The Limits of Social Policy

...Northwestern Europe took the lead and the U.S...

...An American Vision is timely, compelling, and aimed straight at the heart of public policy in the '90s...

...American exceptionalism," therefore, was no accident...

...PEGGY NOONAN* Speechwriter for George Bush "A cornucopia of answers for advocates of limited government who ask, 'But how do we get from here to there?' Many of them are compelling...

...The Americans thought of revolution in the ancient classical way, as a revolvere, a turning back to first principles...

...MALCOLM S. FORBES, JR...

...Read this book if you believe that the nation's thinkers are running out of ideas...

...Nonetheless, toward the end of the 1960s Glazer derived from his experiences "with social policy and not at all from reading any theorist or social philosopher" a disturbing insight, namely, that we seemed to be creating as many problems as we were solving and that the reasons were inherent in the way we—liberals, but also the moderate conservatives of the day (recall that they were such people as Richard Nixon and Nelson Rockefeller)—thought about social problems and social policy...

...Further, it is not only human recalcitrance that impresses him but also the remarkably diverse sets of rules and practices, restraints and habits that human beings in their various communities have evolved from harsh experience...

...indeed, I wouldn't be surprised to find him publishing one day a fuller philosophical statement on an American approach to social policy...

...Since the past is not recoverable (he writes—perhaps too quickly), his new approach offers, minimally, THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1989 two forms of guidance: first, it counsels hesitation in the development of social policies that sanction the abandonment of traditional practices, and second, and perhaps more helpful, it suggests that the creation and building of new traditions, or new versions of old traditions, must be taken more seriously as a requirement of social policy itself...

...In a word, Glazer's chapter on the uniqueness of American social policy deserves fuller development...

...The God who gave us life gave us liberty," Thomas Jefferson insisted...

...These inequalities shocked progressives—that is, those characterized by a "developing social conscience," who turned to the state to ameliorate these "evil and dangerous" inequalities...

...All of them force the dialogue about policy out of the conventional—and barren—terms of debate!' — CHARLES MURRAY Manhattan Institute "Thought-provoking and timely essays...

...And simultaneously, how can there also be full and unprecedented respect for personal rights, liberties, and fulfillment of responsibilities...

...The appearance of both books, and others like them, gives promise of a new era of cross-fertilization and innovation, within a new "horizon" of questions now seen by all to be unavoidable: Why have we failed...

...And if that continues, "the hope that social policy will assist in creating more harmonious social relations, better working social institutions, broadly accepted as the decent and right way to order society, cannot be realized...

...Glazer's capacity for sympathy is broad...

...In Federalist 14, Madison stresses this originality and Tocqueville nearly a half-century later fully appreciated it...

...Two of his lines of thought deserve special mention...

...20003...

...Since social responses are devised by emerging social intelligence (usually gained the hard way) his counsel is respect for such intelligence, even when tacit or inarticulate, rather than randomly tearing it asunder without replacement...

...Some important part of the solution to our social problems lies in traditional practices and traditional restraints...

...Yet Glazer's work needs to be considered in a deeper way, for he operates close to the edges of philosophy, deals with basic assumptions, and pushes against existing "horizons" (the limits of questions currently being asked) more insistently than he looks into the detail of particular problems or proposes new technical solutions...

...Nonetheless, like Glazer's, their sympathies are broad and their respect for ethnicity, religion, and family are similar to his...

...Indeed, the United States just now is rife with experiments and fresh thinking about uniquely American emphases: about incentives for individual effort, about responsibilities as well as rights, and about that coincidence of personal responsibility and participation in the civic and communal good that Tocqueville called "Self-Interest Rightly Understood...

...In its stead, Glazer favors a more modest respect for human nature as it has been revealed in our civilization's social history, for tradition, and for the lived complexity of actual social communities in all their fruitful diversity...

...The "progressive, if jerky, improvement" that high capitalism brought to the world piled new inequalities of wealth, power, and status on top of the inequalities left over from the pre-industrial era...

...How can we do better...

...The American framers were painfully aware of their originality...

...All of this is important...

...The utterly predictable consequence is that "rights undermine roles...

...he does not merely dismiss "conservatives" as immoral, nor act in a wholly ideological way...

...B in 1971, Glazer published in 1. ) Commentary an earlier version of his title essay, "The Limits of Social Policy...

...Indeed, the American framers understood "revolution" to mean something quite different from what the French and other Europeans later understood it to mean (in 1789, 1848, and so on...

...These are the "two sides" Glazer discerns currently at war in American social thought and practice...

...Cato has tapped the knowledge of experts...

...The second line of thought concerns both the throwaway clause mentioned above, "since the past is not recoverable," and the distinctively American idea of social order, progress, and purpose...

...It troubles him that many social thinkers hold that America's welfare system is simply an incomplete and rather unprogressive version of "more advanced" European welfare states...

...He has avoided being "liberal" in the worst sense...

...art way through Chapter One, Glazer adumbrates a new "solution," although what he suggests is more in the nature of an "approach...

...That is the force of seclorum "of the ages," in the "new order...

...whereas evidence indicates that the American model operates on distinctively American ideals and purposes...

...The "system of natural liberty" implies at once both liberty and system...

...A, 224 Second Street SE., Washington, D.C...

...Whereas the history of progressive social thinking is mainly European both in its origins and in its measure of what is more "advanced" and what is "laggard," as Glazer reports, the Americans had quite different ideas...

...But he is at his best when he faces data that oblige him to look again at his earlier assumptions...

...Glazer worries that, despite the attention the second side seems to have received from social scientists in the last two decades, the first side is winning...

...37...

...Aimed straight at the heart of public policy in the '90s...

...While they by no means thought that these principles were then "self-evident" to all peoples, they had reason to believe that trial and error would make them so, as history advanced and nations awakened...

...There are so many informative passages and finely wrought sentences in Glazer's essays that the temptation is to quote and quote...

...The owl of social philosophy is again in flight...

...The closing piece by George Gilder is a fabulous refutation of those who think the United States is in decline...

...True enough, Glazer is working within the dominant liberal tradition in American social policy, whereas Butler and Kondratas have a major chapter called "The Foundations of a Conservative Welfare System...

...Glazer is unsparing in pointing out the ways this happens...

...Available at bookstores or from the Cato Institute, Dept...

...Glazer's insight led him to a new point of view, which he summarizes in two propositions: 1. In our social policies we are trying to deal with the breakdown of traditional ways of handling distress...

...Glazer, on the evidence of these collected essays, is poised to formulate a new beginning for American social thought more in keeping with the American founding, and also more respectful of lessons learned first in America and now coming to the fore internationally...

...that philosophers appear to hold a view of equality of income quite different from that of the American people...

...It is rare to find a practitioner (Glazer participated in the Kennedy Administration as an urban sociologist in the Housing and Home Finance Agency in 1962-63) and theorist with courage sufficient to question the assumptions of his profession...

...Our efforts to deal with distress are themselves increasing distress...

...i.e., that for every social problem there is a policy...

...were first presented before an international audience and in an international context...

...REP...

...Finally, it troubles him that a huge and largely unrecognized battle over values is being fought out in excessive darkness...

...On the contrary...

...The liberal stance is: for every problem there is a policy, and even if the problem is new, the social system and polity must be indicted for failing to tackle it earlier...

...In a not dissimilar spirit, a book by Stuart Butler and Anna Kondratas, Out of the Poverty Trap (Free Press, 1987), covers in its eight chapters much of the same ground as Glazer's does: "Why the War on Poverty is Being Lost," "Rebuilding America's Communities," "Welfare and the Family," "Better Education for the Poor," "Advancing the Agenda...

...Europeans have tended to stress the "social...

...It troubles him (in "Why Isn't There More Equality...

...TIMOTHY J. PENNY (D-Minn...

...Whereas European social instincts tend to operate top-down, from social plans and national programs to needy individuals, American social instincts tend to inspire individual citizens (who might not share the same religious or ethnic visions) to build communities bottom-up...

...he has been a leader among scholars concerned with grasping THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1989 nuances of ethnicity, religion, and other particularities of individual communities...

...We are making no steady headway against a sea of misery...

...Beginning here, Glazer's book guides Michael Novak is the director of Social and Political Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and holder of the George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religion and Public Policy...

...The fundamental perplexity for the framers 200 years ago—and for social science today—is how to meet two requirements: How can there be a progressive, ever fuller achievement of the common good of a whole people—that is to say, the achievement of an ordered, civilized, and dynamic society...

...nonprofessionals through the history, presuppositions, and some of the experiments of "progressive" public policy makers during the past quarter-century...

...2. In our efforts to deal with the breakdown of these traditional structures, our social policies are weakening them further and making matters in some important respects worse...

...Deputy Editor-in-Chief Forbes $26.95 cloth/05.95 paper/358 pages...

...These traditional ways are located in the family primarily, but also in the ethnic group, the neighborhood, the church...

...There is in Glazer much Burkean modesty, little of the hubris of those who see (or once saw) no limits to the malleability of human societies in the hands of all-wise engineers and molders of utopian results...

...T et me characterize the domi1—i nant view of the day (still the dominant view, I would say, among liberals)," Nathan Glazer writes near the beginning of his new book, The Limits of Social Policy...

...JAMES C. MILLER III Citizens for a Sound Economy "A genuinely exciting vision for the United States is provided in this collection of essays...

...Whether or not you agree with all of them, An American Vision is worthwhile reading and certainly contributes to the debate...

...In the best sense of the word, Glazer has maintained a liberal, self-questioning spirit, open to actual experience and results...

...It made a deep impression on me then and is more powerful in its new revision...

...Some—such as "Crisis and Redirection in Social Policy" and "The American Welfare State: Incomplete or Different...

...The other nine essays in this book mostly date from the 1980s, of which three see print for the first time...

...lagged behind, at least until JFK and LBJ began "to show Europe a thing or two" about community participation...

...it was, indeed, a historical deft, a challenge, an experiment, an act of perilous defiance...

...a battle between those who insist on "a radical and egalitarian individualism" and those who defend "mediating structures," that is, the complex of local institutions and social roles that incorporate authority (perhaps religious) and tradition into daily life...

...Virtually all are concerned with various aspects of family welfare policy...

...You'll be challenged, you'll be stimulated, but if you care about America's future, you won't be bored...

...The future outlines of such a work are already hinted at here...

...Americans, although much more aware of the social than Europeans tend to think, see far more clearly the crucial role to be played by the full exercise of personal liberties in any social order worthy of human nature...

...It is as if Glazer sees human liberty not as something unconstrained, but rather as ordered liberty, shaped to diverse social necessities...

...The primal pioneer experience, after all, was building community: not only building new villages, new towns, new cities, and new states, but also building them around luminous new principles of personal responsibility and personal involvement...

...Where can we find new and more fruitful starting places...

...In brief, to get to "the essence of the liberal view of social problems" is to see that its typical stance is blame—not of course of the unfortunates suffering from the social problem the social policy is designed to remove, but blame rather of our society and our political system...

...Guilt, then, and complaisance—guilt for not having acted earlier against the injustices that were after all always there, but also complaisance, because our forebears weren't advanced enough to recognize or act on them at all...

...The first line of thought, then, is to give up a pillar of the conventional wisdom in social policy...

...Make haste slowly," in other words, being careful to supply new strengths for any taken away...

...the new order of the ages," they boasted...

...To be sure, the Americans thought that these first principles were "self-evident," rooted in the conditions necessary for the full expression of "natural liberty...