Now, the hard question.

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:

Ok, so over the last few posts, we been discussing what we will need to do to attack our public debts and permanently limit the size and scope of the federal government.  It not only will require better budgeting and management techniques; it will require a shift of responsibility from government to the individual, and a re-dedication from each of us to civic engagement—to the re-acceptance of individual responsibility, and the re-commitment to neighborly compassion instead of bureaucratic benefits.  For those of you who have followed my posts for a longer period, you know that I have addressed how to do this through processes like the “Tupelo Formula” in our communities, and zero-based budgeting at every level of government. 

What I have been advocating is what I understood to be an approach to government based on those principles drawn from the history of our experiences, of which de Tocqueville wrote and Reagan championed:  an approach to re-building our society for the 21^st Century based on its original purposes and principles—a society built on the foundational relationships formed in families, neighborhoods, congregations, private organizations; facilitated through the activities of free markets and free trade; and then preserved and protected by local, state and federal governments, each acting within their own sphere of competence and responsibility.   It is our adherence over the centuries to these original purposes and principles, which has made us “exceptional”.

 Creation of our exceptional society did not happen over night.  Instead, it arose from the hard work of many generations both before and after the American Revolution, who overcame many obstacles and hardships—and many terrible mistakes.  Over the last century, we have been dismantling this society through the aggressive use of government to supply our neighbor’s needs—culminating with the spasm of new government actions over the last two years.  We can reverse this trend toward larger and more expensive government, and unravel the layers of bureaucracy we’ve created—that’s actually the easy part.  We’ve known what needs to be done, and we’ve known it for a long time.

 The real question is whether we have the will and the desire to make the necessary changes in our personal lives required for re-engagement in the lives of our communities.  We’ve put off addressing this question for over a generation since Reagan told us it was A Time for Choosing and challenged us to form a New Republican Party.  For the sake of our future, we now need to face this question and answer it candidly.

Virtually every piece of data and research about civic engagement and the state of our neighborhoods, as well as the polling data related to our expectations about government, show that even many conservatives may not want to make the lifestyle changes needed to re-engage with our neighbors and re-accept responsibility for our neighborhoods.  That is because we’ve come to a moment in our history when we seem to confuse personal autonomy with Liberty, and to value the former over the latter.  Remember Liberty is based on a certain type of freedom:  freedom from the control of our lives by an anointed elite (hereditary, tribal, political, or religious) and their laws.  Liberty is not based on a right to be free from our neighbors, or from forming the bonds needed for a society to exist and thrive.  To be able to exercise Liberty and have it endure over time, our freedom must exist interdependently with our mutual responsibilities to our family, our neighbors, our communities, and our country.  In essence, freedom without civic engagement is not Liberty, it’s an empty cult of personal autonomy that rots the life of a society.

Through all of the struggles to expand opportunities and wipe away vestiges of discrimination in our society over the last half century, we promoted freedom while we destroyed the civic engagement of middle-class families in African-American and Latino communities, of women in neighborhoods, and of men with their families.  We’ve now created two generations of autonomous Americans at one end of the socio-economic spectrum, and two generations of dependent Americans on the other end.

While children of autonomous parents thrived in the suburbs and good schools, many, if not most, children in neighborhoods just down the street—like those in inner cities like Detroit, where 75% of children drop-out of school before the 12^th Grade—never finished school and often served time in jail.  Those children ended up under-educated and under-employed, and have doomed their families and their neighborhoods to economic decline, while the children of autonomous parents have entered the new global economy and thrived.  Today, most of these autonomous children live far from the home of their youth, travel across the country and across the globe for work, have or will soon have second homes, are as comfortable in an office or flat in Rome as in an office or apartment in Houston, and have developed few ties to the communities in which they currently reside.

Such children are now the second, international generation of personal autonomy.  Now, that does not mean that they, or even their parents, don’t care about other people—they usually do.  They care about the people in Darfur and in other troubled parts of the world, and would travel across the world for the experience of studying their plight; they care about “the homeless” and other disadvantaged, faceless groups of people, and rally for their causes; but, rarely have they looked into the eye of a neighbor in need and had to help.

The difference between these two autonomous generations and the cohorts they’ve left behind has been further exacerbated by the increasing income and educational disparities within our society.  For instance, as has been documented ad nauseum, both the educational performance and attainment levels, and income levels, have dramatically diverged between the top 10% of wage earners and the other 90% over the last generation.  What has not been discussed as much, though, is the incredible disparity that has opened up between the top 1% of wage earners and the other 9% of the top 10%.  This small group has become almost a separate civilization unto itself across the globe—not just autonomous from their neighbors, but virtually autonomous from all societies.  For this group, an eventual economic collapse in one country or region will not materially affect them—they can just relocate themselves and their assets, and then ride out the storm.

For this “Global 1%”, and for a growing number of the two autonomous generations of Americans, the current trend toward providing aid through centralized government entitlements is as beneficial to their lifestyles as those entitlements are perceived to be beneficial by those who receive the benefits.  By allowing government to try to care for our neighbors, the Global 1% and the autonomous Americans can enjoy the fruits of their freedom without any encumbrance of responsibility.  Meanwhile, more and more of the rest of Americans become more and more dependent on government entitlements in their daily lives.

There may be a term for what we are watching develop before our eyes, but it’s not Liberty; and it’s not true to our exceptional heritage.

I’ve recited all of this not to start a class war—because those of us of a certain age are all responsible for having created and fostered this predicament—nor do I advocate going back to some mystical, bygone era that never existed.  Indeed, we know how to correct these problems, and it’s not with more government re-distribution.  But if we are going to be honest with ourselves, we must realize that for a growing number of Americans across the political and economic spectrum, a return to a de Tocqueville America of civic engagement is an anathema—they don’t understand it, they don’t see how they will benefit from it, and it would require a change to their lifestyles that they don’t want to make.

If I’m right—both about what we need to do to wean ourselves from government and the real obstacles to re-building civic engagement—what do we do?

Again, without creating a class war, I think we first need to realize and accept that even though the “Global 1%” has a very large megaphone in our 24/7 media world, they have become so disconnected from the rest of us that they are politically irrelevant to how we address this issue.  If we try to build a program around their wishes we will get nowhere.  Second, it will be very difficult for those in the two autonomous generations to immediately accept the adjustments to their lifestyles that will come with new responsibilities, so engaging them immediately in this effort will merely slow the process down—and time is not our friend.

Instead, we need to focus, for now, on the rest of us—“Main Street Americans”.  We need to begin to promote civic engagement among Main Street Americans who still live, work and raise our families in local communities, and spread that engagement to neighborhoods whose residents have become dependent on government.  We need to focus the way we reduce government and re-align responsibilities among the different levels of governments, and between government and individuals, based on Main Street America’s re-engagement in the lives of our communities; including, for instance, how we re-build our infrastructure to provide for as much time as possible for individuals to care for their families and volunteer in their neighborhoods, churches, civic organizations, schools and local governments.

If Main Street Americans succeed in re-building a de Tocqueville America in this century, the problem with the Global 1% and the autonomous generation will take care of itself.  The result will be like the omniscient voice’s promise in “Field of Dreams”—if you build it, he will come”:  if we succeed, the Global 1% and the autonomous children will come home, because they will see what real Liberty is, and that it works.  America will be where they want to live and work, and together, our children and grandchildren may see the Shining City on a Hill.

Renewing the American Community: A Case Study and A Challenge

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics.

Recently, some of the feedback I’ve been getting focuses on both the enormity of our the fiscal issues facing this country, and how we implement the right policies going forward to avoid getting into this mess again. It is that last issue that I have tried to address in many of my posts on this website over the last year. So to respond to this feedback, I want to summarize and amplify what I’ve tried to say over the last year.

First, I want to go back to what I said about the Founders in a recent post, and then what I felt were important actions we had to take:

To them, citizenship in a free society required active involvement in the life of the community and all its organizations; it was not a license to receive tax-paid benefits, nor a right to delegate community involvement to tax-paid bureaucrats. Democracy is what transpired in town hall meetings and town councils called or elected by the people to govern communities, in service organizations and church congregations, and in schools; while the work of elected representatives in state and national capitols was limited to a few specific tasks outlined in republican constitutions. …

… Remember that the remnants of our unique society still exist under all of the layers of government we’ve created. Those basic relationships that formed the core of our democratic communities still function every day. …

On these remnants we can re-build our unique society and re-establish limited and fiscally-sane government. But, we have to be willing to believe that the blueprints provided by the Declaration and the Constitution are still viable, and then re-commit ourselves to this project. We have to re-engage in the democratic life of our communities. We have to start and support local businesses, join our local service organizations and churches, and involve ourselves in our schools and local governments—and then demand that these enterprises shoulder the needs of our communities with our help, rather than look to Austin or Washington for action.

The skeptical questions I’ve gotten in response to these statements range from “that’s impossible today,” to “you’re advocating social revolution.” To both these sentiments, my answer is that I am no wild-eyed dreamer or revolutionary—but I am an optimist. We have examples all around us of how to make the transformations in our personal lives and in our political policies, which will be needed to accomplish this mission.

For example, here in Harris County our elected officials have established local medical clinics, and alternatives to juvenile detention, that are innovative, that involve the private sector, that improve local neighborhoods, and that provide services cost-effectively (or through private foundations, service organizations, or churches) without Austin or Washington. Our Commissioners and Juvenile Court Judges are showing that what I’ve called the Tupelo Formula works—if we’d just trust ourselves to apply it with conviction and consistency.

In an earlier post I re-told the story of how Tupelo, Mississippi pulled itself out of the Great Depression and other calamities to become a regional economic engine. I outlined the “Tupelo Formula” for local action as follows:

· The community faced a problem that appeared intractable, and that had been confounded by multiple events—not unlike the confounding factors of under-education, under-employment, chronic crime and poverty, and the impulse to be “left alone”, which exist in many of our neighborhoods today;

· One person, followed by a group of civic leaders, saw a strength within the community that created an opportunity that could be exploited to help the community address its problem;

· These citizens had the courage to take a risk with their own resources to take advantage of the opportunity and to share the gain with the community;

· These citizens involved businesses, private organizations, and local government in both the planning and the implementation of their plan; and

· The gains to the community were both short-term, and long-term, and were broadly shared—e.g., businesses were created and expanded, employment grew, per capita income grew, and schools improved.

I am confident that this model for local action will work not just in Harris County, but across the country, as the innovative former Mayors of Indianapolis and Jersey City, Stephen Goldsmith and Brent Schundler, and innovative educators like Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein, have shown over the last 20 years. Harris County is unique in that we are rich with innovative leaders in our private and public sectors, who could begin analyzing and addressing our communities’ needs through the prism of this formula, including:

· Our educational system, including the type of citizen we want to emerge from an elementary, secondary and college education in this state; the proper curriculum and delivery system needed to produce that citizen; and the most efficient and cost-effective mechanisms needed to pay for, account for, and administer that delivery system;

· Our transportation system and physical infrastructure, including a vision of where our citizens will live and work over the next 25 years; an understanding of how and where our goods and services will need to move; the maintenance cycle for all capital investments; an appreciation for the property rights of all Texans; and the most efficient and cost-effective mechanisms for paying for the needed infrastructure improvements; and

· Our criminal-justice and mental-health systems, including the effectiveness of such systems to protect victims, the public, and the person being held and/or treated within the systems; and alternatives that can reduce recidivism and improve the educational opportunities and long-term economic viability of the families and neighborhoods affected by the incarceration or mental-health treatment.

We should confront these issues by creating long-term strategies for addressing them at the most local level possible, but not based on the old “tax-first-figure-out-a-plan-later” strategy recently used to pass Proposition 1 in Houston. Instead, we need to start with the idea that individuals and the private sector are the first sources for ideas, action, and funding—with local government’s strategic support as a resource for mobilizing and coordinating the efforts. This approach will make government live by our principles while addressing urgent problems; and will allow us as a society to begin to address some of the most vexing structural pressures on our public budgets, which put upward pressure on our taxes and downward pressure on job growth.

To start this transformation, we have to rebuild the human infrastructure needed to implement and sustain the Tupelo Formula, by:

· Starting new businesses and promoting policies that encourage small-business creation—small business creation is the easiest way to help people balance their need to make a living with our country’s need to rebuild neighborhoods. Businesses employ people, and employing people effects their lives. Every paycheck sets aside a retirement fund, pays for health care, provides for the sustenance of a family and (indirectly) for the support of the neighborhoods where employees live. Products or services generated by a business effects its customers, and those people touched by its customers. Wealth created by businesses increases the tax base and tax rolls, which in turn fund our schools—more wealth, creates better-funded schools. Programs that a business supports can enrich the lives of residents in the community where the business is located, as well as the lives of its employees. Each of us spends more time every day with our co-workers than with our family: the positive bonds you formed through this activity ripple out in every direction.

In essence, the greatest community service you can ever provide is to create or support a local business.

· Starting or joining a service organization, and promoting involvement in a traditional community-based service organization—between 1870 and 1920 many of the organizations that we remember as the backbones of our neighborhoods were created, and most still exist: Rotary, Kiwanis, the PTA, and many more. These organizations were designed to help serve the needs of their communities, and provide the social networks that build and maintain neighborhoods. Most of these organizations are crying for new members, but time and other commitments keep people from joining.

Find an organization that fits your interests, your community, and your available time, and support it. Then, promote policies that shorten commutes to work, offer tax breaks to companies who give employees paid time to work for schools and volunteer organizations, and offer tax breaks to individuals to donate time to charities (and faith-based organizations) as well as money or assets.

· Getting involved in assimilating our neighbors—To be a nation we must assimilate. Schools, churches, and childhood activities in the neighborhood were designed to assimilate children into our society as adults. Newcomers need the same help. We’ve argued way too long about the failure to promote assimilation. Let’s not just argue about it, let’s act.

Find an organization that is helping newcomers assimilate, and support it. Then, promote policies that give incentives to private organizations to create community centers and teach adults English and citizenship; that give children a safe place to meet, do their homework, and play; and that give families a safe place to interact and get to know and care for each other.

· Supporting organizations that help keep families and neighborhoods intact and building wealth, and promoting policies to accomplish those goals—As I mentioned before, our local GOP Juvenile Court Judges worked to create a model program, funded with private dollars and partnered with neighborhood churches, that is keeping first-time, non-violent juvenile offenders in school and out of jail. These types of programs will fight the long-term problems of under-education, under-employment, and chronic poverty that fester in communities where too many young people drop out of school and get a criminal record. We need more of these innovative programs that help rebuild strong schools, strong families, and strong neighborhoods.

By now you are thinking, “I can’t do all of that.” Well, nobody is saying you need to do all of that, but each of us can do some of the things I’ve listed to start rebuilding a service infrastructure in our neighborhoods that can sustain the needs of our neighbors without tax dollars. It is this overall effort that I’ve referred to in prior posts as Renewing the American Community. If you still don’t think it’s possible, let me leave you with a story that combines this message with my other favorite subject—Baseball.

When I was growing up as a White Sox fan in the mid-60s, one of the stars of that team was a young outfielder named Floyd Robinson. Unfortunately, a very promising career was cut short by an injury, and, in 1968, he left Baseball and returned to his home town in the Logan Heights neighborhood of San Diego, California.

Over the last 43 years, Logan Heights has come to be known as “Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood.” Taking up where his father left off as a small-business owner after World War II, Floyd Robinson and his wife built a successful construction and real-estate development firm. With the income from that business he maintained a small grocery store in the neighborhood where he employed and mentored young men, some of whom went on to play college and professional sports. He also used his income to fill a need for a senior-citizen assisted living center, which he financed and built, and which he has continued to manage for almost 30 years. Although he could afford to move to “nicer” neighborhoods in San Diego, he and his wife still live in the neighborhood he helped to build and maintain. And for some of you, another interesting epilogue to this story is that Floyd Robinson accomplished all of this as an African American in an integrated neighborhood.

Renewing the American Community using the Tupelo Formula is not only doable, but seeds for this transformation are being planted everyday by thousands of Floyd Robinsons—some of whom we know as neighbors, and some of whom we may never meet. All we have to do is accept the challenge. In fact, I soon will be putting a lot of time and effort where my mouth is on this issue, as I am working with a group of people to launch an effort to promote the goals of Renewing the American Community, including innovative solutions utilizing the Tupelo Formula.

So with this challenge in mind, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis:

We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.