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I remember a black physician who shared his own frustration at hearing a young mother on welfare point to her caseworker and say to her child, "That is my case worker. Someday, you’ll have one, too." Is that now the American Dream?
It’s time we as Americans revisit the importance of hard work, integrity, character, and personal responsibility. It’s time to start championing our old-fashioned, common-sense values like fidelity, self-restraint, self-control, self-discipline, and self-reliance.
Victor Frankl, Holocaust survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, reminded Americans, “The Statue of Liberty on the East Coast needs to be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.”
Frankl was just reminding us of our grounding principles. America was founded on the premise that so long as citizens accepted the consequences of their actions, it was their right to be free, to pursue their dreams, and even lead eccentric lives.
Thomas Jefferson wrote: "What is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned."
He also had a warning: “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
Unfortunately, America has steadily been drifting from the Constitutional grounding our Founding Fathers established. What started with FDR’s New Deal has now blossomed into a nanny state where our Constitutional rights have been transformed into extensive entitlements.
Columnist Walter Williams has written on the difference between rights and wishes. He asserts: “A right confers no obligation on another. For example, the right to free speech is something we all possess. My right to free speech imposes no obligation upon another except that of non-interference. … Contrast those rights to the supposed right to decent housing or medical care. Those supposed rights do confer obligations upon others. There is no Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy. …Your right to decent housing and medical care requires that some other American have less of something else, namely diminished rights to his earnings.”
We conservatives still see America as the land of opportunity, and we’re committed to sustaining every citizen’s natural rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We believe that individuals, unencumbered by government controls and empowered by freedoms and opportunity, can make their lawful dreams a reality, limited only by his or her determination and natural abilities. Where possible, we urge the government to get out of people's lives so as to encourage personal responsibility and true opportunity.
As Ronald Reagan reminded us, the effectiveness of government should not measured by how many citizens government helps, but by how many citizens don’t need government help. Reagan was popular because he cared about the people who earned the money more than those who expected government to take from their neighbor and redistribute to them. As Ronald Reagan frequently complained, “Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.”
Americans are paying a psychological price for its government-funded entitlements. The depression of our age is Learned helplessness—“Since nothing I do will make a difference in the consequences I experience, I might as well wait until they do it to me. Then I can sue them or have the government take care of me.” We’ve stopped expecting personal responsibility, and we’ve rewarded dependence. Instead of understanding irresponsible behavior, we excuse it making people psychic invalids. By declaring practically everyone to be a victim of something, we’ve made too many eligible for lifelong, self-absorbed irresponsibility. Just because life is difficult, shouldn’t mean that any American should be entitled to the government taking care of them.
This is not to say that helping our neighbor is not a personal moral imperative most Americans feel. In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote his acclaimed and often quoted Democracy in America in which he praised America and its democratic ideals. Although noting the dangers of individualism, he praised how America was able to balance liberty and equality. He was impressed with America’s self-governing local communities based on self-reliance and mutual cooperation. Tocqueville attributed America’s entrepreneurial spirit that he witnessed to the practice of limited government, but he warned, “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.”
Going back to our Constitutional underpinnings would not be a retreat into the past, but a liberating adventure that would rekindle the American Dream. A return to individual responsibility and caring communities would foster economic growth, create new jobs, increase personal charity, and revitalize community involvement.
Real caring is not making people dependent on the government. Instead, we should be focused on helping every American be successful. Instead of continually talking about the victims; we should honor the self-resilient survivors who find away to bounce back from setbacks and succeed anyway. We should let them inspire us and teach others how to do the same.
It was President Ronald Reagan who started using the gallery at his State of the Union addresses to honor citizens who were making the American Dream work. As he said in his first Inaugural Address: “We have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we’re in a time when there are no heroes, they just don’t know where to look. They’re the individuals and families whose taxes support the government and those whose voluntary gifts support church, charity, culture, art and education. Their patriotism is deep. Their values sustain our national life.”
Reagan humbly knew that the strength of America didn’t come from anything that happened in Washington. It resides in a free people empowered by optimistic dreams exercising their personal responsibility and creating communities committed to preserving a free and prosperous country. May each of us take personal responsibility to make it so for our generation and for generations to come.
