Currents September 2018 11
> continued from page 10 States, we have this history and this aspiration for government to be democratic. It’ s about all of us and what we can do together. So if we become more and more antigovernment, we’ re against ourselves. We’ re against our own collective capacity to do anything.
So, it really doesn’ t matter what it is. It could be economic inequality, it could be climate change, it could be restoring the infrastructure. We can’ t solve any of these problems without government. And if individual citizens withdraw from public life, the only people in society who have power are those with lots of economic power. That’ s why I find this profoundly troubling.
We have to change the narrative. We have to think about the role that government has had in our own lives. We have to talk to friends and family members about what role government has played in their lives, and help them see the connections.
I have my students do interviews with a family member, preferably the eldest member of their family who has grown up in the United States, and ask them about government’ s role in their life through public policies. They come back having learned all sorts of things they didn’ t know about how a public policy like the GI Bill enabled that person to be the first in their family to go to college, and how that changed the fate of the family forever.
So, we have to find a way to recapture that sense of the government as an instrument of good in our lives, and we have to stop thinking of it as the enemy. Otherwise, we cannot make reforms and move forward as a democracy.
Gene Suppell Editor & Publisher
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