Evan Bayh, former US senator and former Indiana governor, spoke about the importance of striking the proper balance between individual freedom and the common good at the Debartolo Performing Arts Center on February 24.
Bayh, a Democrat who won 5 statewide elections in Indiana, emphasized the essential value of individual liberty in the founding and history of the United States, but also argued that Americans have been able to place the proper limits on individual freedom in order to attain the best result for the nation as a whole.
He said that the desire to make the most of one’s self is “innate and inseparable from the American experience.”
He cited examples of the construction of public fire departments to protect the property of individuals from being damaged by fires on other people’s property and the mandate on individuals to purchase auto insurance to protect innocent third parties who get injured in automobile crashes.
“In order to maximize individual freedom, we have to do some things together,” Bayh said.
Issues such as terrorism and the growing national debt are contemporary cases in point. He said that during the Cold War, although nuclear weapons were on both sides, the US could count on the Soviet Union as being rational thinkers. He said deterrence worked in the Cold War because the Soviets were “not suicidal.”
Since Islamic terrorists are not afraid of dying, explained Bayh, we must balance that reality with protecting Americans’ civil liberties.
“If you get it wrong on the one hand, you’ve trampled on our civil liberties, which goes right to the core of who we are,” Bayh asserted. “If you get it wrong on the other hand, people die, which may be the greatest destruction of civil liberties.”
He said that he learned about the importance of intelligence gathering while serving on the Senate Intelligence Committee. The UPS bomb plot, in which explosives were packed into ink cartridges, was thwarted not because of screening of packages but because of a tip from an allied intelligence service. The package originated in Yemen and would have been flown into the US after being processed in Europe.
“The threat to our country is global in nature,” Bayh said. The government needs some expanded powers to combat global terrorism, but he urged Americans not to eliminate treasured civil liberties either.
Bayh said that the debate over the US government’s finances “will dominate public discourse at the state and federal level” in the months ahead. The issue of debt is yet another conflict of individual freedom and the common good because our freedom to borrow money now places a burden on future generations of Americans who will be confronted with the costs.
With the US facing the possibility of significant increases in interest rates and the collapse of the dollar, the government must avoid defaulting on its debts, but must not have drastic spending cuts either.
According to Bayh, two important keys to the future will be increasing private research and development and improving access to education, with a particular focus on advanced degrees.
The growth in the wealth gap can largely be explained by the level of education between the “haves” and the “have nots.” Those who have a college education have seen an increase in their standard of living, while high school graduates and dropouts have seen their standard of living remain relatively flat. But those who have earned advanced graduate degrees have seen the largest increase in standard of living, Bayh said.
According to Bayh, when America moved from an agrarian economy to an industrial economy, the country collectively noticed that formal education was necessary. As the American economy shifts to an information and services based economy, advanced levels of education are even more essential.
The private sector needs to take a larger lead in research and development, largely because America’s competitors, namely China and India, are reducing the advantage the U.S. once had.
“The pace of change has accelerated like never before,” Bayh said.
Although the US has massive debt obligations and nations like China and India are growing rapidly, Bayh commented, “If I had to bet, I’d put my money on America.”
Since Americans has responded well to adversity, or, as Bayh put it, “all the chips are down”, he said he is confident that the U.S. will persevere and remain the world’s economic leader.
Bayh stated that he did not seek a third term in the US Senate last year mainly because of the bitter partisanship in Washington.
While “ideology is useful, it’s a good starting point, and it keeps you grounded,” he said, explaining strict ideology is not the way the world works. Bayh stated that elected officials must make principled compromises, which do not violate one’s core beliefs but are agreements that contain elements with which one does not totally agree.
Elected officials should not be “soulless compromisers” who have no principles or morals either but must strike a balance.
One can have a set of core principles but still acknowledge that an “honorable, reasonable person can come to a different conclusion than you.”
Bayh said, “I hope we focus on the fact that we’re Americans first and not Republicans or Democrats first, and we’re all in this together.”
Mickey Gardella is a sophomore political science major from New Jersey who resides in Knott Hall. He’d like to live in Narnia. Contact him at mgardell@nd.edu.
