Remember “Julia,” the fictional woman who relied on government to give shape and meaning to the most important milestones in her life (apart, perhaps, from the child she “decided to have”)? That impulse resurfaced in a video from last night’s opening of the Democratic National Convention:
What a dearth of imagination. Though like almost everything at a political convention this was undoubtedly meant to be a simple pep-rally montage, the man who utters what in likelihood was thought to be a passing phrase (“government’s the only thing we all belong to”) sounds quite sincere, his inflection even a little desperate. He really just can’t imagine what other kinds of associations might unite us as citizens, or that there might be another universal source which connects human beings and imparts common purpose to lives separated by differences in time and culture, not to mention different branches of the Rotary club.
Perhaps it was unintentional, but it’s also grimly amusing that the single contrast to our allegedly harmonious governmental union comes from the “different churches” we inexplicably attend. It seems to cut back to an elemental, subconscious fear in liberalism: If we stick to our narrow, tribal allegiances (especially one as oddball as religious faith), there’s no telling what could happen! (William Cavanaugh calls this the “creation myth of the wars of religion.”)
But that’s probably reading too much into it. Nevertheless, this is a strange sentiment to hear in the United States, not because it opposes a comic book vision of “rugged individualism” but because of our longstanding intuition that democracy doesn’t maintain itself, and that liberty requires concomitant “arts of association” precisely so we don’t wind up with the arrangement feted in this video. If membership in the state is the only thing you have in common with your fellow citizens (a scenario unavoidable in radical individualism, I’d note, too), you’ve failed as a citizen of a free society.
September 5th, 2012 | 6:44 pm
No, you are not reading to much into this. It’s on par with “you didn’t build that” (I know, that was taken out of context, etc., etc.). “Government’s the only thing we all belong to” is an honest statement of the faith most liberals have in government as a force for “compassion” in our otherwise self-interested society. Government redistributes wealth, breaks down barriers for the downtrodden du jour (tran-sexuals are the next oppressed group in need of “liberation”), and keeps the one percent from running roughshod over the rest of us. Government service is the new calling for those who seek to improve the lives of others . . . a religious calling, especially one in the “reactionary” Catholic Church, places you on the side of the phallus-ocracy intent on denying government payments for contraception/abortion, not to mention encouraging “hate speech” directed toward our homosexual brothers and sisters, as well as those in-between.
September 5th, 2012 | 9:52 pm
“He really just can’t imagine what other kinds of associations might unite us as citizens…”
Okay – name one.
September 5th, 2012 | 10:28 pm
Labor unions.
September 5th, 2012 | 11:02 pm
That is pretty obviously not a “thing we all belong to.” According to wiki, about 11% of all workers are in unions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_States). I am, therefore, slightly unsure about how that’s supposed to “unite us as citizens,” let alone all of us.
September 6th, 2012 | 3:42 am
Conservatives, too, can be of the same mind:
“If the state is confused with civil society, and if its specific end is laid down as the security and protection of property and personal freedom, then the interest of the individuals as such becomes the ultimate end of their association, and it follows that membership of the state is something optional. But the state’s relation to the individual is quite different from this. Since the state is mind objectified, it is only as one of its members that the individual himself has objectivity, genuine individuality, and an ethical life. Unification pure and simple is the true content and aim of the individual, and the individual’s destiny is the living of a universal life. His further particular satisfaction, activity and mode of conduct have this substantive and universally valid life as their starting point and their result.” G W Hegel, “Philosophy of Right” 258
September 6th, 2012 | 7:16 am
What unites Americans is the belief, spelled out in the Declaration of Independence, that the rights held by human beings are God-given, and not revocable at the whim of the state.
EVERY government is “government OF the people”. The Roman Empire was “government OF the people, BY the Emperor”. What made the government of the United States so different is that we have, as Lincoln said, “government OF the people, BY the people”. In other words, the government is the servant of the people, rather than their master. We do not “belong” to the government, the government belongs to us. But President Obama is bent on defying the law and being our master rather than our servant.
September 6th, 2012 | 7:23 am
Labor unions.
Which the Democratic Party is opposed to? Which have united citizens in Wisconsin and Ohio?
One of the unfortunate tendencies we all have when discussing politics, especially during presidential campaigns, is to pounce on anything, no matter how minor and innocuous, that comes from the party (or parties) we oppose. There are perfectly benign and genuine American ideals to be found in “you didn’t build that,” or “government’s the only thing we all belong to,” and yet the job of political partisans is to try to interpret whatever the opposing party says as not merely misguided, but evil.
David Cloutier has some worthwhile thoughts on the video and the fuss it has generated over on Catholic Moral Theology.
By the way, I belonged to a union for over twenty years, and I strongly support unions, but of course the purpose of unions is typically to unite people against something (management), and divisions within unions can be quite bitter themselves.
September 6th, 2012 | 8:17 am
We don’t all belong to labor unions. About 12% of the American workforce is unionized.
We don’t all belong to a church either.
“Government is the only thing we all belong to,” is banal, but reasonably accurate. We all belong to phylum chordata too, but it’s not really relevant to the election.
September 6th, 2012 | 9:30 am
But we do not all “belong to government”. We belong to the nation as it’s citizens. The government is not the nation but rather a subset of its citizens who attempt, we hope, to preserve the nation. I belonged to government when I was in the Navy. When I resigned my commission I became a “private citizen”. Reread your Hegel quoted above. He speaks of “the state”, “which is mind objectified” not the government. Louis XIV made the same mistake when he said, “L’Etat, c’est moi.” Or, at least, those who wanted to put him down put those words in his mouth.
September 6th, 2012 | 10:17 am
We “belong” to the government as members belong to groups, not as slaves belong to masters. If I say, “I belong to the Knights of Columbus,” that doesn’t mean that the Knights of Columbus own me. We belong to the government as citizens, as voters, as volunteer workers, and as officeholders. In a democracy, we all are the government. We elect representatives to represent us. We don’t elect representatives to rule over us. We have government of the people, by the people, and for the people. The Constitution begins, “We the people of the United States . . . ” It does not begin, “We the government of the United States . . . ” As David Cloutier says in a very evenhanded piece on Catholic Moral Theology, “The DNC is trying to counter the overheated anti-government rhetoric of the other party by portraying civic involvement as something noble and valuable.” This brief 15-second spot was not a manifesto about government. It was a response to the Republicans.
September 6th, 2012 | 10:49 am
Everything within the state; nothing outside the state; nothing against the state.
+ + +
Playing with fire by people who don’t know that fire can burn. The alternative to state micromanagement is not anarchy. It is limited and defined government.
September 6th, 2012 | 11:31 am
As Y.O.S. notes, Louis XIV wasn’t the only one to make that mistake.
September 6th, 2012 | 11:46 am
Neither government or the nation is the only thing we “all belong to.” We all belong first of all to created humanity, that community referred to by the Declaration in the language of the day as “all Men,” who have in common that they are “created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Government, according to the Declaration, is secondary and subordinate to this larger “belonging”: “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
There are multiple governments, multiple nations, multiple churches, multiple families, any number of associations and societies and enterprises among human beings. Civic unity is not achieved by elevating one of these over the other, but by recognition that all exist within the community of “all men,” and must respect the law of that community: equality of God-given right.
The convention video is another look into the dark heart of the Left, which more and more openly regards the idea of God- rather than government-bestowed rights as stupid and reactionary.
September 6th, 2012 | 12:22 pm
If you want to celebrate “civic involvement as something noble and valuable” you don’t celebrate the federal government, which is run by faceless bureaucrats over whom the American people have no control. Civic involvement occurs at the grass roots, not behind closed bureaucratic doors. If you live outside the DC beltway, and the federal government is regulating your life in ways in which you have no influence, why would anyone celebrate that?
September 6th, 2012 | 12:33 pm
Every year when I teach Common Sense, I enjoy Thomas Paine’s opening: “Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them…”
I always think of the earnest liberal nostrum that “government is just the name for the things we do together.” No, that’s society.
Here, too, it’s the same: society is the thing we all belong to.
And it doesn’t matter that there’s no one organization with 100% of the population as members. There’s no one government agency like that either.
A little clarity would go a long way here.
September 6th, 2012 | 2:26 pm
At libertylaw blog Richard Samuelson writes:
“… Adams and Paine, who disagreed about much … agreed about this: American citizenship was what all Americans had in common. The government was distinct. It was created by and for the people to serve certain ends. Americans share a nationality. One could say we all belong to the American social/political compact or the body politic, just as the board of directors of a congregation is appointed to serve the good of a religious congregation…”.
September 6th, 2012 | 4:13 pm
just curious: do undocumented/illegal immigrants belong to the government? what about permanent residents who can’t vote?
September 6th, 2012 | 7:27 pm
“just curious: do undocumented/illegal immigrants belong to the government? what about permanent residents who can’t vote?”
Good question, actually. Presumably, though, he didn’t mean to talk about voting as “belonging to” the government, because a huge percentage of Americans consistently choose not to vote. Citizenship, I think, would be a more plausible explanation, but I admit that I haven’t heard his full comments and so can’t say for sure. But presumably context would answer this sort of thing.
Meanwhile, no follow-up from Matthew about how a mere 11% of the population is supposed to unite the rest of us, especially when that 11% is routinely vilified by the major conservative party in our country.
September 7th, 2012 | 8:04 am
Eli: We don’t all belong to government. Children don’t “belong” to government. Felons don’t belong. Resident aliens don’t belong. We all participate in civic life, whether we are eligible to participate in government or not, whether we decline to participate in government or not. Civic life is natural to human beings and impossible to escape, participation in government is not. That’s the point. People precede government and can change, disregard, or overthrow it. This line, which I agree was meant to be a throw-away “nice” thing to say that everyone would agree with, shows that in this mindset government is seen as something like natural law, which precedes us and which we are supposed to conform to. Statism is not the same as believing in a civic duty to participate in government. Statism subsumes everything else.
September 7th, 2012 | 8:50 am
Of course, in one sense, “the government,” that is the organs of the state – the legislature, the executive, the judiciary – is merely the agent of the sovereign people, acting under a temporary and revocable mandate, with powers that are defined and limited and calling at all times for the people’s scrutiny and direct control.
In a larger sense, however, one can speak of the people as the government, having its deputies at work to do its will, watching them, and insisting on a master’s right to control its servant.
More fundamentally still, the people governs, in this sense, that it has no master and no judge, and decides on all matters, in the last instance and alone, by exercising, in Lincoln’s words, “their constitutional right to amend the Constitution or the revolutionary right to abolish it.”
September 7th, 2012 | 11:18 am
Gail, see every other comment above, and also the original context of the claim (which I’ve finally watched). The remark was meant in the sense that “we’re all a part of our nation,” in which sense children and felons and resident aliens *do* belong.
Context, my friend, goes a long way.
And still, by the way, no follow-up from Matthew.
September 7th, 2012 | 2:16 pm
“The remark was meant in the sense that “we’re all a part of our nation,” in which sense children and felons and resident aliens *do* belong.”
Probably, but as Dave mentions above, clarity would help. Why not say “nation”, or “society”, if that is what he meant? Or does he think government and nation (or society) are identical? I wonder if this is merely sloppy vocabulary or also sloppy thinking.
The proper use of words and names matter, as Confucius and Orwell have noted.
September 7th, 2012 | 6:04 pm
Okay, point taken, although there is some plausibility to the idea that belonging to a nation entails belonging to the government (cause, like, what is a nation without a government).
But, um, if that’s the best you can come up with as an argument? Then I’m sort of tempted to just let it go. Switching “nation” for “government” is a lot less mendacious than, say, switching “blastocyst” for “unborn child.”
September 8th, 2012 | 1:21 pm
Eli asks “cause, like, what is a nation without a government?”
Does this mean that neither the German nor the Italian “nation” existed before 1870?
Then, again, there were many German communities living outside the frontiers of Bismark’s German Empire, the subjects of other powers (the Dual Monarchy, Russia &c) who considered themselves part of the German nation for all that. And, then, there was “Italia Irredenta.”
September 8th, 2012 | 7:29 pm
“Does this mean that neither the German nor the Italian “nation” existed before 1870?”
Pretty much, yeah; read your history. That’s why there had to be such a thing as pan-Germanism, for example. If they were already one nation, the idea of pan-Germanism would’ve made no sense.
“…who considered themselves part of the German nation for all that”
Yeah, okay, and fans of our football team who live in LA still call themselves “part of Steelers nation.” I am, nonetheless, *fairly* confident that this doesn’t count.
September 9th, 2012 | 12:56 pm
But Pan-Germanism presupposed the existence of German nationality, as something neither revocable nor attainable at will and, hence, of the German nation as a unit of common descent and blood and not of voluntary adherence and association.
Without this underlying assumption, their claim to political autonomy and self-determination makes no sense.
September 9th, 2012 | 5:17 pm
“But Pan-Germanism presupposed the existence of German nationality…”
Sorry, this is just wrong. Show me your sources and maybe we can talk, but don’t go around making random assertions.
September 9th, 2012 | 6:13 pm
The chains of captivity must rest very lightly on those who defend the statement that we belong to the government. Aside from the fact that I have to submit to its power and that I feel kinship with its other citizens, I in no way belong to it. And although we are a republic, I rarely have the feeling that it belongs to me.
September 10th, 2012 | 11:49 am
I tried to tell my Polish friends that there was no Polish nationality between 1793 and 1918, but for some reason they didn’t buy it. (and I don’t think all of their ancestors were happy “belonging” to the Russian, German and Austrian governments, either)
September 10th, 2012 | 6:09 pm
On “nation” some definitional clarity is needed here, too: formally, a nation is a people–with common language, ethnicity, history, and/or culture.
It is not a polity. Unfortunately, we often use it that way, perhaps because the dominant form of organization today is the nation-state, in which one people are coextensive (more or less, at as imagined) with one government unit.
September 11th, 2012 | 2:42 am
Dave
That is at the heart of Fichte’s demand that frontiers should depend, not on dynasties and treaties, but on language and nationality.
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