Part of today's negative backlash against big government is a belated recognition that government cannot do everything. It never could. Expectations simply have been unrealistically high on this point. The only way most needs can be met is by people helping people - one at a time.
Government programs and money have their undeniable uses, but American society was founded as a commonwealth of individuals, each with a sense of inviolate liberties and rights endowed by a Creator. At bottom, the commonwealth rested on a bedrock of spiritual values.In such a society, the role of government can never be paramount - not if the society is to survive as envisioned. Yet people need help, and if government is not the ultimate answer, then private individuals and private groups must see and be prepared to act on their own.
Unfortunately, that is not happening as much as it should. It's true that hundreds of thousands of Americans daily volunteer their time and services in behalf of others, in countless large and small ways. But any glance at the ills of society shows how vast is the ocean of unmet needs.
George Romney, former governor of Michigan and Detroit auto industry leader, former secretary of Housing and Urban Development and one-time presidential candidate, wants Utahns to set the example for the rest of the nation, to become a role model for voluntarism.
Romney, speaking this week at a Governor's Conference on Voluntarism hosted in Park City by the Commission on National and Community Service, sees voluntarism as one of the four legs of a chair that holds up America.
Government, the economy and spiritual values are the other three legs in his analogy. According to Romney, the spiritual leg is wobbly and the voluntarism leg is the least understood and least utilized. He would like the nation to mobilize its volunteer resources to solve problems.
In fact, as government shrinks or changes the focus of some social programs, volunteers will have to pick up the slack. Whether that can be done successfully depends in part on how well government encourages and organizes volunteers. At the very least, it will have to be nonpartisan or bipartisan.
More voluntarism is one of the answers to dealing with the woes that beset America, but the real answers must be rooted in the spiritual and family values that nourish - or fail to nourish - the nation.
Voluntarism springs out of those values, and if the values are frail, where are the committed volunteers to come from?