The Inversion of America’s Dominant Ideology
By Robert Higgs • Sunday October 30, 2011 11:16 AM PDT • 31 Comments
According to an ABC News report last week,
At a million-dollar San Francisco fundraiser today [October 26], President Obama warned his recession-battered supporters that if he loses the 2012 election it could herald a new, painful era of self-reliance in America.
“The one thing that we absolutely know for sure is that if we don’t work even harder than we did in 2008, then we’re going to have a government that tells the American people, ‘you are on your own,’” Obama told a crowd of 200 donors over lunch at the W Hotel.
“If you get sick, you’re on your own. If you can’t afford college, you’re on your own. If you don’t like that some corporation is polluting your air or the air that your child breathes, then you’re on your own,” he said. “That’s not the America I believe in. It’s not the America you believe in.”
How horrible the prospect! On your own to pay for your own health care; on your own to pay for your own college expenses; on your own to pay for a lawsuit against a corporation that has harmed you unlawfully. How can anyone with an ounce of humanity in his body expect people to take such self-responsibility? The next thing you know, those callous, reactionary Republicans—you know, the ones who ran up the size, scope, and power of government consistently under every Republican president since Chester Arthur—will demand that people take care of their own children and aged parents! Where will it end?
To gauge the extent to which the dominant ideology of the United States has changed—indeed, turned upside down—during the past century or so, we need only recall one of Grover Cleveland’s most characteristic declarations, made in his veto of the Texas Seed Bill, a trifling appropriation of $10,000 to help drought-striken farmers in 1887:
I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people.
The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.
Later, in his second inaugural speech, in 1893, Cleveland reiterated this traditional American stance in favor of limited government, personal self-reliance, and private charity:
The verdict of our voters which condemned the injustice of maintaining protection for protection’s sake enjoins upon the people’s servants the duty of exposing and destroying the brood of kindred evils which are the unwholesome progeny of paternalism. This is the bane of republican institutions and the constant peril of our government by the people. It degrades to the purposes of wily craft the plan of rule our fathers established and bequeathed to us as an object of our love and veneration. It perverts the patriotic sentiments of our countrymen and tempts them to pitiful calculation of the sordid gain to be derived from their Government’s maintenance. It undermines the self-reliance of our people and substitutes in its place dependence upon governmental favoritism. It stifles the spirit of true Americanism and stupefies every ennobling trait of American citizenship.
The lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned and the better lesson taught that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their Government its functions do not include the support of the people.
No politician seriously seeking the presidency today would dare to say what Cleveland—an exceptionally courageous and honest politician even in his day—said in the late nineteenth century. American politcos have learned that the people have come to crave government paternalism, indeed, that they pant for it and demand it at every turn. Obama is not the brightest light, yet he understands how to get elected, and in that quest he is pandering to the same personal irresponsibility and desire to prey on one’s fellows that have been the hallmarks American politics from the Progressive Era to the present.
Tags: American History, Charity, Civil Society, Constitution, Culture, Elections, Free Market, Government subsidies, Liberty, Morality, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics, The State, Uncategorized 
Where do people learn the habit of dependence upon the government, if not in the compulsory government-owned and -operated schools?
Up until 1850, compulsory attendance laws existed nowhere in America, and even as late as 1900, not all states compelled children to attend school.
Yet, by all accounts, American education was world-class in those days. Alexis de Toqueville reports observing high school students engaged in debate using classical Greek and Latin, for example.
terrymac | Oct 30, 2011 | Reply
“You’re on your own” — Obama thinks these are the most terrifying words he can come up with. That speaks volumes about his world view and, if he is right about how scary these words are, that of the American people.
Lester Hunt | Oct 30, 2011 | Reply
This is the speech Obama should have given:
““The one thing that we absolutely know for sure is that if we work even harder than we did in 2008, you will get to keep all of the benefit of your extra effort. We’re going to have a government that tells the American people, ‘what you earned is your own,’”
“If someone else sick, you won’t be comped to pay for them at the price of your own health. You will be able to afford college, because you won’t be paying for some else to go. If you don’t like that some corporation is polluting your air or the air that your child breathes, at least you will know they aren’t doing it legally as the result of a backhander to some interest group or other” he said.
“Slavery via the tax system is not the America I believe in. It’s not the America you believe in.”
Kenneth | Oct 30, 2011 | Reply
Yep and Cleveland’s policies definitely required one to go it alone;
Recession through 1885
87-88 recession
Panic of 93
Panic of 96
Oh what a great time it was....
muirgeo | Oct 30, 2011 | Reply
Why thank you, Mr. Obama. I would like to be on my own. Although you seem to forget that I have people called “friends” and “family” who I can rely on when the going gets tough.
Jeremy Kolassa | Oct 30, 2011 | Reply
Yet the people survived and prospered.
Sam Grove | Oct 30, 2011 | Reply
“I am from the government and I am here to help.” Too scary for Halloween. The most helpful government employees help you navigate the hurdles and impediments that government never should of put there in the first place.
Vagabundus | Oct 30, 2011 | Reply
Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for yourself.
Richard Stands | Oct 30, 2011 | Reply
I absolutely love that first quote!
Robert Fellner | Oct 30, 2011 | Reply
Of Grover Cleveland.
Robert Fellner | Oct 30, 2011 | Reply
On the Republicans.... Dr Higgs has left out such Republican Presidents as Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge (and Reagan had his good side also – cutting the top rate of income tax from 70% to 28%, allowing freedom of political speech on radio, opposing Marxism around the world..... although Rothbardians do not like the last example, and so on on). Also even under wild spending Presidents such as George Walker Bush there was not a single budget where the Democrats did not argue for MORE (not less) money to be spent. Their position on taxes and regulations was also that Bush was not statist enough.
Still the basic point is correct. Most Republicans tend to be pragmatic rather than dogmatic – and, contray to ideology of the education system and the media, pragmatism in relation to government is not a good thing (it is a terrible thing). Only PRINCIPLED opposition to statism stands any chance of success – and most Republicans (comming from a pragmatic business background) lack that.
But the central problem runs much deeper than the ideological collectivism of modern Democrats (and even 19th century Democrats were not totally wonderful – slavery, Jim Crow and lynching, the last two they continued to defend well into the 20th century, are nothing to be proud of – and, as for GC, the Democrats rejected him in 1896) and the pragmatic uselessness of many Republicans. So what is the basic problem.... I think terrymac is correct.
Terrymac’s comment was exactly on target – and a lot short than mine. And YES Republicans (including the wild spending George Bush – both 41 and 43) have traditionally supported the “Public Schools” (a terrible, totally terrible, error of basic judgement).
By the way (to make my comment even longer) – even if one ignores the treatment of black people (and why should one do that?), the Confederacy was not good. The taxes were higher and more “progressive”, the fiat money inflation was more expansive (not less so), the economic regulations were worse (not better – indeed most industry and transportation ended up nationalized in the South), and even on Civil Liberties the Confederacy (with the exception of the Vice President and also of Governor Vance of North Carolina) was worse than the Union.
Lincoln was no good economically (Salmon P. Chase would have been a less bad choice in the Convention of 1860), he was a Henry Clay Whig to the core of his being. However, he had nothing to learn about freedom (in economics or civil liberties – even for white people) from Jefferson Davis and co.
Paul Marks | Oct 31, 2011 | Reply
“You’re on your own” ... if ONLY! I can’t wait.
Scott | Oct 31, 2011 | Reply
Great article by Higgs, as usual.
Both major parties grow government with equal favor, but Republicans were the champions over the last 60 years before Obama. See Heritage 2011 Budget Chart Book with graph on debts and deficits since Kennedy in my June blog post.
A similar conclusion may be reached by combining government spending during years in which either Republicans or Democrats controlled two or more offices in the House, Senate or Presidency.
Craig Green | Oct 31, 2011 | Reply
I gave up on what he says because it is not what he does. The typical president- liar and hypocrite.
ralph | Oct 31, 2011 | Reply
Grover Cleveland also said:
“Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote.”
Apply your snark to that.
cdh
Charles Hawk | Oct 31, 2011 | Reply
Charles:
I would actually agree with that.
See also my blog post, “The Anti-Suffragette: War-Mongering Women’s Place Is Not in Power”.
Best wishes,
Mary
Mary Theroux | Oct 31, 2011 | Reply
I regret that so many readers appear to have missed the point of my post, which was intended only to illustrate the great change in the prevailing ideology with regard to government paternalism since the late nineteenth century. I certainly did not intend to, and did not, defend the Cleveland administration or Cleveland himself in a comprehensive way, nor did I present a brief for the Democratic Party of that day. Cleveland’s views on women’s voting have nothing to do with my point about the change in ideology in connection with government paternalism. My post also has nothing to do with the business fluctuations during Cleveland’s terms in office, and nothing to do with how wonderful (or not) overall economic or social conditions were in the late nineteenth century. I mentioned the Republican Party in passing only to note that partisan charges that it would roll back present-day government paternalism if it had the power to do so are inconsistent with the actions of Republicans in office for more than a century.
My blog posts are not intended to be treatises; making them such would be impossible in any event. They are instead narrowly focused commentaries on specific issues.
Robert Higgs | Oct 31, 2011 | Reply
“You’re on your own” suggests that government is the only form of social cooperation.
There is no other option than (A) government takes care of you, or (B) you’re a lone Crusoe. Of course, (B) rightly brings about many fears, which the false dichotomy preys on...
Julien Couvreur | Nov 1, 2011 | Reply
Keneth, look at those depressions: most of them lasted less than 2 years.
Unlike the Hoover-FDR depression and the Bush-Obama depression.
Ernst Ghermann | Nov 1, 2011 | Reply
Sorry Keneth, I meant muirgeo
Ernst Ghermann | Nov 1, 2011 | Reply
Limited power of government, self-reliance... I am sorry President Cleveland’s generation is gone. I wonder what it would be like to have a government that looked for reasons not to waste money or meddle in citizens’ lives.
Apple Dumpling | Nov 2, 2011 | Reply
I am surprised that not one has acknowledged the fact that Obama is not the government. search George Soros the nefarious is subverting our country just as he has for others. Now search RICO. Want peace of mind for you and your children tomorrow? Act now, go to a site by keying the word petition on you key board. Demand “daily” that congress takes action against the Soros syndicate to stop the destruction of our constitution. However, we must not stop with the petition.
We must teach every like-minded American to do the same etc., etc., etc.
thisisbob | Nov 19, 2011 | Reply
Issa “As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.?”
(Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler)
thisisbob | Nov 20, 2011 | Reply