How the Right and the Left Destroyed the Public Option
What's the common denominator linking crummy public transport, military contractors and the public option being taken off the table in the health care reform fight? Why is a single-payer health care provider "unthinkable"? The common denominator is that the United States is in the thralls of a demented cult that combines the idea of privacy and the profit motive into what is, in fact, our civil religion. It's a crap religion.
The Cult
If the "public option" for health-care reform is off the table who's to blame? We all are -- left, right, moderate, progressive, we have glorified the notion of privacy, profit and individual space for so long that we wouldn't know a public option if one bit us in the ass.
A weird convergence of factors has resulted in United States of America being one of the only places on earth where all sense of a public space, let alone public duty, is off the table as a matter of faith. Privacy, ownership and profit are what we are about.
Examples: Roe v. Wade (whatever your view of abortion) was argued on the basis of privacy. The right to own weapons has been carried such a ludicrous point, in terms of private ownership, that we have little mercenary armies marching around in the woods calling themselves militia groups and armed to the teeth with semiautomatic high-powered military-style weapons. Our trains are 50 years behind the rest of the world's because some genius addicted to the cult of profit decided that they aren't infrastructure but just another business.
"Privacy," "choice," "profit" -- these words are the only American religious creed. Hatred and fear of the government has been both a right wing and left wing preoccupation when government seems to be in a position to curb this cult.
What went wrong?
My son commutes every day to Boston from Newburyport, Massachusetts; a train ride that in Switzerland, France, Germany or even England would take 15 to 20 minutes but here drags on for an hour and 10 minutes. Here our trains must be "profitable" to exist so there is no money to update the system. In other places they work, are updated -- and lose money. The gain is an infrastructure that allows for massive wealth creation in other sectors.
Our train system is stuck in the 19th century. Our health-care providers have been taken over by today's equivalent of the robber barons. Even our prisons are being run by private corporations. When my Marine son fought in Afghanistan and Iraq he and the other soldiers and Marines were outnumbered by the private contractors earning 10 times what our soldiers were earning for doing the same jobs and while making hundreds of millions of dollars for a privatized defense establishment.
"Christian" Heretics
What is so curious is that in this religious country of ours the same evangelicals, conservative Roman Catholics and others who are running around saying that we had a "Christian foundation" have forgotten that one of the great contributions of Christianity (going back to the fourth century) was public nonprofit hospitals and hospices. Since when are Christians against vocation? Since when does Christianity teach that profit must trump all other considerations? -- "I'm my brother's keeper, if I get paid"?
Somehow right wing evangelical Christians now seem to believe that Jesus commanded that all hospitals be run by mega corporations for profit. Somehow the right also thinks that it's normal for the state to hand over its duties to private companies for military operations, prisons, health care, public transport and all the rest. The word "infrastructure" seems to have lost its meaning along with the word "community'"as something for the common good. The common space never needs to "turn a profit" because it is the lifeblood that allows private profit. (Every small business owner about to go under because of health care costs knows this, as does my son, who wastes hours each day on a slow train!)
In fact Christianity was the modern root of the whole idea of public spaces for health care, the rule of law, even public transport and safety that started with the idea of the "king's highway." Public space is what made Western civilization possible. A common law, that applied to all, a common sense of sacred duty to others, a common road system protected by the crown and so forth.
Christianity teaches altruism and altruism is not profit-based. Check out New England's Puritan-established villages. What do you think all those "quaint" post card village greens are? Why do you think they were called the "commons"? The greens are the shared grazing land. Public space was the essential ingredient of Puritan life: church, town meeting house and common grazing land, civic work and hospital building, defense and law. And as for privacy, the community was involved in everything we now hold private.
On the secular side, public space to was also paramount. The dynamism of Western civilization, beginning with the Renaissance in Florence and other European cities, was based on an understanding of the value of public works, public space and public projects combined with private initiative. Walk the great piazzas of Italy and you will be enjoying the public spaces created by civic-minded people who were the forefathers of the Europeans who would build high-speed rail systems that work. Private fortunes were made in the context of a public sector that worked. This is no new thing or "socialism." This is what made the West the wealthy West. (The Medici bankers were no socialists and they understood the need for public spaces!)
If it's Not For-Profit it's Evil. Since When?
Now in the USA we have the worst of all possible worlds: a leftist/libertarian addiction to personal private space, in which no one is allowed to tell anyone else what they should do, combined with this weird anti-Christian "Christian" right wing notion that everything -- even trains, the post office, our infrastructure and medicine, and now even a big chunk of the military (via "contractors") -- must be run for a for-profit motive.
The left, the right, the secular community and the religious community have denied the best of their own heritage when it comes to America. The problem of not getting a public option for health-care reform relates to a philosophical shift in our culture wherein everything has to be justified on the basis of profit and/or privacy. Result: there is no concept of public space at all. Result: idiots shout "socialism" about common sense solutions to our problems that -- very ironically -- the Medici princes of Florence and the Puritans would have all agreed needed to be matters of common public space.
Until Americans -- left and right, atheist and believing -- begin to take another look at where this road of absolutist privacy combined with absolutist profit leads we'll be stuck with the health care that's a mess, trains that don't work and for-profit lunacy: deified individualism.
The Solution
The only real solution is to attack the idea that profit and privacy is sacrosanct. Privacy and profit must be once again balanced by common obligation, public space and civic mindedness trumping individual choice.
We need to get back to the idea of civic space, and public works, not just in health-care but in all sectors of our economy. It's not a question of being anti-capitalist; rather, it's a question of rediscovering a more narrowly defined capitalism that thrives because of a thriving public space. For instance, we need a single-payer health care system and we need it now.
Frank Schaeffer is the author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back and the forthcoming Patience With God: Faith For People Who Don't Like Religion (Or Atheism).
Follow Frank Schaeffer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/frank_schaeffer
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Frank Schaeffer, I'm an admirer, and usually when I read your articles, I agree with you completely. In this case, however, I think you might not be exercising the intellectual standard of "precision
The "concept" of privacy you're talking about means "the freedom to do whatever you want." I AGREE: this is a HORRIBLE concept on which to organize society.
But what about the intellectual concept of privacy? The kind of privacy that protects you from COERCION by others? The kind that, for example, would have prevented the Bush government from enacting "rendition" programs allowing the government to kidnap innocent people off the street because they MIGHT be terrorists.
What about the concept of privacy that, if the Middle Ages had had it, would have prevented the great scientist Galileo from being placed under house arrest by the Church simply because Galileo wrote a dissenting opinion?
Obviously I have absolutely no problem with, for example, public service or community service; I'm studying to be a librarian, precisely so I can participate in the stewardship of public knowledge.
But don't "swing the pendulum the other way," so to speak.
After all, you yourself have expressed opinions that differ from your Christian peers. But didn't you need some privacy and time away from your peers in order to carefully perform the series of intellectual "moves" that enabled you to evaluate and assess your peers' ideas and their weaknesses?
Dear Mr.Schaeff
I was musing that perhaps a part of the problem is that young mother of two you Americans have tied to the train-tracks in Upstate New York. These things have a way of slowing up everybody, and nobody likes a train that's not on schedule…
(O.K. So I've been watching too many of those old silent films on my off days. These things happen when none of the new stuff coming out makes any sense.)
Bravo! You are right on every point. The only thing that you did not mention, Frank, is that part of the reason why Americans deify profit and extreme individualism is because of the breakdown of the family. And I don't mean just nuclear family, I mean extended family. Before the mid-20th century, most people considered family to mean not only mom, dad, kids and the pet, but aunts, uncles, cousins and others who are related. A good example of this is in the New Testament when it is mentioned that our Lord had brothers (who were in actuality half-brothers because Joseph the Betrothed first wife died and had kids from that marriage where as, the Theotokos is Ever Virgin and only had one Son, who was incarnate of the Holy Spirit.) And it was taken that family. But we Americans of the 21st century have no idea what family is partially because of suburbanization and that has led to the cult of the individual among other things. Also, the US is the first truly Protestant country in the world because the Reformation started in Catholic countries and even now there is still some of the 'original' Christian ideas left in even the most secular European country. It is partially because of Protestantism not being universal that led to the extreme individualism that the American finds so 'sacred' today.
Thank you Frank! Excellent! The notion that greedy inhumane Capitalism and Democracy are synonymous must be challenged. The Founders exhortation that government provide for the common good and promote the general welfare has been eroded over time by greed and self-interest at the expense of our citizens, families and society. Giant corporations have used the power of campaign money and influence to promote their own interests and greed, and malleable elected public servants have become servants of the greedy and corporate entities rather than the people who elected them. This essay hopefully will stir a reappraisal and dialogue of what place the for-profit motive in every aspect of our society means and the power of big-money to corrupt has brought us. Lets fight for a single payer system now and not compromise (capitulate) any further with greed.
Very good points Frank. I would add that this deification of individualism has a nasty corollary: the belief that if we give in to the common good, it forcibly had to be at our individual expense with nothing in return. The "what's in it for me?" is the 1st thing one will hear in one form or the other.
Perish the thought that public space could end up enriching us! Only a "Communist" would believe such a fairy tale. (sarcasm)
Just look at a common thread in the health care reform: One almost never hear:
"Public option will lower my premiums because uninsured care will stop being charged to all of us". which, by the way, is absolutely true. How does one think hospitals and clinics pay for all the unpaid care they have to shoulder via ER visits? By printing dollar bills?
However, one will almost ALWAYS hear:
"Public option will limit MY choices
"It is (not, it could) going to cost ME something"
"Why should I pay for...THEM
All about me, myself and I.
The last 3 decades of steady erosion of our common standards of living, rising inequality, cult of Law and Order can be linked to varying degrees to what Frank just describe in his excellent post. It should be clear that, over the mid/long term, we just can't have a viable society build on such premises.
Another thing that has gone the way of "profit or else" is the news. With CNN offering something all day long it is not even set up to research a story. They don't really even fact check, just sound bite. If the bite wasn't on the film it doesn't get any sound. Barney Frank held a town hall and a woman called President Obama a Nazi (in some form) but she associated him with that word. Barney Frank said arguing with her would be like arguing with the dining room table. All they showed was Barney Frank. They didn't show what the woman said. So it looks real, it is on tape, but it was not what happened at all. This is like living in an altered reality. We DO live in an altered reality. We talk about the same thing and each side doesn't know what they are discussing because all they saw was the altered version.
Interesting.
Frank, I agree with your post as it relates to the need for community ownership, privatizing public services and everything measured on a profit-realizing basis. I would like to make one more observation. Today and for many years this country has superciliously expressed its superiority to our neighbor to the south due to its willingness to tolerate "public services" like law enforcement and legislative support to be only available upon receipt of monies--something called "graft."
Americans are no longer able to claim such superiority since this country has been bought and sold using graft--read fees, political appointments, campaign funds and lobbies--where nothing is accomplished for the common good but for personal gain by the "robber barons." Health care, mercenaries, transportation, environmental protections and the GOP are perfect examples. No wonder President Obama appears to be overwhelmed--it's tough to compete against the Almight Buck.
Amen......
GREAT POINT.....
they SHOULD BE SO HEAVILY REGULATED that they actually BECOME >>>>>>>>>>
THEY can SURVIVE without .........d
Excellent post, Mr. Schaeffer.
You pretty much said it all with great clarity and intelligence. Loved it.
Frank, you're an interesting read. I agree whole heartedly with your take on single payer and trains as well as the dependency of capitalism on the public commons. And I agree that the pursuit of profits at all costs is likely to kill this country. Excellent points.
On the other hand:
The idea that a country that just surrendered quite a bit of it's privacy in the ludicrously named "Patriot Act" out of fear is too concerned with privacy kind of makes me wonder if you missed those years.
Using Roe vs Wade, where the Supreme court specifically recognizes a limit the right to privacy as well as governments powers in a marvel of balance is somehow an example of the afore mentioned unhinged lust for privacy "no matter how you feel about abortion" is fantastically obtuse.
Finally, the left has VERY little invested in the "public option". The liberals and progressives are still furious that Obama worked so hard to kill single payer before rolling out this massive corporate welfare bill. The public option is only loved by Obamaphiles and reluctantly accepted by those who have given up hope of any rational policies coming out of DC. It may be the best we can do in a mad house.
Once again, quite interesting reading your view on the right and you're quite mad when it comes to the left.
Great points. Not so simple to resolve as a society. The woman on Chris Matthews show last week that was 'snatched' by O'Donnell just didn't have time to 'think on her feet' because her answer should have been that the Medicare system is broken, corrupt and in need of massive reform so because it will exist for her parents to partake in is only because they are eligible and not resposible for its reformation. Before our govt. shoves more programs down our throats and we discuss privacy vs. community involvement vs. support of others we need to change the overall attitude of our American workforce/society as we have become lazy and expect our govt to handle everything. Sadly-we have religious zealots cramming their beliefs down our throats too-but it is our govt that must heed first. Mr. Schaeffer I like your perspective however, read Uncle Sam's Plantation by Star Parker and don't be biased by her religious take on issues today. This woman rescued herself from the 'community programs' like welfare...
Frank, you are one amazing writer. I wish I agreed with you more on subject matter but you can really put pen to paper. I have read your book co-written with your son and hope to read your latest book soon because you are extremely gifted in your field.
YES!!!!!!!
I have yet to hear Frank Schaeffer say something that doesn't make sense. Great article. I am glad he is increasingly a part of the political discourse.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
