“The Rending of the Fabric of America”

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

“The Rending of the Fabric of America”

February 21, 2012

While intentions may have been honorable, the consequences of President Kennedy’s Executive Order 10988 in 1962 and the social welfare programs of President Johnson’s Great Society in the mid 1960s have been an increased dependency and a loss of personal responsibility. The effects of those acts, and the manner in which they have altered our society over the past four or five decades, have become the focus of groups ranging from the Tea Party to Wall Street Occupiers. Tea Partier’s concerns have been the growing tentacles of an increasingly pervasive government. Occupiers have been focused on widening income gaps, an untenable situation that erodes traditional relationships and makes less fluid the steps up and down the economic ladder.

Both protestors are concerned with crony capitalism, with Occupiers placing most of the blame on Wall Street, while those in the Tea Party see politicians as the principal villains. There are others who place blame for a changing America on globalization, by which American consumers have benefitted, but which has sent many manufacturing jobs offshore. A few blame technology, as the principal beneficiaries have been the most talented and best educated.

Whatever the cause, the net effect has been the loss of a common culture that for decades bound our nation and differentiated us from the rest of world – a republic of people who perceived themselves as middle class citizens living in relative harmony, in which individual liberty stood paramount, and the state secondary. Rich and poor, especially in more rural America, attended the same churches and the same schools. It bred a spirit of community. While differences existed both socially and economically, they were less pronounced.

It is a subject that has attracted academics like political scientist, James Q. Wilson, columnists like David Brooks and Ross Douthat, historians like Robert Kagan and Francis Fukuyama and politicians like Mitch Daniels, Bobby Jindal, Chris Christie and Scott Walker, and recently the subject of a book by Charles Murray, Coming Apart. Mr. Murray’s focus is on white Americans, aged 30 to 49; he contrasts mores in 1960 and 2010. His findings show a widening gap in four categories – marriage, industriousness, crime and religiosity – between those in what he terms the “upper middle class” and those in the “working class.” Surprisingly, his studies find that the upper middle classes, by and large, live by the same values they did fifty years ago, while the working poor have seen their standards deteriorate. In part, he blames the “nonjudgmental” attitude of the elite, upper classes who do not preach what they practice.

The fact that social conservatism is more of a working class phenomenon would seem at odds with Charles Murray’s finding that declines in marriage and church attendance and increases in illegitimacy have characterized that group over the past five decades. However, Jeffrey Bell, in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, explains that apparent paradox by arguing that social conservatism as being “aspirational, driven by a sense in Middle America that the kind of cultural atmosphere we have…is something that needs to be pushed back.”

In the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs, Francis Fukuama writes: “From the days of Aristotle, thinkers have believed that stable democracy rests on a broad middle class and those societies with extremes of wealth and poverty are susceptible either to oligarchic domination or populist revolution.” We are seeing the effects of both in our country today – the crony capitalism that exists between Washington and business leaders (think TARP and banks, General Motors, AIG and Solyndra) and populist movements, whether it be the Tea Party or the OWS. In my opinion, protest movements are not the problem. Over reach by government is.

There are other examples of a fraying of the fabric that is America. Many see it as inevitable that the 21st century belongs to Asia, and particularly to China. Robert Kagan, in his recent book, The World America Made, argues that there is no assurance that a decline in America’s global influence would leave untouched modern history’s glide toward democracies, free markets and free trade. Would a mercantilist China treat its trading partners as fairly as has the United States? It is a question worth pondering, Mr. Kagan asserts, as so many politicians and intellectuals view a decline in America’s influence with equanimity.

Last week the Senate passed a bill (75-20) authorizing the FAA $63 billion to purchase up to 30,000 drones by the end of the decade for use in the United States for civilian purposes. If the House approves, the President is expected to sign the legislation. Law enforcement officers support the bill, but the risk of them being used to spy on Americans brings to mind visions of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984.

For decades, President’s have assumed increased powers, but the seizure of power by the current administration is frightening, with “Czars” now numbering 45 according to Judicial Watch, many of which are unconfirmed by the Senate and are largely unaccountable to Congress. These appointments are, as Judicial Watch asserts, “at odds with republican, limited accountable government.” Political certitude has replaced a concept of moral absolutism. And, concomitant with that increased power, an increasing number of people come to rely on government.

Ironically, so-called liberals and main-stream media support this power grab on the part of the White House (except when it occurs under Republicans.) A concentration of power in Washington further degrades the fabric that has enveloped Americans since its founding, as it erodes a sense of personal responsibility. The division between economic classes has increased at the same time as government has increasingly expanded its reach. Is there a connection? The split between the economic classes has been aggravated by those who give to government and those who receive. In 1944, Friedrich Hayek wrote: “To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything.”

Can the trend be reversed? Nobody knows. But there is reason for hope, as signs that a self-correcting mechanism is underway. Traditionally Democratic states like New Jersey, Indiana, Louisiana and Wisconsin have elected Governors who seem intent on returning power from the state and vested interests to the people. Representatives like Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Senator Mark Rubio of Florida give hope that common sense might prevail in Washington, with a return toward personal responsibility and less dependency on entitlements. 2012 has the potential to be a watershed year. Over the next few months we will see if a trend is developing: the Supreme Court decision regarding the Affordable Care Act, possibly as early as July; the recall election in Wisconsin, at some point during the summer, and the Presidential and Congressional elections in November.