A Nation Like No Other (17 page)

Edmund Burke, the great defender of the American cause in the British Parliament, argued that such private associations were the foundation of a strong, stable society:

Burke's “little platoons”—voluntary associations acting independent of government—bind us to our communities and country in unions that promote individuals' interests through common means. These platoon-families of civic organizations, professional societies, and religious congregations serve as an intermediate entity between the individual and the vast state apparatus.

Today, civil society encompasses a wide variety of groups and associations. For example, the Boy Scouts of America is an exemplary instance of a civic organization that enriches our daily lives. The Scouts encourage education, habits, and virtues that lead to personal success,
and teach our youth the importance of contributing to the public good. Other common examples include neighborhood watch committees, school carpools, little league, the Farm Bureau, and the Red Cross.

Civil society's broad reach makes it uniquely qualified to cater to people's needs. However, even in Tocqueville's time, there were individuals and interests who tried to replace responsive private associations with government. Some of these people were well-intentioned, believing that a one-size-fits-all government bureaucracy could actually serve citizens better than local, custom-designed, voluntary associations could; others knew that an expanded government bureaucracy would serve their interests at other citizens' expense. Despite the vibrancy of American civil society, Tocqueville presciently predicted that government would eventually usurp many of the duties that private associations performed so effectively:

Both Tocqueville and the Founders realized that government could not and should not replace civil society, because the static and singular nature
of government cannot accommodate the manifold needs of American citizens. When government intervenes in any field served by civil society, it shrinks the size and scope of civic life, taking more of the money that would otherwise be available for private associations. Furthermore, when the government intervenes, it often lassoes private associations with new and cumbersome rules and regulations that discourage new membership and sap further initiative by private citizens. As civic society diminishes, those in need are forced to turn to the bureaucratic institutions that have assumed a dominant position. This creates greater and greater dependence on ineffectual and stultifying government action, and individuals become less free, less virtuous, and less well-served.

The more government centralizes social programs, the more it tends to depersonalize and alienate the individuals it is meant to protect and serve. It reduces the individual, to paraphrase Karl Marx, to an “appendage of the bureaucratic state,” which tries to assume control of more and more of our personal responsibilities. This bureaucratization of American life erodes people's dignity and alienates them from one another, as they depend on government to solve problems instead of working together. As the bureaucratic state grows, the citizen becomes smaller, more lonely, and more vulnerable to arbitrary government actions. Transforming from independent citizens into dependent subjects, we lose our ability to organize spontaneously and creatively, instead merely following the rules laid out by a distant, impersonal, and unknowing bureaucracy. Tocqueville described this debilitating process:

To maximize freedom, power should be vested as close to the individual as possible. This principle of localism, or what is described in Christian social teaching as subsidiarity, acknowledges that the smaller and more decentralized the decision-maker, the better the decision-maker can
personalize
the decision to the individuals affected and protect their dignity and freedom. Centralization alienates the decision-maker from its object and robs the individual of his right and responsibility to self-govern.

Government's activities should be limited to those enumerated in the Constitution and to functions that individuals and local groups cannot do themselves. The Founders enshrined this principle in the Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” As the Founders intended, power must reside, wherever possible, in individuals and in the free institutions that they voluntarily create, join, build, and dissolve.

Americans have proved to be the most selfless people in the world, voluntarily giving more of their time and money to their fellow countrymen and to people across the globe than any civilization in history.

Compared to other democracies, America stands out for its philanthropy and its thriving private institutions of learning, advocacy, and mutual interest. The U.S. non-profit sector is much larger than any other nation in the world, with our closest competitor, the United Kingdom, only reaching 14 percent of the U.S. total. As Arthur Brooks notes, “Even more exceptional is the fact that so much of the support of the [non-profit] sector is purely voluntary.” Charitable contributions in the United States amount to $300 billion dollars a year, with three-quarters donated from private individuals. The average family gives over $1,800 annually, and more than half of Americans also volunteer their time.
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Burke noted in his time that this generosity extended far beyond our shores, inextricably linking us with the rest of the world—and this remains true today. After the devastating Indonesian tsunami, President Bush pledged military and humanitarian aid to the people and nations
affected, including $350 million from U.S. coffers in direct assistance. But the governments of Japan, Germany, and Australia each pledged more, provoking a UN bureaucrat to label the United States “stingy.” This illustrates a common misunderstanding of the American system of charity.

Americans are not stingy, we just prefer to engage in charity directly instead of leaving it to the government—a consequence of our civic traditions. After the Indonesian tsunami, individual Americans donated more than $1.5 billion in aid through private organizations, including $400 million to the Red Cross alone. Doctors without Borders was so inundated with American checks that it stopped accepting donations after two weeks.
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The story of American industrialist and Scottish immigrant Andrew Carnegie also illustrates our long-standing attachment to private charity and philanthropy. When Carnegie was a boy, a local military veteran, Colonel James Anderson, opened his personal library to working boys of Pittsburgh every Saturday night. Carnegie leapt at the opportunity, later attributing his spectacular entrepreneurial success to his self-education. Decades later, by then one of the world's wealthiest men, Carnegie decided to build 2,500 libraries to provide others with the opportunity for education and self-improvement that he had enjoyed.
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Civil society institutions were often designed to inculcate this love of education and knowledge. As Moses Mather, an American preacher and Founding Father, stated, “The strength and spring of every free government is the virtue of the people; virtue grows on knowledge, and knowledge on education.”
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Civil society has served as an engine of social change throughout American history, and the civil rights movement is one of its greatest triumphs. After nearly a century of state-sanctioned discrimination and violence, justice-seeking individuals united to right the wrongs of Jim Crow laws. They formed diverse political, religious, and humanitarian associations and built networks to share information, communicate with the public and government officials, and initiate a peaceful campaign to
integrate the South. Martin Luther King Jr. described how civil society underpinned his actions in Birmingham:

The civil rights movement's marches, sit-ins, freedom rides, and voter registration drives were directed against the power of government. Individuals ranging from northern university students to southern ministers organized themselves into hundreds of associations that kept up continual pressure on political leaders and officials to reconsider the immoral policies of segregation. These groups, as King noted, shared resources and coordinated their message and efforts through free institutions. They worked diligently, against great odds and under great duress, to protect the dignity and freedom of the individual against unjust laws.

In contrast to their prominent role in the civil rights movement, civic groups often operate less visibly, though just as effectively. Families and local community groups quietly provide community aid and serve countless needs on a daily basis.

One example can be seen in the resettlement of Jewish refugees in the United States. In 1975, following grass-roots pressure from U.S.-based Jewish organizations and religious-freedom groups, the United States
successfully pressured the Soviet Union to allow the emigration of Russian Jews and other persecuted religious minorities. Over 600,000 such refugees ultimately settled in the United States.
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Their reception in their new homeland was another triumph of American civil society. A network of local Jewish agencies and families helped pay for the refugees' travel expenses, met them at the airport, hosted and helped resettle them, and assisted them in finding English classes and job counseling. A family matching program was also created to give practical and emotional support to the new arrivals.
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The director of the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles that coordinated the assimilation and resettlement program, a Jewish refugee herself, noted the program's success: “[O]ppressed Jews from all over the world [came] here to live in freedom. And now we've got such a thriving immigrant community, with people connecting with their Jewish identity and contributing to society.”
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A similar example is evident in the southeast Asian refugee crisis of 1975. With the fall of south Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos to the Communists, thousands—and eventually millions—of those nations' citizens fled their new dictatorships. Rising to the occasion, President Gerald Ford organized an emergency military effort to evacuate refugees to the United States. American civil society also answered the call, assisting the refugees' resettlement in countless ways. Churches, synagogues, military families, and civic groups petitioned to sponsor evacuees, while the non-profit International Rescue Committee coordinated the effort. Within days of their arrival on American shores, refugees were placed with sponsors throughout the nation. Less than a year after his arrival, refugee Dang Nguyen lauded the informal support network that had aided him: “I have a steady job, regular raises, a nice place to live, the children work hard, my wife and I are well, we have grandchildren, and next month there will be a big event in our family: We will all get our citizenship papers!”
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