We’ve just been through a revolution of a kind. Tired of the same old government whose members are more concerned with fighting among themselves than working for us, the citizens, a substantial portion of the voters has elected a unique kind of president. Now we’re all watching closely to see what he will do for us.
I’m as anxious as you, but I want to suggest what may seem like another revolution: that we try to trust government again. Not the dysfunctional government we have in Washington now, but Government with a capital “g,” that instrument that was created by and for us – We the People.
We Americans, and especially we Granite Staters, pride ourselves on being rugged individualists with a penchant toward libertarianism. It dates back to Colonial times when parliament tried to impose a tea tax on us to support the British East India Company’s monopoly on tea sales to the Colonies.
However, even at the writing of the Constitution the Founding Fathers realized Government was necessary to maintain the rights and freedom of citizens and to restrain groups of individuals from exploiting one another. They realized the role of Government is to ensure that all people have a chance at prosperity and fulfillment.
And for much of our history our government has performed this function. Beginning in the 19th century, the Interstate Commerce Act was the first to try to curb monopoly practices by railroads. The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 followed by the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 turned the government’s attention to curbing monopolistic practices by business. These acts leveled the playing fields so farmers and small businesses had a chance to compete without crippling disadvantage.
FDR’s social legislation – the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration to create jobs, the National Industrial Recovery Act to establish fair-competition codes, the Federal Housing Administration to insure home loans, the Social Security Act to establish unemployment compensation and old age insurance – all of these were for We the People. Minimum wage was set, albeit at 40 cents an hour. Later, President Eisenhower authorized the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 to construct the Interstate Highway System for safer, cheaper transportation. And in 1966 the national social insurance program called Medicare was established.
These are government actions we may or may not be aware of in our lives today, but there are many others we take for granted, though again their source may not be staring us in the face. The government has funded the lion’s share of research and development that goes into technologies we use and rely on every day: GPS, lithium-ion batteries, cellular technology, touch-screen and LED displays, Internet connectivity – technologies that people like Steve Jobs and his team have turned into iPhones. How could we conduct our lives without them? How could they have been developed without government-funded R&D?
In the past our government has funded Pell Grants for education, money toward roads, bridges, high-speed rail to make transportation safer and cheaper. But in recent years these funds have not been available to We the People because of the dysfunction that’s been strangling our government. What we have in Washington these days is not Government with a capital “g.” It’s partisan special interest taken to a monopoly degree. Of course we’re mad! But, please, in your understandable revolt, don’t disengage. Don’t tune out and drop out. We need one another more than ever despite what we may see as irreconcilable differences on certain positions.
What we have in common is bigger than what divides us. We want the monopoly of partisan special interest to stop. We want Government to be able to work for us again. We are told we are a wealthy nation, so let us unite to insist Government be permitted to let that wealth flow again – to R&D, to infrastructure, to education, to a minimum wage with dignity, to small businesses, to affordable health insurance, to good jobs for all.
(Katharine Gregg lives in Mason.)