I have, in parts two and three of this series, lambasted Governor Rendell and progressives like myself for, among other things, not defending a liberal / progressive vision of a good political community So it seems incumbent on me to present a vision for our politics. I am going to try to do that—in the next post in this series. I will do it in a very tentative way, as I really don’t have anything all that new to present or an especially good way of presenting it.
Before I present a positive vision, I want to do something a little different. Sometimes, the best way to identify—and fight for—your own agenda is to look at what your opponents want to create and figure out why you oppose it.
So, let’s begin by imagining the kind of country right-wing Republicans are in the process of creating right now.
A day in the Republican utopia follows with Democratic commentary indented in italics.
You wake up in your beautiful, 5,000 square foot suburban house in Delaware County in a new gated community.
The new community is built on land that, just a few years ago was farmland. Replacement of farmland and forest leads to increased pollution of our rivers and other environmental ills.
You are a little tired because last night there was a party in the club house / community center in this development. It was open only to people who live in the gated community. You are pleased because you and your 18 year old son ran into a neighbor who works for a high powered law firm. Finding out that your son is interested in a career in law, your friend offered him a summer internship.
Gated communities are, of course, highly stratified both in terms of income and wealth, and race. In the never ending effort to find statistical proof of the obvious, sociologists have shown that a major influence on the quality of the internship and job one gets is the quality of the informal contacts one has. So the odds of a child of a city employee receiving an internship of this kind is pretty low and getting lower all the time as neighborhoods become ever more economically segregated.
You get in your SUV and take your son and daughter child take to a nearby private school where they each receive an incredible education. Though the tuition costs you $18,000 a year, the school can on its endowment and fund-raising prowess to spend almost $25,000 per student. So your kids are taught by some of the finest teachers, in incredible facilities, and are stimulated by bright and well educated classmates.
To get there you take a short cut through one of the declining inner suburbs, where the schools are in danger of being taken over by the state. Like many schools in Philadelphia itself, the district spend less than $9,000 per student Unlike the private school, there are no school psychologists or social workers and only one guidance counselor for every 400 students in the schools. The libraries in each school in the district spends almost nothing to spend each year on books and periodicals.
Then you get on the Blue Route and take it to the Expressway which takes you downtown. Thanks to new express lanes on the highway, which are restricted to those who pay a toll, the trip takes you only about twenty minutes.
It takes those who have to ride in the no-restricted but free lanes on the Blue Route and Expressway forty five minutes to travel the same distance. The traffic on the roads has gotten almost unbearable since SEPTA was cut back 15% and its fares have gone up 20%. That was why wealthy automobile commuters demanded that the legislature create the restricted toll lanes.
This is the only part of my fable that is not yet in practice. However Republicans, such as John Perzel have been calling for tolled express lanes.
Finally you arrive at your destination at the major bank headquartered in one of the new office building going up in Center City.
The building is touted as an indication of the revival of the city. Of course, it received a $30 million subsidy from the state and substantial tax breaks as well. Thus it will only begin to bring in substantial new tax revenues in ten years.
You take a break after lunch to go to your private athletic club where you have a brief workout and swim with friends. Your briefly call your wife on her cell phone. She is taking your youngest child to the wonderful playground in your gated community where she meets some of the other moms.
You walk past a decrepit city playground on your way back to the office. The swimming pool has been closed for a few years.
You then take part in a two meetings. The first is a wonderful planning session at which creative ideas for new banking products are discussed. The other meeting is one to plan efforts to outsource back office work to India. You prepare a press release that explains that outsourcing is necessary because two few graduate of Philadelphia public schools have the reading and math skills to justify the higher wages that they receive compared to workers in India.
Our Republican banker doesn’t stop to think that perhaps investment in education in America might recreate the well educated work that is largely responsible for the growth of the American economy between 1850 and 1950.
After work you drive down to the Wachovia Center to watch the Sixers play. There are special traffic lanes that take you to the VIP parking lot, thus saving you thirty minutes stuck in traffic. Then, after a short walk, you hop on the special VIP elevator that takes you to your company’s luxury box complete with food and drink.
Of course, the Wachovia Center received a substantial subsidy from the city
As you fall back asleep, you take pride in all that you have accomplished and thank God and the Republican Party that you live in a country where individualism is still the rule, where the best things in life are individual goods created by individual effort.
As this little fable shows, this is ideology of the first degree for the following reasons:
1. Many of the goods things our Republican banker enjoys are communal goods, that is, goods that are enjoyable mostly because they are shared with others. These goods include the party at the community center, the basketball game, his athletic club and the playground his kids use and the wonderful school they attend.
2. Other goods that our Republican banker enjoys are publicly provided in whole or part. These goods include the highways on which he travels, the office building in which he works, and the Wachovia Center.
3. And the highly paid work our Republican banker does is also a communal product. His own best ideas come from interaction with other bankers. And their work could not be done without the poorly paid back office workers, whether here or in India.
So, the very life our Republican banker leads is proof that his own ideology is mistaken. So much that makes our lives go well or badly depend upon the efforts of others and the goods we provide ourselves in common. While Republicans praised individualism, there are reliant on common goods as Democrats. Republicans use the ideology of individualism and privatization not to escape from community but, instead, to create economically (and racially) segregated and unjust communities. And they use the taxes we all pay, to subsidize their privatized communities.
The Democratic answer to this ideology must be to reassert the ideal of inclusive, just and democratically controlled communities. There is a place for inequality in truly private goods. But our society more than a collection of individuals who pursue individual goods all by themselves. There are common goods that important to us and that can only be sustained through common efforts. And those common goods—schools, recreation centers, community centers, roads and public transit, and even our sports centers must to be available to everyone on an equal and inclusive basis. Only when this goal is achieved will we be equal citizens who share in a common life. Only then will we all lead prosperous lives. And only then will our community give everyone an equal chance to secure their fair portion of the truly private goods.