Lately I've been reading, and one of the things that I read was this. It's a position paper written by a Marine Corps colonel and a Navy captain arguing in favor of the intensive development of things like infrastructure, education, and healthcare as integral parts of our national defense strategy. They further argue that a strong State Department, proactive diplomatic efforts, and comprehensive aid programs are necessary for the United States to retain its position of preeminence in the world.
In short, they sound like they are advocating the Democratic party line as the method of our assured success. Consider the Republicans' budget cut suggestions, on the other hand. It's basically a list of infrastructure, education, healthcare, international aid, and diplomatic programs that they would like to cut. It is tempting to argue that they are making the tough choices necessary to balance the budget. And then you read that a Nobel prize winning economist described Paul Ryan's budget as "a strange combination of cruelty and insanely wishful thinking." And then you read the Congressional Budget Office's recommendations and realize that they kind of make the Republican suggestions look like a partisan attempt to destroy social programs.
How is it that we've come to a place in our government in which high-ranking military officers and the Secretary of Defense (the people who are trained to kill people and blow shit up) are advocating developing our domestic infrastructure and diplomacy? Why are our politicians deliberately disordering our commonwealth while using the power of the purse to shape the structures of America's foreign power in such a way that only the use of force is acceptable? Why are the people who are supposed to be building the strength of the nation so bent on developing violence, which should be the last recourse, as the favored option for American foreign policy?
The answer has to do with the opposition between a communal mindset on the one hand and an individualistic mindset on the other. The military of the United States is essentially an authoritarian socialist organization that has been domesticated by the representative democracy that is our civilian government. Everything that it does relies on teamwork and a sense of obligation to a larger community that necessarily leads to a frame of mind in which fostering the common good is a prized attribute. Politicians, on the other hand, exist in a system in which their primary goal is a selfish one: reelection. This necessarily fosters a certain amount of selfishness, or phrased more kindly, individualism. It also fosters a tendency to spout popular rhetoric while acting in such a manner as to ensure future campaign contributions from special interests.
Accordingly, a certain breed of politician (and political camp followers such as pundits and policy-oriented academics) will inevitably prey upon the baser whims of more narrowly focused demographics. Thus we see unionized teachers, policemen, firefighters, and civil servants becoming the scapegoats for wasteful government spending, nevermind the fact that they provide valuable services for the common good of all citizens of the state. Nevermind the fact that in arguing that public employees earn more than their private sector counterparts, no one bothered to ask why private institutions weren't paying teachers the same paltry wage as public institutions.
When the fundamental statements of political discourse are "They are making more money than you," and "The government is wasting your money," political discourse has devolved into pedagogy and rabble-rousing. The existence of the state is fundamentally a compromise between the entirely selfish aspirations of its composite citizens and those same citizens' desire to be sheltered from the unfettered predation of their fellow citizen. It then follows that the purpose of the state is to promote the common good of its citizens to the greatest extent possible while infringing upon their freedoms to the least acceptable extent.
The freedoms that must not be infringed upon begin with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and are continued in the Bill of Rights and the entire corpus of legislative and judiciary elaborations thereon. The purpose of the state, then is to promote every common good that does not infringe upon these freedoms. This assembly of the freedoms of all citizens as protected equally under the law and the effort on the part of the government to promote the common good can, in shorthand, be referred to as our values.
As the military advocates of the development of the common good note:
"Our values define our national character, and they are our source of credibility and legitimacy in everything we do. Our values provide the bounds within which we pursue our enduring national interests. When these values are no longer sustainable, we have failed as a nation, because without our values, America has no credibility."
While there is admittedly merit to the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps school of thought that argues against a social safety net and for an individual's ability to enjoy the fruits of his or her own labor, the individualist argument is ill-suited for the preservation of the commonwealth. America's greatness lies in its aspirations as a just state in which all people are granted a minimum standard of opportunity that is equitably enforced by law. When the poor have to choose between crippling debt and adequate healthcare, when their children cannot receive a good education, and when public transportation infrastructure is inadequate to take them to and from work, this minimum standard of opportunity has not been met. The sacrifice of infrastructure development, quality public education, and universal healthcare is a betrayal of our aspirations toward humanity and civilization universally guaranteed by law, and the sacrifice of diplomacy and humanitarian aid is the sacrifice of our means of conveying our values to the world.
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