In
his speech on April 13, 2011 on reducing the U.S. Government deficits,
President Obama identified two strains that had run through the country’s
political history and thus informed the American political culture. “More than
citizens of any other country” he said, “we are rugged individualists, a
self-reliant people with a healthy skepticism of too much government. But there
has always been another thread running throughout our history – a belief that
we are all connected; and that there are some things we can only do together,
as a nation. We believe, in the words of our first Republican president,
Abraham Lincoln, that through government, we should do together what we cannot
do as well for ourselves.”[1] These
two strains can be identified as individualism and collectivism, respectively.
I contend that collectivism enables both
individual and collective security. Individual security is oriented to a
person’s survival and collective security is exemplified by national defense.
In
his speech, the president explicitly placed individual security within the
collectivist strain. “Part of this American belief that we are all connected
also expresses itself in a conviction that each one of us deserves some basic
measure of security. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we
live our lives, hard times or bad luck, a crippling illness or a layoff, may
strike any one of us. ‘There but for the grace of God go I,’ we say
to ourselves, and so we contribute to programs like Medicare and Social
Security, which guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income after a
lifetime of hard work; unemployment insurance, which protects us against
unexpected job loss; and Medicaid, which provides care for millions of seniors
in nursing homes, poor children, and those with disabilities.” That
is, limits to rugged individualism exist, whether in the state of nature or in
an interdependent economy, and collectivized programs can bridge the gap on an
individualized basis such that individuals can continue to enjoy liberty. The
individualist/collectivist dichotomy is thus not so clearly dichotomist.
According
to Obama, societal connectedness with others, something limited to the family
or clan in the state of nature, implies the societal duty of individuals with
economic surplus to contribute to the survival needs of other individuals,
especially those who cannot fend for themselves. Individuals pay taxes and
individuals receive sustenance benefits—the collectivism seems in actuality to
mean systemic.
I
have noticed that rich Europeans tend to acknowledge both that they too may
someday be in need of such benefits, and that, under the principle of
solidarity, a duty exists to pay higher taxes than otherwise so other people
may survive rather than perish. As the American president pointed out in his
speech, hard luck can befall each of us; no one is immune from calamity and
ruin. Europeans seem to get this; American’s don’t.
Europeans
also seem to recognize a basic psychological ease of mind exists in knowing
that even in the worst-case scenario, a safety net exists. Even if a rich
or middle-income American never needs to draw on Social Security and Medicare
in retirement, whether due to age or disability/illness, the psychological
security afforded by this recognition through life is surely worth something to the individual. Such a person (i.e.,
with economic surplus year to year) can justify on self-interest alone paying
more in taxes to feel even this subtle peace-of-mind (i.e, individual security)
through life. In other words, the narrow breed of self-interest (i.e.,
selfishness) that exists in American culture as a common trait among
individuals is not even in the individual’s own interest. Such individualism is
thus faulty.
I
have not come across many rich Americans who recognize that they too may need
such services (ignoring the stock market crashes of 1873, 1929 and others);
such people thus view sustenance-oriented taxes as paying for lazy people to
play or do drugs. Should such people therefore die? As disgusted as I am with
the American inner-city “ghetto” mentality that potential employers justifiably
eschew, I believe that to say people with such entrenched mentalities should
therefore die for want of sustenance violates human rights, which are not
conditional. Too many Americans may be guilty of an entrenched selfishness
whose greed knows no bounds even at high levels of wealth. The selfishness that
sees narrowly only that earning or amassing more wealth is possible at any
level is utterly blind to the foundational peace of mind that comes with having
confidence that a safety net even for oneself exists.
Together,
callousness toward others less fortunate and selfishness concerning wealth are,
I submit, just as ugly as a “fuck society, the rules don’t apply to me” ghetto
mentality. A bad odor surrounds both even if some noses are immune to their own
smell. In contrast, imagine a society in which the fear stemming from a
recognition that survival itself is conditional even out of the state of
nature, in “advanced” societies, is absent. The psychological effects even from
the removal of such a subtle, subterranean fear, can be significant. My dad
used to refer to “quality of life” as being an important attribute of reaching
an old age. Yet the importance of obviating a sustenance-conditional fear in a
person’s quality of life even when the
quality is otherwise good tends to be missed by most Americans in their
prime. The Titanic can’t sink!
