From a Culture of Dependency to a Culture of Success: Focusing on What's Right About America and the American People

By Y.S. Wishnick

There is an old story of a famous business tycoon that was near death. His lifelong business partner approached him on his deathbed and asked if hed like to see his great grandchild. The business executive opened his eyes and whispered in his associates ear, No, my friend, I do not want to know what Ive missed.
More and more Americans are missing out on the greatness of their country; its passion for excellence, its commitment to the dignity and self-worth of each individual, and its belief that every person has the right to achieve their own vision for success. Chaos, confusion, disappointment, and hopelessness have pushed and pulled Americans into a state of dependency. From the individual, to the family, to our local communities, Americans are constantly looking for others to solve the problems and challenges they face. This has lead to victimology, class warfare, and ultimately bad public policy where a culture of dependency is becoming the new normal. As people think themselves into believing that they cant make it on their own they are rejecting their own potential and capacity to act. Worse, they are missing out on the person they were destined to become.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 23, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465393340

Y.S. Wishnick

Y. S. Wishnick, Ed.D., has worked closely with both public and private sector organizations over the past 30 years. Most recently he managed the California Teachers Association Institute for Teaching, an organization dedicated to improving the teaching and learning process. Wishnick has been on the cutting edge of strength-based strategies and practices to increase personal success and organizational excellence. Dr. Wishnick is convinced that every individual can be successful by focusing on their strengths and positive experiences and less on deficits and weaknesses. He is the co-founder with his wife Kathleen of the Southwest Institute for ViolenceFree Learning (SWIVL) in Arivaca, Arizona.

Book preview

Part One 

America the Bureaucracy

I’ve often said, the only thing standing between me and greatness is me.

—Woody Allen,

comedian and storyteller

Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

—Ronald Wilson Reagan,

fortieth president of the United States

Our government . . . teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

—Louis Brandeis,

associate justice of the US Supreme Court

Introduction to Part One 

Host: Why are you here?

Caller: To get some money.

Host: What kind of money?

Caller: Obama money.

Host: Where’s it coming from?

Caller: Obama.

Host: And where did Obama get it?

Caller: I don’t know. His stash? I don’t know. I don’t know where he got it from, but he’s giving it to us to help us. We love him. That’s why we voted for him. Obama! Obama!¹

When I heard this short radio interview, I thought it was some form of comic relief. As I listened, the only thing I could think was that this made no sense at all. Have we become so dependent on others that we have lost faith in our own abilities or capacity to act? Further, have political campaigns become so cynical that the only thing that matters is a trade-off for basic needs? What has happened to our political culture that politicians would have the audacity to assume that they are responsible for all aspects of our lives? Is the government simply smarter and the majority of citizens naive? Has our situation become so hopeless and helpless that we are now strangers in our own country? Given the current trend of government intrusion in our personal lives, our families, and our communities, we are at a critical time in our nation’s history. To what extent are we willing to trade our personal liberty for the guarantee that our basic needs will be met? Has our constitutional framework and our founding documents outlived their time and usefulness?

Welcome to the intersection of liberty and rules: Liberty to do what we want when we want and rules that push back and set boundaries. While the radio interview above is complex and raises many questions, I suspect that your response simply depends on your perspective regarding the role that the government should play in our lives. I also suspect that the interview conjures up strong feelings based on certain values and beliefs.

So let’s take a few deep breaths to maneuver away from the stinging nature of the interview so we can view it as instructive.

As you prepare to read this book, I would like you to consider the question: Do you favor rules over liberty, or do you favor liberty over rules? Record your answer, and describe your reasons. Place your response aside, and refer back to it as you read, reflect, and consider the relationship between rules and liberty.

Now think about the three pillars that make up our country: the individual, our families, and our communities. How much liberty exists for you as an individual, for your family, and for your community? What rules exist that restrict your liberty? Are there rules that make no sense, and are there certain liberties that should not exist?

Going back to our intersection analogy of liberty and rules, when the intersection becomes an interstate eight-lane highway, we call it a bureaucracy. The fact that public and private bureaucracy influence many aspects of our lives, our families, and our communities is not a news flash. However, if the social contract with our elected leaders becomes nothing more than a trade-off between votes and government guarantees, we move beyond simple traffic congestion between the electorate and their representatives to a major car wreck. Up until now, most Americans continue to believe that bureaucracy, both in the public and private sector, maintains an acceptable balance between rules and liberty. If this balance is lost in favor of rules over self-reliance and personal liberty, we will be in unchartered territory that can potentially have dire consequences for individuals, families, and communities.

Vincent de Gournay, a leading French thinker in the mid-eighteenth century, was the first person to have coined the term bureaucracy.² Taken from the Latin burrus, a cloth used to cover a writing table or bureau and the Greek word kratein, meaning to rule, the bureaucratic model is fundamental to regulating government throughout society. Bureaucracy’s major characteristics include continuity, predictability, and detailed operating practices and procedures. Bureaucratic growth—spurred by the increasing population, the Industrial Revolution, the economic instability, and the emergence of giant corporations—has dramatically changed the role of the government and how people interact with their elected representatives.³ While the public generally criticizes bureaucracy, individuals rarely have the opportunity to meet directly with their elected leaders and have little recourse other than interacting with bureaucrats to solve their problems.

Sheer numbers alone prevent any real engagement between the electorate and their representatives. Other factors include the growing number of lobbyists, the influence of public and private foundations, and the exponential growth of think tanks and research institutions—all factors having marginalized the value and contributory importance of the individual citizen. The result has been a greater distancing of the individual from elected leaders and an increased reliance on bureaucracy to manage personal and social behavior. The question, however, is not so much how bureaucracy is changing the face of governance and the relationship between the people and their representatives but how bureaucracy is changing people and their personal and social lives. Max Weber (1864-1920), sometimes referred to as the father of bureaucracy, argued that bureaucracy was necessary to minimize the inequalities that exist in representative democracy.⁴ Weber was suspicious of political leaders, regardless of how they came into power and the actions they might take to infringe on the rights of the individual.

For Weber, structures, practices, and procedures need to be in place in order to prevent the government from dominating society and basic institutions, including economic, educational, religious, military, and mass communications.⁵ Weber regarded bureaucracy as a necessary response to unbridled leadership, organizational conflict, and a growing state of government interference. As society became more complex, he considered bureaucracy necessary for maintaining efficiency, productivity, and order. Weber viewed bureaucracy as critical to the advancement of society by creating the necessary conditions for rational, coherent decision making.⁶

Expanding on Weber’s bureaucratic description, Charles Goodsell, an expert on public administration, found that bureaucracy plays a beneficial role in creating the necessary infrastructure for advancing society. Discussing how bureaucracy is advantageous to a free society, Goodsell suggested the following:

Bureaucracy is indispensable to a free society, a democratic polity, and a capitalist economy. The liberty to wander the streets at night, for example depends on competent law enforcement. The ability to vote governments out of office without disruption requires a reliable administrative apparatus. A prosperous business community demands good schools, highways, health departments, post offices, and water and sewer systems.⁷

What then is the proper place for bureaucracy in a representative democracy, and how do we balance the interests of the individual with that of the society? Asked another way, do the needs of a bureaucratic society make expendable individual liberty, and if so, how much liberty are we willing to relinquish? To answer this question, we turn again to Max Weber for his thinking and insight. Weber’s general view was that large-scale bureaucracies have a responsibility for balancing the interests of the public and the private sector with that of the individual.⁸ From Weber’s thinking, we can conclude that a rational approach to decision making in large organizations, regardless if they are public or private, is the mark of modern social structures and is beneficial in the long run to advancing society. For many in the public and private sector, bureaucracy is an ideal organizational structure that is efficient and desirable for accomplishing goals in a highly complex, diverse society.

Bureaucracy is considered an appropriate infrastructure for developing procedures and practices to bridge and to coordinate governmental and marketplace relations. Numerous examples exist where government bureaucracy regulates the private sector, making it difficult to distinguish between where government ends and where the marketplace begins.⁹ Bureaucracy has and continues to change the lives of Americans, not in a simple or obscure way but in dramatic fashion. Fundamental to this change is a shift in our political culture from a decentralized position of power and authority to more and more control in the hands of a growing class of individuals from the public and private sector. What has resulted is a symbiotic relationship between the public and private sector to form a new unified political and economic class. In this book, this class is referred to as politeers and profiteers. Politeers are politicians who believe it is in the national interest for the government to expand its role in meeting the basic welfare needs of Americans. Using bureaucracy for the purpose of creating rules to regulate individual and group behaviors, politeers promote the view that the federal government has a legal and ethical obligation to provide for the general welfare of all citizens by ensuring employment, housing, and health care, just to mention a few topics. Politeers believe that bureaucracy can be transformed to help create a new vision for the federal government—one that brings stability and civility to society by ensuring that the basic needs of all Americans are met. For the private sector or marketplace, there are the profiteers wanting to maintain their liberty and flexibility but also desiring the support of the federal government through bureaucratic rules and regulations to protect their self-interests. This is not a new experience for the private sector as past legislative efforts by the federal government have often been closely aligned with capitalist interests when enacting rules to regulate trade and commerce, price-fixing, and monopolies.¹⁰ Profiteers, however, are a new class of capitalists that are dramatically different from entrepreneurs and individuals who support an unfettered marketplace to create and provide new and innovative consumer services and products. Profiteers act more like warriors, willing to exploit the public in order to make a profit. As a result, there are no bounds or limitations for the profiteer. The profiteer does not view the marketplace as a field of opportunity but rather as a place to control and dominate. The politeer and profiteer are motivated by absolute power and profits, respectively, and guided by the desire to manipulate and gain an advantage through the expansion of bureaucracy. Both benefit from an insulating bureaucratic infrastructure of rules and regulations that shield them from the public. Bureaucracy holds policy together as a rational way for society to organize itself. From the way we communicate to the food we eat, the purpose and true intent of laws enacted only become meaningful as bureaucratic rules and regulations are developed. Congressman John Conyers Jr. exemplify this when he commented that he was unable to read the complicated health care legislation.¹¹ In Conyers’s case as well as other legislators, there was no indication that their not reading the bill was a failure of due diligence.¹² What is evolving is a two-step approach to our legislative process—one that was never intended by the Founders of the Constitution. Step 1: Our elected officials pass laws that are specific in purpose and intent, but operationally vague and unclear. Step 2: Government bureaucracy creates structures, procedures, and practices to bring some sense of order and cohesion to the laws that are passed.

Nevertheless, a significant portion of the electorate is accepting our growing bureaucracy and believes it to be a natural nexus to the way we make laws. This perspective may help explain what the Speaker of the House of Representatives meant when referring to the health care legislation that was recently passed when she said, We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.¹³ What this means is that bureaucracy, with its rules and regulations, is becoming the major force in our representative democracy with the potential for transforming not only the government but the people who are governed.

Chapter One 

Bureaucracy for Who?

The view that individual liberty is a potential threat to the greater good and that social justice for all cannot take place unless society is controlled and regulated by government is obtaining more and more traction.¹⁴ Bureaucracy operates as a balancing act between rules and liberty where individuals are willing to relinquish a portion of their personal liberty for the good of society. Played out between local, state, and federal jurisdictions, advocacy groups of all types look to the government as a solution for resolving social inequalities.¹⁵ Often referred to as social engineering, bureaucratic regulations have taken many forms including legal restrictions, limitations on industrial practices, and encouragement of market-driven competition resulting in self-imposed constraints. Bureaucratic regulations attempt to shape individual, family, and community conduct, often through sanctions such as fines and/or incarceration. From the viewpoint of a number of constitutional experts, bureaucratic rules and regulations combined with statutory or case law seemingly have a free pass to interfere in almost every aspect of our lives.¹⁶

Politicians, entrepreneurs, and average citizens have become accustomed to a bureaucratic environment, looking at the government as a means to improve or, in some way, enhance their situation. Bureaucracy, including government at all levels—military, corporations, hospitals, higher education, and public schools, just to mention a few—are an expected and accepted part of society. Bureaucracy has also created barriers for the electorate so that the public is not able to engage easily with their elected representatives. As a result, members of the public are more inclined to meet with a bureaucrat regarding a particular problem or concern than a member of the Congress.

This increased reliance on governmental agencies in combination with the distancing of elected officials from the public has contributed to the expansion of bureaucracy into congressional affairs. This intrusion into the legislative process is a growing trend that runs counter to the original intent by the constitutional framers. While there was a fierce debate in the early days of the republic regarding which branch of government would have jurisdiction over bureaucratic operations, it was determined that bureaucracy would not be part of the legislative process. The federal bureaucracy began with three cabinet departments established by George Washington in 1789. Since that time, the number of departments in the cabinet has more than tripled with a myriad of agencies, bureaus, and authorities to help administer the government’s business.

Nevertheless, today bureaucrats provide information, conduct research, and make available feedback to elected officials on new legislation and recommendations for how current laws can become more effective and more efficient. Bureaucrats have procured an inordinate amount of information and expertise on the administration and overall effectiveness of laws. As a result, elected officials will often turn to bureaucrats—those individuals that have the requisite expertise, knowledge, and experiences—before their constituencies when they need information, research, and even how to vote. There is also strong evidence suggesting that elected officials have more confidence in the bureaucrats than in the voters. Lawrence N. Hansen, from the Public Accountability Project, described a growing level of cynicism and dissatisfaction in the public regarding our basic institutions and how this attitude is threatening our representative democracy. Hansen concluded the following:

The success of self-government depends in large measure on informed citizen participation. Members of Congress believe a growing number of Americans are distressingly uninformed about the ways Congress and government work, inattentive to political news and developments, and disinterested in available opportunities to interact, communicate with, and influence elected officials.¹⁷

Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner of economics, attempted to explain this split between the elected officials and the public by suggesting that Americans have listened too closely to antigovernment rhetoric and have drawn faulty conclusions. Krugman believes the following:

Antigovernment rhetoric, rhetoric that has convinced many voters that a dollar collected in taxes is always a dollar wasted, that the public sector can’t do anything right. The antigovernment campaign has always been phrased in terms of opposition to waste and fraud—to checks sent to welfare queens driving Cadillacs, to vast armies of bureaucrats uselessly pushing paper around. But those were myths, of course; there was never remotely as much waste and fraud as the right claimed. And now that the campaign has reached fruition, we’re seeing what was actually in the firing line: services that everyone except the very rich need, services that government must provide or nobody will, like lighted streets, drivable roads and decent schooling for the public as a whole. So the end result of the long campaign against government is that we’ve taken a disastrously wrong turn. America is now on the unlit, unpaved road to nowhere.¹⁸