I don’t think it makes much sense to talk about helping victims of traffic accidents or hurricanes as identity politics. And I didn’t think it made much sense to talk about Black Lives Matter as if that were identity politics. The obvious point in every one of those cases was that someone has been hurt who should not have been and was not treated properly. Helping innocent victims just seems humane. Just as it doesn’t seem proper to me to complain about giving medicine to sick people but not to healthy ones – it’s not inequality but equal treatment in the same conditions. But America is not reacting the way I think it should. Trying to move to equality is perceived as inequality by too many, especially Republicans.
So let’s look at the politics. Obamacare is very popular – it has resisted all efforts to repeal it – because it is available for everyone. Social security doesn’t have any labels – we all get it. That’s the way President Roosevelt designed it. So I think we need to design many policies that way – we need to put all kids through college if they want it. Of course that’s what public colleges once did but we’ve started to think of support for higher ed as a special benefit that needs a special excuse. So of course those who don’t get it fight it. That’s American politics. Always has been and I suspect always will be. Of course they make higher education available for all young people in Europe, but we must be better than the Europeans because we don’t.
James Madison learned to trade for what he wanted. The Constitution is a set of compromises so both North and South would sign on. By contrast, all the Founders knew we needed to build canals to open up the vast lands of the new republic and realize its economic potential, but it took forty years before New York finally built the Erie Canal because of bickering over who would get the benefits and who wouldn’t. Democracy requires compromise and ways to spread the benefits.
That may be immoral and philosophically unsatisfactory but if we want to accomplish anything, we have little choice. Every news report tells us how some community or group is doing something for their own benefit despite the damage to the rest of us. I’m personally upset by leaving people on the street without homes, food or jobs, and “solving” housing problems by pushing people away and out of sight. And I’m upset by the notion that every community needs its own airport so they can have their own industry, though the impact on the environment is huge and will eliminate much of the good we’ve been trying to do to save our world. But people looking for jobs want us to bring the jobs to them, not just make them available in other places like New York City or Buffalo. Everyone does have a right to decent jobs and homes and I’d put a lot into making that a reality. But leveling New York state to rebuild the old rust belt would be an environmental disaster.
Still, somehow, everyone has a right to a place to live, work and earn a decent living. I’d make that a right. But, like health care and social security, it has to be universal. It has to be done in ways that will protect the environment. And it has to feel like everyone is getting the benefit. If we can’t get over those humps, we’ll all die together.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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