Don't Debase Public Service

January 2002 -- The fastest way to undermine a precious value is to dilute it with lesser materials. Gold coins are cheapened by the addition of brass. High art is corrupted by pop infusions. And the strenuous ideal of public service is adulterated by the inclusion of mere volunteerism.

That is not to say brass, popular art, and volunteer work are bad things. On the contrary, considered in themselves, they are good things. But just as the best may sometimes be the enemy of the good, so the good may be the enemy of the best. And that is just what is happening today in America's public discussions about public service.

Volunteerism as National Service

Last November 6, Senators John McCain and Evan Bayh took to the Op-Ed page of the New York Times to advocate expanded programs of national service, "from promoting literacy to caring for the elderly" ("A New Start for National Service"). To anyone who remembers Senator McCain's presidential bid, this was all too familiar. After McCain's stunning upset in the New Hampshire primary, the "national greatness" conservatives at the Weekly Standard ran Noemie Emery's burbling article about McCain under the title "Ask Not. . . ." The obvious reference was to John F. Kennedy's line: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." Overlooked in both Emery's article and Kennedy's slogan was the fact that America's Declaration of Independence is, at its core, a statement of "what your country can do for you." It is an assertion that governments are instituted for no other purpose than to secure their citizens' rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Two days later, following McCain's lead, President Bush proposed his own version of a "national service" plan. The New York Times's headline read "Bush Seeks New Volunteer Force for Civil Defense." But most of the president's text had little to do with civil defense. Thus, the president began to outline the ways in which people could help their country by saying: "You can serve your country by tutoring or mentoring a child, comforting the afflicted, housing those in need of shelter and a home." None of those could plausibly be classified as civil defense. They belong to the realm that is often called "civil society."

Creating a Civil Society

Now, it is not to condemn civil society to say that it is distinct from civil defense. It is only to insist that our national leaders treat the two things differently. With regard to civil society, our statesmen should be saying: "Washington cannot afford to focus on more than its central business, and that is prosecuting the war against terrorism. What we need is leaner, meaner government. Therefore, we are asking that you, our country's civilians, take back from government the tasks extraneous to providing national security. We are asking that you create a civil society of for-profit and non-profit organizations that will deal with the many problems lying outside national security. If you will expend your time and effort on such undertakings and institutions, we will cut taxes so that you can support them."

The benefits of such a program would be two-fold. First, and most important, it would focus Washington's efforts, and it would focus them on just those tasks for which government is well suited: the provision of security and justice. Secondly, it would establish, between the state and the isolated individual, a bulwark of wholly private institutions—educational, medical, cultural, recreational, charitable, etc.—so that people could live without requiring government programs, assistance, or caretakers. If we are to reap these benefits, however, the one thing government absolutely must not do is meddle with civil society through groups like Americorps and Seniorcorps. Government must simply get out of the way of civil society, lift its regulations on private institutions, and cut taxes to the point that people have the wherewithal to finance civil society.

What happens when government remains involved with civil society was demonstrated soon after the president's address. He and his wife appeared in full-page newspaper ads, urging Americans to log on to  www.nationalservice.org  in order to learn what groups and organizations could use their services. One of those listed was the Environmental Defense Action Network. According to its home page, this is a project of the Environmental Defense Fund that seeks "progressive" organizations as partners and then allows these partners to mobilize their "activists" with a single mouse-click, helping them send pre-written e-mail messages to policymakers. In short, President Bush's plans for "civil defense" have given an environmentalist lobby invaluable publicity by providing it with the opportunity to pitch its efforts to many Americans whose only desire was to join their country's fight for law and order.

Of course, many commentators will see no paradox in this. Indeed, they may well believe that the president's call for civil defense should direct citizens to a network of progressivist environmental lobbies. For example, on December 9, New York Timescolumnist Thomas L. Friedman wrote the following in an article outlining what he would like to see on the homefront of the war: "Imagine if tomorrow President Bush asked all Americans to turn down their home thermostats to 65 degrees so America would not be so much a hostage to Middle East oil?" The title of the column was "Ask Not What. . . ." Philosophically, that allusion to Kennedy's inaugural address was apt. But an even more appropriate allusion would have recalled the hapless Jimmy Carter making a fireside chat in a cardigan sweater.

Civil Defense as Public Service

To say this much is not the end of the story, however, although libertarians sometimes speak as if it were. We must do more than fight government encroachment on civil society, and President Bush pointed the way when he spoke of organizations through which civilians could genuinely make the country safer. He briefly mentioned "a new modern civil defense service," as well as activities such as Neighborhood Watch. These suggestions are all to the good. Civil society should not be turned into a type of public service, but that does not mean there is no place for public service in a free society.

There is a place for it, and this is a part of our Revolutionary heritage—often called republicanism—that libertarians have too long ignored. Part of the reason may be that contemporary historians have tried to portray the republicanism of the American Revolutionaries as a form of altruism. But that was not the case, as historian Jerome Huyler demonstrated in his May 1999 interview with Navigator, "How Lockean Was the American Revolution?" For the Revolutionaries, public service stood to Lockean freedom as a means to an end. Citizenship was an activity; liberty was the goal.

Precisely what public-service activities might best be incorporated into the lives of free citizens today is a question for political science generally and for each community individually. In Philadelphia, where a Town Watch group operates night-time foot patrols, hundreds of people have called to join. Acton, Massachusetts, a suburban community ill-suited to foot patrols, has developed a network of people who are trained to take responsibility for watching over their neighborhood and reporting anything suspicious. (In Northern Ireland, many lives were saved by citizens' reports of suspicious packages.) In Pascoe County, Florida, neighborhood watch groups have compiled telephone and e-mail notification chains that would be employed to reach many people quickly in case of a chemical or biological hazard, whether terrorist or accidental.

Libertarians should be on guard to ensure that the civil-defense programs developed are related to proper government activities. But they should also be vocal in reminding the country that voluntary public service on behalf of security and justice is a major part of the legacy we inherit from our Founding Fathers' love of freedom.

This article was originally published in the January 2002 issue of Navigator magazine, The Atlas Society precursor to The New Individualist.

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