gage foreclosures is rising. Clearly, housing is not an area where the market, left to itself, produces tolerable results for anyone but the very rich. A broad-based housing program that would link the needs of the. poor to those of the middle class is urgently needed and would have massive public appeal. “Home” is a fundamental The notion of the meaning of life as consisting of competition, consumption, and security produces stunted lives and cultural deprivation, symbol of American life. We are shocked when people are deprived of it, when they have to make do with overcrowded and inadequate housing, or when they are hard-pressed financially to pay for what they have. Furthermore, we are not apt to be effective workers, good citizens, or responsible parents if we are without adequate housing or are worried about our ability to hold on to it. Here is a common-good issue with wide public appeal. Yet to phrase policy discussion only in terms of meeting wants and needs, even the most legitimate wants and needs, is to remain locked into the assumptions about our life together that most need to be questioned. Granted, we need to return with renewed vigor to eliminating what Albert Borgmann calls “brute poverty,” the poverty that is simply not necessary in a nation as rich as ours. But we also need to address the problems of what Borgmann calls “advanced poverty,” what in Habits of the Heart we called !’the poverty of affluence.” The notion of the meaning of life as consisting of competition, consumption, and security produces stunted lives and cultural deprivation in a different form from brute poverty, but in a way more disturbing since advanced poverty is the primary cause of brute poverty. One might be tempted to ask what governments can do about something that is primarily a moral sickness; yet we must remember that our institutions, both economic and political, create the conditions for this moral sickness. Specific proposals, well within our political tradition, could combat this problem. We should consider, for example, requiring two years of public service from all our young people at the end of high school. This requirement should include a wide range of options. The armed services would be one possibility, but programs such as VISTA and the Peace Corps, as well as a set of designated and monitored nongovernmental programs, could meet the requirement. What all the options would involve is service, with minimal material compensation, that would contribute to the good of others while postponing the individual’s own career advancement. Such a program should not be adopted without wide public discussion and the achievement of an effective consensus that it would strengthen an ethic of public service. As this example indicates, the Democratic candidate, in focusing on the common good, will be advocating particular policies, but will also be doing something even more important: encouraging a process of public discussion and long-range consensus formation. Indeed, the politics of the common good is above all the politics of discussion. The candidate should also raise the issues of family, neighborhood, and work and be open to what religion may have to say on these matters—not in order to invite some prefabricated answer from the Christian right, but because these issues are critical to a recovery of what in Habits of the Heart we call “moral ecology.” Changes in these areas are essential in the effort to deal with advanced poverty. Most people in America still have very positive feelings about the family. Yet much about the life we lead, particularly our occupational life, pulls the family apart. Democrats could advocate a'family policy similar to that of Social Democrats in Western Europe, which would provide family allowances and leavetime for parents, and would require businesses to schedule their work hours with family needs in mind- benefits that, again, would apply to everyone, not just the “deprived.” These policies would make life much easier for American women, but it is not just a question of women’s rights, but again of the common good. Rising medical expenses, especially for those over eighty-five, are Reagan encouraged illusion and discouraged responsible discussion. rapidly leading to a crisis where there will be an intense struggle between advocates of life-extending care for the aged and proponents of all other forms of social spending. Here, as Daniel Callahan has proposed, we need a national discussion about the meaning of old age, the dignity and value of the aged, and the limits that must be set that will be fair to old and young alike. The effort simply to deny that old age is significantly different from other periods of life avoids discussion of the particular virtues and responsibilities of old age and is an example of advanced poverty. Most contemporary discussions of social policy are premised on the value of economic growth, and much of what we have said in this article makes the same assumption. Yet growth comes in many forms, some more efficient and socially beneficial than others. Western Europeans, for example, enjoy virtually the same living standard as Americans while consuming only one-half as much energy per person. Furthermore, some forms of growth are life-threatening. If the whole world had as many automobiles per capita as the United States, we would expire in a cloud of carbon monoxide. Yet what does third world economic growth mean if it does not mean automobiles for every private family? And if we oppose the general use of the automobile elsewhere in the world how can we justify our own addiction to it? Surely it would be a certain ticket to defeat to ask Americans to give up their private automobiles today. Nevertheless, we must at least begin to discuss environmental responsibility in transportation and other fields. Here too the question of the common good is involved. The threat of growth to the natural ecology inevitably leads to the even deeper question of the threat of growth to our moral ecology, of how to think about increasing wealth and technological advancement in ways that will not destroy our capacity to act together as morally responsible persons. A president who leads us into a serious discussion of the common good, both at home and abroad, will make a contribution that would far outlast his own administration. The climate a president creates is as important as what he does. Reagan corrupted the American people by lying to them and simultaneously encouraging them to be self- indulgent and self-righteous. He pretended to be a teaching president but he taught us badly. He encouraged illusion and discouraged responsible discussion. We need a teaching president who will encourage us to be selfrestrained, devoted to the creation of a good society, and willing to engage in vigorous debate about the common good, which is, as Dennis McCann has put it, not something any of us has a certain definition of in advance, but the good we seek in We should consider requiring two years of public service from all our young people at the end of high school. common through a politics of discussion. The one thing it is not is simply the aggregation of private interests, with no agreement as to what the outcome means in terms of the general good. We Americans have undoubtedly been corrupted by the affluence of the postwar era and, most recently, by the fantasy world of Ronald Reagan. But we have maintained enough common sense and genuine civi^ virtue to be able to respond to serious, intelligent leadership. Leaders who talk about sacrifice and a new age of limits in a grim and tight-lipped way will be rejected. Americans will still prefer fantasy. But if serious thought and hard work are presented as the necessary prelude to a society and a world that are safer, more peaceful, and, in a deeper sense than we now fully understand, more prosperous, then Americans can rise to the challenge with joy and enthusiasm. It wouldn’t hurt to have a leader whose vision, joy, and enthusiasm could infect us all. Robert N. Bellah teaches sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. William M. Sullivan teaches philosophy at LaSalle University in Philadelphia. They are two of the five authors of Habits of the Heart. This essay first appeared in Tikkun, 5100 Leona St. Oakland, CA 94619. Subscriptions are $18 for one year. JonMarc Edwards is a Twin Cities painter. John Danicic is a Twin Cities photographer. Eric Walljasper is a Twin Cities Art Director. Clinton St. Quarterly— Fall, 1988 13
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