There is an emerging consensus that government has an interest in, and a right to attempt, behavior modification among those who are sunk in dependency on public assistance. So there is a need to know more about what government can legitimately do to nurture in citizens the character traits requisite for personal independence. There is a less sentimental and less politically timid assessment of what constitutes “caring.” Americans are recurring to the Victorian distinction between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. The deserving work and are decent parents, having only children they can and will care for.
Many states are implementing or contemplating laws to make some entitlements contingent on comportment. On the principle that entitlements from the community entail obligations to the community, welfare benefits may be linked to work requirements. Unwed teenage mothers receiving benefits may be required to live with parents and stay in school. Some stipends are not increased for additional children born to mothers already on welfare, or may be cut if a recipient misses parent-teacher meetings. A frequently truant teenager can cause a family’s payment to be cut. Arkansas’s Gov. Bill Clinton’s “personal responsibility agenda” includes a law revoking drivers’ licenses of students who do not maintain C averages.
Such laws are difficult to administer and easy for unsympathetic bureaucracies to sabotage. They also raise thorny questions, such as: Is it sensible to assume that parents can control teenagers? Does one risk increasing child abuse and other domestic violence by providing financial incentives for teenage parents to marry? Does this “new paternalism” or “moralistic, strong government conservatism” rest on a fallacy to which some conservatives are particularly prone? The fallacy is the idea that people are primarily moved by economic calculations and hence can be controlled by altering financial incentives. Economic incentives are most effective when they mesh with social norms. On the other hand, causing people to stay in school or go to work can give them healthy habits and disciplines.
Prof. Lawrence Mead of New York University writes about “The Democrats’ Dilemma” in Commentary. He says Democrats want political debate to turn on economic inequality, but most voters are more distressed about government’s failure to fulfill its elementary functions, such as educating children, maintaining roads and fighting crime. People are outraged about paying for a portion of the population that is perpetually dependent on welfare because they cannot or will not behave responsibly.
Democrats, says Mead, “do not approve of the disorders of the ghetto, but they find it impossible clearly to disapprove of them.” The lethargy of the dependent is a result of the ghetto’s ethos of resignation and must be countered by policies that promote responsibility. Minimal standards of behavior must be insisted upon regardless of racial or other excuses that teach the poor that they cannot be expected to cope or conform.
Most welfare recipients are white. Most blacks are middle class. But as Mead says, many ghetto blacks have responded to their dilemma in effect “by seceding from mainstream institutions-breaking the law, dropping out of school, not learning English, declining to work.” Mead may be wrong in saying that this “internal secession” is as threatening to the nation as the South’s secession in 1861, but like the South’s secession, today’s threatens the Democratic Party. “Most liberals,” says Mead, “believe that less can or should be expected in the way of work or other civilities from the poor than most voters want.”
Republicans, who are generally hostile to expansions of government’s scope, are more disposed than Democrats to use political authority for behavior modification and character formation. But conservatives want to use government to decrease dependence on government; they favor prophylactic statism to increase self-reliance.
Mead’s question is, Can Americans, and especially Democrats, overcome the legal and political obstructions to enforcing work and other civilities? James Q. Wilson’s answer is: It’s worth a wary try. In his new book, “On Character,” Professor Wilson of UCLA says character and the social settings that influence it are not beyond the influence of public policy in a free society. Wilson’s definition of good character includes two qualities-empathy, meaning regard for the needs, rights and feelings of others, and self-control, meaning the ability to act with reference to the more distant consequences of current behavior. Character is shaped by public forces-by general opinion, neighborhood expectations, artistic conventions, elite understandings, “in short, by the ethos of the times.” Public policy primarily reflects that ethos, but can shape it a bit.
Some people will say that it is too costly, in money or freedom, for statecraft to attempt soulcraft. However, the alternative to attempting it may be an indiscriminate backlash against welfare for the deserving as well as the undeserving. Government, says Governor Clinton, is a limited gadget, but its capacities expand when its programs can presuppose “a receptive culture where everybody is willing to assume some responsibility for the future.”
Clinton has read Peter Brown’s new book, “Minority Party: Why Democrats Face Defeat in 1992 and Beyond,” so Clinton knows what he is up against. Brown reports that three years ago a task force of Democratic congressmen was debating a new social agenda and many members wanted it to declare that the work ethic is the core value of society. Rep. Augustus Hawkins, then the senior black member of Congress, strenuously objected, saying the declaration would be seen by welfare recipients as a slap in the face. The statement was dropped. Behavior modification and character formation are needed near the top as well as the bottom of society.
