Amitai Etzioni and Ed Crane
By Amitai Etzioni, Ed Crane

Amitai Etzioni

Three out of four Americans (76 percent) believe that our society is morally decaying. A study of voters by the Wirthlin Group shows that 60 percent of voters feel that the problems facing the country are "primarily moral and social in nature," as opposed to "primarily economic in nature." The growing appeal of the Religious Right reflects the yearning of Americans to address values issues (for which "family values" and "culture" have be come code words). While so far cultural conservatives have largely supported the economic (laissez-faire) conservative agenda (cut government, taxes, deficits, regulations) there are signs that cultural conservatives feel that "their" issues are being neglected.

One may say that this matter concerns only Republicans, but Democrats too face a growing rift between liberals who focus on jobs, minimum wages, workers rights, and entitlements and the demand from New Democrats to also attend to values issues. Beyond politics, the future of America as a civil and ethical society is at stake. The all-too-familiar litany of social problems-violent crime, drug abuse, illegitimacy reflect a fraying of the social fabric and of core values.

None of this suggests that the agenda for the next hundred days and beyond should be one of government-imposed values. The moral reconstruction of America is a matter of changing habits of heart, mind sets, values, and social institutions--and, to limited extent, public policies. Congress, the president, and presidential candidates can rough out an agenda, frame issues, and focus the public dialogue on what the proper direction of the American society should be.

The tenor of the dialogue will deeply affect the direction in which the society will evolve. If one turns first to the most divisive issues, pointing fingers if not waving fists, bashing and demonizing, one escalates the cultural war and aggravates the polarization of America. One also preaches to the choir rather than bringing new people into the fold. We need to remind one another, to draw on a religious language, that nobody is beyond redemption; and that we are offended by sin but seek to reach out to the sinners.

Above all we should have faith in faith, win people over to a responsible way of life rather than try to beat them into it. We should not try to set back the clocks to the fifties; we need to recognize the duties of both parents to their families rather than demand the women stay home to take care of children. We should find a replacement for affirmative action without returning to an age when women and minorities were discriminated against. Nor can we allow the young, or for that matter anybody else, to become the next silent generation; we should respect rights as we demand that everyone live up to their responsibilities.

We need a grand dialogue about what our new moral direction ought to be. Such dialogues do lead to a change in direction as we have recently witnessed in other areas, from the way we treat the environment to our growing consensus about the need to scale back government.

There are several legislative items that can nourish such dialogues, send a message, and advance the needed cultural changes. To help shore up the family we could:

• Establish "children first" divorce policies. Congress should draft a new model divorce law requiring that divorce settlements set aside assets needed to ensure the economic well-being of the children (to be controlled by the custodial parent until the children come of age). Any remaining assets may be divided between the two parents. This would also discourage many from rushing into divorce.

• Establish a small tax credit for pre-marital counseling. Many churches require couples to undergo pre-marital counseling. Congress may recognize the value of this trend by granting a $250 tax credit to couples who participate in such counseling, signaling the merit of stronger marriages by encouraging people to enter into them more responsibly.

• Require parental involvement in child care. Child-care centers that receive public assistance should be required to demand parental involvement as a condition of accepting children, in the form of a set amount of hours of volunteer service each month. Among other benefits, this will serve as a quality control, exposing parents first-hand to any problems in the care their children are receiving.

• Protect communities' jurisdiction. Among the new measures we should support is a federal law that no community will be denied its right to enclose itself, through such measures as check points and gates at the entrances to communities. Because communities are the sociological basis for our moral fabric and because they occur in public spaces rather than in private homes and cars, we must ensure that these are safe and not taken over by any one group.

• Encourage transitional bilingual education. It might make sense for instruction in one's native language to be available to new immigrant students, but time limits should be placed on such programs to prevent young people from completing 12 school years without ever commingling with students from other backgrounds and being introduced to mainstream teachings.

• Make English and civics lessons widely available. Many legal immigrants would like to learn English and pursue citizenship to gain inclusion in mainstream society, but find no help when they try. Congressional hearings could flag the need. Voluntary associations are particularly suited to take it from here.

Many more social reforms need to be adopted, to which we can turn once we realize that as important as the economy is, we do not live by bread alone. Those who implicitly hold that economic forces drive social and moral ones should revisit former communist countries to see both the fate of societies built on such theories and the devastating effects of a moral vacuum left in their wake.

—Amitai Etzioni is the author of The Spirit of the Community, and University Professor at George Washington University.

Ed Crane

The most important issue the 104th Congress could concentrate on during its second hundred days is the legitimacy of much of what it does. An outgrowth of the effective hegemony over Congress that Democrats have had since the New Deal has been a growing indifference toward, if not disdain for, the Constitution of the United States. Yet ours is a government of delegated, enumerated, and strictly limited powers.

If we were to adhere to the Framers' vision of a restricted role for the federal government in social and economic affairs, questions of economic growth, widespread prosperity, proper values and social harmony would not be viewed as political issues in the first place. They would also represent far less in the way of problems than they are today.

The Tenth Amendment reads in its entirety, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Pretty straightforward, as is most of the Constitution, which was written to be understood by the layman, and not to be divined by scholars or high priests. One is hard pressed to find in the Constitution enumerated powers for a wide range of current federal initiatives, including welfare programs, economic regulations (outside the police power to deal with torts), or even the War on Drugs (it took a constitutional amendment to have a War on Alcohol).

Each member of Congress takes an oath to uphold the Constitution. During much of this nation's history that oath meant something and congressmen would routinely vote against a measure solely on the grounds of Congress lacking constitutional authority to pass it. Today, it's common for a member to express "grave constitutional concerns" about a bill but then vote for it, stating that the Supreme Court will sort of the constitutionality. That is an abrogation of congressional responsibility. During the second hundred days, the 104th Congress would be doing itself and the national service if it created a bipartisan Constitutional Caucus of pending legislation.

In addition, it could profitably spend the entire 100 days repealing legislations of questionable constitutional authority that has been doing positive damage to American society.

The solicitor general recently claimed before the Supreme Court that the Commerce Clause grants Congress "plenary" power to pretty much do what it wants. It does no such thing. The Commerce Clause was not intended to regulate business, but to "make regular" trade between the states that had been disrupted by protectionist state laws under the Articles of Confederation. It was a free trade clause that has been so distorted by the federal courts over the decades that there is now virtually no aspect of our lives that Congress won't try to control under this alleged authority.

Business regulations are estimated to cost the American economy some $600 billion a year in compliance alone. That speaks nothing of the enormous opportunity costs resulting from the government proscribing entrepreneurial initiatives via regulation. The market, after all, is a discovery process. Limiting the choices available to businesses is to short-circuit that process. For instance, when interstate trucking was deregulated most observers predicted lower rates would result from increased competition. That is, in fact, what happened. What was not anticipated is that even greater savings--on the order of magnitude of tens of billions of dollar per year--resulted from the just-in-time inventory adjustments that more flexible shipping schedules made possible.

But even if the extensive federal regulation of business were somehow constitutional, the manner in which Congress deals with regulation is illegitimate from a statutory standpoint. The Constitution nowhere grants Congress the power to delegate lawmaking to unelected bureaucrats. Yet that is exactly what it does when it passes sweeping, ill-defined legislation like Superfund and other environmental laws that give the EPA virtually unlimited discretion to write laws. A hundred days of repealing legislation by bureaucratic edict would be well spent.

Turning to values and family issues, nothing has done more to tear down moral standards and traditional values in America than the welfare state. The constitutional justification for welfare legislation, ranging from AFDC to food stamps, has typically been the General Welfare Clause. But, again, that clause has been grossly misinterpreted. It provided that laws that were passed be passed to promote the well-being of American generally. The idea was precisely to avoid the faction-specific legislation that federal welfare laws all too often represent.

The Framers intended to create a government with authority to act within a small island of political society surrounded by a vast sea of civil society. Most of what we now call the private sector was meant to be beyond the reach of state action. And the fact is that the growth of economic, family, and "value" problems have increased in concert with our growing disregard for constitutional constraints on government.

In any case, there is a growing consensus among social conservatives and economic libertarians that getting government out of our lives should be a high priority in solving both social and economic problems. As Don Eberly of the National Fatherhood Initiative puts it, "Honesty in politics admits to the limitations of politics to treat the deepest roots of our moral and social crisis." And economic liberation is hardly inconsistent with solving social problems. Eliminating the capital gains tax would do more for the family, for instance, than tax credits for children.

The elections on November 8 signaled a sea change in U.S. politics. It could be argued that Americans were rejecting the New Deal as much as they rejected Bill Clinton. Before those anti-government ideas find adequate expression, however, Congress must stand back a few paces and take stock of what its proper role is within our constitutional framework of limited government.

—Edward H. Crane is president of the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.