Civil society: an "us" or a bunch of "I's?"

NPR just published an article describing how, in this age of budget cuts, large donations from private individuals are keeping California state parks open. For example, Dan McCranie, who made a substantial fortune in the semiconductor industry, donated $750K to help keep Henry Coe State Park open. According to the article:

McCranie figures that now that private donors have stepped up, state money will never come back to Coe Park. So it will be up to them [the private donors] to create an endowment fund big enough to keep this park open in perpetuity.

The really interesting part of the article is the reaction of Rob Reich to Mr McCranie's donation (Mr Reich is co-director of Stanford University's Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society and no relation, apparently, to former Labor Secretary Robert Reich):

Getting the state off the hook for funding parks may also set into motion a slippery slope, says Rob Reich ... "You get lots of people like [McCranie] or others who do this who have great intentions and are civically minded and spirited," Reich explains. "But acting one by one by one, they set into motion this dynamic ... where suddenly we're not acting collaboratively or collectively as a public. We're acting individually as philanthropists to benefit the thing we're most passionate about. And suddenly we don't have a civic sphere anymore. We don't have political participation. We don't have an 'us.' We have a bunch of 'I's.' "

First of all, let it be noted that Mr Reich seems somewhat confused inasmuch as he calls Mr McCranie "civically minded" and yet characterizes his actions as leading to a situation where "we don't have a civic sphere anymore." Nevertheless, it seems clear that the predominant sentiment expressed in Mr Reich's comments is that the only kind of action that is legitimate is action taken by the state; actions taken by an endowment fund established by a bunch of private citizens are somehow second-rate, suspect, and undesirable.

And yet, why should the actions of private individuals, unaffiliated with the state, be undesirable? After all, there are certain thinkers, for example, Albert Jay Nock, who consider the state to be the enemy of its citizens and all state actions to be usurpations of the prerogatives of private citizens and institutions. For example, in his book Our Enemy, The State, Mr Nock writes:

[E]very assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can there be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power. ... Instead of recognizing the State as "the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men," the run of mankind, with rare exceptions, regards it not only as a final and indispensable entity, but also as, in the main, beneficent.

Let us consider the following two alternatives:

a.) the individual sends his hard-earned money off to the central government so that one or more apparatchiks may substitute their own judgment for the taxpayer's and decide how that money should be spent (often in some way the taxpayer objects to);

b.) the individual, acting as a philanthropist, spends his money directly "to benefit the thing [he's] most passionate about."

Why should option a. be viewed as automatically superior to option b.? This is the thinking of a man who has become accustomed to a society in which all institutions besides government have atrophied under the totalitarian pressures brought to bear by the leviathan state.

In an article earlier this year, Yuval Levin describes the process by which private institutions (in this case, the Catholic Church) are being "cleared out" by the Obama Administration:

[D]oes civil society consist of an assortment of efforts by citizens to band together in pursuit of mutual aims and goods as they understand them? Is it an extension of the state or of the community? In this arena, as in a great many others, the administration is clearly determined to see civil society as merely an extension of the state, and to clear out civil society—clearing out the mediating layers between the individual and the state—when it seems to stand in the way of achieving the president’s agenda. The idea is to leave as few non-individual players as possible in the private sphere, and to turn those few that are left into agents of the government.

Bill Kristol expands:

As Yuval Levin noted in National Review Online ... institutions such as the Catholic church [or, say, an endowment fund run by a bunch of private citizens] represent a mediating layer between the individual and the state. This layer, known as civil society, is one of the principal differences between Western liberal order and the socialist view.

In Mr Reich and Mr Obama's world view, all institutions besides government are inherently suspect and undesirable. Only "collective" actions undertaken by the state are legitimate. This attitude is best summed up by the mantra Progressives keep repeating: "We're all in this together." For example, Robert Reich, the former Labor Secretary, has written:

Obama must show America that the basic choice is between two fundamental views of this nation. Either we're all in this together, or we're a bunch of individuals who happen to live within these borders and are mainly on their own.

Obviously, I prefer to believe that we are a bunch of individuals acting on our own. In the socialist, collectivist view, on the other hand, all action must be taken by the people acting collectively. The problem with this view, of course, is that it is an illusion. The actions will not be taken by some mythical "us acting together." Such an entity does not exist. Rather, a small cadre of government bureaucrats located in a far off capital will impose their personal judgments on us all. What's more, the policies they impose on us, although funded by taxes expropriated from all of us, will often benefit only a small special interest group who, in turn, are supporters of the apparatchiks themselves.

What is especially ironic about this situation is that many of the Progressives who now adopt the socialist, collectivist world view and see government as the solution to every problem, were hippies back in the 60's and then viewed the government as the root of all evils.

The fact that private individuals have stepped forward to spend private funds to support what previously had been a function of government should not be viewed as a regression and relapse to a less advanced state, but as the healthy reengagement and revitalization of individuals and institutions that operate independently of government. It is these individuals and institutions that constitute civil society proper.

Let a thousand I's bloom.