For the last century, America has been building up its
government, giving it more power and more money, and expecting it
to do all things for us.
In 1776, representatives from each of the 13 colonies met to discuss the ongoing hostilities with the British government. This Continental Congress assigned to Thomas Jefferson the job of writing a document declaring the independence of the colonies. A few revisions from the Continental Congress, and the delegates signed, risking their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honors.
We tend to be blase about this action of 233 years ago, but the Continental Congress was not. It was a huge step. It was not merely a war with the biggest military super-power of the day. They were throwing out, not only the governors and the tax collectors, but the judges and courts as well.
“We are living in a state of nature!,” they exclaimed to one another. This was repeated so often that one delegate joked that he might as well use the corner of the room in Independence Hall instead of the privy, since they were living in a state of nature. Of course, he did not carry out his threat.
The colonists levied the War for Independence and, since the British were having beaucoup trouble with the French at the same time, the Americans won the war. The British and the American Tories fully expected the new nation to lapse into chaos and anarchy. Instead, the fledgling United States proceeded to conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do – without government bailouts or stimulus packages. How? In a word, volunteerism.
These days, we have a big bloated government that we rely on for all aspects of our lives. We expect that the government will educate our children, pay for our retirement, build our roads, put out our fires, process our sewage, loan us money for college and houses, pipe us water, and catch and punish bad guys for us. We expect that if we lose our jobs, the government will give us money. If we are broke and need medical care, we expect the government to care for us. And many of us are working toward seeing that the government pays for our medical care even if we are not broke.
The colonists, on the other hand, had no such expectations. Their government was three weeks away, across a stormy, hazardous ocean. Britain sent governors and tax collectors and occasionally soldiers. But by and large, if the colonists wanted something, they formed voluntary associations and made it for themselves.
Thomas Paine, in his pamphlet Common Sense, wrote, “Some writers have so confounded society with government as to leave little or no distinction between them… Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil, in its worst an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.”
America kept its government small for more than 100 years. In 1835, Alexis de Toqueville wrote that in America, “When a private individual mediates an undertaking, however directly connected it may be with the welfare of society, he never thinks of soliciting the co-operation of the government; but he publishes his plan, offers to execute it, courts the assistance of other individuals, and struggles manfully against all obstacles. Undoubtedly he is often less successful than the state might have been in his position; but in the end the sum of these private undertakings far exceeds all that the government could have done.”
For the last century, America has been building up its government, giving it more power and more money, and expecting it to do all things for us. I believe we are approaching the necessary end of that experiment, wherein the government is absorbing so much of our gross domestic product that our economy is in danger of collapse. But volunteerism is not dead in America. All across Gilroy, little booths selling fireworks have mushroomed up, each supporting a different voluntary association. It will take a miracle to resuscitate our nation … but I believe in miracles.
Cynthia Anne Walker is a mother of three, a mathematics teacher and a former engineer. She is a published, independent author. Her column appears each Friday.
