A Burkean Approach

Fire of Liberty
If you haven't seen it today then I suggest you read George Will's most recent column on John Edwards and his current effort at the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity. As Will notes, the 2008 presidential hopeful has made it his utmost duty to find ways or encourage people of his policies to eliminate the current "two Americas" that he rattled on and on during his un-successful bid for vice-president in 04. Though Edwards has taken up a more conservative tack by arguing that poverty is brought about more by the dissolution of the family, out-of-wedlock births, lack of a work ethic, zero responsibility, he can't get away from the liberal line of calling on the government to end the problem rather on depending on Burke's "little platoons" of family, churches, and various private charities and groups.

Now Edwards can wrap his blue state solutions to poverty(more government spending)up with pretty red-state(smaller gov't/personal charity) wrapping paper and ribbons all he wants but folks in the American heartland (Votes he'll need to be Prez) aren't about to be lured down this road of folks taking away massive amounts of their tax dollars to pump into the pockets of folks who don't deserve it, much like has been done since LBJ's "War on Poverty" was launched forty years ago. I guess Edwards forgot that his policy of fighting poverty via the spending of money has been refuted by great works like Charles Murray's Losing Ground, Marvin Olasky's The Tragedy of American Compassion not to mention the Welfare Reform Act instituted by the Republicans and President Clinton(One good accolade for ole' Bill), in the mid-1990's that actually set about weaning the poor off the government teat and urging them to join the workforce and relying more on the local resources, churches or families to resolve the roots of poverty. In fact Will's column reminded me of a piece over at National Review Online by Lawrence W. Reed, president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, which pointed out that at one time we had leaders like President Grover Cleveland who argued against heaping tons and tons of federal money at a specific problem like poverty or disaster relief because it would make the people ever dependent on government and just dissolve the American character of hard work and responsibility that the "little platoons" promoted. Just look at what the 22nd president had to say on the issue of federal government dependency:

In his veto of the Texas Seed Bill, Cleveland warned against a general disregard of the "“limited mission"” of the federal government. He didn'’t think Congress or the president should torture the Constitution until it confessed that disaster relief was among the responsibilities of Washington, D.C. He felt that the country should heed the time-honored lesson that, as he put it, "“Though the people support the Government, the Government should not support the people."

The welfare-statists of our time have saddled us with $8 trillion in debt, a federal tax burden seven or eight times that of Cleveland'’s day, and a legacy of handout programs that have yielded little more than dependency and dysfunctional families. Billions in corporate welfare have exacted a similar toll on American enterprise. Cleveland tried to tell us that government has nothing to give anybody except what it first takes from somebody, and that a government big enough to give us everything we want is big enough to take away everything we'’ve got. But somewhere along the way we fooled ourselves into thinking that government can help our brothers and sisters better, more quickly, and more cheaply than we can help them ourselves. What a sorry mess of pottage we'’ve mortgaged our children'’s future for.

Nonetheless, Americans are still the most generous charity givers on the planet. The best evidence that we haven'’t entirely lost the instincts Cleveland appealed to is the fact that when Americans want to donate money to help others, they don'’t make their checks out to FEMA or any other government agency.

Cleveland didn'’t say no to drought relief because he thought hurting farmers didn'’t deserve relief. He urged Americans in general and members of Congress in particular to give from their own hearts and personal resources. His veto message noted, "The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow citizens in misfortune."” Aid from Washington, D.C., he wrote, only "“encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character."”

Those farmers in Texas got their aid, all right — as much as 10 times or more in private assistance as the amount that Cleveland refused to launder first through a federal bureaucracy.

All in all, Will's column and Reed's piece just go to show you that local, private, family and religious institutions are the best place to go when you're hurting rather than the federal government. This is something that John Edwards and President Bush should think of rather than promising to spend more federal money(yours and my tax dollars) to solve the problems of poverty and disaster relief. Lets hope someone comes along in 08 and pulls us back towards the "little platoons" rather than "Big Fed." (I hope someone in the GOP will come up with this).