The Marriage We Call Government

The role of government was one of the recurring themes in the debates during the recent US presidential election. Perhaps you remember the “you-did-not-build-that” controversy that was raging in the media. Obama was panned by many from the right for stating that, even if you succeed in business, you did not make that possible alone. In one of the many caricature cartoons that appeared on the web, a father points to the sandcastle that his children built in the beach, and proclaims to the confused kids “you did not build that!”

One commentator said that, for the first time in her life, she agreed with two diametrically opposed arguments at the same time. Yes, the kids built the sandcastle. But, would that be possible without someone offering beach-service in the first place? It needs investment, security, and other services that need collective action. There are many beaches around the world where security does not allow kids to enjoy the luxury of building sandcastles. The forlorn white beaches of Mogadishu come to mind.

This is just one aspect of the left-right division when it comes to the best way of building a society. The right emphasizes individual action, individual freedom, individual socio-economic independence. The left stands for shared responsibilities, shared benefits, and just allocation of the two across individuals. No matter what the philosophical or moralistic justifications provided for these positions, it stands clear that they represent two distinct visions regarding building a society. If we go extreme right, which idolizes libertarian principles, taxation is a crime and we cannot envision any meaningful role for government let alone a welfare state. If we go extreme left, we land in a communist society where individual choice is practically non-existent.

If government is a marriage, the Democrats would be the mother and the Republicans the father. The Father is no-nonsense and straight-faced. He insists on having disciplined kids, with clear individual rights and responsibilities. The mother, having instinctive, unconditional maternal love for her children, naturally gravitates towards shared responsibilities and rewards whereby the weakest members are protected. The mother is soft-hearted, and caring for outsiders as much as for the less fortunate of her children. The safety-first survival instinct of the father makes him zealous in defending the status-quo, doubtful of the unknown change, and suspicious of outsiders.

Throughout history, and across different societies, familial responsibilities constitute the distinct caring role of the mother and the couching and training role of the father. The father ensures that the child develops into an independent personhood, while the mother makes sure that s/he does not get in harm’s way. When conflicts arise between the two careers, there are cases where the mother becomes defensive and takes the side of the weaker sibling.  

Nowhere is this more evident than in the compelling story of the classic sibling rivalry between Jacob and Esau, which is narrated in Genesis. These twin brothers were fighting hard to earn the blessing of their father, Isaac, that ensured dominance. Esau, the first-born of the two, was “a skillful hunter, a man of the field”, and was tipped for the blessing by the father. But their mother Rebekah went to a great length to ensure that the blessing went to Jacob, who “was a mild man, dwelling in tents.” The ensuing battle between the two sexes is one of the most intriguing stories of the Old Testament.

Many polls indeed indicate that women are almost twice more likely to be Democrats than Republicans (with 41% and 25% of total women shares respectively). While gender can be a good predictor for political affiliation, what could be equally important is the social conditioning that leads one to better appreciate and hence affiliate with one of the qualities of the two genders. (Here, one may wonder on the effect of early family life on the likelihood of a person becoming a Republican or a Democrat. The archetype right-wing thinkers like Ayn Rand must have been brought up in a (relatively) patriarchal family, whereas thinkers associated with the left, such as Noam Chomsky, must have been raised in matriarchal families. You may say the independents are those lost in the arguments between the father and the mother in them).

If we take cue from nature, a successful society needs both the left and the right. It is not a mere coincidence that a typical family is built around a mother and a father, and not just any one of them. Fair representation of both sides by means of a democratic government ensures an equilibrium whereby the worst of one gender is tampered off by the best of the other. In fact, this lesson seems to have been properly internalized. If you take the US, the two parties have equally shared power since their formation, each party governing almost 50% of the years since 1861.  

A good analogy, you might say, except that an election has no resemblance to a wedding. There you have a point; neither do the two parties have the love-bond you typically see in a family. Yet, however unhappy the marriage, societies keep on forming governments. It appears as if people are heeding to the advice of Socrates who remarked “By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.”

And so, we do.