America shifts to dependence

Washington’s infection is a cancer. Spreading from the city of change in which to believe are spirits that chill, one of a new federalism and another, larger specter, that of government as God, omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. Benevolent? Not quite.

As President Barack Obama churns out billions from the federal money machine, pouring in green ink and to create red, cities and states across the country are replicating him, fashioning billions of dollars in stimulus packages to create jobs, ostensibly, and rescue their economies, fabulously.

The Wall Street Journal chronicles the trend: In Lancaster, Calif., a shopper who spends $300 at a local business receives a $30 gift card from the city. Elsewhere, government pays real estate brokers for adding tenants at local strip malls. This is the equivalent of plucking $50 from a man’s pocket only to return later offering a five-spot and a sly smile.

Another trend is slightly older but gaining momentum. Mayors are nudging aside elected school boards in takeovers of school districts. Mayors run districts in big cities such as Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia and smaller towns such as Providence, R.I., and Harrisburg, Pa. In most cases, mayors appoint school board members and are tasked with driving up test scores that have plunged into the toilet and through the sewer.

Both developments represent a shift in American thinking, to dependence on government rather than self-reliance, to centralization rather than locally elected officials accountable to local constituents. Somehow, amid the distrust of government that still swirls in the national psyche, Americans are shifting trust from themselves to bureaucrats.

Among places insulated from the transformation is this one. There are no moves afoot by localities in the central Shenandoah Valley to craft local stimulus packages or wrest control of schools from school boards. Most local officials are scurrying to fill budget holes, of which there are many. Their task is not to spend but to wield cutting blades, sometimes with seeming abandon.

Such actions seldom fail to draw blood and anger. Count us among those mystified by the notion that saving $11,000 by cutting indoor track in Augusta schools is worthwhile when the budget gap is $6 million. But hard decisions, like hiring freezes and holds on the purchase of new materials as well as trims to programs, are needed. What isn’t needed is government overreaching here like that unfolding in Washington and beyond.

Underlying what long has been the quintessential American view has been a fervent belief in the ability of individuals to withstand trials and forge triumphs. Henry David Thoreau brought literary pulse to this thinking:  “[I]f one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams … he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.” We suggest this is uniquely true in this country.

But it will not remain so if America’s destiny is allowed to slip from her people’s hands to the government’s.

Absent a change in the current course, Americans, indeed, might find that in pursuit of small comfort in a moment of fleeting economic crisis, they will have surrendered a thing more dear, the country’s identity. Better to bear the passing sting of budget cuts without stimulus plans that soothe now and bankrupt later, and cling instead to the hope that once the sun again beams the country will remain recognizable as a place where dreams still thrive.