Today's guest columnist is the distinguished historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. His article is condensed from a commencement speech he delivered at Roosevelt University, May 21, 1995.
Many regard the national government not just as the problem but as the enemy.
For my generation of Americans, those who were born during the First World War, grew up in the Great Depression, and served in World War II, the Rooseveltian belief in the national government as the instrument of the people seemed abundantly justified. It was the national government under the leadership of Franklin Roosevelt that brought us through economic collapse and beat the Nazis and the Japanese, preserving American democracy against domestic failure and foreign war.
Roosevelt's immediate successors sustained this belief in the national government. Polls taken during the Kennedy administration showed that more than 75 percent of Americans thought the national government was working in their interests and telling them the truth. But today only about 20 percent trust government to serve their interests and to level with them.
Why this remarkable reversal? For one thing, presidents after Kennedy let Americans down. Johnson deceived them about Vietnam. Nixon deceived them about Watergate. Reagan deceived them about Irangate. The national government proved unable to solve the problems of poverty and racism. And the availability of public funds under lax supervision opened the door to graft and rip-off, whether by Pentagon suppliers or Medicare doctors or savings-and-loan bankers or welfare cheats.
In the 1980's President Reagan led an all-out attack on government. "Government is not the solution to our problem," he said. "Government is the problem." Politicians trashing each other in television sound bites further undermined public confidence in the profession to which they all belong. The media made cynicism a national industry. And today, stirred up by the furious flow of Speaker Gingrich's unending words, many regard the national government not just as the problem but as the enemy.
This assault on the national government is represented as a disinterested movement to "return" power to the people. But the withdrawal of the national government does not transfer power to the people. It transfers power to the historical rival of the national government -- the great corporate interests. As Theodore Roosevelt observed of the greedy trusts of his day, "If this irresponsible outside power is to be controlled in the interest of the general public, it can be controlled in only one way -- by giving adequate power of control to the National Government." The fight against government regulation of corporate privilege, TR added, "is chiefly done under cover; and especially under the cover of an appeal to states' rights."
It is a delusion to say that, because state government is closer to the people, it is more responsive to their needs and concerns. Historically it is national government that has served as the protector of the powerless. It is the national government that affirmed the Bill of Rights against local vigilantism and preserved natural resources against local greed. The national government has civilized industry, secured the rights of labor organizations, improved income for the farmer, and provided a decent living for the old. Above all, the national government has vindicated racial justice against local bigotry. Had the states' rights creed prevailed, the U.S. would still have slavery.
And historically the national government has been more honest and efficient than state and local governments. How well are state and local governments doing with their own problems, problems that lie primarily within their jurisdiction, such as our deteriorating schools and our escalating crime? As for bureaucracy, duplication, and waste, will there be more or less if a single federal agency is to be replaced by fifty separate state agencies? Just wait until local pols get their hands on those federal block grants!
The crusade against government springs from a conviction that, if we get government off our backs, our problems will solve themselves. But far from solving problems, the old, unregulated, laissez-faire economy of the 19th century generated the problems that produced class warfare, the manifestos of Marx, and in time, the Great Depression. Democratic capitalism has triumphed because of the long campaign mounted by reformers, Franklin Roosevelt foremost among them, to use the national government to humanize the industrial order.
But things have slipped back since FDR's time. Recent studies by the Twentieth Century Fund show that the inequality of wealth is increasing in our country at an alarming rate. The top one percent of families owns more than 40 percent of the nation's wealth. Great Britain is notorious as a class-ridden society, but the top one percent in Britain owns only about 18 percent of the nation's wealth. The current push in Congress to cut taxes for the rich and social programs for the poor will only deepen the inequalities that divide and demoralize the American people.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was the transcendent American individualist, but he became impatient at the grousing about government he kept hearing around him, as he made clear in his journal: "It is folly to treat the state as if it were some individual arbitrarily willing this and so ... .I confess I lose all respect for this tedious denouncing of the state by idlers who rot in indolence, selfishness, & envy in the chimney corner."