U.S. experience suggests it's tough to shrink bureaucracy while building more prisons
Twice in the past three months, I have been reminded that I represent a potential security risk to the people of the United States.
The first time was at a Canadian airport early one morning. The uniformed officer at U.S. Customs and Border Protection asked my profession - professor, I said, political science - and then my business, which was to attend meetings with senior leadership of an international development organization. The name of the organization was unfamiliar to him.
"It isn't one of those socialist, United Nations, one-world government, liberal, Marxist organizations, is it?" he asked. As if such an organization, should it somehow exist in his country, ought not to.
At the border, it is never a good idea to mistake serious probing or even freelance political bluster for jocularity; and, in the unlikely event of the latter, witty comebacks don't come easily at 6 a.m. I forgot to mention that the organization had received a presidential medal for its work. I said something about supporting communities around the world to become self-reliant.
"Oh, like you teach someone how to fish, instead of just giving him the fish?" "Yes, that," I said. Close enough. I was on my way.
The second time was on arrival in North Carolina for a longer stay as a visiting professor in a lovely, politically unorthodox city. It took almost two weeks and some staff persistence to get the university-issued identification that allows me to check out books and connect to the Internet.
So long as the security clearance mandated in state law was outstanding, there were no shortcuts. Apparently another state university campus once had the unpleasant experience of a convicted felon showing up on-site; and the last place for a felon, as any legislator knows, is a library.
I like the U.S., I really do. I have family roots and friends in this country. It is home to most of the writers on my bookshelves and most of the musicians on my playlist. I admire its universities, small and large, even as they endure successive state budget cuts on a scale that dwarfs those experienced to date in Canada. I'm here for all those reasons. And, having been fascinated as a Canadian child by the civil rights struggle in the U.S. South, I was able to participate earlier this month in some memorable local events on the national holiday to remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
At about the same time, though, the Republican presidential primary candidates moved into shouting distance, parading their checklist credentials: family values, evangelical faith, immigration, lower taxes and less government. Invariably, the key to restoring jobs, prosperity, moral virtue, and U.S. leadership in the world is less government.
On that much the candidates are competitively certain.
There are just two small problems with the mantra. One is that, among those who repeat it, there is far too much fear and too little social trust to really have less government. There is no image of a common life - only lines drawn to delineate the deserving and the undeserving, the bearers and betrayers of "traditional American values." Public institutions such as schools and universities that might transcend such divides are themselves the target of political suspicion as sites of "indoctrination."
The other problem is that national and state-level politicians, in fact, have been investing heavily in more government for a generation: more prisons, more surveillance and border security, more military capacity. Indeed, the Republican front-runner says he favours "a military so strong that no one in the world would think of testing it." Whatever it takes.
Among the fearful, well-financed groups rally around the constitutional right of individuals to carry concealed weapons in the unlikeliest of places, such as churches and hospitals. But it is government's job to build the really big walls that quarantine and police the potential terrorists, the criminals, the poor, the undocumented immigrants and their children.
So the mantra of less government is either code for other things or it is an enduring false promise - one that is increasingly made, and demanded, in Canada too.
On this point, the U.S. experience is instructive. Across the country, municipalities that don't dare raise property taxes to pay for basic public services are starting to dim their street lights at night to cut costs. Darkness, it turns out, is a bracing reality check for a fearful society.
Original Article
Source: edmonton journal
Author: Roger Epp
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