Crisis of Responsibility

by David L. Bahnsen

  There is also the underlying fact that a virtuous society picking up the load for the welfare state requires generous, charitable giving. But beyond that reality, I suggest that your commitment to supporting the churches, schools, charities, and humanitarian organizations you believe in produces an unquantifiable satisfaction and reward. I do not mean mere appeasement of guilt, nor am I describing anything like karma. I am addressing a reality of human nature—when we faithfully and sacrificially give, the act itself fills a priceless reservoir of joy.

  A responsible society is a charitable society. And a charitable society begins with each person giving according to his or her means.

  Is there more you can do personally to help resolve our crisis of responsibility? Of course. Overcoming the cultural crisis will also require a cultural response (the subject of the next and final chapter), but responsibility begins in our homes. My intent with this list is to get you thinking about what you can do to better insulate your own family against the challenges we face. The stakes are so high—and the need so heavy—that we truly do need all hands on deck.

  Main Street has asked the elites in this populist uprising of late to quit acting like they have all the answers. By enacting the ten items I have listed in this chapter, Main Street will go a long way toward telling the elites, “We don’t need you after all. We’ve got this.”

  12

  THE CULTURAL REMEDY

  FOR MAIN STREET

  A Vision for a Free

  and Virtuous Society

  We do not need more material development, we need more spiritual development. We do not need more intellectual power, we need more moral power. We do not need more knowledge, we need more character. We do not need more government, we need more culture. We do not need more law, we need more religion. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen. It is on that side of life that it is desirable to put the emphasis at the present time. If that side be strengthened, the other side will take care of itself.

  –PRESIDENT CALVIN COOLIDGE

  Thomas Sowell’s masterful book Intellectuals and Society (2009) explored the topic of public intelligentsia. Sowell asked what fruits society has reaped from the intellectual class and how we became so obsessed with what this class says, especially when the demand for their opinions was almost entirely self-manufactured. As Sowell put it, “The role that they aspire to play in society at large can only be achieved by them to the extent that the rest of society accepts what they say uncritically and fails to examine their track record.”

  Sowell condemned a charlatan class of journalists, academics, and politicians who uncritically accepted the elite’s anointed vision for the world. The solution, says Sowell, is to not exempt public intellectuals from external validation tests. An arrogance in modern collectivism has led to the Left advocating for “surrogate decision making.” Because the elite’s vision of the anointed was transferred from intellectuals to outfits like the New York Times and various public teacher unions, those who would strip elites of their decision-making authority in society now face a much harder task (in other words, the leftist and elitist vision for society as permeated into the mainstream).50

  What Sowell could not have anticipated in 2009 was that by 2016—only seven years later—a global movement would arise to say enough to the elites and intellectuals responsible for so much flawed ideology and policy in public life. The charlatan class of journalists, academics, and politicians is as alive as ever, but it must now contend with a vigorous and even angry public resistance, dissatisfied with an increasing level of incompetence, unproductivity, and unfulfilled promises coming from the silos of the self-anointed.

  In the aftermath of the great recession, governmental gridlock, and secular below-trend economic growth, the tide of public sentiment has turned. Around the world—from Detroit to London, Chicago to Brussels, Middletown, Ohio, to Tokyo, Japan—skepticism, if not downright revolt, has metastasized. We have lost faith in the ability of society’s architects to provide for the public good, deliver on utopian promises, promote a safe society, and dispatch economic prosperity.

  For those like Sowell (and this author) who bemoan the influence of this allegedly enlightened class, this paradigm shift carries the potential of promise. There is great hope to be had in a public that rejects unproven or failed ideas. The cultural flow that allowed the elites to be unchallenged when delivering their harmful yet highly consequential worldview has begun to reverse. Thus, the present cultural dissatisfaction has the potential of being a constructive building block for a better tomorrow.

  If our society is to resist the arrogance, and even tyranny, of this “establishment” class, we must face our own crisis of responsibility head-on. The people appear ready to reject a top-down societal structure; but meanwhile, our preparation for assuming the bottom-up responsibilities of self-governance is wholly inadequate. We lack the social and cultural framework needed for the transfer of power from disinterested third-party elites to societal stakeholders with skin in the game. The seeds of discontent have been sown—rightly so. But assuming the mantle of moral leadership requires a moral readiness, an underlying sense of responsibility that is the nonnegotiable prerequisite for a free and virtuous society.

  At the heart of our responsibility crisis is an increasingly heated love affair with victimhood—we are addicted to blame. And all of us have lusted after it one way or another—conservatives and liberals, on the outside and the inside, rural America and cosmopolitan America. We have all found different bogeymen to blame for the things that dissatisfy us, but they are bogeymen nonetheless. The Left caricaturizes financial fat cats and corporate executives while the Right demonizes journalists and politicos. Kernels of truth turn to wholesale excuses for passivity, inactivity, and apathy. All too often, our society has fixated on what has been done to us, whether real or imagined, while losing a healthy and rugged fixation on self-reliance and actualization.

  We err when we delineate responsibility from morality. A sustainable culture of accountability requires a basic foundation of ethics. It inevitably demands social standards, norms, and values. Our present culture isn’t merely lazy; we are reaping what has been sown by moral relativism and ethical agnosticism. The vicious cycle caused by our cultural crisis of responsibility is a by-product of the deterioration of our cultural character.

  Hope Beyond the Blame

  All is not lost. Our rich cultural inheritance is formed from the greatest parts of the human spirit and divine providence. Re-moralization is possible. Individual responsibility deteriorated in one generation. Surely, it can be restored in one, as well. But it will not happen until we end the blame game.

  What I have attempted to do in this book is to correct the false narrative that every impediment to prosperity is caused by some unfair, undefined, uncontrollable external force.

  Globalization has created entirely new challenges, but it doesn’t excuse an inadequately dynamic labor force. The financial crisis revealed a horrific meatloaf of bad policy and bad actors, but it does not excuse an individual for refusing to keep personal financial commitments. Government policies and regulations have wreaked havoc on economic incentives, but they do not excuse a pitiful work ethic. China can manufacture products cheaper than many domestic companies and Mexico has added labor at the lower end of the wage scale. However, those facts does not excuse someone who refuses to develop new job skills or adjust to economic realities that offer both challenges and opportunities. Wall Street has often behaved recklessly, but that behavior does not justify a reckless Main Street. Automation and digital innovation create a daunting headwind for parts of the labor force, but that does not unlearn over one hundred years of lessons about “creative destruction” and innovation. Higher education has failed millions, but that does not mean it can disengage from society. Government has grown far too big, but that does not mean the people should
capitulate and become entirely dependent on the state.

  In each case, I have tried to demonstrate the prima facie validity of the alleged bogeyman, to acknowledge the real challenge at least, and any full-blown misbehavior at worst. And yet, with every threat to opportunity for every class of Americans, we consistently see a path forward to true prosperity and fulfillment—if we refuse to play the blame game and reassert responsibility.

  No one should think that I am offering policymakers and elites a pass by consciously and emphatically focusing on responsibility. Yet I suspect some will do so, if for no other reason than to dodge responsibility themselves. It is a dilemma as old as Adam in the garden—when your own culpability is exposed, simply cry, “What about other guy [or gal]?!” My pleas for overcoming a crisis of responsibility on Main Street should not be read as a vindication of institutions and elites.

  The crisis of responsibility is personal, it is individual, and it is bottom-up. And yet, it is also institutional, corporate, and top-down. The two are not binary or mutually exclusive. We need responsible decision making and leadership from the pillars of society. I have attempted to drive home the need for leadership on a number of issues:

  *To stop using housing policy to drive social aims

  *To create a financial underwriting policy that promotes “skin in the game”

  *To craft policies that drive labor market dynamism and invest resources into retraining, education, and reinvention

  *To add tax deductibility for skill development outside of one’s present job field

  *To completely overhaul the relationship between the state and crony corporate actors, whose corrupt peddling of influence has shredded faith in American business and commerce

  *To develop a system of school choice, utilizing both charter schools and tax credits, to empower parents and students to achieve their educational aims

  *To reinitiate assimilation as the driving force behind our immigration policy, so that American culture and patriotic pride are valued

  *To terminate the present business model of higher education and excessive student debt, and rethink a system of disengaged university chancellors, bureaucrats, and professors

  *To right-size government programs and budgets to promote fiscal sanity, solvency, and the dignity of the American people

  From legislators to bankers, corporate leaders to lobbyists, educators to policymakers, this book has offered no immunity to anyone. Nor have I merely lobbed complaints at the leadership class. I have offered a constructive set of policy reformulations. The challenge in a book very consciously designed to be an overview is that a detailed blueprint for all social maladies is simply not possible. I am neither arrogant nor naïve enough to suggest that the prescriptions I have proposed are comprehensive cures. But I do suggest that in the major categories of school choice, crony capitalism, labor market dynamism, and student debt reform, we have in these pages a highly effective launching pad for truly respecting and addressing the policy sources of populist rage without ignoring the elephant in the room.

  The burden of living a fulfilling life belongs on the individual. To do so effectively, we must eliminate impediments to individual responsibility. Crony capitalism and a discriminatory educational system enables actors to avoid responsibility and often facilitates their victimhood. A member of society who refuses to learn a new marketable job skill is a victim of his own laziness; but a member of society also becomes a victim when denied access to the doors of education or enterprise made available to other select groups. He or she ought not to embrace a victim mentality, but they should be viewed differently than those who create their own estranged circumstances. That is why our approach must be a both/and—dealing with shortcomings in policy and also addressing the overwhelming need for greater initiative, self-reliance, and responsibility.

  We do too much to feed angst without curing it. We can caricature successful corporate executives as “fat cats,” but that does nothing to heal the covetousness driving the caricaturing. We love the idea of “recalling” politicians who disappoint us, but that does nothing to restore responsibility to the voters who elected them to begin with. The need of the hour is to empower a renewed sense of responsibility, including facing the consequences of our actions. Our crisis of responsibility cannot be overcome if we are insulated by a perpetual safety net from the consequences of our actions. We reap what we sow, and so it should be.

  The Way Home

  I suppose it is true that my adult life consists of being on “the inside” of all the best offered by the global economy and information age. I work in the cosmopolitan field of investment finance and maintain offices in the affluent communities of Newport Beach, California, and New York City. I am married and have three children who attend private school. I live in a context of comfort and convenience, despite not growing up in anything of the sort. I could never write Hillbilly Elegy because my life has not been that life. But like J. D. Vance, I have an insatiable compassion and empathy for people who are not presently tasting a life of opportunity and prosperity. Not a bone in my body indicts anyone in this crisis of responsibility because of a cosmopolitan or moral superiority complex.

  My every waking passion desires that all of God’s creation find “the good life.” I believe in the aspirational society, and, more importantly, I believe in the extraordinary peace and contentment produced by earned success. Success is not limited to the educated, elite, or some “higher rung” of society. The free and virtuous society I long to see—the America I believe in—is exceptional because all may pursue their unalienable rights to life, liberty, and happiness with a shared creed of faith, values, and character.

  If I believed an opportunity society could flourish merely by demonizing the institutional forces and elites that have become persona non grata in our society, I would wholeheartedly join the chorus. And to the extent that constructive policy criticism is needed, it is my responsibility as a stakeholder in society to join the song. But because I genuinely love those most disenfranchised and disaffected in our society, I cannot pretend that all the pain is someone else’s fault. A culture of responsibility and scapegoatism cannot peacefully coexist. America is an ownership society, not only in our brand of economics, but in the very spirit with which we tackle adversity. Restoring our culture will not be easy, but no elitist or globalist enemy of any sort will ever be vanquished until we do.

  Individualism has always been a hallmark of American life, but it has fallen out of favor now. We need thriving cultural institutions now more than ever in the face of cultural shifts and economic realities, but they have been suffocated by ineffectual, top-down governance. It is not my contention that we must choose between the two and shift from enlightened collectivism to rugged individualism to find our savior. We do need to restore individual responsibility, but individualism becomes merely a buzzword when not partnered with mediating institutions.

  Replacing top-down statism and elitism will happen only when we restore strong families, communities, churches, schools, and civic organizations. Subsidiarity must be restored, not only as a political or philanthropic philosophy, but also as a vision for public life. That means individuals engaged in those arenas have a responsibility to value the work they do and the greater role they play in benefitting society at large. Fraternal organizations must become more than LinkedIn entries. They should become part of the fabric of how our communities live, how we serve one another, and how we think about public life. We are engaged in solving a “chicken or the egg” cultural problem, a cycle of irresponsibility that will take great resolve to overcome.

  As I have grown up, my understanding of organized society has changed—a lot. I no longer believe in the simplistic assertions of my youth—government is the problem, people who struggle are just lazy, and the successful make it on their own. I now have a deeper respect for the complexities and challenges of modern life. I di
d not grow up in material prosperity, nor receive an economic head start when my father died as I entered the twenty-first year of life. But I did receive something far more valuable than money—an upbringing rooted in character formation, personal responsibility, and the value of thinking and living well. No price could be placed on such an inheritance.

  As I think about the challenges of the twenty-first century in a macro sense, juxtaposed to my own life journey in a micro sense, I am overwhelmed by the burden to focus on this vision of a free and virtuous society. The crass and selfish materialism of our age has failed to meet the material needs of many. It has ignored the deeper pursuit of joy that comes only as the consequence of dignity and meaning. My prayer for all people is that they flourish as they find joy, which is, as C. S. Lewis wrote, “the serious business of heaven.”

  My friends, this human flourishing is the need of this and every age. Human flourishing is the reward we will enjoy for curing our cultural addiction to blame and overcoming our crisis of responsibility. Our aim and hope is flourishing that leads to joy—and truly takes us home.

  ENDNOTES

  Chapter 1

  1Strategas Research, “Real US GDP Growth Has Broken From Its Trend Since 2008” (chart).

  2Sean Trende, “Why Trump? Why Now?” Real Clear Politics, January 29, 2016, www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/01/29/why_trump_why_now_129486.html.

  3Ibid.

  4Jonah Goldberg, “The Mooch: White House Communications Mis-director,” National Review, July 28, 2017, http://www.nationalreview.com/g-file/449966/anthony-scaramuccis-communications-director-disaster-health-care-debacle.