Public and Private Realms in 21st Century America

By Charles Euchner

As Barack Obama claims the Democratic nation, his party risks a categorical error that could make winning the election -- and then governing the nation -- impossible. Republicans struggle with the same risk, but because of the intensity of their business and social-conservative factions, they slip less easily. But, heaven knows, the current president has slipped badly into these muddy waters.

The danger is not understanding the basic units of the nation. Politicians across the ideological spectrum -- Bush and Kennedy, Obama and McCain, Clinton and Clinton -- increasingly display only the vaguest notion of which issues belong in the public realm and which ones belong in the private realm.

The manifesto of this confusion was Mario Cuomo's keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 1984 -- until Barack Obama's 2004 oration, the most influential convention address of modern times. Repeatedly, Cuomo talks of America as a "family." Here are the most relevant excerpts:

On behalf of the great Empire State and the whole family of New York, let me thank you ...

In our family are gathered everyone from the abject poor of Essex County in New York, to the enlightened affluent of the gold coasts at both ends of the nation.

We believe we must be the family of America, recognizing that at the heart of the matter we are bound one to another, that the problems of a retired school teacher in Duluth are our problems ...

And we can deal with the deficit intelligently, by shared sacrifice, with all parts of the nation's family contributing ...

And I ask you now, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, for the good of all of us, for the love of this great nation, for the family of America, for the love of God ...

A stirring speech, but wrong in the fundamentals. The nation is not in any way a "family." It is a collection of states, cities and towns, families, businesses, private institutions, and nonprofit groups. And each of those units needs its own power and responsibility to contribute to the nation.

Communities work best when individuals and groups enjoy great autonomy in their private places -- in families and churches, fraternal associations and private schools, clubs and leagues -- and when the public realm exerts real authority in matters that need common action.

Here's how Hannah Arendt describes the political community in The Human Condition:

To live together in the world means essentially that a world of things is between those who have it in common, as a table is located between those who sit around it; the world, like every in-between, relates and separates men at the same time.

To Arendt, the table offers the common space that members of a community share -- the public realm. It's where people come to hash out to solutions that exceed the scope of their private concerns. For politics to work, though, people need to come to the table with strong identities. They need to contribute to a diverse set of perspectives.

To gain that strength, the private realm needs to be strong. People need the freedom to develop their ideals without needless outside pressure or restrictions. Consider one simple example. Private schools, then, should be free -- they should be encouraged -- to develop a distinctive set of ideals. If every private school is like the others, none of them can bring a special perspective to the table.

When I taught at Holy Cross, a pro-choice student group sought meeting space and funding from the college. The college president, John Brooks, said no. The students argued that the denial amounted to tyranny, a stifling of free expression, and so on. Although I am personally pro-choice -- I agree with Bill Clinton's adage that abortion should be "legal, safe, and rare" -- I endorsed the college's position. It seemed to me that a Jesuit institution should be allowed room to develop and express its values. The student group could easily meet without official endorsements -- in fact, it would undoubtedly be more creative if forced to find its own way.

Just as important as a private institution's freedom, I think, is the public realm's need for a diversity of thought. Public debate is strengthened when institutions like Holy Cross embrace distinct values.

When we recognize the sharp distinction between public and private, debates become a little clearer. Rather than wafting into the vague rhetoric of "we are all one national family," we recognize that people and groups have different needs. We are more likely to embrace choice -- in schools, religion, health care, retirement plans, jobs, cities and towns, environmental issues, private clubs, sports, family matters -- and less likely to accept, unthinkingly, the day's conventional wisdom.

That means, quite simply: We need to find a way to adopt clear but strong standards for things fundamental to us as a community. But when there is no one answer, we need to allow great leeway to those institutions below the federal government.

When one unit of government tries to do too much, it can only vaguely wave at real public policy. As Theodore Lowi has commented, legislation becomes an expression of sentiment -- Poverty is bad! Schools should perform better! -- than a hard mandate of "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots." The real work, then, gets passed on to the bureaucrats and interest groups and lawyers who battle over regulations and funding formulas and court orders.

That's no democracy. It is, as Hannah Arendt wrote, the "rule of no one."