The football season and the State of the Union message are behind us.
In another few weeks the election of 1996 will be upon us. In these few
days of calm before the Iowa caucus, we need to reflect upon the social
and political transitions of our times and how they impact the November
elections.
We live in a society that is being transformed by forces largely outside
of our control. We are caught in a transition from the old industrial, hierarchical,
mass production society to the individualism of an Information Age.
Of course, it is not our nation's first transition. Historians tell us that
there have been three American Republics. The first stretched from the adoption
of the Constitution in 1789 to the Civil War. We might call that the Age
of Federalism, a time of decentralized government power with a strong emphasis
on individual responsibility.
The Second Republic lasted until the Great Depression of the 1930s. It was
a time of growing federal power and involvement in our lives. We might call
it the Age of Government Expansion.
The Third Republic was the political, governmental and social transformation
created by the New Deal. This one's easy to tag: it was the Age of the Welfare
State.
The beginning of the end of the New Deal era came with the election of Ronald
Reagan in 1980. But the actual end of liberalism came 14 years later --
after the collapse of communism as an organizing principle of society -
when control of the U.S. House of Representatives passed into conservative
hands.
In the words of MIT professor Rudi Dornbusch: "Statism has had its
time on the stage. Pervasive regulation, public-sector enterprises, a bloated
welfare state with crushing tax burdens of those who work - and absurd levels
of subsidies for those who don't - have failed as effective alternatives
to decentralized decision-making...."
So the election of 1996 is not about Bob Dole or Bill Clinton, the elimination
of the Commerce Department, or Haiti, Hooters or hand-gun control. The election
of 1996 is about a choice of visions to guide us in the Fourth Republic.
First is the choice between collective and individual decision-making.
Will the government make decisions for you, or will you make your own decisions?
The resolution of this conflict will determine whether you or the government
will invest your retirement savings, whether you or the government will
decide which school your child attends, whether you or the government will
decide which doctor you see.
The welfare statist says it is better that government make these decisions
for us; the advocates of liberty believe we are capable of making them for
ourselves.
The second choice is whether equality or freedom will be the core of our
vision. The liberal vision worries that if people are allowed to be free,
they will become unequal, and that will be unfair. So government must count
outcomes by race, hue, gender, age, sexual preference, etc., and then enforce
remedial policies to make sure that no group gains relative to any other.
The conservative vision, by contrast, recognizes that whenever equality
has been the driving force, freedom has been the first casualty. The advocates
of liberty believe the individual should be free to go as far as his or
her efforts, talents and energy will allow, regardless of race, color or
creed.
Finally, there is the choice of whether the state or the individual should
be held responsible for moral conduct and the spiritual dimension of our
lives. The liberal vision sees the state as the repository of virtue and
therefore responsible for morality. When something goes wrong it is the
fault of the state, not the individual, so the state must act. Conversely,
the conservative vision sees the individual as responsible for his or her
own actions, and the sum of these actions sets society's moral course.
In any transition the challenge for political leaders is not to stop it -
they cannot - but to advance a vision for that transformation compatible
with our constitutional traditions of liberty, justice, and limited government.
President Clinton's vision reflects the faith in government of the Third
Republic. His veto pen has struck down a balanced budget and a reform of
welfare as we know it. His top domestic priority is to ensure that the government
is "never, ever" shut down again.
But by its very nature an accelerating flow of information is decentralizing,
increasing individual power and choices. It will transform not only our
lives, but our government as well. The conservative vision, anchored in
the liberty established by the Founding Fathers in the First Republic, is
the only one compatible with the individualism demanded by an information
society.
Choosing between these competing visions for the Fourth Republic is what
the 1996 election is all about.
The National Center for Policy Analysis is a public policy research institute
founded in 1983 and internationally known for its studies on public policy
issues. The NCPA is headquarters in Dallas, Texas, with an office in Washington,
D.C.