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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."

Was John Rawls a Conservative?

Note: Last fall, in the midst of the debate over S-CHIP, I wrote an op-ed article arguing that the Bush Administration had adopted the simplest and most powerful idea in John Rawls's A Theory of Justice -- the "difference principle." For years, Rawls has been the bete noire of conservatives everywhere for his intellectual justification for the welfare state. Today I read an article in The American Conservative making a similar argument. Seems to me, the cons have an ally in the late liberal philosopher. Below is my op-ed. What do you think?

By Charles Euchner

The partisan battle over children’s health care masks the most important element in the debate. George W. Bush is a closet Rawlsian.

John Rawls was the Harvard philosopher whose 1971 study A Theory of Justice has been a touchstone for a generation of liberals. Rawls argues for a robust role for the state in establishing fair opportunities in unequal societies.

At the heart of his theory is the “difference principle,” which holds that policies that increase inequality—tax policy, government benefits, wage structures, educational opportunities—can only be justified if the poorer members of society benefit. What sounds like a logical mistake—how can poor people be better off when inequality increases?—actually offers a dynamic way to think about complex societies.

“[T]he higher expectations of those better situated are just,” Rawls writes, “if and only if they work as part of a scheme which improves the expectations of the least advantaged members of society.”

If the government wants to grant industrial or agricultural subsidies—which make their way into the pockets of mostly privileged people—there must be some assurance that those subsidies benefit the less well-off members of society too. Same goes for tax breaks, research funds or universities, social security, and health care.

That’s where President Bush enters the picture.

As part of his plan to reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), President Bush wants higher participation rates for poor and working-class families before expanding the program to middle-class families. Specifically, Bush wants to see an enrollment rate of 95 percent of all eligible participants—children in families with incomes 200 percent or less of the federal poverty level, which is about $20,000—before expanding the program to others.

S-CHIP represents the Clinton Administration’s second-best approach to health care, after the failed effort to provide universal care. In the span of a decade, the program has provided health care for three-quarters of all eligible children get care under the program. When kids get the health care they need, they do better in school and other activities.

The states enjoy wide latitude in running the program. Some have increased the eligibility standard to families living at 250 percent and even 350 percent of the poverty line. Other states have offered coverage to expectant mothers and the parents of eligible children.

Democrats in Congress have sought to expand the program ever more. President Bush has responded that such expansions change S-CHIP from an entitlement for families who cannot afford health care into a general entitlement. That is dangerous for two reasons. First, it would explode the federal government’s commitment for health care at a time when it’s already out of control.

Second, a super-sized S-CHIP program would encourage employers to back out providing insurance for workers.

But there’s a bigger problem still. When social programs cater to the middle class, the poor often get left behind. Social Security and Medicare provide important benefits to middle-income Americans, but do less for poor people. Welfare and Medicaid have always borne the brunt of budget cuts.

Why not tie middle-class benefits to greater participation among the poor? For his justification, the President could do worse than turn to Rawls.

“Consider any two representative men A and B, and let B be the one who is less favored,” Rawls writes. “B can accept A’s being better off since A’s advantages have been gained in ways that improve B’s prospects. If A were not allowed his better position, B would be even worse off than he is.”

The difference principle offers a more realistic and dynamic approach to justice than standard schemes of redistribution. Rather than ranting against inequality, Rawls uses inequality to help everyone. He understands that social policy that ignores this reality is worthless—or even destructive, since it fosters resentment, envy, and a zero-sum approach to common concerns.

Communitarian liberals and compassionate conservatives often talk about the need to connect the interests of different groups in society. A Rawlsian approach to entitlements like S-CHIP—now carrying the endorsement of President Bush—offers a useful way to do just that.

The difference principle can be applied to other areas of public policy as well. We might offer more programs for gifted math and science education, as well as better opportunities for disadvantaged children. We might devise strategies to increase housing supply, as long as inexpensive housing is part of the mix.

The irony of President Bush’s Rawlsian turn is that conservative intellectuals abhor John Rawls. The National Review chided Rawls for his “childlike innocence about the ways of the world.” Robert Nozick, a libertarian colleague at Harvard, wrote his own masterpiece, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, partly to challenge Rawls.

Rawls, though an academic liberal to the nth degree, was determined to balance the needs of individual and community, equality and efficiency, dynamism and security. The difference principle provides his mechanism. It’s imperfect, to be sure, but it’s creative and practical.

At the time of Rawls’s death in 2002, there were 5,000 books and articles about his work. As theorists nit-picked the details of his work, Rawls backed off some aspects of the difference principle. But the idea remains important. Maybe it doesn’t stand up to the academic’s angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin analysis. But it’s a good guideline for fostering fairness.

Ultimately, politics involves contests over two kinds of issues—principles and details. Democrats concerned about poverty should embrace President Bush’s endorsement of Rawlsian justice. Then they can bargain about the details of health care and other policies.