Random Ruminations on Personal Responsibility

When I was doing research for my book God and Country, I began to really appreciate the impact of Calvinism on American culture. Calvin taught that people were either “saved” or not, and that personal success (wealth, acclaim) could be a sign that one was one of the elect. (Before religious historians post blistering responses, I know this is a very superficial description of the theology.) What intrigued me was the way in which this particular belief continues to influence our very American perspective on merit and personal responsibility.

I thought about that Calvinist influence when talking last week to a student who was disdainful of his classmates who had yet to find employment. “They should have done what I did,” he told me, explaining the extra efforts he had put into his own search. And those efforts were laudable, no question about it. But he is also blessed with a high intellect, lots of energy, the means to dress well for interviews and other advantages he takes for granted.

A contemporary of mine who runs a political think-tank is an exemplar of this attitude. He is a white, straight, Anglo-Saxon Protestant male, over six feet tall, and athletic. His parents both graduated from one of the nation’s best universities, and while they were not wealthy, he had a comfortable, intellectually enriched childhood and adolescence. He has enjoyed good health. He was born with a quick mind. And he has withering contempt for people who need public assistance of any kind. After all, he “stood on his own two feet.” Why can’t they?

I think this attitude is common among bright people who have worked and achieved. It takes some thought–not to mention humility and compassion–to recognize the role privilege plays in our lives.

My friend grew up white, straight and male in a society that privileged such things. He had good health, a good mind, and he didn’t encounter social or economic barriers to the tools he needed to succeed. I know that he–and my student, and others–also displayed admirable personal characteristics and diligence, but what they and so many others fail to appreciate is the extent to which privilege made it easier for them to “make it.”

The noted philosopher John Rawls asked an important question: What sort of system might we devise that would be fair to everyone if we operated behind “a veil of ignorance”–if we didn’t know beforehand what place we would have in that system? If we didn’t know whether we would be born rich or poor, black or brown or white, disabled or healthy, mentally impaired or brilliant…If we had no way of knowing whether we would be born to privilege or mass despair. What sort of system could we create that would reward effort and achievement while still recognizing and ameliorating “luck of the draw” disadvantages?

I don’t think a fair system would deny health-care to poor people or those with pre-existing conditions. I don’t think it would “save” money by cutting back preschool programs, or insisting that women bear children they are unprepared to raise. I don’t think it would deny laborers the opportunity to unite to bargain for safer workplaces.

I don’t think that insisting that people exercise personal responsibility requires us to ignore the role luck plays in our achievements.

We can insist on personal responsibility without being mean-spirited or willfully obtuse.

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Is the Individual Mandate Constitutional?

The most controversial provision of the Affordable Care Act  is undoubtedly the individual mandate–the requirement that almost everyone carry health insurance.

Why a mandate? As the LA times said, “A mandate is key for reducing the ranks of the uninsured, who often turn to emergency rooms for care, driving up everyone’s costs. Spreading the costs—among healthy and sick—is also the only way to make the reforms work.” Health economists agree–in order for this reform to work, it has to include the mandate. So—It’s necessary, but is it constitutional?

According to most constitutional scholars, yes. Here’s the analysis:

Congress has authority both to regulate commerce among the several states, and to “lay and collect taxes to provide for the general welfare.” The Senate bill requires that citizens purchase qualifying health coverage; if they don’t, they pay a tax penalty. Exemptions are granted for religious objections, financial hardship and a variety of other reasons. The House bill didn’t impose a “mandate” per se, but amended the Internal Revenue Code to levy a “tax on individuals without acceptable health coverage.” Functionally, the two provisions are essentially the same. (Interestingly, opponents concede that Congress could lawfully establish single-payer (Medicare for All, say), and tax us to pay for it.)

In 1944, Supreme Court established that insurance is an economic activity that falls within Congress’ regulatory power. More recently, the Lopez and Gonzales cases clarified how the Court understands “economic” and “non-economic” activities within the context of Commerce Clause. In Lopez, Court held that Congress exceeded its authority by legislating against guns near schools; in Gonzales, it ruled that the act of growing marijuana at home could be regulated by the federal government even though the conduct was not itself economic, because the larger interstate “regulatory scheme would be undercut unless the intrastate activity were regulated.” As one scholar has summarized, “ If health insurance is itself an ‘ingredient’ of interstate commerce and ‘self-evidently’ within Congress’ Commerce Clause authority, the statutory goals for broadening, making more efficient and less costly, and otherwise improving health insurance coverage, fit equally within that authority.

Further, the individual mandate requirement easily qualifies as a ‘necessary and proper’ means of achieving those goals, under the standard first articulated by Chief Justice Marshall [in 1819] and adhered to since: “Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional.”

The Federalist Society and other opponents of the mandate have argued that refusal to purchase insurance is inactivity, and thus not subject to regulation. How, they ask, can government regulate a decision not to act?  But as judges have noted who upheld the mandate, people who refuse to buy insurance are not doing “nothing.” They are gambling that they won’t need coverage, or they are deciding to self-insure. In either case, they are also deciding to game the system, making the overall program unworkable.

Refusal to purchase health insurance would be analogous to refusal to pay social security and Medicare taxes or, at the state level, refusal to purchase auto insurance.

Most constitutional scholars believe the mandate will be upheld; others–noting the ideological tilt of several of the Justices–are less certain, although they agree that precedents would ordinarily require such a result.

Ironically, since opponents of the mandate are making the case that ONLY a single-payer system is constitutional, a victory for opponents might actually result in the enactment of a single-payer system, since the multiple markets we’ve been operating under are simply not sustainable.

Works for me.

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Abuses of Power

For the past couple of months, I have been watching the political shenanigans in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Maine and elsewhere with increasing disbelief, trying to figure out what has prompted such disdain for civility, democratic process and  individual rights.

In the latest bizarre twist from Wisconsin, the Governor and GOP leadership simply ignored an order of the federal court. The court had issued a stay of the law repealing collective bargaining rights, pending an evidentiary hearing on whether it had been passed in a manner consistent with the state’s open door law. The legislature could have abided by the order, or it could have held another vote, after proper notice. Instead, those in charge decided to thumb their noses at a court order.

The belligerent and tone-deaf Governor of Maine unilaterally decided to erase a mural that he didn’t like. It was on the walls of the state’s Department of Labor, and portrayed the history of the labor movement.

In Michigan, the Governor has proposed–and the legislative majority has apparently approved–a bill that gives him unprecedented, nearly dictatorial powers of the sort not seen in the United States (probably because those powers appear to conflict with our constitutional system of checks and balances).

In Indiana, the Republicans who now control both houses have been indulging in some of the most vindictive lawmaking we’ve seen. (A former student of mine who has been lobbying this session recently characterized the chamber as “the Hatehouse.”)  They are busily passing measures to marginalize gays, harass immigrants, and make it difficult if not impossible for women to control their own reproduction. (During arguments over the imposition of a three-day waiting period before women can obtain an abortion, a woman legislator asked that an exception be added for cases of rape; the sponsor angrily responded that such an exception would be a ‘major loophole’ because women would all claim to have been raped! The proposed amendment was then voted down.)

I could go on and on, unfortunately. But the larger question is: what is going on? What explains this epidemic of bullying?

I don’t know if I can explain the “why” of all this, but I think I can characterize the “what.”

One of the goals of this nation’s founders was memorably related by John Adams, who explained that the Constitution was intended to establish a nation of “laws, not men.” We would have a country where the rule of law trumped the exercise of raw power. No one was to be above the law, and the purpose of the law was to limit the ability of those in power to abuse that power. What we are seeing is what happens when people elected to office behave like thugs, using their positions for personal and political aggrandizement rather than for the common good.

The people elected in 2010 talk a lot about the constitution, but their actions betray their absolute ignorance of its central purpose.

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Good Citizens

I have been asked to address students at an Indiana High School on “Good Government Day.” My assignment was to describe to them the attributes of a good citizen.

Here’s what I plan to tell them. (Constructive criticism is welcome!)

Good governments require good citizens. If there is one thing that history has taught us, it is that without good citizens to hold government accountable, power really does corrupt those who exercise it.

So the question becomes: what makes a good citizen? I think that there are three requirements topping the list: Constitutional literacy, critical thinking skills, and the willingness to pay one’s dues.

What do I mean by each of these?

Let’s start with Constitutional literacy. You simply can’t be a good, responsible citizen if you are ignorant of the history and philosophy of your own country. A week or so ago, Newsweek Magazine ran an article titled “How Ignorant Are You?” It was a quiz, with questions taken from the tests immigrants have to pass in order to become citizens. The percentages of Americans who could answer the questions correctly were embarrassing—for most of them, it was less than 30%. There are literally hundreds of other surveys that confirm how little most Americans know about their own system: two-thirds of us don’t even know that we have three branches of government!

If you don’t know what the Enlightenment was, and how it shaped our constitutional system, if you don’t understand that the purpose of the Bill of Rights was to protect individual rights both from government and from the majority, if you don’t understand the difference between civil liberties and civil rights, you can be a good person, but I would argue that you don’t know enough to be a good citizen.

Constitutional and historic literacy are just the beginning. You also need critical thinking skills.

What I mean by critical thinking skills is the ability to tell the difference between facts and garbage. One of the reasons that Constitutional literacy and an analytical mind are such important parts of good citizenship is that the world is a more complicated place than it used to be, especially when it comes to the oceans of information we get every day. The internet is a wonderful thing—I’m not sure how I survived before google—but because it brings so much unfiltered material into our lives, the ability to separate factual, credible information from spin and propaganda is more important than it has ever been. If you don’t know what the Constitution and Bill of Rights really say, or how the Courts have defined and interpreted what they say, you’re a lot more likely to believe that forwarded email you got from your crazy Uncle Ray.

In the last few years, we have seen incredible changes in the media. Fewer people read newspapers or even watch the evening news on television, and more and more of us get our information on line. Some of that is great, some of it isn’t. We are in danger of losing real journalism—where people monitor what government does, where they fact-check and provide context and background. Instead, we have mountains of unsubstantiated opinion, PR and spin. Good citizens have to be able to separate fact from fantasy. They have to live in the world as it is, not in a bubble where they listen only to things that confirm what they already believe—and the internet makes it so easy and tempting to construct that bubble. At the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, where I teach, we are so concerned about this issue that we have established a new undergraduate major in Media and Public Affairs. So far, it is the only major of its kind in the country.

Finally, the third quality of a good citizen:  Willingness to pay one’s dues—taxes. This one isn’t going to make me any friends, but it’s true. We’ve had 25 years of politicians telling us that taxes are like theft, that they are government stealing our money.  Not so. Taxes are the price we pay to live in a society that makes it possible for us to earn a living and live in safe communities. Taxes pay for everything from national defense to paved roads to air safety to garbage collection. Tax dollars pay for the school you attend, the parks you play in, the police and firefighters who keep you safe. Don’t misunderstand—good citizens are diligent watchdogs of the public purse, because there’s nothing virtuous or patriotic about waste or duplication—but they are also willing to pay their fair share without whining about it.

Think about a basketball team where some players just don’t pull their weight, or clubs you belong to where most of the members let a few people do all the work. Most of us don’t think very highly of the slackers. Good citizens aren’t slackers—they do their share. And that includes paying their share.

There are lots of other behaviors that characterize good citizens—voting, keeping up on the news, serving on juries, working for a political party or for a cause you believe in—all the things we mean when we encourage civic engagement. But if you aren’t civically literate—if you don’t know the basics of our history and constitutional system—your vote won’t be as informed.

If you don’t have the ability to assess the credibility of the news and commentary you are receiving, you won’t get the whole story, or the accurate account, and you will make decisions based on bad information.

And if you accept public services—police protection, garbage collection, paved roads, education and so many more—but you don’t pay your fair share of taxes, you aren’t a citizen at all. You’re a freeloader.

At the end of the day, being a good citizen requires a lot more than just being born in the United States. It’s more than wearing a flag pin, or being proud of what this country has accomplished. Being a good citizen means doing your part to move America forward, it means helping this country of ours live up to its highest ideals. And that requires civic knowledge, intellectual honesty and a willingness to contribute time, effort and tax dollars to our common civic enterprise.

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Interesting Observation

My granddaughter Sarah currently lives in Wales; she is attending the University of Wales and will graduate this summer. She reads the Guardian, and this morning sent me the following text message.

“Taken from the comment and debate section of the Guardian this morning: ‘what you need to say and do to be credible in the Republican Party essentially deprives you of credibility outside it. The Republicans recognize this, but like an obese glutton at an all-you-can-eat buffet, they just can’t seem to help themselves.'”

The comment was in response to an article on “The American Right, Stuck in a Hyperbolic World,” and I think it captured the current dynamic perfectly. Right now, for example, it looks quite likely that the House GOP will shut down government, despite Democrats’ willingness to meet their demands halfway. (The Republicans want 60 billion in cuts; Democrats are offering 30 billion.) They seem absolutely oblivious to the damage indiscriminate cuts will do to the still-fragile recovery–and equally oblivious to the political damage their posturing is inflicting.

As the commenter noted, they just can’t help themselves.

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