Of Christmas and Celebrating Hope

The story of Pandora and her box (or jar) has been retold for thousands of years, with minor variations.  The key elements of the tale from Greek mythology are consistent.  Pandora was endowed with many wonderful gifts and talents, among them beauty, music, persuasion, and others.  She was also given a box, which she was told never to open.  Try that out on anybody:  “Here is an interesting box.  It is yours.  DO NOT EVER OPEN IT!”  I expect that the result would ever be the same, the box will eventually be opened.  As the story goes, it was, introducing into the world evil in all of its forms.  Last of all, however, from the bottom of the box, came hope.

I believe hope to be an underappreciated and little understood gift from God.  Hope is essential to happiness, salvation, and life.  I know of no happiness without it, I cannot imagine any achievement not preceded by hope.  In all salvation, temporal or eternal, hope draws us forward.  It is foundational to life and living. Hope is ever at war with despair (for example, the Spanish word for “despair” is desesperanza, or the absence of esperanza, “hope”):  despair is life-draining, while hope feeds life.

In this understanding of hope, I do not refer to the weak sentiment most common in everyday parlance, the wistful wishing for something better, a wish that seldom acts as a motivator for effective action.  I have in mind the hope spoken of by God and His prophets, against which the forlorn reach from despair—as valuable and comforting as that may be—pales in comparison.

Consider how the power of hope is described in this account of the preaching of the ancient American prophet, Ether:

Wherefore, whoso  believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God. (Ether 12:4)

Notice the power of this hope, an anchor to the soul, making those who possess it sure and steadfast, the person who has gained it always abounding in good works.  Nothing weak or wistful here.  Such hope is a mighty, heavenly gift, with mighty results.  Also notice the connection between hope and faith, the former being a powerful fruit of faith. 

I have thought that a fair definition of “hope” is the personal recognition that something desirable is attainable.  By faith we learn of the desirable object as well as gain the recognition that it is within our reach.  When that happens, hope is born in our hearts, and we are stirred to action to attain it.  That is life itself.  Dead things, inanimate objects, reach for nothing, always acted upon, never doing the acting.

There are many things that each of us values and would very much desire to attain, to gain, to build:  love, knowledge, wealth, improvement, new abilities, bridges (real and figurative), but we do not act to realize our desires until we first gain the idea that we can be successful.  Without hope of success we may go through the motions in a lame sort of way, guided by routine that can become drudgery.  We are energized—even beyond what we thought were our limitations—as soon as we gain a vision, as soon as we believe the prized fruit to be within our reach, when we have hope.  Then there is little stopping us.  Obstacles are overcome, means are found, tools are made, skills developed.  

In my reflections I have named my three daughters Faith, Hope, and Charity, as each one seems especially to personify one of these three great gifts of God.  My oldest daughter would be named Hope.  Throughout her life, once she has gotten it into her head that something worthwhile is within her reach she has done whatever it takes to realize it.  Because of that, through great and consistent effort, overcoming many obstacles, she has become rich in all of the eternal things, in everything that matters.  Her mother and I admire her for it.  Her achievement need not be unique.  It is within reach of all of us.  Each may have such hope and become so rich.

There are many reasons for the perennial popularity of Christmas.  Surely one of these is that it is a celebration of hope offered to everyone.  Salvation did not come to earth with Christmas.  The sacrifice and atonement that Jesus Christ would work out to bring about all salvation would await another three decades after His miraculous birth.  With Christmas, the birth of the Savior, there arrived in Person the assured hope that salvation would come.  The angel who appeared to the shepherds at Bethlehem the night of the nativity was filled with that hope, with that assurance, that caused him to rejoice and share with the shepherds his message “of great joy” so that they, too, might have this great and assured hope:  “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2:10, 11) 

The hope of Christ, in all of its power to action and motivation for every good thought and deed, is worthy of general celebration, every year.  The salvation of Christ has been placed within reach of everyone.  Having that hope can become a personal anchor as we realize its promise, becoming sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, that each of us personally, here on earth, can be filled with “peace, good will toward men.”  At least in part, that is what Christmas is all about.

Of Limited Freedom and Limited Government

I live and work near the belly of the beast, and I can report that these days he is not happy.  His belly is rumbling.  He has eaten more than he can digest.  Watch out, he may throw up.  He is already belching.

The federal government is not working, we know and see.  Not only is it not working as was intended when it was created by the States, it is not working as designed and over designed in subsequent years.  The federal government cannot manage the national parks, the welfare system is breaking down, the national transportation infrastructure takes in more money and yet the signs of dysfunction and decay on roads, rails, and bridges are increasingly apparent.  Banks are regulated with thousands of rules while the banking industry continues to shrink:  we have fewer banks today than we did in 1891, and their share of the financial markets has been dwindling for decades.  So much of what the federal government touches turns to rust and ruin.

Yet the federal government keeps reaching out for more, undeterred by its failures.  The Environmental Protection Agency aggressively imposes restrictions on the air we exhale, the Food and Drug Administration announces plans to control the fat in our foods, the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection has decided what kind of mortgages lenders can make and what kind of people can get them (acknowledging that many who qualify today will be outside the boundaries of federal standards in 2014).

You can augment this brief sampling of a longer list from your own experiences.  This is nothing new, other than perhaps in frequency and intensity.  If there is a virtue in Obamacare it may be that its unworkability and its increasingly universal hurt are demonstrating broadly what many have been feeling individually.

Demonstrating the hurt is not the same as redressing it.  The beast, however ill, will not cheerfully surrender its prey.  During the debate over ratification of the Constitution, one commenter, writing in the Philadelphia newspaper Independent Gazetteer (October 12, 1787), observed, “People once possessed of power are always loth to part with it”, and then warned that the Feds could not be counted on, by their own volition, to do “any thing which shall derogate from their own authority and importance . . . or give back to the people any part of those privileges which they have once parted with”.  If that was predictable in 1787, it is painfully apparent today.  Perhaps the clearest example is how the Washington power elites have exempted themselves and their cronies from the application of Obamacare while continuing to inflict it on the rest.

And yet, Obamacare is the hurt that keeps on hurting.  People will not get over it or get used to it.  Its pain and suffering will be felt again and again with each new illness, every new tax, as its strictures reduce availability, affordability, and quality of wellbeing.  Wave after wave of new harm will come, astonishing its supporters and augmenting the ranks of its victims until it is addressed.

Americans, much like other people, will put up with much before they are roused to action.  Unlike for many other people, our Constitution gives us avenues for action.  The Constitution embodies the concept of continual redress within the rule of law to make appeal to extremities outside of the rule of law unnecessary and unthinkable, so long as the principles of the Constitution retain their vitality. 

The core principle of the Constitution is limited government, designed to protect the growth and expansion of human freedom.  Increasingly, for about a century, the “progressives” in Washington have turned public affairs on their heads.  Human freedom has been the focus of limitation, while government enjoyed constant growth and expansion.  The end seems approaching, either of the ability of government to manage what it has taken on, or perhaps (and hopefully) when the holders of power can no longer convince enough people that it is all for their own good.  Limitation on government may return in vogue as promises of government solutions to feed the beast ring ever more hollow.

The Philadelphia writer of 1787, whom I cited above, was a critic of the Constitution, because he believed it impossible that the power gathered in by the federal government could be wrested from its hands.  I remain hopeful that it still can be.  Nothing else will work.

Of Dysfunction and Governing the Nation

It seems that no more evidence is needed. The establishment press, normally loath to criticize the federal government, has at last become even fond of proclaiming that “Washington is dysfunctional,” although they do so as if announcing something worthy of being “news.” The Senate has not passed a budget in some four years. The House of Representatives regularly passes budgets that the Senate will not even consider. The President—who has no budget-proposing role under the Constitution—proposes budgets that are routinely disregarded while declaring his intent to govern without the Congress. At the same time, people feel more alienated from their government than ever before, in ever increasing numbers considering the nation headed in the wrong direction, regardless of the party in control of national policy.

In the most recent demonstration of the Washington breakdown, the Congress this year failed to pass the annual appropriations bills before the current ones expired. Or, better said, the House passed appropriations bills, the Senate demurred, and the President announced that he would veto any appropriations legislation that offered either more or less than what he wanted.

The establishment press, amplifying executive branch efforts to promote panic and stampede the public, announced that “the government would shut down,” and yet 83% stayed open. Some prominent public operations (that do not require any appropriations to operate) were closed at the President’s bidding, like the Lincoln Memorial and the various veterans and war memorials, but the President seemed to have enough money to travel to various campaign-style rallies to complain about the government shut down. There was national confusion and consternation.

Perhaps what is news is that there is, at last, general agreement, and the President has helped demonstrate, that the federal government has become dysfunctional, by which we may mean, not doing what it needs to do. I also notice that this condition has not been getting any better. In addition to the recent, visible indicators, I would offer some longer-term measures.

Economic growth is depressed and has been declining for decades; employment is also down, with millions leaving the work force. Government welfare rolls have expanded dramatically, suggesting that a very large portion of the population is either not able to take care of itself or has surrendered its responsibility to do so. The federal balance sheet approaches ever closer to insolvency. To avoid being gloomy and doomy, I will not recount dismal education trends, eroding family formation patterns, the precarious condition of national infrastructure, or our worsening international relations (with allies and opponents).

Yet, the federal bureaucracies are far larger, taxes—visible and hidden—are higher, red tape has become ubiquitous, and federal subsidies have fallen behind promises even as they outdistance the ability of the federal government to pay for them. If government is the solution, then why is more government not making things better?

How could this happen? Have we as a nation lost our ability to govern ourselves? Have “partisan politics”—as though something new rather than part of our national intercourse since 1796—frozen the ability to consider, set, and follow national priorities? Have the problems of modernity exceeded the ability of policymakers to resolve them?

A case could probably be made for each and all of the above explanations. I think, however, that they are all symptoms of a more fundamental problem, one recognized long ago, at the founding of the nation.

As early as 1787 the Founders recognized that a central government would not work for the United States. Even with just the original 13 states and 3 million people, the nation was too vast to be governed in detail from one capital. That is why they created a federal system, under which the few, truly national concerns—such as national defense, trade, international relations, national standards of measures and sanctity of contracts, preservation of freedom and the rule of law, together with the means to fund these activities—would be handled by the national government. All else was reserved to the States.

Note that I did not say given to the States. Remember, the States and the people in them created the national government. The States and the people in them gave to the national government its authority and power.

Today, the United States stretches across a continent and reaches to the isles of the sea, with over 300 million inhabitants. It is even more impossible than ever to govern from a single capital, by a centralized government. We all have seen the evidence, in addition to the growing dysfunction of Washington. Everyday, people all over the nation struggle with rules made by the federal bureaucracies, rules that are often nonsensical where people live and work and play, rules governing the volume of water in our toilets, the content of our children's food, the gasoline in our cars, the content of our communications, the form of our financial affairs, and many other elements of daily, personal life. Even worse, they have become too vast and complex to be administered faithfully or complied with loyally.

We could fault the executive branch bureaucrats who make them or the Congressmen and Senators who write the laws, but these people are no smarter or dumber than the rest of us, and just as well meaning. They just have an impossible job. No one can know enough to run so many things from Washington.

Consider the big issues that seem to have Washington all tied up in knots—in turn afflicting all the rest of us. The new national healthcare systems are breaking down even as they get started. National rules for farmers have Congress stuck over who should get subsidies and who should not. National tax plans designed to take from some to give to others divide the people into winners and losers. Environmental regulations impose costs on some in order to subsidize someone else. National education programs follow each other in rapid succession, each with a new and high-sounding name, none of which do much to stem the continued decline in education. And ever present with all of these national rules are unintended consequences that were not and probably could not be foreseen but which crush people’s businesses, destroy jobs, and disrupt lives.

These are all issues that the Founders never intended for the national government, issues that if governments should address at all should be left to State and local governments, where decisions can be made closer to the people who have to live with the results.

We have at hand a better, competent government, or at least its blueprint. It is found in the structure of our Constitution that created a federal system. Our Constitution is the recognition that only through a system that keeps governing as local as possible can a great nation exist in union and harmony.

What we are seeing play out before our very eyes is that our nation not only should not be governed by a central authority, but that it cannot be. The sooner we recognize that and return to the federal plan of the Founders the happier, and the sooner Washington will be able to function as it should for the benefit of all rather than frustration for all. The task is too big otherwise and doomed to failure. It will not be a pleasant failure.

(First published October 27, 2013)