift.”  They knew the need for mercy by the sheer responsibility they bore with their political power.

In the campaign season we will likely hear a lot of humble rhetoric. Probably most of it is for show, so I will not judge candidates by their words. However, I will not vote for anyone who subscribes to the “self-made man” philosophy. I will vote for those who respect power as a vulnerability, not an entitlement.

God save us from the “self-made man” or “self-made woman.”

 

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Big, Bloated or Inclusive?

Every time I hear about how big government is, I think about how inclusive it is.  Civil Rights came down from big government, education for special needs and bilingual students came down from big government, unemployment compensation for citizens squeezed out of work came from big government. What role did private enterprise or the states play in rescuing these deserving citizens?  Who was willing to address these needs but big government?

The federal government has become scapegoat for all that we lack, from employment to our choice of doctors.  But is it the regulations that make voters chafe or is it the inclusion of less deserving people who don’t resemble us, the ones who speak differently, who could not afford college, who depend on Food Stamps to feed their families, who worship other gods, or who lack the proper identification to vote? The deserving poor have become a swelling number. The only way to shrink government is to exclude their benefits, to raise the qualifications to vote, to attend college or to receive food rations.

Big government is big because it serves so many.  Sure, it is bloated and bureaucratic, and most legislators can agree to starve the bureaucracy. But the chronic bloat can only be shrunk by starving those who benefit, the others, the less deserving.

When the right wing declares we can not afford big government, the subtext is we can not afford to care for the others.  When Governor Romney exhorts students to borrow from their parents to pay for college, is he thinking of parents who have no assets beyond the house they live in?  When Senator Ryan says we will pay for our health care with smaller allocations called “vouchers,” is he writing off the chronically ill, whose care burdens the healthy ones?  When the Tea Party legislators voted to end unemployment compensation twice in the last three years, were they thinking of fellow citizens who lived in another part of town and attended a different church?

The enemies of big government content themselves by believing that all who deserve these services will receive them, while the others will hopefully not attend their churches or schools or, when desperation prevails, will be locked away from their society. They are the undeserving, the illegals, the profane, the illiterate, the slum-dwellers.  We should not care for the others, the ones who drain off benefits our children should have.

No one says these things out loud in an election year, and if they are so impolitic, they will be soundly chastised like Representative Todd Akin, who articulated indiscreetly what the Republican platform had already implied. But really what is the subtext of shrinking government, when we get past the consensual cutting? It is preserving our government, so we are insulated from your needs.

The message is shrouded in fiscal policy, in preserving tax cuts, in shrinking the deficit, in liberating the entrepreneur, but the real message is: make sure there’s enough for me and my kind.  “The rest of you are on your own,” as President Obama is fond of remarking ironically.

This week, watch how many ways the right wing can scramble this message, so it sounds like responsible planning and freedom from regulation.  Then ask yourself: who is included and who excluded from these plans?  Who are judged deserving and who deemed acceptable losses?