Guest Post by Morbo
Occasionally, I’ll read an article that makes a point like this: “In the country of X, everyone gets [a free college education, national health care, subsidized ice cream, etc.] We could learn from them,”
I’m often skeptical, because the United States has become radically different from even the Western European nations that, on the surface, we seem to have so much in common with.
Yet I could not help but have these thoughts again after reading a recent piece in The Washington Post about Finland, which, although a cold land much of the year, sounds like liberal paradise. A national system of health care covers everyone. Colleges don’t charge tuition and students even receive living stipends to attend. The country’s educational system is one of the best in the world. Its people live longer than Americans, and its infant mortality rate is lower. Author Robert G. Kaiser asked proactively, “If they can do, why can’t we?”
But Kaiser concludes we probably can’t. I agree — but for different reasons.
Kaiser notes the serious differences between the two nations: Only 5.2 million people live in Finland, as opposed to 300 million in the United States. We spend much more on our military. Finland is ethnically and religiously homogenous. Most people are nominal Lutherans who believe their religion compels them to help those in need, while the U.S. has spawned mutant forms of Christianity tied to bootstrap capitalism. Finns are happy to live in modestly sized houses and spend less on stuff. In America, McMansions are increasingly the norm, and we need five-car garages for our SUVs. Our TVs are now the size of theater screens, and of course we have a God-given right to every new electronic toy that comes out.
But to me, those surface differences still don’t explain the gulf. Kasier touches on, but does not fully explore, the main reason the Finns have a successful society while ours continues to sink: Finns believe in the power of government to do good. He writes, “Every significant Finnish political party supports the welfare state and, broadly speaking, the high taxation that makes it possible. And Finns have extraordinary confidence in their political class and public officials. Corruption is extremely rare.”
Compare that the United States. We are constantly told by the dominant Republican Party that government is the enemy, not the ally, of the people. Democrats seem unable to challenge this line. With an attitude like that, it’s no wonder we spin our wheels.
I’ve never been to Finland, but I can only imagine that if a politician ran for office there on a platform that was hostile to the very institution he sought to join, he would not do well. In America, such politicians win office and get reelected. Ever since Reagan we’ve had this drummed into our heads: Government is not the solution to the problem; government is the problem.
Unfortunately, this line of thinking has a long pedigree in the United States. Garry Wills traced citizen dislike of government in his 1999 book A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government. As Wills points out, the “hate-the-government” line goes back to the founding. Considering that the United States was born of a revolution, that’s not surprising. What is surprising is that this attitude is still with us 230 years later.
Reflexive “government-is-evil” thinking endures even as programs like Social Security have become fixtures. Such thinking survived the creation of the modern welfare state (such as it is these days), unemployment insurance, the Centers for Disease Control, the interstate highway system and the Federal Depositors Insurance Commission. In other words, it survived concrete examples of effective government programs in action – programs that have made a positive difference in the lives of millions of Americans.
How can this be? How can Americans continue to hate big government while reaping its benefits? Perhaps unique among the Western world, Americans have the ability to hold two contradictory opinions while experiencing no cognitive dissonance. They are capable of spouting anti-government rhetoric in volumes and then turning around and lauding a congressman for winning a federal pork barrel appropriation for a new bridge in town.
Kasier notes that there is a Finnish word “talkoot,” which expresses the idea of “doing work together.” He writes, “It’s a powerful Finnish tradition, and reflects a national sense that ‘we’re all in the same boat,’ as numerous Finns said to me. This idea has always appealed to Americans, but in this country it has nearly always been an abstraction. Finns seem to make it real.”
And therein lies the key difference. Americans are happy to accept empty rhetoric and go about their daily business fueled by national myths, never caring that the very example of their nation increasingly makes of mockery of the lofty words in our founding documents. Finns are not.
In short, Finns have grown up. We in America still have a lot of that to do.