CAN WE TALK:
GUNS WITH BUTTER
By Aubrey W. Bonnett, PhD
It was an exultant President, still riding high in the popular polls,
declaring to a nation, beset with fiscal uncertainty and anomie that, as
Chief Executive, he would introduce a large increase in the defense budget
and in homeland security to fight terrorism, disarm Iraq militarily, and in
so doing, there would be downward adjustments in social spending, in many
areas. He also indicated that he would like Congress to make permanent his
early tax cuts, which benefit the upper classes, largely.
Finally, he implied that the war on global terrorism must be won at all
costs even at the risk of obliterating the surplus, and the small gains made
by the middle class and poor in America during the days of plenty. Sure he
did outline a call for prescription drugs, and for fighting the scourge of
HIV/AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean. But can we have these social programs
while fighting terrorism and a war in Iraq?
It was then that nostalgia began to return and I recalled the sixties
when this nation had just begun, in the post World War II era, to confront
social and economic problems, spurred by the winds of change and concomitant
social and protest movements and, with the demise of England and the
destruction of Europe, was beginning to usher in a new Pax Americana. At
that time another popular President, John Kennedy, had used Camelot to
challenge our nation to be “other directed” and to make bold changes, both
in the domestic body politic and beyond, for, he argued, this would
transform this “new nation” into a formidable world power-devoid of empires,
not seeking to conquer by the force of might, but instead by lofty ideas of
civic virtues, altruism, and an ascendant global capitalism restrained and
enriched by democratization- intrinsically and extrinsically .
On Kennedy’s death another Texan President took up the mantle and
declared to a mournful and restive nation that he would fight the “War on
Poverty”(BUTTER), only to lose that war to the “War in Vietnam” (GUNS) - a
loss from which our nation has never fully recovered. Indeed it was just
incrementally beginning to adjust positively during the eight years of
unprecedented economic growth in the 1990s.
But there are other current and salient factors that we should consider.
Secretary of State Colin Powell and CIA chief George Tenet both indicated,
in different contexts, that the breathing ground for terror and terrorism
was the squalid poverty, abysmal despair, feeling of abandonment, that many
nations in the world and their citizens feel are attributable to this “first
new nation”-America- and its first world allies. Powell, before the assembly
of the rich and powerful at the World Economic Forum, felt we could fight
these misguided emotions and sentiments by exporting freedom - I assume that
he was referring to its political and economic dimensions - without which,
as South Africa and many mini states in the Caribbean show, political
independence becomes no more than an illusion.
George Tenet’s testimony before congress had two main foci: first, it was
more an attempt to bolster the President’s request for added resources from
the congress for homeland security/defense; and, secondly, to simultaneously
deflect the massive criticism toward his and the other national security
agencies in this post 9/11 era by stating - and this is important - that
“true believers”, be they white militias such as Timothy McVeigh or foreign
terrorists such as Osama bin Ladin and the Al Qaeda, willing to die for what
they perceive as “just causes”, become very difficult to deter , totally,
especially in a democracy.
On the domestic front there were other more sobering and alarming trends
that related to the further concentration of wealth in America, with the net
worth of Americans being further skewed towards the rich, powerful and those
in the upper income brackets. Just recently, The New York Times reported
that, according to Internal Revenue Service data, the wealthiest Americans
paid a smaller share of their income in taxes, because in 1997 congress
reduced taxes on capital gains, which accounted for a significant share of
their income. Indeed, although Congress tried to equalize this by cutting
taxes for the middle classes only one in five qualified for those cuts, the
Times stated, which involved tax credits for children and education
expenses. Consequently, as a group, the portion of their income going to
taxes actually rose.
New York University professor and economist Edward Wolff put it starkly,
“although more than half of all families are investors in the stock market,
largely through 401(k)’s and similar retirement plans, wealth in America is
more concentrated today than at any time since 1929”. Of course the tax cuts
passed by Congress and championed by President Bush only aggravate these
trends. No less than Alexis de Tocqueville, in his Democracy in America,
warned that one peril of democracy was the concentration of wealth in the
hands of rich men and the formation of a consequent ruling class. A concern
echoed by proponents of the power elite thesis, who contend that the fault
line of our social structure is the ownership and distribution of wealth,
and the dysfunctional effects of its dispossession on the life chances of
the “wretched of the earth”. Our nation’s strength, however, has always been
its claim to build a vibrant middle and managerial class, and the ability to
keep hope alive among its less fortunate.
So, in this context, a budget by the chief executive, President Bush,
that returns to deficit spending to combat terrorism, combined with another
proposed tax cut, while seriously cutting many domestic programs such as
social security, medicaid, employment and training, public housing
assistance, children’s welfare services and community block grants, for
example, is a budget that freezes the middle and working classes out of the
American Dream. And, of course, all this comes at a time when the US Census
reports that the foreign born in this nation is at a record high and, I
contend, we must focus heavily on empowering the American Dream for them and
their second-generation progeny. We must continue to find new pathways of
granting them access to peace and prosperity, and not by faith based
initiatives, only.
On the overseas front I take Secretary Powell and former Secretary O’Neil
seriously when they argue that our nation must find new ways of battling the
root causes of terrorism - global poverty - although I disagree with where
they place some of their focus. I would contend that, debt forgiveness;
increases in foreign aid; the maximization of funds for micro lending
initiatives in poor nations; heavy investment in health, education and urban
infrastructure development; and an increase in student foreign exchanges at
the undergraduate levels; would be a step in the right direction.
Indeed NGO agencies such as the Ford, Carnegie, the Rockefeller
foundations have been exerting a credible effort at building the essential
ingredients of true ‘Powellian” freedom. But in these developing nations, as
in our own society, we must do more to ensure that the “revolution of rising
expectations” is not extinguished for the nascent middle and working
classes. For as President Johnson discovered domestically in the 1960’s, and
we are now in the external arena, it is not only the “riff raff” that we
have to fear, but those imbued with the yearnings for modernity and
progress. No amount of disguised unilateralism, unbridled militarism, or
posturing by political / economic elites as to their bona fides in
empathizing with the poor, or escaping from poverty, will bring us true
peace, until we find a middle way of balancing an effective policy of GUNS
with BUTTER.
February 1, 2003. IMPACT OPINIONS, IMPACT NEWS. © |
