The United States Congress is a body that consistently ranks with incredibly low approval ratings from the people that it serves. Lower, of course, than the much-ballyhooed low approval rating that George W. Bush gets. Yet in an amusing way, those same people who give Congress as an entire body a terrible mark usually approve of the job their local Congressman is doing.

This, of course, makes no sense. For some reason, the “Congress is rotten… but my guy’s okay” mentality pervades the American electorate. This leads to over-90% incumbency rates in both the House and the Senate, ridiculous in light of their own approval ratings.

A parallel can be drawn directly with the government’s actions. Just like the people disapprove of their government institutions as a whole yet favor their personal representatives, they disapprove of big government and wasteful spending… unless that’s being done on themselves. Of course, most government programs are spend somewhere on something, so typically, a wasteful program is still going to have more vocal support than myriad detractors.

This is a problem of collective action. Those who benefit from unnecessary government spending and programs are going to be far more concerned about losing it than those passive Americans who are worried about runaway spending but have many other issues on their plate.

It is the hesitance to action and desire to value those government programs that benefit the self that has gotten us to this big-government point in history. It is a “soft” tyranny, a “milder” despotism that now permeates out lives. This path that the American government has undertaken has been foretold by many people. The Anti-Federalists, writing in the time of constitutional ratification, feared the many powers that the new government would have. Thirty years into the American Experiment, Alexis de Tocqueville saw the dangers that American freedom would face.

“It would seem that if despotism were to be established among the democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and less mild; it would degrade men without tormenting them.”

The degradation of will and character, the submission to the all-powerful and ever-growing State would lead men, de Tocqueville said, into a state in which Americans simply would be unable, in any, way, shape, or form to live without the aid of government’s benevolence.

“The will of man is not shattered [by the state], but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

The utter inability to cut or even limit the growth of new government spending is becoming more and more disheartening by the day. The collective action problem prevents any but the most well-funded and active group of citizens from making any impact at all. Perhaps government has not yet truly become the shepherd, but it is the supplier of such perceived indispensables it has become the mother, allowing the American people to suckle its great resources.

 

Liberte, fraternite, et egalite: this was the rallying cry of the French Revolution. Translated, of course, to liberty, brotherhood, and equality. Mighty interesting, as the forces of liberty and equality are always tugging against each other in the modern day.

John Gerring, political scientist at Boston University, argued that the one ideology that has consistently prevailed in the Democratic party throughout its history has been the yearn for equality. Earlier, they nobly strove to achieve equal rights and an equality of opportunity for Americans. Unfortunately, in the sixties and seventies, the Democrats turned away from an equality of opportunity and have tried to bring about an equality of outcome through a redistributive welfare state.

Lefties have changed their point of view from equality under the law. Now, because inequality still exists despite the widespread equal treatment laws, they assert that the system itself must be corrupt in some way. We no longer hear about individual racism and sexism, it’s racism and sexism on an institutional level. And how does one fix that? Change the institutions, change “the system,” and redistribute, redistribute, redistribute.

Indeed, the solution that progressives propose is to change the laws so that there’s no longer equality, there is inequality. Witness, for example, affirmative action laws, title IX laws, and sexual harassment laws.

The French must be thanked for creating such a catchy slogan. One Frenchman, in particular, warned us long ago against this inevitability, even though we didn’t heed his warning. Alexis de Tocqueville, someone who had seen the devastation wrought by the French revolution and the incredible success brought on by the American one, wrote about the dangers that a desire for equality would ignite in the souls of free men.

“For the principle of equality begets two tendencies: the one leads men straight to independence and may suddenly drive them into anarchy; the other conducts them by a longer, more secret, but more certain road to servitude.

“As the conditions of men become equal among a people, individuals seem of less and society of greater importance; or rather every citizen, being assimilated to all the rest, is lost in the crowd.

“When all conditions are unequal, no inequality is so great as to offend the eye, whereas the slightest dissimilarity is odious in the midst of general uniformity… This never dying, ever kindling hatred which sets a democratic people against the smallest privileges is peculiarly favorable to the gradual concentration of all political rights in the hands of the representative of the state alone.”

De Tocqueville is absolutely not an advocate of inequality, but his master work serves to warn us of the constant, unabated, and unrestrained lust for equality. Equality is a natural instinct of free men, yet can be a destructive and degrading influence if left unchecked.

 

Overt or not, the underlying philosophy of contemporary politics is a fierce battle between John Stuart Mill and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Mill, while perhaps best known for his development of utilitarianism as an ethical system, was politically a classical liberal, a fierce defender of liberty. His seminal work On Liberty is a must-read for those interested in intellectual history.

Rousseau, on the other hand, formulated the idea of a "general will," and thought that a nation should be governed according to these principles. This has proven disastrous throughout history, as individuals have fancied themselves to be the supreme arbiters of the "general will" (Hitler, Mussolini, for example).

Our nation's founding wasn't based on Mill (Mill was a mid-19th c. writer, coming well after the U.S.' beginning). Indeed, individual liberty wasn't as fierce of a strain in Revolutionary America. They desired collective liberties as laid out in the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights are all based around the phrase "Congress shall make no law..." This clearly was a way for states to keep their own autonomy from the central authority rather than preserving individuals' liberty. Indeed, in spite of the first amendment, many states had their own official religions.

We've evolved, however. Individual rights have become more and more important to our national character and our livelihoods. Indeed, our respect for individuality and responsibility are what set us apart from the trending-socialist Old Europe. Alexis de Tocqueville, touring America in the 1820s, saw our unique national character and wrote (in his absolute must-read Democracy in America) that he had high hopes for our relatively new republic.

"It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life. For my own part, I should be inclined to think freedom less necessary in great things than in little ones, if it were possible to be secure of the one without possessing the other...

It does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of their own will. Thus their spirit is gradually broken and their character enervated."

De Tocqueville clearly saw the direction our nation was headed in. He saw, even in our early days, our fierce love of liberty, and recognized that our nation would endure through struggle. He saw that our large liberties were by and large secured in the nature of our government and the nature of our people. He knew that the danger laid in the day-to-day meddling in minor affairs that our government is capable of.