essay
BY MICHAEL ROOKE-LEY
‘Real Men’ Don’t Do Government?
Women tend to understand the social contract
T
he political season is upon us, and for many of us
the task at hand is to insist that President Obama
fi nd his voice. My greater concern, however, is
that there may be a diminishing audience for an active
government and nation-building right here at home.
Having spent nearly 35 years in the classroom — mostly
teaching law students and occasionally undergraduates — I
sense a disturbing resurgence of references to government
in the third person — and not in a nice way. All too often,
government is “them,” some evil outside force. And, of
course, if it’s the enemy, the smaller the better.
Polls, as well as my anecdotal experience, suggest that
far more men than women — whether of my generation
or my students’ generation — are drawn to this small-
government libertarianism, currently popularized by Ron
and Rand Paul. Most of these men describe themselves as
socially liberal, fi scally conservative (translation: the right
to smoke weed after work while ignoring the jobless folks
across town) and often apolitical. Though they might not
actually vote for Congressman Paul (or vote at all), their
view of life as an individual endeavor seems to be the
cultural norm. The ongoing task of fi nding a reasonable
balance between individual rights and community
responsibility rarely draws their attention. And gender
seems to be playing a part.
Consider, for example, that so many “successful” older
men regard their material comforts to be the result of
individual talent, wholly ignoring the considerable benefi ts
of societal support, inherited privileges, the opportunities
provided by middle-class upbringings and just plain good
luck. Accomplished women, on the other hand, rarely
subscribe to such self-serving silliness and seem to value
a more holistic approach to life’s challenges and successes,
even in the face of blatant gender-stereotyping. Recall the
last presidential campaign when candidate Obama was
belittled as a former “community organizer” (by the ever-
provocative Sarah Palin, among others, to the delight of
too many white male voters) and the subsequent criticism
leveled at empathy-burdened Supreme Court nominees:
illogical, irrational, non-linear, emotional, weak …
feminine.
and dangerous threat to our democracy.
When the wealthiest 20 percent of
Americans own 85 percent of our
privately held wealth (and the top
1 percent owns 35 percent), when
the average income of our richest
1 percent is 36 times greater than
that of the median U.S. household,
and when this 1 percent fi nances
unencumbered PACs and determines
elections, our peaceful democracy is
tempting fate. On a human level, this
wealth disparity breeds separate lives. Our
paths never cross. Out of sight, out of mind.
In the 2011 Quality of Life Index — weighing factors
such as health, education, public safety, fi scal responsibility
— the U.S. ranks 31st, well behind those countries that
choose to devote greater resources to their infrastructures.
Once again, where’s the social contract?
Sadly, so many young men seem to be on that familiar
solo track we disavowed in the cultural revolution of our
youth. We must remind ourselves that our relationship
with government mirrors the relationships we maintain in
our everyday lives. “The personal is political,” remember?
What ever became of the “men’s movement” of the 1970s,
which built upon that latest wave of women’s liberation and
on which we held out such hope for transforming gender
roles — where we sought to fi nd honest, one-on-one rela-
tionships with other men, equality of responsibility in our
family life, engagement in our neighborhoods and our chil-
dren’s schools, inspiration in our workplaces, and thoughtful
participation in our government’s programs and priorities?
Can it be, as one female friend has suggested, that we sim-
ply can’t overcome these intractable gender differences —
whether nature or nurture, the barriers are just too great?
Sometimes small experiments can help me understand.
When I pose to my students a hypothetical new society on
a desert island — 30 of us, or 50, or 200, however many of
us are in the class — and ask what our rules (constitution)
are going to be, we seem able to settle on what we expect
from one another and, men and women alike, that we’re
We must remind ourselves that our relationship with government
mirrors the relationships we maintain in our everyday lives.
My favorite political candidate of the day is law
professor and consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren, who
is running a strong campaign for the Senate seat once
sought unsuccessfully by Mitt “The-99-percenter-is-Just-
Envious” Romney. Her remarks on the campaign trail have
been widely reported:
There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own.
Nobody. You built a factory out there, good for you. But, I
want to be clear: You moved your goods to market on the
roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of
us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of
police forces and fi re forces that the rest of us paid for. You
didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come
and seize everything at your factory and hire someone to
protect against this because of the work the rest of us did.
Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something
terrifi c or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But
part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk
of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.
Yes, the social contract. And pay forward. Small-
government, free-market advocates need to “man up” in
ways that matter. For more than a decade, many of us in
the legal academy and elsewhere have warned that the
unprecedented disparity of wealth in our nation is a real
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not simply going to let that other fellow a few seats over,
through bad habits and/or ill fortune, fall into the gutter and
stay there.
Predictably, however, as we move from full-engagement
(on a desert island or in small communities) to a representative
democracy (because our town has become too large for us
all to meet and debate in the local amphitheatre), as “local”
gets lost, we fi nd many of our voices (usually baritones)
condemning government as “them,” a frame of reference
which affords us the luxury of denying responsibility and
wallowing in judgment and sanctimony. The larger and more
diverse the community to whom we can pass the buck, the
quicker we can disassociate ourselves from those whom we
don’t know and aren’t inclined to know. (It’s all the harder,
of course, in a purposefully heterogeneous society, our
Great Salad Bowl experiment, unique among democratic
nations, where we seek to demonstrate that people from all
cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds can live together
peacefully and productively. Inspiring, to be sure, but
enormously diffi cult each and every day.) If we can create
distance and imagine differences, we can rationalize our
self-centered behavior. It’s easier than engagement, and a
quicker route to “getting mine.”
Combining our tendency toward sanctimony with the
bystander syndrome — when we silently acquiesce to an ill-
advised war pursued overseas in our name (and during which
most of us sacrifi ce virtually nothing ourselves) or
to a money-driven system which has allowed
a deviant football coach to roam undeterred
in a powerful and privileged culture which
many of us support from the comfort of our
couches every Saturday afternoon — we can
spare ourselves any sense of responsibility
and principled action.
Teenagers — mostly girls, it seems —
love that painfully clichéd slogan (on mugs,
T-shirts, bracelets — you can shop for it online!)
attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: “Be the change you
want to see in the world.” There’s wisdom there, of
course. In my day, it was “the personal is political,” now a
helpful reminder to us aging progressives who may succumb
to hypocrisy in our less public lives. To be sure, every so
often we all stumble along the way, looking out for number
one at the expense of family, friends, our community, our
nation and faceless fellow travelers worldwide. We fi nd
ourselves asleep at the switch, only to discover that our
attention to self and to community is way out of balance —
that we’re not living as we would want the world to be.
Consider, for example, the just-graduated young man
who may be setting forth into the world of, say, business
or law. Predictably, deregulation, lower taxes and right-
to-work laws may hold a certain appeal for him, but more
personally — and more signifi cantly, I believe — he does
not intend, nor even consider, that starting a family will
impact the timing or trajectory of his career path. He
envisions an uninterrupted, linear career path, assuming
without much thought, I suppose, that “the wife” will
keep the home fi res burning, Romney-style. On the other
hand, my female students — often brilliant, self-assured
and career-minded themselves — seem quite conscious
of the potential interruption and requisite balancing act
when children enter the picture. Can it be, as one female
friend has suggested, that we simply can’t overcome these
intractable gender differences — whether nature or nurture,
the barriers are just too great?
We might ask ourselves if we’re just looking out
for number one at the expense of our community when
we choose to enroll our kids in private elementary and
secondary schools that are out-of-reach, fi nancially and/or
geographically, for families of modest means. Or when one
“beats the taxman” with undeclared income or dinner out
as a “business expense.” Or when we slyly remodel our
home without complying with our community’s agreed-
upon permit process. Or when one chuckles over a secret
extramarital adventure with a neighbor‘s wife?
To the young men who have been fortunate to have the
privilege of a college education comes both opportunity
and responsibility to choose work that matters and, as
the counselors say, to live a life worth living. And there’s
nothing more noble than public service, where one can
express the bedrock American values of equality, inclusion
and community. With our infrastructure collapsing all
around us, its most essential feature — the foundation of
our democracy and an informed electorate, our nation’s
beacon to the world — remains our government-funded
schools. So, fellas, how about a career teaching in our
disadvantaged public schools? Face it: Most of today’s kids
in low-income schools don’t have a chance without you.
Yes, boys will be boys — tough, rebellious, independent,
bulging biceps. But as men we can choose to grow up,
reminding ourselves that what we want for ourselves and
for the next generation is the experience of face-to-face
engagement, of making meaningful contributions and of
sharing real friendships (not simply on Facebook!) next
door and across the globe. In a participatory democracy,
doing government is doing relationship on a macro level.
Through public service, we create and maintain community.
Government is we. Guys included.
ew
Michael Rooke-Ley of Eugene is an emeritus professor of law.
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