A RETURN TO COMMON SENSE

The subtitle of this book invokes Common Sense, the most famous work of the American revolutionary Thomas Paine. What’s the connection?

It’s partly, of course, the issue of whom our government represents. Paine was ready to throw off the yoke of British tyranny well before most of the nation’s founders were. In this spirit, part of what follows is a common-sense critique of the United States’ current situation. As discussed in chapter 1, hyper-individualism has held sway numerous times in our history, and a characteristic of these periods is the extent to which they favor the chosen few over the majority.10

But what makes Paine so relevant today was his ability to see outside the box. While the majority of the colonists were unhappy ALL TOGETHER NOW with the Crown, most were unable to envision ending their relationship with England and seriously consider independence. Common Sense, which starts right off with a vitriolic personal attack on King George III, offered the colonists a radically different view of their options. Paine told the colonists that their humanity was a gift from God, not from the king. Thus, they had a responsibility to themselves and their children to construct a system of government that would free them from the constraints of the Crown to pursue their “natural rights.” We can see this philosophy clearly embedded in the Declaration of Independence, where the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was enshrined as a God-given, self-evident right of humanity.

We have drifted too far from Paine’s vision. Many of us share a sense of deep discomfort and insecurity about the direction our country is taking. But there do not seem to be any signposts pointing to a better way. Why not?

It’s easy to blame the lack of leadership, and there’s something to that. The quality of many of our leaders does seem particularly suspect these days. Opportunists can always be found in politics, but their influence is often countered by those truly motivated to promote the public good (which is not to say that such people agree on how to do so, of course). Right now, the ratio of opportunists to idealists may be unusually high.

But the problem cuts deeper. The emphasis on individualism will always be a core American value, but it has been stressed to the breaking point. As the YOYO influence has spread, assisted by the muscular application of contemporary economics (as discussed in chapter 2), the YOYOs have implemented a philosophy of hyper-individualism that disdains using the tools of government to seek solutions. More than anything else, this policy has led to our current predicament. Under the banner of “You’re on your own,” we have lost a sense of common ownership of our government, an institution that many of us now distrust as feckless at best and corrupt at worst. 11

This abandonment of our faith in government to help meet the challenges we face—social, economic, and international—has been costly. We have shut off our critical faculties that under normal circumstances would lead us to be deeply angered by much of what’s going on. Despite the events of September 11, 2001, we are less prepared for a national disaster now than we were a few years ago. Our citizens are dying in an underfunded war launched on false pretenses, and our actions have helped to unleash powerful forces that are both lethal and destabilizing. A majority of our representatives are addicted to tax cuts with no regard for their future impact. Short-sighted vested interests are at the table, constructing self-enriching energy policies instead of incentives to conserve; polluters are editing the science out of environmental protection acts.

These are front-page stories. Yet in the absence of a broadly shared vision in which we see that each one of these calamities poses a deep threat to our common fate, it’s not clear how we should react. We have a vague sense that something important is off-kilter, but since the YOYOs have taken government solutions off the table, we have no means of crafting a suitable response. When the answer for every problem is a market-based solution—a private account, leavened with a tax cut for the wealthiest—we are trapped.

Clearly, we need to escape from that restrictive, cynical vision. Pursuing our collective, rather than strictly personal, interests will help. The plan I offer is straightforward: diagnose the point at which we got off course and chart the way forward.

The diagnosis begins in chapter 1, with a more detailed explanation of YOYO ideas and policies and a brief history of their evolution. Chapter 2 looks at the supporting role played by economists whose ideas in recent years have lent sustenance and support to the YOYO agenda. In chapter 3, I get proactive and lay out the WITT agenda. Chapter 4 addresses a set of challenges to the agenda, and the final chapter concludes with thoughts about how a movement to implement these ideas might be nurtured into being. 12

My hope is that the ideas that follow, along with some of the great work of others I cite along the way, will morph into a blueprint for such a movement to carry out. By working, thinking, and planning “all together now,” we can find our way toward a more hopeful future for ourselves, our families, and our society.