“What’s Love Got to Do With It?”

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics.

With all that is going on in politics right now, it is hard not to have a lot of thoughts about a lot of issues. In fact, I’ve had so many thoughts, that I have had a hard time trying to decide which one I would write about. Then, as often happens, I read something and it crystallized an idea that I want to discuss. Consider this a follow-up to my last post, entitled “The ‘Compassion’ Trap.”

Those of you who follow Big Jolly Politics know that I have returned repeatedly to the subject of the type of country we must re-establish if we conservatives achieve our goal of reforming the federal government, including how we will have to re-engage our neighbors in the life and governance of our communities. I even have been working with a group of people over the last year to create a forum to collect and disseminate ideas to foster this re-engagement, entitled “Renewing the American Community.” What I have found most frustrating about this process has been the difficulty of explaining why we need to re-engage in our communities, and how that is intertwined with our goals at the federal level of government.

Then, I read Peggy Noonan’s column from this past weekend’s Wall Street Journal, entitled, Apres le Deluge, What?. This lengthy excerpt vividly illustrates much of what I have been trying to say:

Here are some statistics of what someone last week called a new lost generation. In 2009, the last year for which census data are available, there were 74 million children under 18. Of that number, 20 million live in single-parent families, often with only an overwhelmed mother or a beleaguered grandmother. Over 700,000 children under 18 have been the subject of reports of abuse. More than a quarter million are foster children.

These numbers suggest the making—or the presence—of a crisis.

Some of these youngsters become miracle children. In spite of the hand they were dealt, they learn to be constructive, successful, givers to life. But many, we know, do not. Some will wind up on YouTube.

The normal, old response to an emerging problem such as this has been: The government has to do something. We must start a program, create an agency to address juvenile delinquency. But governments are tapped out, cutting back, trying to avoid bankruptcy. Which means we can't even take refuge in the illusion that government can solve the problem. The churches of America have always helped the young, stepping in where they can. That will continue. But they too are hard-pressed these days.

Where does that leave us? In a hard place, knowing in our guts that a lot of troubled kids are coming up, and not knowing what to do about it. The problem, at bottom, is love, something we never talk about in public policy discussions because it's too soft and can't be quantified or legislated. But little children without love and guidance are afraid. They're terrified—they have nothing solid in the world, which is a pretty scary place. So they never feel safe. As they grow, their fear becomes rage. Further on, the rage can be expressed in violence. This is especially true of boys, but it's increasingly true of girls.

What's needed can't be provided by government. When the riot begins or the flash mob arrives, the best the government can do is control the streets, enforce the law, maintain the peace.

After that, what? Britain is about to face that question. We'll likely have to face it, too.

What struck me most about this excerpt was this sentence: “The problem, at bottom, is love, something we never talk about in public policy discussions because it's too soft and can't be quantified or legislated.” Not only is this topic not something we talk about in public policy discussions, I rarely, if ever, have heard it come out of the mouth of a conservative politician. Instead, we periodically bemoan the fact that we are really misunderstood people, and really are “compassionate.” But, if we are to be honest with ourselves, we have to acknowledge that, at some level, what we know and live by in our private lives doesn’t always translate into action in our public lives. We must always remember, that at the heart of compassion, in private or in public, is an active caring love for others—the type of love that is described throughout the New Testament of the Holy Bible (which we conservatives so often reference as the source for our culture and our law).

Real, active caring for our families and our neighbors, and building the homes, schools, churches, neighborhoods, and infrastructure needed to fulfill that care, is hard work. For over 100 years, liberals have tried to circumvent this hard work through grand schemes and government agencies that worked from offices far away from our communities. In the end, however, this movement failed because you can’t remove the humanity of a caring, neighbor-to-neighbor love from the process. Remember that in the ageless parable, Jesus didn’t tell us that the Samaritan helped his neighbor by lecturing to him from a distance, by taking money from other travelers along the road to give to the neighbor, or by developing a scheme to protect all people who find themselves in the same predicament—he told us the Samaritan showed “compassion”: he stopped, dressed the neighbor’s wounds, picked the neighbor up, took him to the Inn, and made sure that the neighbor had what he needed to rebuild his strength and get back on the road. A bureaucrat with 1000 case files sitting in an office in Washington or Austin can’t do this—it’s as simple as that.

If we dismantle the federal Leviathan without re-building our communities, all we will do is create a vacuum of needs that will soon again be filled by liberals, government agencies, taxes and public debt—and we will continue to fail our neighbors as we bankrupt our country, because “[w]hat’s needed can’t be provided by government.” That simple acknowledgement was known by our Settlers and our Founders, but somehow, over the generations, we forgot it. We must re-learn it, and commit to re-teach it to our posterity.

So, I challenge each of you as we proceed into this campaign season to listen to what our candidates are saying about their view of government and what they intend to do. Question them about how they will not only limit government at the national level and run it at all levels more cost-effectively, but how they will help to rebuild our sense of neighborhood so that we creatively meet the legitimate needs of our families and neighbors while never again desiring for grand schemes and bureaucrats.

If you understand what I am talking about and want to get involved in trying to rebuild our communities in the mold of what de Tocqueville described when he marveled over “American Democracy,” then contact me. Soon, we will be launching a website to facilitate our “Renewing the American Community” forum, and we will welcome your input and participation.