The term “welfare state” appears to have been coined in 1941 by Archbishop Temple (William Temple, of York, and later of Canterbury). The OED quotes Citizen & Churchman ii. 35 “We have..seen that in place of the conception of the Power-State we are led to that of the Welfare-State.” The word welfare is an old one, though. Chaucer used it with some frequency, and by 1400 or so, Ful glad was sir Gawayne, Of the welefar of Sir Ywayne (now stop snickering, you in the back). There’s a sense in which it is one of the oldest words in the United States, as it is the twenty-ninth word in the preamble to the Constitution that created this country, and four of the previous twenty-eight were ‘the’. Of course, the phrase was not entirely without controversy. It advances somewhat from Locke’s phrase of the common good, or the common benefit in the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Edwin Randolph, who wanted both “simple and precise language and general propositions”, introduced the phrase to the Consitutional Convention. Not an easy combination. As a general proposition, saying that the nation should provide for the general welfare is certainly general, and profoundly simple, but scarcely precise. Some skeptically viewed it as a vague excuse for a tyrannical central government to do anything it wanted, while others believed it to simply draw a distinction between providing for the specific welfare of the constitutional conventioneers, which was not the aim, and the general welfare of the country. However, as the Articles of Confederation also suggested that its purpose, was among other things, for the “mutual and general welfare” of the states, the phrase slipped through, despite cranky protests by George Mason (who, like Mr. Randolph, declined to actually sign the thing—remember that, next time you hear somebody way what our Founding Fathers wanted, some of our Founding Fathers hated some of the others, and that disagreements, party politics, and backroom deals were as much a part of the Founding as they are now. But I digress).
Where was I? Oh, yes, welfare. By 1918, the word included the basic idea of government supplying the needs of the populace in this line from Arnold Bennett’s Pretty Lady: “Canteens, and rest-rooms, and libraries, and sanitation, and all this damned ‘welfare’.” Welfare, presumably, is a good thing at this point, both in the individual and policy senses, however much Conservatives grumble about change. The idea grows, mostly in advancing the welfare of women and children, in fits and starts, culminating, really in the establishment of Social Security, at which point it makes sense to talk about a welfare state, a state that has ultimate responsibility for the welfare of each of its members, for maintaining a minimum standard of nutrition, shelter, and even comfort, below which we won’t let people go. Then, establishing unemployment insurance, direct aid for families with dependent children, hot lunches, etc., etc., expands the methods for maintaining that standard without changing the basic idea.
It’s that basic idea that we, as a nation, seem to have abandoned. I blame Ronald Reagan, of course, although his stories of the welfare queen (despite being fiction) were scarcely original. Conservatives, who always thought of the welfare state as government meddling in the inherited class structure, not only because it changed the poor (by giving them a sense of entitlement) but because it changed the rich (by eliminating their noblesse oblige position as the source of charity). Moderates and pragmatists saw the negative side-effects of Great Society programs outweighing the benefits, and rather than coming up with new visions of how to accomplish the goals, distrusted goals entirely. Clinton’s pledge to end welfare as we know it was a surrender, and an admission. Those of us who believe in welfare, those of us who don’t want to abandon that responsibility, and don’t trust anything less than the might of the government to hold it, are challenged to come up with a perfect policy to accomplish the goal, in order to justify the goal. But the goal still stands, and I say (again) with Rabbi Tarfon, that it isn’t your duty to complete the work, but that you are not at liberty to neglect it. The nation still exists not only to provide for the common defense, but also the general welfare.
It’s tempting to draw the simple but false choice between being a welfare state and a warfare state. The universe is, of course, more complicated than that. But the essence is there, that we, as a people, decide which obligations we take up, and which we shirk. We took up the responsibility of ousting Saddam Hussein, and we let go the national responsibility to feed the poor. We could do both, or either. It’s our choice. And we should be known by it, and know ourselves by it.
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.