Government On Our Backs

You don’t have to go far to hear this old refrain: “I just wish the government would get off our backs”. You hear this old saw or some version of it in almost every quarter. It isn’t reserved for “grumpy old man-ville” or Republican-burg anymore. It’s just about everywhere where people believe they may be losing some level of control in their lives and government becomes an easy scape-goat. The whole question about the role and size of government in our lives has given me something to think about, particularly in the last week. The events in Boston and West, Texas are just the last in series of events that have me thinking about what role government plays our unique American culture. The more I think about it, the more I concluded that when it comes to government and American culture, we are really an inconsistent and incomprehensible bunch of people.    

I’m very pleased that law enforcement was able to solve the horrific bombing crime in Boston and capture or kill (his choice) the likely perpetrators. That's a great example of government functioning at its best. Now that the arrest has been made, the usual cadre of hyper-critical Senators and Congress-persons are more than eager to jump in and criticize the work of the FBI and the decisions about how to bring the suspect to justice. Chief among the cadre of the critical are Republican Senators who believe he should declared an “enemy combatant” and tried in military courts- Lindsay Graham leading the way. They are also questioning everything about what the government knew about the two brothers and what they did. This is classic Monday morning quarterbacking played out on a national scale.It is proper to question the actions of the FBI about their previous contact with the brothers- but for me this raises a more basic question. My question is about how much power the government should have to control people based on their beliefs. I understand these two men became American citizens, guaranteeing their basic right to believe as they wish. I’m not defending the actions that ultimately grew out of their beliefs- only that government is not supposed to (and cannot) practice mind control over people and impose prior restraint. It is interesting to me that the most conservative politicians (i.e. those who want the smallest government) are also the ones calling for an all-knowing and all controlling government when they see someone as the “the enemy” or “the other”- and it fits their political agenda.  

We must recognize that the incredible effort to identify those two brothers in Boston was based on the use of a very pervasive video surveillance system that can watch all of us all of the time. I’m not questioning the value of that system to identify criminals- but, I am pointing out that the American tradition is to enjoy privacy and to reject government intrusion or surveillance of our private lives- yet we kind of like it when it works for us. It was the government after all who put those cameras there and has access to all the data on our movements, any time they want to use it. These are the inconsistencies I think about when I consider some of the underlying issues that surface when horrific events happen. Let’s remember that after the 9-11 attacks, Congress quickly passed the Patriot Act, which may be the single biggest threat to basic freedoms in our history, while saying they did it to protect our freedoms. The sting of that attack caused most of Congress and President Bush to leap head-long onto this dangerous legal ground- where they expanded the role of government exponentially beyond their own beliefs or rhetoric on small government.

Within the same week as the Marathon bombing, there was a massive explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas. Fourteen people died and many, many people were injured- threatening an entire community. I see a connection between these two events when I think about the role of government. Here was a situation that clearly called out for government oversight, but there was none. Our government didn’t even know of this plant. But we now know that the operators were working with several thousand times the amount of ammonium nitrate the law allows without over-site. In the constant cry to stop government regulation and get government off our backs this needless loss of life flies in the face of that plea. Republicans blame the Obama administration for over-regulating business and deepening the recession. The facts are that the Bush administration instituted more regulations- but then never enforced them. You might recall that during those Bush years we had more food supply contamination problems than any other time in our history and more imported products coming to the country with toxic materials. (remember lead paint on baby toys?) Every time one of these episodes occurred the people asked, “Where’s the government? They’re supposed keep this from happening”. But there is never a consistent answer because we’re an inconsistent bunch. We don’t want government on our back- unless it’s for some reason we like or it deals with one particular problem. We tend to treat government over-site like an entitlement when it affects our ability to buy hamburger. 

I’m not suggesting how much government we’re supposed to have. I’m suggesting that this question may be the central debate of our time because so many of the issues we are grappling with today eventually circle back to this basic question. We're stuck on this issue because the characteristics of the American culture are colliding head-on with the practicalities of governing a country of over 300 million people that was founded on the principles of individual liberty and freedom. The collision of those two forces reveals the inconsistencies we are dealing with today.

 

Here are a few examples to illustrate this conflict of traditional cultural values vs. modern day realities. Many in Congress will argue to the death to get government out of our lives – but will easily inject government control into our marriages, sex lives, and reproductive choices. What could be more “government on our backs” than that? In the area of basic safety and security you have seen us mobilize the whole of national resources because of an attack that killed three people in Boston, but the idea of stopping thirty thousand deaths a year from gun violence can't even be defined as an issue of basic safety; because our culture says guns are a part of us and the Second Amendment cannot be touched. By adding the “terrorism” label we permit ourselves all kinds of intrusive excesses to enforce laws, when another kind of basic safety issue kills 10,000 times more people every year and our leaders won’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. On personal privacy, which is integral to a free society, we readily give it all away, because Dick Cheney told us they can "WMD" us to death, and we just believed it without a shred of hard evidence. We respond to fear by sacrificing the one thing we hold most precious and defines who we are. Of course there is no NRA-like lobby (or industry) to defend the Fourth Amendment, like there is for the Second Amendment. On religious freedom, we will rail against any kind of government intrusion to impose reproductive health provisions in our national health care system because of religiously based objections, but we will literally persecute any Muslim in this country and characterize them all as ”radical Islamists”- based on our residual fear and hatred from the attack on 9-11. Where was the outcry to warn us about “radical Christianity” following the Oklahoma City bombing or mention of the ballooning Militia Movement that is so openly hostile to our government and huge portions of our population? If there had been a Christian chapel built on the site of the Murrah Building bombing it would have been seen as a pious act of respect for the victims, even though McVay was a radical Christian. But when (U.S. citizen) Muslims wanted to build an Islamic community center near ground zero in Manhattan it was viewed as a disrespectful outrage and was prohibited.  Our ideas about what is dangerous and how government intersects with our lives aren’t based on the nature of actions-unless we can also cast the blame on “the other” at the same time. I know there is not equivalency in all of these examples. But there is most certainly inconsistency and  bad logic in the way we approach the issues, and that is the problem.

There is so much in the culture and character of being American that is great. Those attributes are the ones that draw admiration and respect in some parts of the world, and puff us up with pride that we are Americans. We revere our freedom and independence and there is strain in us that wants justice. We tend to come together in our communities when faced with disaster. Sometimes that pride in who we are and what we’ve accomplished as a young nation also blinds us to the darker side of our character- the side that draws hatred in some parts of the globe. That's the side that doesn’t recognize the vein of racism that runs through our history and still holds us captive today. We sometimes long for yesterday and forget to plan for better tomorrow, believing our traditions leave no room for improvement. And as much as we revere justice in some areas, we neglect economic justice as the driver of a better life for all. And, we rarely deal with our hypocracy in making policy. This is the crux of the American enigma.

Perhaps the time has come to recognize we don’t live in the same kind of country we had in the late eighteenth century. Perhaps it is time to recognize that our enemies, from within and without, are not the same either. Perhaps it is time to realize that wanting and supporting the services and protections only our government can provide isn’t un-American. It just might be the most American thing about us because it speaks to a common good and a shared responsibility among us all, and toward us all. The next time we “just want the government off our backs” it might be helpful to think about what it would really be like if government wasn’t there at all, then re-examine those “rugged individualistic” characteristics that might not serve us so well in today’s world. I absolutely do not know the answer to these matters, but I believe the issue is important enough, that at this stage in the debate about government, it’s probably more important to ask the right questions instead of having all the right answers. Asking the right questions about whom we really are, who we really want to be, and how government will help or hinder that journey is our best course for the future.

Thanks for looking in.