Good Intentions

It’s more than a little sad for me; I relate to it all so well. We’ve been down so many crooked highways that it’s hard to recognize in us the persons we once were. I guess I expected more, a better effort: more inward growth, more outward connectedness and selflessness. I expected too much, didn’t I? But I understand this, too.

I remember the things we cared so much about—the foundations we vowed to build our lives upon, the principles, the values. We cared about our own opportunities, yes, but also the opportunities of others. We cared about fulfilling our potential, but helping others fulfill theirs. We cared about making more often real the promise of a better, fuller life for all people, about building and protecting a greater sense of community. We believed in reaching out and, where there appeared no common ground, building bridges. We believed in a higher calling, a greater good.

Oh, we still talk about a land that provides for all, regardless of who they are or are not, what they have or have not, where they may or may not be found. We still talk about freedom, equality, opportunity and justice. We still talk about poverty, education, and health care. But do we mean it? What have we done to move our rhetoric toward reality? How real is that freedom? How inclusive is that equality, opportunity and justice? How good are our good intentions?

We took advantage of our own opportunities, to be sure. We’ve always understood the avenues to success and the wealth-creating power of free, competitive markets; and we’ve advocated with conviction the importance to all of economic growth. We know quite well how amazingly it all has worked, producing the wealthiest of upper classes, the broadest, most financially secure middle class. But when and how did we develop a blind eye to how poorly competitive free-market dynamics provide for the poor, the undereducated, and those in need of health care? Is it just too inconvenient? Or does it just make too complex these issues for which we prefer simpler, unaccountable laissez-faire answers?

To what end our persistent anti-“big government”, anti-“welfare”, anti-tax refrain? We are a big country. We have big problems that call for big solutions. To that end, we require big, consistently effective government. And it requires each of us to pay our fair share of the cost. How can we say that we cannot comfortably contribute our fair share, when in good part it is devoted to helping and supporting the poor, aged and unable, to better educate people out of their poverty and into productivity and self sufficiency?

What happened to our genuine intention to advocate and work for needed assistance to those struggling day to day, often failing? We even had a nascent concern—however passive or naïve—for the earth and air and water that contains us, nurtures and supports us. And if, as we have said, the answers are all about private interests, private philanthropy or church missions, show me how that alone has solved these problems—or even come close. And let’s consider our contribution, our part played.

We’ve lost our way somewhere on our quest for the greater good, on that path paved with good intentions. Somewhere we lost our footing, our vision and mission. We have our success and worldly goods, yes, but has that fulfilled our potential, our promise? And if that is what we gained in that world we’ve so easily slipped into, what have we lost?

First written: January – June 2005
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007