Watching the drama of ‘Obama-care’ unfold from a 14,000-kilometre distance, it was easy to think that the debate was about health insurance.
But according to the Sir John Graham Lecturer 2012 Guest Speaker Professor Robert P George of Princeton University, it was also about what a government means – a kind benefactor, a cruel tyrant, or something else entirely?
These questions are critical, because the way we think about the government and how we interact with it, and in turn, how the government behaves.
According to Professor George, government is not a benefactor or a tyrant, but an institution created and maintained by people.
Its authority to rule only exists because of its purpose – to serve.
The Government only has the power that is delegated to it and rules on behalf of all of us.
Common good
Professor George said that the moral justification for the ruler’s governance is service to the good of all – the common good.
“The common good is not an abstraction or platonic form hovering somewhere beyond the concrete well-being, the flourishing of the flesh and blood persons constituting the community. It is the well-being of those persons and of the families and other associations of persons,” he said.
The Government does not invent what is good for a community but coordinates and sets the conditions that enable the society with its myriad of persons and institutions to flourish.
The Government decides things like which side of the road people will drive so that the rest of the society can function effectively.
The Government should not take over or dominate other parts of the society.
For example, it should not tell us the type of milk that we should buy at the supermarket—that is a choice for individual persons; and it should not raise our children for us—that is the job of families.
Common mistakes
Professor George gave an example from the US context, to illustrate how citizens often misunderstand about their government.
His students at Princeton believe that peoples’ freedom from government tyranny was created by the Bill of Rights—a set of rules that the Government is not permitted to break.
According to Professor George, “this is about as wrong as you can get it.”
In fact, many of those who first laid down the US constitution were worried that the Bill of Rights would undermine the real things that protect freedom, namely, public understanding of the general government; as a government of delegated and enumerated powers; and the division of powers between the national government and the various states.
What protects us from government tyranny is our understanding that the government has been created by us and is at our service, even while it rules us.
Critical factors
The US has an additional protection that we do not have; it has various tiers of the Government so that power is separated.
Without so many layers of government in New Zealand, the first point is even more critical.
We need a public understanding of what government power is.
Professor George argued that it is “everyone’s business” to hold the government to its role as an institution of service and not tyranny.
He stated, “Even the best constitutional structures, even the strongest structural constraints on governmental power, are not worth the paper they are printed on, if people do not understand and value them. We have the will to resist the blandishments of those offering something tempting in return for giving them up or letting violations of them occur without swift and certain political retaliation.”
This requires citizens who care not only about their private interests, but also about the public interest; citizens who care—not just theoretically but demonstrably—for the institutions that make up our collective life.
Citizens who know that the well-being of future generations cannot be exchanged for today’s latest whim and their freedom cannot be traded for short-term comforts when we cannot see another way out.
Where do we find such citizens?
Professor George said, “It is ultimately the autonomy, integrity and general flourishing of these institutions that will determine the fruit of limited constitutional government.”
This is both encouraging and sobering news. We cannot vote away our responsibility for the society we live in.
The work of building a civil society takes many hands.
