All Too Familiar

All Too Familiar
When Democrats talk about the "American family," they sound more like Big Brother than the Founding Fathers.
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Saturday, August 19, 2000 12:01 a.m. EDT

Having spent a pleasant couple of weeks in Syria and Beirut, I came home a few days ago to find America deep in a discussion that in someone else's country would scare the daylights out of me. Facing the "compassionate conservatism" of George W. Bush, the Democrats at their Los Angeles convention made every effort to out-care all comers. America is a family, the Democratic leaders kept telling us, and this family needs "healing," and the person to do this is Al Gore, because--as President Clinton told us Monday night--Mr. Gore "understands the future."

Even assuming that Mr. Gore is endowed with powers more oracular than most, there's a sinister edge to this theme that his job as president would be to play daddy to America. The premise is that Mr. Gore and his caring colleagues know better than most of us exactly what each individual American needs, and he loves us enough--"in his heart," as his supporters keep saying--to make sure we get it.

Among the things Mr. Gore is supposed to give us is something that right now goes under the buzzword of "diversity." Under the banner of diversity, this campaign has been playing as an endless calculus of intimate differences. America has some powerful folks who keep very close tabs on the private features of our countrymen, tallying every nuance of religion, ethnic background and sexual preference. The distinction between this and bigotry is presumed to be that these days, we don't hate the folks we are pigeonholing, we love them.

What doesn't seem to be on the agenda is simply living and doing business with them. Instead, it's all about caring. Sure, President Clinton, the empathizer in chief, gave a farewell speech Monday in which he cared mainly for himself. But at least he really cared.

Above all, everyone at this convention cares about children. "It is not enough to love your own child," we are told by Elizabeth Birch, a gay-rights activist who took the Democratic podium Tuesday. "We must love all children, and heal the family called America." Alís daughter, Karenna Gore Schiff, urges us to elect her father because ìthe office of the president represents every child on earth.î Hillary Clinton reminds us she still thinks "it takes a village."

And, in a spirit that seems to lump minorities together with all those collectively loved kids, Jesse Jackson gets up to congratulate his Democratic brethren on a party headed by a southern Baptist and an Orthodox Jew. The point seems to be not that people differ in ways that a free and just society will leave them to sort out under an impartial set of rules--thus ensuring genuine equality, not to mention dignity. Rather, the village elders want us to know that folks of different stripes are now kosher simply because these days we all really care. This is celebrated as some great new form of American brotherhood.

Brotherhood--when it turns up honestly, in private life--is a source of great good. So are families, so is love; and there is also much to be said for compassion. But these are things best volunteered privately, not hijacked by politicians. At the simplest level, most folks find it a full-time job simply to love their own children. Could we please stop kidding ourselves that we all have energy to indiscriminately love everyone's children?

The sad truth is that as organizing principles of politics and economics, such ideas as love, caring and collective families have a history of disaster. Government is a realm in which it's much more humane for us to hold each other at arm's length. Most families, after all, are essentially dictatorships. With young children to care for, they need to be.

That's a setup very different, however, from the workings of a free society. Citizens--adults--need mainly a framework of impartial rules within which they can take responsibility for themselves and their own children. That's what lets countries get rich and stay free, and what allows real compassion to flourish.

Doesn't the world learn? The Soviet Union was built on brotherhood. It was a village. It was a vast village swamped with the corruption that comes of depending on brotherhood to decide who gets what share of scarce resources. It was a village with medical services so bad there was no chance for anyone to go on caring for some of the children born there--they died too young.

The Chinese tried brotherhood, and millions starved. Only when they stopped communally loving children and collectively growing cabbage did that economy start to "heal."

The French revolution began with slogans of brotherhood and went on to the guillotine.

Behind the notion of love as the linchpin of politics is the message that the folks in charge--like the parents of young children--know better than we do what we need. That can lead in the end to policies that make even the Middle East look like a garden of tolerance.

Ms. Rosett is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. Her column appears Thursdays in The Wall Street Journal Europe as "Letter From America" and Saturdays on OpinionJournal.com.