SOCIAL PROGRAMS AND TAXES

The metaphor of the Nation As Family is part of the conceptual systems of both liberals and conservatives. In that metaphor, the government is a parent. But what kind of parent, according to what model of parenting?

Liberals apply the Nurturant Parent model. Consequently, it is natural for liberals to see the federal government as a strong nurturant parent, responsible for making sure that the basic needs of its citizens are met: food, shelter, education, health care, and opportunities for self-development. A government that lets many of its citizens go hungry, homeless, uneducated, or sick while the majority of its citizens have more, often much more, than these basic needs met is an immoral, irresponsible government. And citizens who are not willing to support such governmental obligations are immoral, irresponsible citizens.

Social programs are also seen by liberals as ways for the government to simultaneously help people (Category 2) and strengthen itself (Category 5). From this perspective, social programs are conceptualized metaphorically as investments – investments in presently unproductive citizens (those who do not pay taxes and who use up government funds) to make them into productive citizens (those who do pay taxes and can contribute to society). The measure of a social program is whether it produces a return on the investment. A social program that doesn't work is a bad investment. The question is not whether to have social programs, but rather which ones work well, that is, which ones produce dividends in the long run.

Liberals also conceptualize social programs as investments in communities. By putting money into the hands of people who don't have it, the government creates jobs in poor communities. People with those jobs spend money, which creates more jobs, and so on. If this is done wisely, there can be a multiplier effect and the result can be a net creation of wealth for the society as a whole. Here the metaphor is one of investing in communities, instead of, or in addition to, investing in individuals. This too is in moral action Category 5.

Liberals also see many social programs as functioning to promote fairness (Category 1). They see certain people and groups of people as "disadvantaged." For historical, social, or health reasons, which are not faults of their own, such people have been prevented from being able to compete fairly in pursuit of their self-interest. Racism, sexism, poverty, the lack of education, and homophobia are seen not only as barriers to empathy and nurturance, but also as barriers to the free pursuit of self-interest and self-development by disadvantaged individuals and groups. For liberals, it is the job of the government to maintain fairness, in the service of both moral self-interest and self-development. Hence it is the job of the government to "level the playing field" for the disadvantaged. This is why liberals support affirmative action.

Conservatives, on the other hand, apply the Strict Father model of parenting to the Nation As Family metaphor. To them, social programs amount to coddling people – spoiling them. Instead of having to learn to fend for themselves, people can depend on the public dole. This makes them morally weak, removing the need for self-discipline and willpower. Such moral weakness is a form of immorality. And so, conservatives see social programs as immoral, affirmative action included.

The myth of America as the Land of Opportunity reinforces this. If anyone, no matter how poor, can discipline himself to climb the ladder of opportunity, then those that don't do so have only themselves to blame. The Ladder-of-Opportunity metaphor is an interesting one. It implies that the ladder is there, that everyone has access to it, and that the only thing involved in becoming successful and being able to take care of oneself is putting out the energy to climb it. If you are not successful, then it is your own fault. You just haven't tried hard enough.

From this perspective, a morally justifiable social program might be something like disaster relief to help self-disciplined and generally self-reliant people get back on their feet after a flood or fire or earthquake. There is a world of difference, from the conservative perspective, between having government help a victim of a natural disaster (who does not have himself to blame for his misfortune) and having government help someone who is merely poor (who, in this land of opportunity, has only himself to blame for his poverty).

In addition, there is a related consideration that militates against social programs in the conservative worldview, what we have called the Morality of Reward and Punishment.

Strict Father morality assumes that it is human nature to be motivated by rewards and deterred by punishments. If people were not rewarded for being moral and punished for being immoral, there would be no morality. If people were not rewarded for being self-disciplined and punished for being slothful, there would be no self-discipline and society would break down. Therefore, any social or political system in which people get things they don't earn, or are rewarded for lack of self-discipline or for immoral behavior, is simply an immoral system. Conservatives see the very existence of social programs as unnatural and immoral in this way.

It is for this reason that any form of socialism or communism is seen by conservatives as immoral, and why, for many conservatives, any social program is seen as a form of socialism or communism. Here is a particularly clear statement of the position, explicitly linking political conservatism with childrearing according to the Strict Father model. The statement is by James Dobson, from the updated version of his classic book, The New Dare to Discipline (References, B3, Dobson 1992). Dobson is the country's most influential spokesman for conservative family values among conservative Christians. The quotation comes from a section on the importance of behaviorist principles in raising children.

Our entire society is established on a system of reinforcement, yet we don't want to apply it where it is needed most: with young children.... Rewards make responsible efforts worthwhile. That's the way the adult world works.

The main reason for the overwhelming success of capitalism is that hard work and personal discipline is rewarded in many ways. The great weakness of socialism is the absence of reinforcement; why should a man struggle to achieve if there is nothing special to be gained? This is, I believe, the primary reason why communism failed miserably in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. There was no incentive for creation and "sweat equity."...

Communism and Socialism are destroyers of motivation, because they penalize creativity and effort. The law of reinforcement is violated by the very nature of those economic systems. Free enterprise works hand in hand with human nature.

Some parents implement a miniature system of socialism at home. Their children's wants and desires are provided by the "State," and are not linked to diligence or discipline in any way. However, they expect little Juan or Rene to carry responsibility simply because it is noble of them to do so. They want them to learn and sweat for the sheer joy of personal accomplishment. Most of them are not going to buy it (Dobson, The New Dare to Discipline, pp. 88-89).

Here Dobson makes explicit the link between Strict Father family values and conservative politics. Social programs subvert human nature. They violate the very thing that, in Strict Father morality, makes morality possible: rewards for discipline and punishment for lack of it. Rush Limbaugh belittled the very idea of national health care as "Rodhamized medicine," after superdemon Hillary Rodham Clinton (References, CI, Limbaugh 1993, p. 171). When he did so, conservatives in his audience understood that he was invoking this view of the immorality of social programs in general.

As we shall see below, the principle of the Morality of Reward and Punishment plays an enormous role in the conservative worldview. The reward side rules out any government distribution of wealth or benefits that is not based on free market competition, and it makes the right to the disposition of private property absolute; the punishment side focuses the criminal justice system on retribution. That is a lot for one principle to do, and as we shall see it is central to a great many conservative stands, aside from social programs.

We can now see clearly why liberal arguments for social programs can make no sense at all to conservatives, whether they are arguments on the basis of compassion, fairness, wise investment, financial responsibility, or outright self-interest. The issue for conservatives is a moral issue touching the very heart of conservative morality, a morality where a liberal's compassion and fairness are neither compassionate nor fair. Even financial arguments won't carry the day. The issue isn't about money, it's about morality.

President Clinton's Americorps program is a very clear example. It is a double social program: a college loan program and a program to help local communities. The Americorps program allows students to pay off their college loans by working for social programs in local communities.

Since the social programs are immoral for conservatives, so is any program that uses government money to pay for workers in such programs. The government's offer to pay off college loans in this way provides a financial incentive for students to work in such programs. Conservatives see such an incentive as a form of pressure placed by the government on students to engage in an immoral activity. Moreover, paying the students constitutes a second social program, which is doubly immoral.

From a conservative perspective, the students are being coddled through the government's provision of a ready-made way for them to pay off their loans; the disciplined conservative alternative would be for students to have to find jobs for themselves in the workplace to pay off loans. Since the students are not seen as doing honest, productive work in the free market when they work in a social program, they are not seen as earning their loan payoff. And since not every citizen can get loans paid off in this way, getting such a loan at low rates is a form of payment for something unearned. Even worse, from the conservative viewpoint, Americorps gives both students and people in communities the idea that the government and individuals should be engaging in such activities – that communities should have people paid by the government to come in and help and that helping in such communities is an acceptable form of national service. Americorps, for conservatives, is immoral through and through.

Liberals, of course, have a different moral perspective on social programs. Nurturant Parent morality, applied to politics, makes social programs moral, as we saw above. A double social program – at the same time helping communities and the students who work in them – is doubly moral. And the idea that helping such communities is an excellent form of national service is another plus, which makes it triply moral. That is why it is one of President Clinton's favorite programs.

What we have here are major differences in moral worldview. They are not just differences of opinion about effective public administration. The differences are not about efficiency, or practicality, or economics, and they cannot be settled by rational argument about effective administration. They are ethical opinions about what makes good people and a good nation.

What is at issue in the debate over social programs is the very notion of what morality is and how morality applies to government. There is no morally neutral concept of government. The question is which morality will be politically dominant.

From this perspective, we can see why certain conservative proposals have puzzled liberals. Take, for example, Newt Gingrich's proposal that AFDC children be taken away from their mothers and placed in orphanages. How did this support family values? Or Nancy Reagan's alternative to programs to combat teen pregnancy and AIDS by the distribution of condoms to high school students and clean needles to impoverished drug addicts. The First Lady's proposed solution was not to have such programs, but instead to tell the high school students and drug addicts to "Just say no." Both the Gingrich and Reagan proposals seemed idiotic to liberals, but made sense to conservatives. The reasons should now be relatively obvious.

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