Paternalism

Some academics use “paternalism” as a dismissive for rejecting certain historical social relationships. Granted, there are many scholars out there who appreciate far more nuanced analyses of paternalism,¹ so here I am only referring to this loose subset who have (apparently) not given the subject all that much thought.

However, in the bigger picture, paternalism disparagement is actually a prominent feature of American culture, which is famous or notorious for championing autonomous individualism. So here is a very brief sketch of that broader historical and cultural context.

The American sentiment against paternalism goes back to at least the seventeenth century, epitomized by John Locke’s philosophy that had the effect of idealizing the economically self-sufficient yeoman, who was thus also politically autonomous (beholden to no boss). Thomas Jefferson carried this torch in celebrating “a solid independent yeomanry.”² Most famously, Jefferson wrote, “Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God.”³ Owner of a large plantation and numerous slaves, Jefferson himself was not exactly in the yeoman category. With the most glaring exception of slavery, by Jefferson’s era, the cultural orientation against paternalism was profoundly ensconced.

We can see the continuation of this culture in a 1928 speech, when Herbert Hoover contrasted the American trait of “rugged individualism” as “diametrically opposed” to the “paternalistic and state socialism” found in Europe.⁴ There is much irony here, and not just because Hoover was a former orphan who pulled himself up by his proverbial bootstraps (with a minimum of paternalism). Many contemporary academics decry paternalism from the Left as violating notions of social equality, whereas Hoover became a noted representative of the Right during the Great Depression. True to his philosophy, Hoover refused to involve the federal government more elaborately in the economy, for that would have been “paternalism.” He lost his re-election bid of 1932, and FDR’s much-noted New Deal of massive and unprecedented governmental paternalism followed.

Whether from the Left or Right, those disdaining paternalism now tend to reflect a cultural orientation stemming from the American frontier and its mythologized individualism. This cultural milieu favors the competitive and entrepreneurial, as well as the unscrupulous and opportunistic. Others do not necessarily cope so well in such a socioeconomic environment.

“From gloves to gravestones; a paternal Senator looks after the soldiers even to the end.” 1903 cartoon satirizing Vermont Senator Redfield Proctor for providing tombstones (from his family’s marble quarry ) for Spanish-American War fatalities. This captures a common ploy of hiding corporate welfare within “free market” ideology. [cartoon by “Davenport” for the New York American (July 1903); Library of Congress image]

Despite the ongoing rhetoric of individualism, today there are entire sectors of the American population who cannot live without paternalism. These include military lifers, repeat offender inmates, portions of the homeless population . . . but also a host of middle-class people asking for government bail-outs due to living beyond their means and blaming “financial illiteracy.” Even more remarkable, at the core of paternalistic hypocrisy are the corporate welfare beneficiaries; recipients of governmental largesse who never call it paternalism and even entertain absurd illusions of individualism, as if the “free market” did not involve the government at all.

I’ve now lived long enough to watch the entire lives of certain individuals who never escaped their own voluntary subjugation to paternalism, mainly because the big wide world out there terrified them. They remained dependent, sometimes homeless, and only semi-functioning on the fringes of a community, partly because American society expected things from them that they simply could not deliver. I used to imagine them doing quite well within an Old World type of extended family clan; in an America obsessed with individual autonomy, they fared poorly.

Military lifers sometimes observe that their institutional dependence is not all that different from repeat-offender inmates who also need an institution providing them with survival basics. My father observed this during his U.S. Navy tour, 1941–45. He met old salts who still had H-O-L-D F-A-S-T tattooed on their eight fingers, a “superstition” related to climbing ship rigging. He also remembered that some of them (well into middle age) blew their entire paychecks during weekend shore leaves and would have then become homeless, were it not for the Navy waiting to provide them with food, shelter, medicine, and clothing.

One of my maternal grandfathers often referred to the Navy as his “surrogate mother,” for he had been a homeless orphan child-laborer sleeping on the hosiery factory floor where he worked, in Philadelphia. He became a Navy lifer who was lucky enough to enlist long before the Great Depression hit; afterwards, all the service branches were turning away hordes of unemployed applicants seeking that particular paternalistic benefit. He paid a price, though; getting called back into active duty as a middle-aged man who then had to survive some of the most horrific Pacific Theater fighting during World War II.

As for inmate lifers, Morgan Freeman’s character “Red” captured this sentiment perfectly in the 1994 film, Shawshank Redemption, when he spoke of prison: “These walls are funny. First you hate ’em, then you get used to ’em. After long enough, you get so you depend on ’em.”⁵ One of my high school classmates led such a life; in and out of incarceration until ill health from chronic alcohol abuse killed him at the young age 56. The county jailers all knew him, generally liked him, and regularly made him a trustee. He was agreeable and passive when locked up. Outside, he behaved like an errant child who didn’t know what to do with himself.

Libertarians have long rejected paternalism when it comes to things like seat belt and motorcycle helmet laws. This objection conflates (what economists call) the public good with the libertarians’ much-denounced “nanny state” role of government. But you do not have to be a genius policymaker to appreciate how a head injury incurred from not wearing a motorcycle helmet could cost taxpayers seven figures in lifelong medical care. This is a common hypocrisy and double standard among libertarians that more or less goes like this: “Leave us alone until we need you, then subsidize us.” Various red state farmers have been practicing this hypocrisy for nearly a century now, lately receiving many annual billions in crop subsidies, subsidized irrigation water, and federal crop insurance. I doubt they would describe such monies as paternalism, but it is actually left over from FDR’s New Deal (the AAA, in this case).

The “leave us alone until we need you to subsidize us” attitude not only reflects paternalistic hypocrisy, but also a childish streak in American culture (long observed by the Chinese in particular). Those childishly lacking self-control or self-discipline now blame psychological disorders, including “addiction” to everything from sex to fast food to video games. Laziness and profligate spending used to be character flaws; now they fall into the category of “the addiction that made me do it,” reminiscent of Flip Wilson’s “the devil made me do it,” minus the humor. This is also how people who have lived beyond their means claim that “financial illiteracy” is responsible for their dire economic straits, as if they were incapable of doing the basic arithmetic regarding income and expenditure, and as if they had no will power to resist spending on wants instead of needs. Naturally, they want some paternal entity to bail them out when they get into financial trouble. This included the upper middle-class who bought houses beyond their means before the 2008 housing bubble burst . . . then asked the government to help them.

The Left seems to object to paternalism when it is associated with naturally unequal socioeconomic relationships; the kindly boss, the powerful who show benevolence to the powerless, the successful competitor who is nonetheless compassionate toward the less-competitive. Yet, they do not object to social programs (i.e., governmental paternalism) to address these inevitable social inequities. The Right seems to deny that paternalism exists at all when it is obviously cloaked in government subsidies to private businesses, tariffs on particular goods that favor domestic producers, various corporate bailouts, and the like.

Some elements of paternalism are probably, ipso facto, inherent in all forms of government. In fact, “paternalism” may simply be a feature of the social species that is humanity. Even in the most basic extended family clan dynamics going back to the Paleolithic, alpha males and females contributed more than they took, partly because weaker members of the clan were not capable of contributing as much. Those less capable members thus benefited from the alphas’ paternalism.

The foregoing is an admittedly shallow analysis of paternalism, yet it goes further than academic preachers who dismiss paternalism out of hand. Eventually (many generations from now) perhaps Americans will finally overcome their national mythology regarding autonomous individualism. If so, then maybe they will acknowledge that we all benefit from the socioeconomic public good.

Copyright © 2019, 2022 Will Sarvis. All rights reserved.

ENDNOTES

[1] For some thoughtful essays, see “Paternalism and Risk,” in Ethics in Practice: An Anthology, Hugh LaFollette, ed. (John Wiley & Sons, 2014), 293–345.

[2] Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 6, Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private, H. A. Washington, ed. (NY: H.W. Derby, 1861), 486.

[3] Thomas Jefferson, The Works of Thomas Jefferson, edited by Paul Leicester Ford (NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), 303–04.

[4] Herbert Hoover, “Rugged Individualism,” in A Documentary History of the United States, Richard D. Heffner, ed., (NY: New American Library, 2002), 309.

[5] Frank Darabont, dir., Shawshank Redemption (Castle Rock Entertainment, 1994).