The Rise of Government and the Decline fo Morality; J. Dorn

One cannot blame government for all of society's ills, but there is no doubt that economic and social legislation over the past 50 years has had a negative impact on virtue. Individuals lose their moral bearing when they are not held accountable for their actions. The internal moral compass that normally guides individual behavior will no longer function when the State undermines Mr. Dorn is vice presidentforacademic affairs at the Cato Institute and director of Cato' s Project on Civil Society. This essay is based on his Chautauqua Institution lecture in 1995. incentives for moral conduct and blurs the distinction between right and wrong. More government spending is not the answer to our social, economic, or cultural problems. The task is not to reinvent gov ernment or to give politics meaning; the task is to limit government and revitalize civil society. Government meddling will only make matters worse.

If we want to help the disadvantaged, we do not do so by making poverty pay, by restricting markets, by prohibiting school choice, by discouraging thrift, or by sending the message that the principal· function of government is to take care of us. Rather, we do so by eliminating social engineering and welfare, by cultivating free markets, and by returning to our moral heritage. Early Twentieth-Century Virtue: Lessons from the Immigrants At the turn of the century, there was no welfare state. Family and social bonds were strong, and civil society flourished in nu merous fraternal and religious organiza tions. Total government spending was less than 10 percent of GNP and the federal government's powers were narrowly lim ited. Immigrants were faced with material pov erty, true, but they were not wretched. 136 There was a certain moral order in everyday life, which began in the home·and spread to the outside community. Baltimore's Polish immigrants provide a good example. Like other immigrants, they arrived with virtu ally nothing except the desire to work hard and to live in a free country. Their ethos of liberty and responsibility is evident in a 1907 housing report describing the Polish com munity in Fells Point: A remembered Saturday evening inspec tion of five apartments in a house [on] Thames Street, with their whitened floors and shining cook stoves, with the dishes gleaming on the neatly ordered shelves, the piles of clean clothing laid out for Sunday, and the general atmosphere of preparation for the Sabbath, suggested standards that would not have disgraced a Puritan housekeeper.

Yet, according to the report, a typical Polish home consisted "of a crowded one or two-room apartment, occupied by six or eight people, and located two floors above the common water supply." Even though wages were low, Polish Americans sacrificed to save and pooled their resources to help each other by found ing building and loan associations, as Linda Shopes noted in The Baltimore Book. By 1929, 60 percent of Polish families were homeowners-without any government as sistance. Today, after more than 50 years of the welfare state, and after spending $5 trillion on anti-poverty programs since the mid 1960s, Baltimore and other American cities are struggling for survival. Self-reliance has given way to dependence and a loss of respect for persons and property. The inner-city landscape is cluttered with crime-infested public housing and public schools that are mostly dreadful, dangerous, and amoral-where one learns more about survival than virtue. And the way to survive is not to take responsibility for one's own life and family, but to vote for politicians who have the power to keep the welfare checks rolling. Dysfunctional behavior now seems almost normal as people are shot 137 daily and the vast majority of inner-city births are to unwed mothers receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children. In addi tion to the moral decay, high tax rates and regulatory overkill have driven businesses and taxpayers out of the city and slowed economic development. It's not a pretty picture.

In sum, the growth of government and the rise of the "transfer society" have under mined the work ethic and substituted an ethos of dependence for an ethos of liberty and responsibility. Virtue and civil society have suffered in the process, as has eco nomic welfare. The Role of Government: Con8icting Visions Market-Liberal Vision. From a classical liberal perspective, the primary functions of government are to secure "the blessings of liberty" and "establish justice"-not by mandating outcomes, but by setting mini mum standards of just conduct and leaving individuals free to pursue their own values within the law. The "sum of good govern ment," wrote Jefferson, is to "restrain men from injuring one another, " to "leave them . . . free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement," and to "not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned." The Jeffersonian philosophy of good gov ernment was widely shared in nineteenth century America. Indeed, Jeffersonian de mocracy became embodied in what John O'Sullivan, editor of the United States Mag azine and Democratic Review, called the "voluntary principle" or the "principle of freedom." In 1837, O'Sullivan wrote, The best government is that which gov erns least. ... [Government] should be confined to the administration of justice, for the protection of the natural equal rights of the citizen, and the preservation of the social order. In all other respects, the voluntary principle, the principle of freedom ... affords the true golden rule.

138 THE FREEMAN • MARCH 1996 During the nineteenth century, most Americans took it for granted that the fed eral government had no constitutional au thority to engage in public charity (i. e., to legislate forced transfers to help some indi viduals at the expense of others). It was generally understood that the powers of the federal government were delegated, enu merated, and therefore limited, and that there was no explicit authority for the wel fare state. In 1794, Madison expressed the commonly held view of the welfare state: "I cannot undertake to lay my ,finger on that article of the Constitution which grant[s] a right to Congress ofexpending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constitu ents." From a classicalliberal or market liberal perspective, then, the role of govern ment is not to "do good at taxpayers' expense," but "to prevent harm" by estab lishingrules ofjust conduct and a rule of law.

The general welfare clause (art. 1, sec. 8) of the U.S. Constitution cannot be used to justify the welfare state. That clause simply states that the federal government, in exer cising its enumerated powers, should exer cise them to "promote the general welfare," not to promote particular interests. The clause was never meant to be an open invitation to expand government far beyond its primary role of night watchman. "With respect to the words 'general wel fare,'" wrote Madison, "I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." Yet, what Madison feared happened-as his vision of government was overtaken by the views of people who sought to use government, not to prevent harm, but to "do good" at taxpayers' expense.

Modern Liberal Vision. The transforma tion of the Framers' constitutional vision began with the Progressive Era, accelerated with the New Deal, and mushroomed with the Great Society's War on Poverty, which created new entitlements and enshrined welfare rights. Today, more than half the federal budget is spent on entitlements, and social welfare spendingis 14 percent of GNP. During the transition from limited govern ment to the welfare state, freedom has come to mean freedom from responsibility. Such freedom, however, is not true freedom but a form of tyranny, which creates moral and social chaos. The modern liberal's vision of govern ment is based on a twisted understanding of rights and justice-an understanding that clashes with the principle of freedom inher ent in the higher law of the Constitution. Welfare rights or entitlements are "imper fect rights" or pseudo-rights; they cannot be exercised without violating what legal schol ars call the "perfect right" to private prop erty. Rights to welfare-whether to food stamps, public housing, or medical care create a legal obligation to help others. In contrast, the right' to property, understood in the Lockean sense, merely obligates in dividuals to refrain from taking what is not theirs-namely, the life, liberty, or estate of another.

For the modem liberal, justice refers to distributive justice or social justice. But "social justice" is a vague term, subject to all sorts of abuse if made the goal of public policy. Indeed, when the role of government is to do good with other people's money, there is no end to the mischief government can cause. Many Americans seem to have lost sight of the idea that the role of government is not to instill values, but to protect rights that are consistent with a society of free and respon sible individuals. We have a right to pursue happiness, but there can be no legal guar antee that we willobtain it without depriving others of their liberty and their property. When democracy becomes unlimited, the power of government becomes unlimited, and there is no end to the demands on the public purse. Democracy then becomes crude majoritarianism in which the "win ners" are allowed to impose their will and vision of the "good society" on everyone else. In such a system politics becomes a fight of all against all, like the Hobbesian THE RISE OF GOVERNMENT AND THE DECLINE OF MORALITY 139 jungle, and nearly everyone is a net loser as taxes rise, deficits soar, and economic growth slows.

Bankruptcy of the Welfare State Most voters recognize that the welfare state is inefficient and that there is a built-in incentive to perpetuate poverty. It should be common sense that when government prom ises something for nothing, demand will grow and so will the welfare state. Indeed, total government spending on social welfare is now over $1 trillion per year. Yet only $1 of every $6 of social welfare spending goes to families with less than poverty-level in comes. For all the money spent on fighting poverty since 1965, about $5 trillion, the official poverty rate has remained roughly the same, about 14 percent. Government waste, however, is only part of the problem; the welfare state is also intellectually, mor ally, and constitutionally bankrupt. Intellectually Bankrupt. It is intellectually bankrupt because increasing the scope of market exchange, not aid, is the only viable way to alleviate poverty. The best way to help the poor is not by redistributing income but by generating economic growth. Pov erty rates fell more before the War on Poverty when economic growth was higher.

The failure of Communism shows that any attenuation of private property rights weak ens markets and reduces choice. Individual welfare is lowered as a result. The welfare state has attenuated private property rights and weakened the informal rules of manners and morals that make life worthwhile. Real growth has slowed as a result. From 1889 through 1919, real growth averaged 4 per cent per year while government consumed 10percent of GNP. From 1973through 1992, however, real growth averaged only 2.3 percent while government consumed 36per cent of GNP. Morally Bankrupt. In addition to being inefficient and intellectually bankrupt, the welfare state is morally bankrupt. In a free society, people are entitled to what they own, not to what others own. Yet, under the pretense of morality, politicians and advo cacy groups have made the "right to wel fare" the accepted dogma of a new state religion, in which politicians are the high priests and self-proclaimed "benefactors"

of humanity. But "the emperor has no clothes": poli ticians pretend to "do good," but they do so with other people's money. Politicians put on their moral garb, but there is really nothing there. Government benevolence, in reality, is a naked taking. Public charity is forced charity, or what the great French liberal Frederic Bastiat called "legal plun der"; it is not a virtue but a vice. Constitutionally Bankrupt. The welfare state is also constitutionally bankrupt; it has no basis in the Framers' Constitution of liberty. By changing the role of government from a limited one of protecting persons and property to an unlimited one of achieving "social justice, " Congress, the courts, and the president have broken their oaths to uphold the Constitution. In contrast, Congressman Davy Crockett, who was elected in 1827,told his colleagues, "We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Con gress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money."

What Should Be Done? Polls show that three of four Americans distrust government and that more young people believe in UFOs than in the future of Social Security. Those sentiments express a growing skepticism about the modern liberal state. What should be done? First, and foremost, we need to expose the intellectual, constitutional, and moral bankruptcy of the welfare state. We need to change the way we think about government and restore an ethos of liberty and respon sibility. The political process can then begin changing the direction of government and rolling back the welfare state.

140 THE FREEMAN • MARCH 1996 America has a great future, but that future is endangered by a federal government that has become bloated and unable to perform even its rudimentary functions. The col lapse of Communism and the failure of socialism should have been warning enough that it is time to change direction. It is time to get government out of the business of charity and to let private virtue, responsibility, and benevolence grow along with civil society-just as they did more than 150 years ago when Alexis de Tocque ville, in his great study of Democracy in America, wrote: When an American asks for the cooper ation of his fellow citizens it is seldom refused, and I have often seen it afforded spontaneously and with great good will. . . . If some great and sudden calamity befalls a family, the purses of a thousand strangers are at once willingly opened, and small but numerous donations pour in to relieve their distress.

Welfare reform is in the air, but the elimination of the welfare state is still con sidered heresy by most politicians. They consider themselves "benefactors," albeit with other people's money. Yet the role of government is not to legislate morality-an impossible and dangerous goal-or even to ,'empower people"; the role of government is to allow people the freedom to grow into responsible citizens and to exercise their inalienable rights. During the past 50 years, the welfare state has divorced freedom from responsibility and created a false sense of morality. Good intentions have led to bad policy. The moral state of the union can be improved by following two simple rules: "Do no harm" and "do good at your own expense. " Those rules are perfectly consistent in the private moral universe. It is only when the second rule is replaced by "Do good at the expense of others" that social harmony turns into chaos as interest groups compete at the pub lic trough for society's scarce resources. D The power of one.

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