SHARE:
Summit
At lunch I sat next to Henry J. Jibaja, state program director for the Corporation for National Service, a public-private partnership that oversees three national service initiatives. Together with the private Points of Light Foundation, CNS helped organize the Philadelphia Summit. Jibaja, who served in the Peace Corps in the 1960s, reflected the upbeat mood at the gathering when he enthused: "I haven't seen people show this much interest in public service since the Kennedy years and the Peace Corps."
To be sure, Clinton helped generate the interest when he made volunteerism a key issue for his second term. Then, too, there's the summit's high-wattage star power of sitting and former presidents joined in a bipartisan embrace of a subject that's hard to dispute: the need for civic commitment. And finally, the whole affair was run by one of America's most trusted (and least exposed) public figures, Colin Powell.
Bowling solo
The convening of the summit suggests a couple of things: that government expects to be playing less of a role in the lives of the nation's poor and that political leaders are looking toward volunteers to pick up the slack, especially in directing the country's increasingly troubled and troubling youth. Problem is, we modern-day Americans apparently don't share the community of interests that were once so common in the country. Evidence suggests we are less likely to join our fellow man in working toward a better, more just society.
Alexis de Tocqueville observed in the 1830s that Americans' propensity for civic associations was the key to their ability to make democracy work. That desire for social engagement has broken down, according to Robert D. Putnam of Harvard University, who laid out his thesis in a brilliant 1995 essay in the Journal of Democracy titled "Bowling Alone." Taking as a starting point that some 80 million Americans reported bowling at least once in 1993 - a 10% increase over 1980 - but league bowling declined 40% in the same period, Putnam goes on to trace similar declines in support of all kinds of community organizations: parent-teacher organizations, women's clubs, the numbers of volunteers for the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts. He cites as reasons: more women working, both men and women working longer hours; and the familiar social disconnector, television. "High on America's agenda," concludes Putnam, "should be the question of how to reverse these adverse trends in social connectedness, thus restoring civic engagement and civic trust."
One speaker at the Tampa pre-summit, Bill McBride, managing partner of Holland & Knight, suggested that one way to get hard-working people engaged in social service is to make volunteerism a part of their job descriptions. "It starts with CEO types, who let it be known that that kind of activity is important," he observed. "Our experience is that it helps productivity."
Still, there is a growing number of commentators who say it is the elite of large corporations and organizations that have created a divided and detached society. They point to the chasm between rich and poor that has grown exponentially so that today 1% of the population controls 40% of the wealth (up from 18% in the 1970s).
Unbridled capitalism
The statistics and other evidence have caused a number of critics from across the political spectrum to suggest that not only is big government a cause of the problem but there's a strong suggestion that all is not right with our capitalistic society as well. For example, during a recent speech at the National Press Club, conservative William J. Bennett said, "Unbridled capitalism is a problem ... for that whole dimension of things we call the realm of values and human relationships."
Bennett said in his speech, "We are the most affluent and materially prosperous people in the history of civilization. America also leads the industrialized world in rates of murder, violent crime, juvenile violent crime, imprisonment, divorce, abortion, single-parent households, teen suicide, cocaine consumption, per capita consumption of all drugs, pornography production and pornography consumption."
At the pre-summit, luncheon speaker Tampa Mayor Dick Greco, a politician-businessman, told a disturbing urban tale that seemed to echo Bennett's grim description of America today. Greco told of growing up poor in Tampa - and how grateful he was that he had been able to prosper. Yet for all his success, the mayor was left feeling powerless by a recent experience. Visiting his old neighborhood on a police call one night, the mayor witnessed a grim scene: A 15-year-old had shot and killed another boy and "showed no remorse."
The question left hanging was: Could some good soul, a mentor, have somehow changed the course of this boy's life? Clearly, the noble and worthy concept of a society of volunteers envisioned at the Philadelphia summit is a goal to be pursued. But whether it can happen in a society where the work ethic and self-interest have been elevated to the position of a religion is questionable.
Perhaps President Clinton's idea of requiring high school students to volunteer for a period of time makes sense. That way, they can turn their attention to helping others before they become totally absorbed in helping themselves.
