Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 1, 1993 TAG: 9307070439
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-15 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ray L. Garland
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
That was the great question in 1787 and it's still the great question as we mark the 217th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 1993. But we seldom use the word republic any more. It wasn't always so. Mr. Lincoln's army styled itself the Grand Army of the Republic, and as recently as 50 years ago, Winston Churchill was fond of referring to America as `the great republic.`
The problem may be that the word has been replaced in the popular lexicon by its more sonorous, high-sounding competitor, democracy. Is it a distinction without a difference? Perhaps, but I am not entirely persuaded. Democracy suggests rights that are inherited while republic denotes responsibilities that are unremitting.
A republic, by definition, must depend for its survival upon the civic virtue of its citizens. In the ancient lore of Rome, it was the corruption of `republican virtues` by the imperial state that lead to ruin. A perennial rallying cry of Roman politics was the restoration of the Republic, but it never happened, any more than we or any nation can retrace our steps to find some idealized past.
It was, I think, the British Labor Party in 1945 that coined the term `Welfare State` and proclaimed it the blessing of the modern age. It was only later that it took on an unwholesome connotation. Still, that is the inevitable direction of all democracies and there will be no turning back. Once people learn they can vote themselves payments and benefits, where does it end?
Increasingly, America seems to exist on two levels: media reality and just plain reality. In media reality, almost everything is going wrong. But when you venture into the real world, you find a great many things going right: products that work as advertised; people honorably and conscientiously doing their jobs.
But media reality is so powerful that it threatens to overcome our perceptions and warp our understanding of the abiding strength of the nation. `Nothing is more dangerous,` Churchill concluded, `than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll.` Dangerous it may be, but that is now the only atmosphere in which our political affairs can be conducted. One day the president has 80 percent approval; six months later it's only 40 percent. This is the stuff of juveniles.
For a number of years, pollsters have been asking the ridiculous question, `Do you think the country is on the right track or the wrong track?` For some time now, a strong majority has said `wrong track.` But neither the question nor the answer has any reality outside the crafting of political campaigns because so few people can agree on what would constitute the right track.
The problem is that hysteria has its consequence. It's by no means unlikely that a people overwhelmingly convinced that their country is on the wrong track will some day be sold a bad bill of goods.
Perhaps the real danger here is the basic assumption of the question, which gets us back to the original point of rights vs. responsibilities. The question seems to assume that if we're on the wrong track it's the business of politicians to put us on the right track. That's a relatively new notion, but in its name some of the greatest criminals in history have already enlisted.
Every nation or institution raised to the pinnacles of power and prestige has taken a fall. The reason suggests itself: Success breeds arrogance and wealth creates an indifference to the real sources of wealth. As one economist put it, `Money does not pay for anything...goods and services can be paid for only with goods and services.`
Except, of course, when government intervenes to decide who pays and who gets paid. Thus is born the modern political incantation of `fairness` to justify robbing Peter to pay Paul. It is now defined as `fair` for government to claim more than half the income of Americans living in New York and California who earn more than $250,000 a year.
If we date the real arrival of the welfare state in America from Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, we are less than 30 years into it. How long will it take for the average tax burden in this country to reach 50 percent? Maybe 15 years. Then what?
Still, the only way to judge our position is by comparing it to others. At a recent meeting of European Community leaders in Copenhagen, British Prime Minister John Major warned that Europe was falling farther behind the United States. Between 1970 and 1990, he said, America created 30 million new jobs compared with just nine million in Western Europe, where the population is substantially larger.
Unemployment in the 12-nation European Community now averages nearly 11 percent, half again what it is in the U.S. And as great as we think our deficit is, deficits in the EC are running 50 percent higher. `The choice before us is a stark one,` Major said, `we must compete or we shall contract.`
The most interesting thing about America is its vast diversity. Virginians are, or at any rate used to be, very different from Floridians or New Yorkers. Yet, our main political impulse now is to impose uniformity. But the most hopeful thing about America is that her people are still on the case, often hopelessly muddled, but still viewing the country as a work in progress. For such an old party, that's no small accomplishment.
by CNB