THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 25, 1996 TAG: 9602230556
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ALEX MARSHALL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
It's been 25 years since President John F. Kennedy told us, ``Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country'' on a windy January inauguration day in Washington.
His words apply today, even though it's hard to imagine any 1996 presidential candidate espousing a contemporary equivalent.
Kennedy's quaint-sounding message is applicable because we depend on the most obvious manifestation of ``country'' - the system of laws and institutions we call government - to make our lives work. We owe its maintenance a debt. If we only take from it, we erode our safety and security and those of future generations.
By government, I'm not talking about getting a check for Social Security, welfare, Medicare, or any of the other programs the politicians fight over.
I'm talking about a functioning court system, laws that define acceptable behavior and police who enforce them, a money supply and a deed room at City Hall that keeps track of who owns what. These fundamentals, and their efficient and fair operation, support our lives, from the homes we own up to the functioning of the New York Stock Exchange.
These essentials do not run on automatic pilot. This is the government ignored when Phil Gramm talks about getting it off our backs, or Bill Clinton talks about a particular program that can help us.
Look at Italy, Russia or a number of countries where these systems either are in poor repair of don't work at all. Who gets to sell a can of tuna fish or deliver a load of lumber in these countries are made as much through their respective ``Mafias'' as through the written words in some government hall.
Such a state of affairs could arrive here because we glorify individual fulfillment and achievement without recognizing what makes either possible. It results not from malice, I believe, but a shift in priorities by different political and social factions over the past few decades.
Many who came of age in the 1960s value personal growth through work, art, or spirituality - painting a great picture, discovering the self through meditation or getting the right mixture of home, work and family.
To many of them, a devotion to country or government symbolizes only the blind devotion to the powers-that-be that led thousands of young men to travel to Vietnam and die for a cause of dubious worth or possibility.
Others in recent times glorify individual economic achievement - the rich man or woman who has created a computer company or successfully played the stock market. They believe if everyone worked hard to get rich all common problems would be solved by Adam Smith's invisible hand.
To these devotees of the capitalist system, government only symbolizes unwelcome intrusion into the ``free market,'' which they fail to recognize does not operate without a functioning system of laws and institutions below it.
Tony Blair, England's new Labor party leader, caught this misplaced focus on the individual in a recent New Yorker profile when he spoke of ``social libertarianism'' as the mirror image of ``economic libertarianism'' - and how both are socially destructive.
I have a home, a job that pays me to think and write about stuff, and a system of businesses around me where I can spend what I earn. As I drive around town, or enjoy a nice meal somewhere, it dawns on me that I owe an enormous debt to whomever constructed the society I live in.
Any individual achievement or success on my part is only possible because I live in a society that has allowed me to compete with my ability to write a story, rather than my ability to fight or instill fear.
I owe this system something in return.
Of course we should avoid a slavish devotion to ``the state.'' And recognizing the worth of government does not preclude a debate about its proper size.
But blanket statements, like Ronald Reagan's ``government is not the answer, it's the problem,'' are destructive. It would be nice if a Clinton, Dole, Forbes or Buchanan would say some modern version of Kennedy's words.
We need to hear them. by CNB