For Everyone Everything

“When did the Preamble or the Constitution include the government meeting the people’s needs for housing, transportation and health care?”So asks Mike Opelke on The Blaze (“Blaze Exclusive: Socialist Mantra Hidden in Grade School Chants” 2 March 2011). For those who don’t know, The Blaze is “a news, information and opinion site brought to you by Glenn Beck and a dedicated team of writers, journalists & video producers.” But, it doesn’t matter necessarily who, specifically, asked the question.

See, the problem, or rather one of the problems with the Right is that they think, apparently, that promoting the “general welfare” means raising an Army and heading off to wars abroad to "protect our freedoms" and all the bullshit that goes along with that... Nevermind that the founders didn't even want a standing army. Nevermind that such a thing, if these wars were even protecting us... at all, would fall under "common defense." One has to wonder what they think the “general welfare” is? They love to quote the Declaration of Independence, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and all that, as if that defines what America is about… well, not that it doesn’t, but it’s the Constitution that defines our government, how it should work, what it should do for us. And, one of those things, right there in the preamble, is to “promote the general welfare.” It’s in there with “establish justice,” “insure domestic tranquility,” and “provide for the common defense.”

Anyway, Opelke’s issue (and that of other folks to the right of center) is that, supposedly, “school children around the country” are chanting—strangely, he doesn’t suggest they are being forced—a socialist mantra. That mantra: “The People’s basic needs must be met in a country. Needs for housing, education, transportation, and health care overseen by our government system.” Apparently the notion that people’s “basic needs” be met is a horrible idea.

How dare a grade school, or anyone for that matter, suggest that the general welfare might include housing or education or transportation, right? And God forbid anyone try to include healthcare... and that's just going on "general welfare." There's also "justice" and "domestic tranquility," but, of course, neither of those is served by people having homes or knowledge or a way to get to work or to even have work, or being able to see a doctor...

How about a new approach--call it socialist if you like, but then I might have to mention our roads and our water and our military for that matter, if you're so against socialism—an approach that actually values the individual instead of demanding that the individual pull himself up by his damn bootstraps and go be entrepreneurial or whatever and become a CEO, become rich, live the American Dream... or else. I mean, who do these poor people think they are, getting union jobs and demanding better pay? If you just went out like the American Dream told you to and made your own damn way, you wouldn't be needing to make demands because you'd be self-employed, self-sufficient... well maybe not self-sufficient; that wouldn't be very capitalist of you.

This new approach: the government exists to promote justice, i.e. to renounce, discredit and disallow racism and sexism and other forms of discrimination, to ensure that those who commit crimes (and not just those who can't afford good attorneys) pay the price as our society sees fit. Also, that housing access is equal, that access to education and jobs and transportation is equal, that access to healthcare is equal.

This new approach: the government exists to promote domestic tranquility, and what makes us more tranquil than having access to the necessities of not just life but now modern life, i.e. access to an education, access to housing, access to food and clean water, access to, again, healthcare?

This new approach: the government exists to promote the general welfare of all of its citizens, i.e. that, as Alexander Hamilton argued in his "Report on Manufactures," 5 December 1791, "the object to which an appropriation of money is to be made" or for which a law is to be passed (I would add), "be General and not local," that the government not promote, directly or indirectly, one portion of its peoples over another, be it certain corporations, be it certain races or creeds or religions.

This new approach, put simply in perhaps some very socialist terms: for everyone everything.

We've come to a point where I can understand the sentiment of some graffiti in 1968 Paris: “mankind will not live free until the last capitalist has been hanged with the entrails of the last bureaucrat.” You know, down with the capitalist pigs and whatnot.

Partisan politics, capitalist agendas, militaristic notions of protection... It's time to try something new, or maybe simply something closer to what the founders had in mind in that preamble.

It cannot simply be from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. We must look past even that Marxist slogan. Instead, in this modern age, with all of the advances we have achieved already, we should be able to make available everything to everyone.

For everyone everything.