Perhaps our most perceptive critic of welfare-state politics is William Voegeli, senior editor of the Claremont Review of Books, and author of Never Enough and The Pity Party.
As the title implies, the central thesis of Never Enough was that no matter how much we've spent on social programs over time, it will never be "enough" for liberals. New programs and more spending are always urgently demanded. Despite amassing a national debt that now exceeds the gross domestic product because of such spending, real cuts or elimination of programs are never seriously proposed. Even the idea of a modest cut in the rate of spending growth in this or that program is reflexively denounced as mean-spirited and cruel.
Buried in such logic are, of course, some absurd notions, including that government, however much it is doing, must always do more, that everything it now does needs doing, and that whatever government does wouldn't get done if not for government doing it (raising the obvious question of how we not only survived but prospered for so long as a nation prior to the creation of such a large, activist state).
However, with The Pity Party, Voegeli goes beyond the case laid out in Never Enough to more fully explore the psychological compulsions that have driven the left (and therefore the rest of us) into this illogical and fiscally ruinous position.
Within this context, the most significant change in American politics over the past century has been a fundamental shift in the perceived purposes of government itself.
Prior to the Great Depression, the expectations for government were relatively modest--provide security and order in order to protect life, liberty and property. This was a conception consistent with the classical liberal beliefs of John Locke, Adam Smith, and the American founders, and summed up by such pithy phrases as "government shouldn't do for people what people can do for themselves" and the "government that governs best governs least."
All of this changed, of course, with the rise of Progressivism at the beginning of the 20th Century and the later translation of progressive proposals into public policy in the form of Franklin Roosevelt's social-democratic New Deal. The purpose of government thus changed--from providing order and security to helping the citizenry under the guise of compassion.
Compassion thus became the primary political virtue, a status which has only been strengthened since then. Government spending now accounts for a share of gross domestic product (41.6 percent, according to the latest figures from the Heritage Foundation's 2014 Index of Economic Freedom) that would have been inconceivable in the 19th Century, or even for FDR's New Dealers in the 1930s. And at the heart of it all is a massive welfare state that demonstrates compassion by taking money from some people and giving it to others.
As Voegeli makes clear, this continual demand for ever more programs and redistribution of ever more resources is actually driven less by a genuine desire to help the afflicted than by the desire to be seen helping the afflicted. It's largely about making liberals feel good about themselves.
Thus, the primary force driving the welfare state Leviathan is the liberal desire to be seen as more virtuous than others, especially those greedy, callous conservatives, a factor which also explains the otherwise inexplicable liberal lack of interest in whether the programs they endorse truly help the intended beneficiaries. As Voegeli notes, it doesn't really matter if such programs work so long as liberals can feel good and be seen as morally superior by supporting them. Perceived intentions are what count, not results.
To this one might also add that the left "does well by doing good" because doing good has also turned out to be a highly successful electoral strategy; perhaps even an unbeatable one. When you give people a check, they tend to vote for you. And when you give bigger checks to more people over time, you eventually acquire an electoral juggernaut. At least until the money runs out.
The incentive structures built into the politics of compassion thus inexorably drive us toward a limitless welfare state, in which an ever-larger percentage of the population becomes dependent upon a government check for sustenance. And the Marxist slogan, "from each according to their ability to each according to his need," becomes our own.
As such, perhaps the most interesting aspect of Voegeli's dissection of the welfare-state mentality is the inherent suggestion that, even if it could be conclusively demonstrated that many of our social programs have actually worsened the plight of the poor, those same liberals who supposedly care so much more than the rest of us wouldn't care. Things would continue on in the same fashion because the primary goal all along has been less to help others than to help the liberal self-image.
A combination of moral preening and vote-buying therefore makes it increasingly difficult for us to reverse course, despite that $18 trillion national debt. A more effective formula for impoverishing a nation on the installment plan is difficult to conceive.
Future generations are going to end up paying a fearsome price for liberal compassion.
------------v------------
Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.
Editorial on 01/12/2015