One of the most insidious threats to our liberty is the idea that
politics and government are the province of “experts” and “authorities.”
Many of us have an attitude about what we call
“politics” that seems to be a combination of how children feel about the
dentist’s office and the principal’s office. We don’t exactly disapprove
of what goes on in such places, but we think that our time is best spent
elsewhere. I think this is a dangerous attitude, and one that the
opponents of liberty are doing their best to encourage.
Politics is the business of citizenship, and that means that it is
the business of every citizen. But this does NOT mean that we must all
spend our time obsessed with the race for power. Rather, we must
remember, or learn for the first time, that many of the things we spend
our most rewarding and productive time doing are really “political” —
because they are the substance of the self-governing life of a free
people. When we accept the view that the important things we do in our
local communities are not “political” unless they have to do with the
competition for office, we leave ourselves vulnerable to a subtle but
pervasive disenfranchisement.
A study released recently by the League of Women Voters is an example
of what I have in mind. The headline in the Washington Times story was
“Community helpers eschew politics.” The story tells us that “A
substantial survey released today from the League of Women Voters
reveals that most Americans are eager to nurture their community
involvement, as long as it doesn’t involve politics.” The Times reports
that the study “shows that only 31 percent of those surveyed
participated in a political activity recently. We are instead engaged on
a more intimate scale. It is neighbors, the PTA, church, school, the
corner park, children and local travails, that engage us. Some 56
percent, in fact, said they were involved in the community. About 54
percent have worked to solve pesky neighborhood problems.”
While the news that Americans are more focused on doing the concrete
work of citizenship than on the race for office is edifying, the
underlying assumption of the article is dangerous. The definition of
“politics” implied suggests that politics is merely the business of
competing for office. That means that activities involving the PTA, the
church, etc., are not viewed as political — and they therefore lose the
claim to pre-eminent importance which is inevitably implied by the term
“political.” Whatever else the word “politics” means, we all understand
that it somehow refers to matters of first importance to our common
life. So when we say that our work in education, charitable care of our
neighbor, business, and all of the other activities that are the
substance of our striving for happiness and justice are not “political,”
we are implying that nothing that we do locally is of first importance
to our common life as a people.
If we were thinking clearly about the nature of self-government and
liberty, we would realize this how wrong this is. We have allowed the
stupid media — and I use the word “stupid” advisedly — to present an
understanding of politics that debases the very meaning of the term.
Politics concerns our life together — the life of the city, in the root
meaning of the word. Politics concerns the things we hold to be most
important to that common life, and this is one reason that everyone
understands that it is through “politics” that we control and influence
the use of coercive force in the society. We understand that the
activity concerning the most important things must involve authority
over the ultimate power, coercive force.
What are the implications for our liberty if we accept the false
distinction between “politics” and the things that we do for our
community and our church and the education of our children? In accepting
this division we are allowing the trappings and power of ultimate
authority to be separated from the activities that actually deserve the
greatest respect. We acquiesce in the treatment of the
fabric of our lives as though it were of secondary importance to the
grand machinations and schemes of the inner circle, of those in the
inner circle of “politics,” where the truly important things are done.
The inevitable result will be that we become lax about what is done with
the coercive power of the state, partly because we are — as the survey
reported in the Times indicates — perfectly well aware that the things
we do every day are more important than the pursuit of the trappings and
privileges of power. Ultimately we can lose sight of the fact that
without our involvement the coercive force of the state can be abused in
ways that will ultimately destroy us.
The false view that community life is not political encourages the
best of our citizens to “eschew politics,” as the Times article put it,
to view themselves as outside the political order, and to expect no role
in the important public decisions of our common life. But what is the
uniqueness of America? It is the involvement that ordinary people can
have in those major decisions that ultimately involve the use of
coercive force in their society. That is what has distinguished us as a
people and as a society from the general run of human societies
throughout the ages. To be an American is to understand that the life of
local self-government — the local self-government of life — is most
important thing.
We must not allow a debased understanding of politics to be imposed
upon us, replacing the understanding which identifies politics
essentially with the whole range of activities we think of as good
citizenship. We must recall that involvement with church, involvement
with school and
community and business are the very activities of citizenship and
self-government. The notion that somehow these things are entirely apart
from politics is nonsense. If we forget that the life we are building in
the places we live is the only life America has, then a mere handful of
people will be in a position to make the judgments that determine the
future of the country.
We must understand further that the intrinsically political nature of
such activities is perfected when we enter the process of elections and
legislation in order to ensure that in our laws and policies we protect
the influence and prerogatives of that community level of action. The
politics of the ballot box and the legislative chamber must be seen as
extensions of the more fundamental political life we lead with our
fellow citizens every day.
Forgetting these things over the past 40 or 50 years has led to the
increasing destruction our true political culture of liberty in America.
As we have ceased to understand the truly political dignity of
life at the community level, we have ceased to understand that it is at
the community level that most of the influence and control over money
and coercive power must be preserved. Instead we have allowed real power
and decision-making to be put in the hands of bureaucrats and
politicians at a level of government that we don’t control. So, although
many of use are still willing to be involved deeply in the day to day
self-government of our own lives and in the community life around us,
we have allowed a pattern to develop that deprives the stratum of life
in which we are most fully engaged, the local community, of its control
of resources, influence, and ultimately the power that attaches to
“government.” Among the most important challenges we face in securing
the future of the country is the effort to reclaim that power and
control, and to put it back in the spheres of local activity that are
the most important arena of our active lives.
Thinking that the things we do in our communities are not important
enough to be considered “political” has been draining us of our capacity
for self-government — or at least our confidence in our capacity for
self-government. But one of the things that has most impressed me as I
have traveled around the country is the depth of interest and commitment
shown by the American people in engaging the real and concrete
challenges they face in their actual communities. From crisis pregnancy
centers to local education reform, from cooperative efforts at
neighborhood renewal to entrepreneurial initiatives bringing astonishing
new value to consumers, Americans are always building and rebuilding the
various forms of their life together. The fiction that modern Americans
are apathetic and without any real interest in citizenship is just that
— a dangerous fiction.
In America as it ought to be and can be again, power will be
concentrated substantially in the hands of people at the local and
community level — especially with regard to those things that most
affect our daily life. We must move beyond “politicians” who don’t
understand or respect this goal. We must turn instead to political
leaders who understand that the things most Americans call “political”
today — the races for office and the debates in Congress — are
important only to the degree that they serve the true, organic political
life of the nation, which is our common pursuit of justice and happiness
undertaken mostly in the concrete circumstances of our local life
together.
