THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, September 27, 1995 TAG: 9509270003
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: KEITH MONROE
LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines
We are living in interesting times, a situation the ancient Chinese regarded as a curse. Blessing or curse, one thing is certain. A lot of settled assumptions are being unsettled. Newt and his merry band want to take 60 years of accumulated New Deal/ Great Society growth and uproot it.
Even President Clinton wants to throw out welfare as we know it. There is now bipartisan agreement that we'll have to alter drastically health-care programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Republicans aim to ditch federal programs for the arts and humanities as well as public broadcasting.
In one of the greatest poems of the 20th century, W.B. Yeats recalls the long procession of ``old civilizations put to the sword,'' and the fact that ``they and their wisdom went to rack.'' But he concludes that ``all things fall and are built again.'' And he chooses to celebrate those who do the building.
The interesting thing about the Washington revolution is the opposite reactions it evokes. In one view, the Republican revolutionaries are the wrecking crew, out to destroy America. According to this school of thought, we are witnessing the arrival of the barbarians at the gates. Others believe the revolution will be the country's salvation, that the Republicans are getting back to first principles and are simply clearing the ground in order to build again.
The key to unraveling the confusion may lie in something a visitor to the Virginian-Pilot said last week. He was David Mathews, now president of a think tank called the Kettering Foundation, before that secretary of health, education and welfare in the Ford administration and president of the University of Alabama.
Mathews was discussing what impels people to get off the sidelines and take part in their community, to become constructive forces rather than seeking to obstruct or opt out. He said: ``People take responsibility for the things they have chosen.''
At the most basic level, we take responsibility for our homes because we have chosen them and have a stake in them. We take responsibility for our children because they are dearer to us than ourselves. We have chosen them in a way so deep as to defy description.
Some of us take responsibility for our children's schools or our neighborhood, our city, state or country for similar reasons, because we feel a sense of ownership. Because we have chosen them. Often the most responsible citizens are immigrants who have literally chosen to be Americans and who don't take the privilege for granted.
And that insight of Mathews, that we are willing to take responsibility only for that which we have chosen to own, may help explain the wildly divergent attitudes toward the agenda of the Republican Revolution.
Many Americans who grew up with the Great Society and the New Deal before it regard government programs like affirmative action, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Social Security, Medicare, Head Start, Public Television, student loans, EPA, OSHA, FDA as public responsibilities because they were present at the creation and have a sense of ownership about them.
They helped choose the programs that now help define American society. They have paid the taxes to fund them and have come to regard them as contributions toward making America a better place. Eliminating them seems like a step backwards.
But a majority of the electorate is now comprised of people born after the New Deal was over. Many have no memory of the Great Society. Others opposed the ideas at the time but were outnumbered. All now find themselves living with institutions created in those years that they didn't choose. They don't feel any responsibility for them. They don't own them.
Yet they've been expected to pay for them. No wonder it's easy for them to contemplate a revolution that would sweep away so many programs. Feeling no connection with them, they welcome the change. And they have begun to elect like-minded representatives who feel they've got a mandate not to preserve the past but to invent a different future.
Thus, one man's vandal is another man's hero. In this sense, Pat Buchanan is right. We are living through a culture war. And the clash can only continue. Both sides undoubtedly feel history is on their side.
But David Mathews might say the real issue is finding the common ground, because the society won't take collective responsibility for any institutions that a majority of us aren't prepared to choose willingly.
So far the name-calling and finger-pointing in Washington demonstrate what divides us, but the process must move on to what unites us. There's been a lot of knee-jerk anti-government rhetoric, but the debate is beginning to demonstrate that people do draw the line someplace. They are willing to downsize or eliminate some government programs but are unwilling to part with others.
The process may be messy, but we are slowly choosing what we are willing to take responsibility for - what kind of welfare program or social safety net, what form of Social Security or medical program for seniors or educational system we are prepared to pay the price to maintain. Together. MEMO: Mr. Monroe is an editorial writer. by CNB