Anti-Statism in America

Anyone who has followed closely the debate over national health insurance has probably noticed some peculiar inconsistencies in Americans’ attitudes toward the legislation. A Pew Poll released on October 8 found “steady support” for specific elements of the health care plan, including the public alternative to private insurance, the employer mandate, and the requirement that everyone have insurance. Nonetheless, popular support for the plan itself was declining, with 34 percent “generally [in] favor” and 47 percent “generally opposed.”

What accounts for this disparity? Certainly, some people fear that Medicare will be cut, or that “death panels” will be set up, but one of the most persistent concerns is not about specific provisions; rather, it’s that the federal government will be taking over health care. In a Washington Post poll last month, a plurality worried that the health care plan “creates too much government involvement.” In a poll taken October 9–13 by Public Strategies in conjunction with Politico, 52 percent of respondents feared that Congress would go “too far in increasing the government’s role in health care.” In a Harris poll in early October, 65 percent agreed, and only 22 percent disagreed, with the “criticism” that “the proposed reform would result in a government-run health care system.” In other words, Americans are looking to the government for help, but they still don’t like the government.

And this isn’t just confined to the health care debate. You get the same inconsistencies if you look at polls about government regulation of finance and business. Polls show majority support for specific new measures, such as restricting CEO salaries and establishing a new consumer financial-protection agency, but the Public Strategies/Politico poll found that 68 percent of respondents preferred “better enforcement of existing regulation” over “new regulations.” Again, Americans are turning to government, but they distrust letting it do too much.

This pattern of belief is deeply rooted in the American psyche and has regularly stymied efforts at reform. Americans have supported, or have come to support, specific governmental remedies, such as Social Security, the minimum wage, and environmental and consumer protections. But, when a new program that expands government is proposed, they have displayed a general ideological predisposition against the power of government. As Obama tries to get his reform agenda through Congress, this predisposition is already proving to be a formidable obstacle.

Americans’ skepticism about government dates at least from the Revolution. In The Liberal Tradition in America, published in 1955, political scientist Louis Hartz described the Americans of 1776 as “Lockean liberals.” He was using the term “liberal” in its classic connotation--more like today’s free-market conservative or libertarian. Americans, he perceived, envisaged the state as strictly limited to protecting property relations among equal producers. They saw strong government--which they identified with the British crown--as a threat to economic and political freedom. Government, in Thomas Paine’s words, was a “necessary evil.”

The first adherents to this Lockean liberalism were followers of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson--small farmers and (in Jackson’s case) urban workingmen who attacked the statism of the Federalist elite. But, after the Civil War, a rising business class invoked it against the political left, claiming that a policy of laissez-faire would best ensure a prosperous America. Lockean liberalism became free-market conservatism.