BrianGarst.com

It is accepted conventional wisdom that the American polity is contentiously divided along partisan lines in a way unlike ever before. While the veracity of this statement is historically debatable, it cannot be doubted that Americans are strongly entrenched along partisan lines. Barack Obama has sold himself as the candidate best suited to bridge this divide.

Embedded in Obama’s soaring rhetoric is a bold collectivist agenda. He sees a future where we, through government action, “provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless.” He mocks those who want to reduce the size and scope of government – by allowing people to choose their own health care, their own schools and their own futures – as supporting “social Darwinism.” Obama proposes to implement these government programs in the name of social justice, but an understanding of democracy demonstrates that what we’ll actually see is a further erosion of social cohesion. He’d replace the Ownership Society with a Nanny Society.

Democracy is more inherently responsive to the preferences of citizens than any other form of government. This should not mask the fact that government, even when democratic, cannot come close to matching the ability of free markets to respond to the wide variety of preferences of ordinary people. Conversely, government action forces individuals into choices they do not want. Milton Friedman observed that, “the characteristic feature of action through explicitly political channels is that it tends to require or to enforce substantial conformity.”

Imagine two neighboring families of different backgrounds looking to school their children. Each family wants to ensure their children’s education does not conflict with their cultural and religious traditions. In a free market system these families can both find adequate education by placing their children in schools that meet their own standards. In the present system, however, government education has forced conformity, meaning that both of these families preferences cannot be simultaneously satisfied. The two families must place their children in the same school due to their geographic proximity, despite their expressed differences. If they wish to influence their children’s education, they must then do so through political channels. Thus, when these two families both lobby the local school board for conflicting educational goals they become, thanks to government, not just neighbors but political opponents.

Over the decades, as government has vastly expanded the scope of its involvement in private affairs, citizens have been forced into an ever growing number of these confrontational situations. With so much personally at stake in every governmental decisions, it is little wonder that many have taken an adversarial view of politics. Further expansion of government is clearly not the answer. If we want to restore social cohesion we must begin extracting government from the decisions that matter most to us. Barack Obama’s optimistic rhetoric, no matter how expertly delivered, cannot heal America so long as he is advocating for more of the collectivist action which has brought us here in the first place.

Barack Obama Election '08