The following is Part 2 of my Aunt Jean's "This I Believe" Series. Part One is here.
I worship neither God nor Government. Though one is favored more by those on the right and the other by those on the left, both are contrivances of man. Many people have a need to believe there in something bigger than they are—some benevolent, all-powerful force that can solve the biggest problems, or at least help them feel that someone is in control. A few of us out here think Jesus is not at the wheel and that no politician can “fix” the economy, for example, any more than a mechanic can fix an ecosystem.
But I do believe in people.
I believe in individual entrepreneurship—you know, in the woman who sees how to solve a problem in a new, interesting and less expensive way (then gets others to collaborate with her to solve said problem for others). She’s an innovator. A change-maker. A creator of value. An earner of an honest profit.
I believe in community—the closer to home, the better. When people apply local knowledge to local problems, they’re using a power that distant bureaucrats, elites or authorities do not possess (applied to problems those self-same authorities cannot solve). Real community means abandoning the notion that someone out there should be in charge, dispensing orders as fast as unearned largess. Real community is about emergent leadership, where someone close points the way after collaboration and interaction among peers. It’s what Tocqueville saw, except we need it now on steroids. Its prime virtues are voluntarism, toleration and initiative.
I believe in personal responsibility—which is to say self-reliance, first. The more we rely on supernatural entities or state interference to solve our problems, the more we are displacing the onus of responsibility for individual action onto others. I say displace, because the responsibility to act does not go away magically because we ignore it. It often falls onto others. Whether we’re talking about a 24-year-old trust-fund kid shielded by his parents from the consequences of his actions, or someone subsidized by the state to live at subsistence, personal responsibility is not something we can afford to trade for either economic security or equality. As Milton Friedman said: “any society who puts equality before freedom will end up with neither.”
I believe in compassion—neither of which should ever be confused with the low-cost measure of going out and voting for a political candidate full of promises of programs. Love and compassion are emotions that compel us to care and then to act, whether within our family or in our community. Voting in more compulsion by the state is but a cheap replacement for actually having to care and act. Such a replacement has deleterious consequences, the first of which is a loss of what it truly means to have compassion. The second of which is personal responsibility, the last of which is community. While there are strong, effective communities within churches and well-meaning people in state offices, we must never confuse human action with the will of God. Never confuse state power with charity. Never confuse government coercion with community.
Comments