During some circle jerk press conference the afternoon of Obama's health care speech, Dennis Praeger made his case against health care reform. He argued that when the government begins to do more for its people, the result is that citizens feel that they can get away doing less for their neighbors. As proof, Praeger pointed to the fact that Western European nations have a lower per capita rate of charitable donations than does the United States. Praeger's punchline: "Bigger government results in smaller people." I think that this punchline sums up the philosophical opposition that vast swaths of conservatives have against, among other things, health insurance reform.
Praeger's argument convienently ignored many things. For example, America's leadership in per capita charitable giving can largely (if not entirely) be explained by the incredibly beneficial tax treatment such giving receives. But, for me, one thing that Praeger ignored stood out the most: The Greatest Generation.
A majority of the young men and women who sacrificed so much at home and abroad during World War II came of age in the New Deal era. The social safety net that Roosevelt championed did not make this generation of Americans "smaller." If anything, the evidence suggests that it made them even more willing to make sacrifices for their country, whether it meant rationing at home so that the troops abroad could have food and clothing or spilling their blood on foreign soil so that the Nazis would not advance further.
It would be fascinating to do a more in-depth study of how the social ethos underlying the New Deal might have shaped the ethos of The Greatest Generation. I have no doubt that it would prove Praeger dramatically wrong.
The idea that government intervention in social justice issues makes citizens feel less obligated to their neighbors strikes me as utterly bizarre. When the government takes a strong position that certain things should not exist in America and then actually does something about it -- funding crumbling schools, taking care of the environment, providing shelter to the homeless, etc. -- I believe that an honest view of the evidence will show that in their day-to-day interactions with their neighbors, citizens follow the government's lead.