Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 5:11am

The Forgotten Men & Women of America


In 1883, William Graham Sumner published an essay titled “The Forgotten Man” (originally titled “On the Case of a Certain Man Who Is Never Thought Of” – not quite as catchy) which is as relevant today as it was when it was written. The essay is a great exposition of the laissez-faire understanding and approach to social problems and articulates what I believe many on the libertarian right and within the Tea Party believe today. From a Catholic point of view, there is much I find agreeable within it, though there are certain tangents, unnecessary to the main argument, that I would take issue with.

For Sumner, the Forgotten Man is the industrious and productive member of the working class (and within this I would include small business owners) whose labor supports the advancement of the ideological fantasies of both the left (egalitarian social democracy) and the right (imperial crusades for democracy). In Sumner’s words:

As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C shall do for X or, in the better case, what A, B and C shall do for X. As for A and B, who get a law to make themselves do for X what they are willing to do for him, we have nothing to say except that they might better have done it without any law, but what I want to do is to look up C. I want to show you what manner of man he is. I call him the Forgotten Man.

A & B sound a lot like our social democrats and neoconservatives – oh excuse me – our Democrat and Republican establishment leaders who see in the American worker, C, virtually nothing but a source of tax revenue to support whatever they have a mind to do. Academic elites have decided that it is the government’s divinely appointed role to establish a perfect egalitarian order at home and a democratic order abroad. Because the thought of spending their own time, resources, and personal energy on advancing these causes in a peaceful way is absolutely unthinkable, they have decided it is justifiable to expropriate the labor of people who either do not support or are actively hostile and opposed to these dubious moral projects for their establishment and maintenance. That’s just what governments do, we all suppose.

The extent to which the American worker is forgotten in the delusional quest for a perfect world varies. Many of us heard about the people lined up for “Obama money” after the 2008 election. When asked where Obama gets his money to give to them, one of the hopeful recipients guessed that it came from “his stash.” Others said that since they “helped” Obama, he will “help” them by paying for their gas and their mortgages. Others still demanded that they have unlimited access to free birth control and abortions, no matter what anyone thought about it or what rights – to speech, religion or property – they might violate in the process. And of course, we never cease to hear from those who want to spend billions arming one group of psychotic fundamentalist radicals against another, all to protect the innocent, of course.

In all of this ideological madness, the productive worker on whose back the whole host of unproductive government entities and projects, from the welfare bureaucracy to the military itself, is entirely forgotten.* He is briefly remembered during campaign seasons when it is assumed that people want to be placated with tax talk, and when groups such as the Tea Party or the Ron Paul Revolution raise their voices loudly enough (though the former seems indifferent if not supportive of the rate of military expenditure). The rest of the time our elites discuss their ideological fantasies as if the only thing preventing their fruition was the existence of the other party and its own ideological fantasy. That there might be natural limits to the ability to make one’s fantasies reality, and that one of those limits might include the apoplectic rage of people who are tired of working 4/7 of the year to make it all happen, generally doesn’t come up.

Of course both sides insist that we have a moral duty not to complain about whatever it is they want to spend our money on, or, what amounts the same thing, debase our currency for.  It’s part of the “social contract”, they say. It’s for “the common good”, the leftist Catholics declare. It’s for “national security”, the neoconservatives implore us. Forgotten along with the taxpayer is Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum, which establishes that the fruit of our labors is our private property that no one is justified in appropriating for themselves, that charity is never to be forced by human laws, and that the solution to poverty is not welfare but rather property ownership. Forgotten are Catholics such as Dorothy Day, who opposed Social Security as much as she did American imperialism (its ok to be an “anarchist” if you are of a slightly left-leaning variety, though). Forgotten are all those who have known and warned that the modern state is a cold, mechanical, secular monster that is indifferent to or outright hostile towards religious communities that refuse to compromise their principles.

In his essay, Sumner displays some hostility towards people we would classify as social rejects or dropouts. But his point is well taken towards a third group that wishes to spend taxpayer money – statist social conservatives who believe in the “War on Drugs.” He writes:

 It is the industrious workman going home from a hard day’s work, whom you pass without noticing, who is mulcted of a percentage of his day’s earnings to hire a policeman to save the drunkard from himself. All the public expenditure to prevent vice has the same effect. Vice is its own curse. If we let nature alone, she cures vice by the most frightful penalties. It may shock you to hear me say it, but when you get over the shock, it will do you good to think of it: a drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be. Nature is working away at him to get him out of the way, just as she sets up her processes of dissolution to remove whatever is a failure in its line. Gambling and less mentionable vices all cure themselves by the ruin and dissolution of their victims. Nine-tenths of our measures for preventing vice are really protective towards it, because they ward off the penalty. (emphasis mine)

Some people may see in this statement shocking indifference. I see, on the contrary, an affirmation of the natural law. I do not go as far as Sumner, who suggests that such people ought not even be the recipients of private charity. Surely we can and should help those who we can with what we can, though we must also keep in mind that some people do not wish to be helped and cannot be helped. With Sumner, however, I object to the notion that the state exists to protect us from ourselves. Until a person poses a tangible threat to someone else’s basic rights, the state has no justification for laying their hands upon them – as it has done with countless thousands of marijuana users and partakers in other harmless and consensual activities.

The welfare state and the police state both have the effect of “warding off the penalty”, making acceptable and “safe” (remember safe, legal and rare?) life choices that would have been unthinkable previously. Raising children without a husband? It is one thing for the state to intervene when a negligent man abandons his family, and another for the state to subsidize a feminist radical who decides she doesn’t need a man. Julia’s life is a series of evasions of and crimes against the natural law, and it is all made possible by the productive labor of people who neither need nor want the services of this hideous beast, the modern state, offers. It is a monstrous injustice to force anyone to support an otherwise unsupportable lifestyle choice, especially when it violates their conscience to do so. I fail to see how it is substantially different than slavery.

The forgotten men and women of America are a quiet lot. I believe they are generally uninterested in politics for a variety of reasons, though many of them vote and participate and become involved at some level. The day that America’s elites need to fear is not this day, when activist types such as myself are doing what we always do, making noise and such. It is the day when the forgotten men rise up and force them to remember their existence. My guess is that it will follow the day that the dollar completely collapses.

 

*I don’t mean to imply that society can exist without “unproductive” labor.  Bureaucracies, militaries, etc. are unproductive but necessary to varying extents. It is when they grow at a rate unsupportable by productive labor, and in the service of ends that the majority of productive workers don’t benefit from or find morally repugnant, that these realities have to be highlighted.

0 0 votes
Article Rating
14 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
WK Aiken
WK Aiken
Tuesday, November 27, AD 2012 7:14am

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” – CS Lewis

Art Deco
Art Deco
Tuesday, November 27, AD 2012 8:11am

Bureaucracies, militaries, etc. are unproductive but necessary to varying extents.

No, the civil service and the military perform useful services. They are not, however, services that emerge from market transactions, hence the resort to public agency.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Tuesday, November 27, AD 2012 8:13pm

” . . . the civil service and the military perform useful services.”

Truth. The military destroys things and kills people in order to prevent such evils from being inflicted on the citizenry. It does not (since they stopped issuing letters of marque) produce wealth, goods, or servicers. It takes assets, economic resources, wealth from the producers. Similarly, the civil service/bureaucrats do not produce but take from the productive sectors.

And, above the two are politicians that deal in coersion and fraud; and have devolved into latter-day Gracchi trading bread and circuses for votes.

Some thoughts:

This rewards bad behavior.

See Zerohedge, PA has issued a study showing how a family of four on various welfare entitlements has higher disposable income than the similar family that grosses $69,000 a year.

There is no such a thing as a free lunch; or something for nothing. Someone pays for it.

It’s always other people’s money.

Nations reach breaking points when producers/taxpayers become outnumbered by dependents/tax takers.

Symptoms of national disaster include the tax-taking segments growing more rapidly than the wealth-producing sectors, they call it “The evil, unjust private sector.” In 2011, the US national debt grew by more than did the evil, unjust private sector GDP, and that is just one part of the increases in government taking.

Voting for abortionists, sodomists, and class hate-mongers (they promise to take more from somebody else that you hate whom they charge isn’t paying his “fair share”) to feed the Obama-voting moron bloc is not one of the Corporal Works of Mercy.

Let’s have some fun. List the public utils produced by various bureaucracies.

I’ll start with the EPA: higher prices for elecricity, gasoline, home heating oil; and shortages to boot.

Feel free to jump in.

trackback
Wednesday, November 28, AD 2012 12:03am

[…] The Forgotten Men & Women of America – Bonchamps, The American Catholic […]

Darren O.
Darren O.
Wednesday, November 28, AD 2012 9:12am

Seeing as salty truth-tellers of old are the elixir of choice in these parts, I offer, for your edification, from 1872…

http://archive.org/details/publicschooleduc00ml

Michael Muller, while a favourite of some (what are now thought to be) fringe Catholic groups, has in his other works great insights into prayer and the faith. Well worth a read, IMHO. Deeply rooted in the 32nd Doctor of the Church, St. Alphonsus Liguori.

Kyle Miller
Kyle Miller
Wednesday, November 28, AD 2012 11:29am

“Vice is its own curse. If we let nature alone, she cures vice by the most frightful penalties.”

He ignores the penalties inflicted on the innocent bystanders. No man is an island. No action happens in a vacuum. Every vice has a societal cost. The idea of victimless crime is non-reality.

You read Sumner’s quote and see an affirmation of natural law. I see a justification of natural selection, which wouldn’t be surprising since such thought was rising to the forefront of academic thought in his time.

trackback
Wednesday, November 28, AD 2012 12:37pm

[…] The Forgotten Men & Women of America – Bonchamps, American Catholic […]

Kyle Miller
Kyle Miller
Wednesday, November 28, AD 2012 2:17pm

“Marijuana does not post a greater risk to society than alcohol; both should be prohibited or both should be legalized.”

There is a point when risks becomes too costly for society. While alcohol comes with its costs, introducing another intoxicant into the market will simply increase the harm incurred. And while the one indulging won’t be prosecuted in a legalize all vices society, everyone else would be punished in some form.

This is the problem I have with the Ron Paul crowd and its obsession with legalizing narcotics. It is their belief in the license to participate in vices as the ultimate example of real freedom. Their freedom is embracing the worst habits of us and not the free exercise of what makes us a great citizen, community and country.

“Sumner’s point and mine is that you cannot save people from themselves”

It’s true the decision to do good or bad ultimately lies with the individual. However, law can have a positive effect in deterring one to do harm to him or herself. Absent the law, the tempted individual sees license to partake of legal activity without a true understanding of serious, even dire, consequences.

You acknowledge there is a risk to legalization, but your interpretation of Sumner’s point makes risk evaluation pointless. For no matter the risk, you can’t save people from themselves. The result is a society where there are no personal limits. All narcotics are legalized, and no societal costs until harm to another party is done. That’s a difficult argument to make to a mother crying over a child killed by a school bus driver who showed up to work hung over from a crack high.

Kyle Miller
Kyle Miller
Friday, November 30, AD 2012 7:00pm

Hi Bonchamps. Had to step away and get some things done. Back to the discussion…

You and I agree there are reasonable limits on freedoms. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean you can yell fire in a theater. Right to bear arms doesn’t mean you can possess a nuclear missile in your backyard. The debate is where to draw the line.

You mentioned the costs to enforce the drug laws as a justification to cease the prohibition. It is my belief that the rightness or wrongness of a law is never based on its enforceability or its costs.

If we, as a society, decide sex trafficking is wrong and should be illegal, does it matter the cost to enforce it? At what budgetary line does a harmful activity became non-harmful? Is sex trafficking bad when enforcement is $1 million but licit when enforcement costs $1 million + $1?

How much has been spent on stopping and prosecuting murder? By the legalize narcotics standards, we should cease those laws. They are simply ineffective and too costly. Murderers will murder anyway. Or, is it possible the very existence of the law provides a beneficial deterrence to would be murders?

You say the drug user’s addiction is punishment enough. If you have known, worked with, lived with, been the victim of, etc. an addict, you know that person is not the only one punished. Those people are the real forgotten men, the trail of victims the addict leaves behind. Those who have to live with the costs incurred by an addict’s habit. Don’t forget those forgotten men.

In regards to Ron Paul supporters, I know very well how they think and what issues are important to them. The Paulistas rally around narcotic legalization as the ultimate example of freedom. Yet, finding such fervor about the rights of the unborn and religious freedom is virtually silent. They claim to be freedom fighters, but their motivations are really selfish. “Let me smoke my pot. Erase my debts you evil big banks.”

I could go on and on about the problems of Paulistas. I have 2 in the family and have seen endless postings by them and their friends. You are the sanest one I’ve ever met, probably the only sane one.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, December 1, AD 2012 6:59am

Again, and with reference to Blackadder’s contention, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has a budget of $6.9 bn, of which the Department of Justice attributes $3.5 bn to the cost of incarcerating people for whom the top count was a drug charge. Federal prisoners account for about 11% of the nation’s inmates, but a much higher share of those incarcerated for street drugs (~30%). The federal Drug Enforcement Administration has a budget of $2.4 bn. Overall, around 20% of the sum of costs for law enforcement at all levels of government is attributable to the gross costs of enforcing the drug laws. Not 10% of all public expenditure is lavished on police, courts, and prisons. About 2% of all public expenditure can be fairly attributable to drug enforcement.

(While we are at it, libertarians, around 15% of all public expenditure is allocated to the military, and somewhat under 30% of all soldiers are billeted abroad, so “the empire” accounts for just north of 4% of public expenditure).

Discover more from The American Catholic

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

Scroll to Top