Homestead mailing list

[tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>]

tvoivozhd--programs that entailed little more than labor by 
participants. This was unwittingly the appropriate solution for lifting 
large numbers of people out of poverty. By definition minimum-wage poor 
people cannot accumulate the surplus of capital needed to dig out of 
their economic hole---however as unemployed or under-employed, they have 
unutilized labor. Given the opportunity to make unutilized labor the 
equivalent of accumulated capital puts them on the first rung of the 
ladder upwards---making upward mobility a reality instead of berating 
them for lack of ambition or initiative. So far as the Homestead Act's 
success, it should be noted that participants had the necessary 
skills---they were products of a long-gone agricultural society.


New York Post <http://www.nypost.com>

DUBYA'S SOULCRAFT

*I*N his inaugural address, which was largely about America's stance 
toward the world, President Bush's reference to the Homestead Act was 
tantalizingly tangential: "In America's ideal of freedom, citizens find 
the dignity and security of economic independence, instead of laboring 
on the edge of subsistence. This is the broader definition of liberty 
that motivated the Homestead Act, the Social Security Act and the GI 
Bill of Rights."

Unpack the implications of those two sentences and you will find the 
core of conservatism updated for Republicans who think of themselves as 
a party of governance rather than of opposition to government, and who 
have come to terms with this fact: Americans talk like Jeffersonians but 
expect to be governed by Hamiltonians.

The Homestead Act was passed in 1862, when Congress would have been 
forgiven for devoting all its attention to more pressing matters. But 
just as the construction of the dome of the Capitol in which Congress 
worked continued, defiantly, as the Confederacy waged war for national 
dismemberment, the business of national consolidation continued, 
defiantly, with the Homestead Act.

Its provisions were as simple as the problem it addressed was stark. The 
problem was writ large on American maps at that time, which often 
designated the Great Plains as the Great American Desert. Under the act, 
fees totaling $18 entitled homesteaders to farm 160 acres which they 
would own with no other price after five years, or after six months if 
they paid $1.25 an acre.

Rarely has a social program worked so well. Indeed, a few years ago 
historians voted the Homestead Act, which remained in effect in the 
contiguous United States until 1976 and in Alaska until 1986, the 
third-most important legislative achievement in U.S. history, ahead of, 
among others, the Social Security Act, the GI Bill and the Voting Rights 
Act and behind only the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 (which was more an 
executive than a legislative achievement) and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 
1854 (which actually failed in its attempt to defuse the sectional crisis).

More than 270 million acres — 11 percent of today's America — were put 
into private hands. These approximately 422,000 square miles are more 
than 2.5 times the size of California and almost as much land as the 
combined area of 19 of today's states. According to Mark Engler, 
superintendent of the National Park Service's Homestead National 
Monument in Beatrice, Neb., 30 of today's 50 states had homesteads in 
them and there are up to 93 million descendants of homesteaders.

How does this pertain to Bush's domestic agenda? His inaugural address 
related that agenda to an "edifice of character." He said 
"self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self," and 
that "edifice of character is built in families, supported by 
communities with standards" and sustained by "the varied faiths of our 
people."

But the edifice is not "built" only in families; it is influenced by 
many facets of civil society, which in turn is shaped by government's 
many activities. Bush, in an address central to America's political 
liturgy, has now spoken of character as something that is, to a very 
limited but very important extent, constructed. Public policy 
participates in the building of it. This is a doctrine of architectonic 
government — government concerned with shaping the structure of the 
citizenry's soul.

Twenty-two years ago there was a book, written by this columnist and 
read by dozens, titled "Statecraft as Soulcraft: What Government Does." 
It was a manifesto, of sorts, for "big government conservatism." It 
argued that modern government, with its myriad prescriptions, 
proscriptions and incentives, cannot help but endorse and, to some 
extent, enforce certain values. So it should be thoughtful and 
articulate about it.

It cannot be said of Bush, as was famously said of Martin Van Buren, 
that he rows toward his goal "with muffled oars." Bush has said "I don't 
do nuance," and his "ownership society" agenda — from Social Security 
personal accounts to health savings accounts to tax cuts — is explicitly 
explained as soulcraft. Its purpose is to combat the learned 
incompetence of persons who become comfortable with excessive dependence 
on and supervision by government. His agenda's aim is to continue, in 
the language of his inaugural address, "preparing our people for the 
challenges of life in a free society."

That is the crux of modern conservatism — government taking strong 
measures to foster in the citizenry the attitudes and aptitudes 
necessary for increased individual independence. That is what the 
Homestead Act did, out in what no longer is the Great American Desert.

/E-mail: georgewill AT washpost.com/


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