THE BECKONING GATEWAY

By Edwin Cooney

From where do you gather your ideas about America’s cultural, political, and social past?  Is your information solid or sketchy?  How does your knowledge of our past and your assessment of the present affect your outlook on our future?  Where, do you suppose, the gateway exists to our brightest possible future?

If you were born in the United States between 1920 and 1960 to a poor or middle class family, there’s a better than even likelihood that you registered to vote as a Democrat on your  18^th or 21^st birthday.  On the other hand, if you were born during the same time period to an upper middle class or wealthy family, it’s just as likely that you registered as a Republican upon reaching voting age.

Since the 1960s and '70s, a time during which Walter Cronkite (CBS News), Chet Huntley and David Brinkley (NBC News) and Howard K. Smith (ABC News) brought the uncertainties and horrors of war, campus conflict, poverty, and political corruption into our living rooms through television, there has been a sea change in the relationship between the American people and their government.

The time that passed between Saturday, March 4, 1933 (when FDR became President) and Monday, January 20, 1969 (when Richard Nixon took the presidential oath) constituted the era of progressive government.  During those thirty-six years, Americans were largely fed, sheltered, educated, and increasingly employed as well as shielded from financial ruin and communicable diseases through the auspices of government at all levels.

If you were born in America between 1960 and 2000, it is likely that divisive wars, corrupt and incompetent political leadership, nettlesome government regulations, and, perhaps above all, the conflict between traditional religious institutions and an increasingly potent human secularism has increased your skepticism as to the wisdom or even the patriotism of your own government.  Hence the core issue as we enter the 2012 presidential campaign lies in the following question:  is passive or progressive government the beckoning gateway to liberty or tyranny?

Speaking to a group of his fellow Republicans in 1962, Arizona Senator Barry M. Goldwater put it this way: "Limited government, two short words…contain the basic philosophy of the Republican Party and the precepts on which this nation as grown great.  Throughout history, government has proved to be the chief instrument for thwarting man’s liberty.  Government constitutes power in the hands of some men to control and regulate the lives of other men…”

In the 1930s, FDR put it another way, “….the only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government."

Next comes a vital question: who is the government?  FDR, Harry Truman, JFK and LBJ always insisted that government was made up of the people.  Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater insisted that special kinds of human beings called “bureaucrats” or "elitists" were the pillars of “liberal” government.  At the 1948 Democratic national convention that nominated Harry Truman for a full presidential term, Senator Alben Barkley of Kentucky -- a great orator and storyteller -- responded to the GOP proposition that the government was being run by “bureaucrats” this way:

“What is a bureaucrat?” Barkley asked and then answered his own question, “a bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds an office that some Republican wants!”

Alben Barkley was rewarded for his “keynote speech” eloquence by being nominated and elected Vice President of the United States between 1949 and 1953 under President Truman.

Conservatives, although they assert that government is inefficient, also insist that government is too powerful and that we should fear it as they do. 

Liberals, on the other hand, insist that as long as government stays out of the bedroom, government is a necessary counterbalance to powerful and uncoordinated private interests. These interests, they assert, have historically thrown our economy into a tailspin and run roughshod over the rights and safety of the individual since they are focused on their bottom line: profit.

Of course, the days of Roosevelt, Goldwater, Nixon, JFK and LBJ are past.  The Reagan and Clinton eras are also gone.  Now, it’s Obama vs. Romney and not all are satisfied that there’s much of a difference.

Still, there remains the question: is passive or progressive government the best avenue to a peaceful and prosperous future?  I vote for progressive government controlled by the sovereignty of a free and determined people.  Government, run by the prosperous for primarily the peace and prosperity of the prosperous, is inevitably too exclusive to safeguard the least among us.  Moderately progressive government that invests in all the people and is accountable to everyone is by definition "inclusive government." 

The choice you make between the two types of government is your business, but the success of free government is everybody’s responsibility.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY