Age of Irresponsibility

Matthew Continetti analyzes our cultural moment, and the likely impact of Obama’s policies, in a Weekly Standard piece. He says that Obama recognizes that the problem is a collapse of responsibility among cultural and political elites, following by a corresponding collapse of trust in those elites. Yet, Obama’s stimulus package and expansion of government will not solve the problem; in fact, they’ll make it worse:

“Obama identified the pervasive lack of accountability among American political, economic, and cultural elites. He reminded his audience of the concept of duty. And while he might have expanded the sphere of personal obligation a little too far—what does it mean, exactly, to have duties to ‘the world’?—the message was spot-on. ‘It is time to put away childish things,’ Obama said earlier in the speech, quoting Paul . . . .

“To leave childhood behind is to embrace adulthood and the values associated with it. Independence. Self-sufficiency. Modesty. Responsibility. Decorum. Fidelity. Civility. These are the values that have, like the buttresses of a cathedral, supported American society for centuries. A cursory glance around the country today—and especially at the people who run it—reveals that our nation is sorely lacking in these staples of middle-class life. We are living through a drought of middle-class respectability. And that has led us to political and economic crisis.

“Obama and the Democrats believe that the erosion of bourgeois values can be slowed or even reversed through public expenditure. This is what the Democrats are talking about when they bring up the ‘vanishing middle class’ and propose government intervention. But their efforts are doomed to fail. Public expenditure can’t buy virtue. It may even crowd it out.

“To preserve the American middle class, Obama and the Democrats want to transfer the burden of responsibility from the individual to the government. They want to raise taxes and finance expanded federal government intervention in education, health care, pensions, and the workforce. Their logic is that, if you no longer have to worry about sending your child to a good school—or going bankrupt because of a hospital visit, or delaying retirement because your 401(k) is now a 201(f), or working several jobs because you can’t get a good wage—you are more likely to have a happy, healthy family. Your middle-class existence will be more placid. The bourgeois values of hard work, accountability, pride in country, and discipline will carry on to the next generation. The populist impulse will subside.

“The stimulus bill captures the ethos of this new liberalism perfectly. The dramatic expansion of government’s share of the economy is geared toward specifically liberal ends. Ends like Head Start, subsidies for college education, Medicaid, alternative energy, and a loosening of welfare requirements. The bill is a partisan Democrat’s dream. It’s also a huge miscalculation. Increased dependence on the state is not a solution to our lack of personal accountability. It will only encourage more of it.”

Continetti commends Obama for “challenging fathers to play a more active role in raising their children” and suggests that he appears “open to good ideas from the private sector, from the nonprofits, from charities and churches.” Yet, in the end, he wants to solve the cultural crisis politically: “He has witnessed elites fail, yet he seeks to put more power in the hands of political elites.” Along with other liberals, he seems to believe that “for America to retain its place among nations, we need to look more like Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands.”

In short, “the values of such social democracies are the opposite of the American virtues. The opposite of what Obama claims to want to promote. The American ethos is one of self-reliance. This is not the same as autonomous hedonism and greed. A self-reliant individual is responsible for himself and his family. He is accountable for his actions. He has to be. The welfare state, by contrast, promotes dependence. As government expands its sphere of involvement in everyday life, the number of supplicants for government assistance increases. Rather than encouraging the individual to take responsibility for his actions, the new liberals have embarked on policies that will encourage the individual to turn to government instead. The individual might be delivered from the risks of the marketplace. But what about the risks of the public sector?”