Central Planners

As conservative Republicans work to eliminate or reduce the amount of money New Hampshire spends on government programs, critics on the political left have emerged from time to time with the idea that these policies are immoral—or as one outspoken critic said, “morally repugnant.”

This criticism is predicated on a belief that only government can provide for the basic needs of people who can’t provide for themselves. We agree that people need to take care of one another. It is our moral obligation. But it’s not government’s job to do it. In fact, one of the best things about American history is how well we have taken care of one another, even before the federal government launched its “War on Poverty” or created programs such as Medicaid or Obamacare.

Alexis de Tocqueville, a French political thinker and historian who traveled to America in the 1830s, wrote that one of the strengths of 19th Century America was its “robust civil society,” which he defined as the institutions, such as the family, the church and other secular civic organizations, that operated between the individual and the government. He praised these institutions, explaining how they tempered the isolating tendencies of individualism and the “despotic proclivities of centralized [government] administration.”

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