ortonA decent society can’t promise that nobody will suffer. It decides which forms of preventable suffering it will no longer accept.
Elections are nearing. Sides are being taken, battle lines drawn, and the usual fearmongering is warming up. We are told to fear socialism, capitalism, nationalism, globalism and every other ism available. We are told to fear the other side, fear the other people and fear losing quickly what we may already be losing slowly.
Perhaps we could step away from the isms long enough to ask a more useful question: What are the minimum conditions Americans should reasonably expect from a decent society?
Our Declaration of Independence expresses the American ideal of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It does not guarantee happiness, wealth or equal outcomes. It promises the liberty to pursue them.
As science advanced and the centuries passed, government became increasingly capable of helping people make that pursuit meaningful. Public education created opportunity. Public health prevented disease and extended lives. Police and courts provided security. Roads, sanitation and infrastructure allowed commerce to flourish. Capitalism supplied the innovation, investment and productive energy that built much of modern America.
But capitalism has limits.
Capitalism, without constraints, is simply the ism of capital. Money goes where it grows. A decent society asks that some of it go where it helps.
That doesn’t make capitalism evil. Capitalism is remarkably good at creating wealth. It is simply not, by itself, a moral system for deciding what happens to people who can’t produce wealth, inherit wealth or attract wealth.
Government can’t eliminate every form of human suffering: cancer, dementia, heartbreak, accidents, bad luck or human stupidity. And government has often proved itself fairly capable of creating a few problems of its own.
But a prosperous society can still decide that certain preventable conditions fall beneath the minimum standard it is willing to accept.
Of the suffering that actually is preventable, how much are we willing to tolerate as Americans?
Children should not be effectively condemned at birth to illiteracy, ignorance, hunger or the consequences of their parents’ poverty.
People should have reasonable access to basic preventive health care.
People should be reasonably safe from crime in their own neighborhoods.
Old people should not be abandoned merely because they are confused, poor or unable to care for themselves.
Citizens should not be sent into unnecessary wars, and war should not casually be brought onto our home soil.
Everyone should have some genuine minimum opportunity to participate in society.
This much seems desirable, reasonable and reachable.
These are thresholds beneath which a rich and successful nation should be embarrassed to allow its citizens to fall.
None of this is free, and none of it is simple. Every dollar spent building a floor is a dollar somebody argues could have been used to raise the ceiling instead. Every program meant to catch people falling has, sooner or later, caught some who didn’t need catching. That’s not an argument against the floor. It’s the price of having one.
Personal responsibility must remain part of the bargain. We can’t protect people from every foolish decision, nor can government become the permanent substitute for family, work, judgment and individual effort.
But those risks don’t excuse us from deciding what minimum conditions a decent society should ensure.
We can’t solve every problem because humans are remarkably problem-prone. But we can at least address the conditions we agree we simply shouldn’t tolerate.
We can tie this back to a spiritual truism that nearly everyone accepts as baseline morality: the Golden Rule. Treat others as you would have them treat you.
The Golden Rule requires more than sympathy. It asks us to change places.
If I were born into that impoverished family, what minimum opportunity would I want?
If I were 85, confused and unable to care for myself, how would I want society to treat me?
Whatever neighborhood I lived in, what level of crime would I consider acceptable?
If my child could be protected from a preventable disease, what would I expect?
If my son were being sent to war, how necessary would I demand that war be?
Suddenly, the Golden Rule stops being something embroidered on a church wall and becomes a rather demanding piece of public policy.
Another spiritual truism helps guide us. James 2 tells us that faith without works is dead. In civic terms, values without consequences are not really values. They are just marketing.
America doesn’t need to become a cradle-to-grave welfare state to establish a decent social floor.
We need only gut-check ourselves about just how much preventable suffering we are willing to tolerate among our fellow Americans in a country this rich, successful and grossly unequal.
A decent society cannot promise that nobody will suffer. It decides which forms of preventable suffering it will no longer accept.
Gary Horton is chairman of the College of the Canyons Foundation board. His “Full Speed to Port!” has appeared in The Signal since 2006. The opinions expressed in his column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Signal or its editorial board.
