“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a
more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for
the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of
Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America.”
This is the preamble to the Constitution of the United
States. In it, our founding fathers speak about the role that government is
supposed to play in the lives of people. In Judaism, our founding document is
the Torah, the five books that record the experience of the people of Israel
from the time of creation until they are ready to enter the Promised Land. The
Jewish Bible, however does not have a preamble that speaks to its purpose. When
it says at the beginning of the Ten Commandments, “I am the Lord your God” it
is telling us that these laws are God’s will for how people should live. When
it says, “Hear Israel, the Lord is our God the Lord alone.” It is telling us
that the rules are from the one God and there are no other Gods who can tell us
to abrogate it. When the Torah reads, “You shall be holy for I the Lord your
God is holy.” It is giving us a framework on how to live our lives, much the
same way as the preamble to the Constitution does.
There has been a lot of discussion in this election year in
this country about the role of government in the lives of its citizens. Certainly
there are times when government is too intrusive and times when it needs to
intrude more. It is always a balance between letting people do what they know
is right and having government regulate what we do. The problem is not the
government, I think, but we human beings who make up the population. I think we
all agree that people can be selfish and self-serving. The Bible, even with all
its laws, understands that there is no law code in the universe that can cover
all the things a person should or should not do. We have to learn to be moral,
fair and kind. The prophet Micha tells us that we know what God wants from us,
“Only to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God.” Justice makes sure
we act fairly. Mercy gives us a break when we just make a mistake and walking
humbly with God reminds us that we are not God but we have an obligation to try
our best to do what God expects from us.
When the founding fathers of the United States wrote the
Constitution, they were living in world where things did not go according to
God’s law. Each state had its own version of justice. There were disputes
between people and states that were not being mediated. Each state had its own
version of a militia and no sense of working together with other states. Each
state, each city and each person did what was profitable for themselves and not
for the welfare of others. Being free required the people to be fair and the
definition of fair often depended on what was at stake for the parties.
The role of government, therefore for the United States and
for Judaism is summed up in this lesson from the Talmud, “pray for the welfare
of the government, for without it people would devour each other alive.” I
remember years ago, when police went on strike in a city in Canada, that
rioting and lawlessness ruled the streets until they could get the officers
back on patrol. I understood that the Talmud was not being theoretical. Law is what
makes civilization possible.
I understand that nobody likes taxes. Rich people did not
become rich by giving away money; they earned it and saved it so why should government
be able to take it away? It is functionally no different from the blue color
worker who gets a paycheck and wonders why the government can take out taxes
from what she has earned. The problem, of course, is that the money collected
from both rich and poor goes to provide the infrastructure we all depend on and
makes sure that basic services are available for everyone in areas of health
and retirement/disability income. Better to pay a little each day than to have
a big bill show up when we are not expecting it. Judaism required everyone to
pay taxes and it empowered the government to collect it no matter if the person
wanted to pay or not.
The same applies to regulations. Nobody likes government
telling us how to run our business. Yet who would clear and salt the walkways
in front of their store in the winter if they were not told they have to do it?
After all, snow removal costs money. The United States has a long history of
requiring business to provide a safe work environment because business could
not be relied upon to do it. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company had dozens of
women die in a fire because they were saving money by not dealing with fire
safety and they had locked doors so that the workers could not get out. From pollution issues to workers safety to
standard benefits, business could not be relied upon to do what was right without
government intervention. Greed and single-mindedness had corporations looking
the other way when it came to doing what they should. I often say, “Human Beings have an infinite
capacity to delude themselves”. We don’t think something will go wrong even as
we make decisions that will all but insure problems. The role of Government is
to bring a shot of reality into the way we live and the way we do business.
We can argue about who is responsible when people do stupid
things. Does government have to regulate every possibility for the dumb things
people do? (a month or so ago there was a disabled man who tried to drive
his “scooter” up an escalator with disastrous results.) Finding the right
balance is also the role of government and it is the responsibility of those
electing representatives to elect those who will legislate with eye to where
the voters stand on this issue.
Judaism teaches us that Government has to sometimes be the
grownup in the room to make sure that we don’t hurt ourselves or others; that
we will not “devour each other alive”. When I insist that Wall Street and Banks
need regulation, I am not taking a political stand, I am reflecting the Jewish
understanding that these institutions are not about a level playing field for all investors, they are about doing what will make money for their stockholders. To make
sure what they do is fair for everyone will take government regulations. There
is a long history, in this country of all kinds of fraud and insider trading going
back hundreds of years. In my own life, there has been, from the junk bonds
scandals of the 80’s to the Libor scandal of this year plenty of evidence that
regulation is appropriate and needed. Rabbi in Ancient Israel set limits on
what was an appropriate profit on a given sale; too much was price gouging.
There can be no free markets and no freedom for people if
there are not sensible interventions by government. It is not about politics,
it is about the natural role of government. Without government, is there any
doubt that we would cannibalize each other?
