Self-reliance, not

I am going to stray today from my usual single-minded focus on the world’s conflict zones to comment on the life of Paul Ryan.  I do this knowing full well that vice presidential candidates do precious little to decide electoral contests.  My inspiration comes in part from his life story, which happens to resemble my own, and in part from the efforts of the American media to make a coherent narrative where none exists.

My father died when I was 15, Ryan’s when he was 16.  Ryan’s family sounds as if was a good deal better off than mine, which was precariously lower middle class.  Like his, my mother went back to school after my father’s death and got a doctorate.  My mother worked in addition–I am not clear about Ryan’s.  Like Ryan, I got through college on the Social Security benefits paid after my father’s death, plus generous scholarship funds (thank you Haverford!).  I have worked hard since the age of 28, as has Ryan.  We both inherited some money.

Nothing in this life story has turned me towards Ayn Rand and her extremist views.  Quite to the contrary:  it is clear to me, as it should be to Paul Ryan, that he and I were both born to relative privilege, if only because our families were well-educated.  We recovered from untimely parental deaths with help from the U.S. government (yes, Social Security really is a U.S. government program) and hard work by our remaining parent.  We have had good jobs, his paid entirely by the U.S. government and most of mine as well.  Family members have been generous in their bequests, for which we should both be grateful.

These life stories tell me that getting a bit of help–whether from family or the U.S. government–is not inconsistent with hard work.  I don’t claim to be unusually self-reliant, and neither should Paul Ryan.  Our safety nets worked.  We took good advantage of that and have enjoyed many rewards as a result.

There are a lot of people in this country who don’t have the same safety nets.  Paul Ryan knows who they are, as his political party is assiduously trying to prevent them from voting.  That is mean-spirited but rational.  The poor certainly aren’t going to vote for those who want to dismantle the safety nets that do exist.  Republicans are fond of accusing Barack Obama of promoting class warfare.  That is backwards.  It is those trying to dismantle the government’s social safety nets who are promoting class warfare.

What about family?  This is the really difficult subject.  Poverty and family disruption go together:  the poor marry less and divorce more, the unmarried and divorced are poorer than the married.  Despite the “marriage penalty” in our tax code, the financial incentives to marry and to remain married are so great it is really hard to understand why anyone does something else, but increasingly people do.  This too is not accounted for in Ayn Rand.

What does any of this have to do with war and peace, or more generally with U.S. foreign policy?  A great deal.  I’ve already noted how Paul Ryan’s budget would gut diplomacy and development assistance while increasing military expenditure in an era that requires more of the former and less of the latter.  Someone who doesn’t believe in safety nets at home would not be interested in exporting them either.  Paul Ryan, product of a middle class family that provided ample education and support (supplemented by the U.S. government), doesn’t want anything like those advantages given to the poor in this country or abroad.

This is not a consistent narrative of self-reliance.