Forget cave, we need goodwill, good government

National Catholic Reporter, March 24, 1995

As the Cold War clouds rolled back to let peace shine on old trouble spots from South Africa to El Salvador, it seemed the United Nations was finally ready to fulfill its promise of transcending nationalism, cementing peace and fostering prosperity. The intervening years have sadly shown that, as presently constituted, the United Nations is not equal to the task. While its defenders can point to some decent achievements, the overall history has been one of ineptitude and inertia at the mercy of politics and other disasters.

At last November's meeting of the U.S. Institute of Peace (page 8), non-governmental organizations, increasingly more prominent and daring than the United Nations at the world's crisis points, were challenged to pick up the U.N. slack. This was a sign of the times.

While there is enough blame to go around, it is no secret that, politically, when the big chips are down, as the United States goes, so goes the world. And the United States is not going very far with the United Nations. The United States has failed for years to pay its full share of U.N. expenses. In a growing isolationism, U.S. politicians recoil from world involvement -- encouraged in this by overwhelming numbers of us the people.

Such calamities as Somalia and Bosnia need not have happened or be happening. We justify our unwillingness to get involved by telling ourselves we are not the world's police and other old slogans, but because we say it selectively we sound hollow when we say it. And this national withdrawal is but the tip of a more dangerous iceberg.

Since last November's Republican landslide into power, an old refrain has reverberated ever more insistently, an echo of the Reagan years, to the effect that it's not government's role to solve people's problems. At least, not their unpopular problems. On the contrary, this argument goes, government itself may be the problem. This is domestic isolationism.

The anomalies pile up. The same conservative politicians who decry world or local involvement simultaneously promote ever greater arsenals and armies to do ever less.

A great many influences crisscross to create these anomalies. There is fear and insecurity behind it. There is a radical selfishness behind it. There is a scurrying behind flimsy barricades. We're nervous.

And from behind the barricades there is a call for volunteers to pick up the responsibilities our national and international governments have abdicated.

This is not mere selfishness on our part. Sometimes it's guilt hung over from the past. Often it's genuine charity and decency. The politicians oblige us by saying that government hasn't worked. That is true. The world is in many ways a sorry place. But it's foolishness to pretend that volunteers or NGOs will do what governments have so badly failed to do.

So down at the bottom of the iceberg lurks the explosive question that won't stay submerged forever: Is our society to be fragmented back into individuals, each with our own agenda, as we were before we formed city and state, or can we find a more effective way of living and interacting together?

Individualism is honored in this country. But America also has a proud tradition of people democratically working together. People are so complex, the societies that reflect their varied interests will be complex, too. Walking the fine line between individual good and common good is what we call civilization. Extremes are the enemy. We are at a volatile crossroads just now, fed by radio and other demagogues, the kind that foster extremism.

No matter how bad things get, we can't return to the original cave with our computers and Walkmans. The only road is forward and uncharted. But we ought to have learned a few things from our history thus far.

We learned that our individual wills and our community will are generally so weak that we need governments and laws to force us to do what we don't want to do, for the good of all, which in the long term is also our own good. But we also learned that life would be barren without the will and the ways to go beyond mere obligation. We become more human, as individuals and societies, when we aspire higher than the law. And if we aspire in the right direction, the law will follow. Good government embodies our best wishes.

This is the great value of the NGOs, as it is the value of every more local organization founded on goodwill: that they keep government's frosty feet to the fire; not only complement government here and now but inspire and lead it in a kinder direction for the future. And if they are all successful' they will fuse into one purpose and pursuit some utopian sunny day.

This will take a while. Hope enters here. It's scarce today. It's a valued Christian virtue. Someone should tell the politicians that hope beats hype by a mile.