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The American Volunteers

by Theresa Fritz Camoriano

When Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States in the early 1800's to study our society, he described us as a country of volunteers.  He wrote:

"The citizen of the United States is taught from his earliest infancy to
rely upon his own exertions in order to resist the evils and the
difficulties of life; he looks upon social authority with an eye of mistrust and anxiety, and he only claims its assistance when he is quite unable to shift without it.... When a private individual meditates an undertaking, however directly connected it may be with the welfare of society, he never thinks of soliciting the cooperation of the government, but he publishes his plan, offers to execute it himself, courts the assistance of other individuals, and struggles manfully against all obstacles.  Undoubtedly he is often less successful than the State might have been in his position; but in the end the sum of these private undertakings far exceeds all that the government could have done."--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

This past week, the International Science and Engineering Fair was held in Louisville, and my husband Guillermo was a volunteer responsible for recruiting volunteer translators for the foreign students attending the fair.  This was a remarkable week-long event, both because the students and their projects were very impressive, but also because it required coordinating many hundreds of volunteers, who gladly offered their time as translators and guides, who manned tool booths to assist the students, and so forth.

I knew Guillermo was going to be living downtown for the week, but I was a bit surprised when he called Saturday evening and asked us to volunteer to help check in the 1200 students on Sunday morning.  Apparently, since it was Mother's Day, there was a bit of difficulty recruiting volunteers to show up at 8:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning, and they needed a few more.  So, our two daughters and I arrived bright and early on Sunday to report for our volunteer jobs as "gofers", making sure the students and the adults accompanying them received their bags, badges, and souvenirs, including light-up "Intel" pens and Louisville Slugger bats.  The experience reminded me that, almost 200 years after Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America, we remain a country of volunteers. 

Voluntary, non-coerced action is what the U.S. has been about throughout most of its history.  People trading freely with each other without government coercion, and people forming mutual aid societies, little league baseball teams, churches, lending libraries, and hospitals, have been a part of the American tradition for many generations and are what really make things happen and meet the needs of Americans.  When Americans see that something needs to be done, we take the initiative and do it.  It is not our tradition to force others to take care of us or to consider ourselves to be victims, helplessly waiting for someone else to solve our problems for us.

One of the interesting aspects of recruiting volunteer translators was that there were definitely cultural differences between translators from different countries.  It was particularly difficult to recruit translators from former communist countries, such as Russia.  It made me wonder whether the Russian culture had made the country more susceptible to tyranny or whether it was generations of tyranny, with the government controlling all aspects of their lives, that caused Russians to lose the volunteer spirit that we are accustomed to seeing in this country. 

I recall, about 11 years ago, when Guillermo and I took a trip to the Soviet Union hosted by the Ministry of Aviation, which was trying to lure American businesses to invest in production there.  We met with people from various Soviet industries.  While the people were pleasant, it was extremely frustrating to try to conduct business with them, because they had no concept of voluntary business transactions, in which two parties made exchanges for their mutual benefit.  They knew what they wanted, but they made no effort to offer us anything that would make a deal interesting from our point of view.  Because they had lived their entire lives under Communist rule, with central government planning, the entire concept of voluntary exchange was completely foreign to them.  We finally gave up trying to conduct any business, deciding to simply enjoy the trip and hope that the younger generation would figure out the realities of the marketplace before everyone starved to death.

One of the bright spots of the International Science and Engineering Fair for me was that one of the finalists, a high school student from Beijing, stopped me to comment on my Statue of Liberty lapel pin.  The students at the fair make a hobby of exchanging pins with each other, and this young lady obviously wanted my pin.  I asked her whether she knew what it was, and she replied that she did, and she hoped they would be able to visit the Statue of Liberty before they went back to China.  So, my Statue of Liberty pin (which was a gift from Donna Mancini) will be finding a new home in Beijing!  Perhaps a spirit of volunteerism will also begin to take hold in China as people rely on themselves and on voluntary action rather than on government coercion.  After millions of Chinese were slaughtered by their own government, "for the good of society", perhaps the Chinese people have learned the importance of voluntary action as opposed to coercion.  I certainly hope so.

Another bright spot is that two young computer programmers from Russia, who now live in Kentucky, volunteered to help us on Saturday.  They were very pleasant and hard-working and seemed to be enjoying the experience.  It makes me hopeful that perhaps a new generation of Russians and other former communists is learning about the pleasures of voluntary action and self-reliance. 

Unfortunately, at the same time that these former communists are learning about voluntary action, the U.S. is gradually sliding into the central planning, government control mode, with people relying more and more on government coercion and less on themselves and their own voluntary action.  From "smart growth" and zoning, in which the government makes almost all the decisions about land use, to centralized government control of education, to government control of health care, the U.S. is gradually shifting from a free society, based on voluntary action, to one in which even the most private areas of our lives are controlled by the government through coercion.   We are falling for the siren song that has destroyed so many people throughout the ages.  (Just ask my young acquaintances from China and Russia.)

Lee Hamilton recently encouraged the graduating class at Bellarmine University to go into public service.  I would like to suggest that true service to the public is done on a voluntary basis, not on the basis of wielding government force against the people.  A businessman who provides goods and services that people are willing to buy on a voluntary basis is truly serving the public.  But a bureaucrat who threatens us with jail if we do not use our land as he demands or if we do not hand over half of our income is not serving the public.  A school that is funded by force through taxation is not really serving the public.  If it were truly serving the public, it would not have to operate on the basis of force. 

The tradition of independent, voluntary action is seriously threatened in this country today.  I hope we will recognize the trend and take the initiative to turn it around soon, relying on our traditional spirit of volunteerism.  I hope we will not fall for the populist notion that we will be more secure and more prosperous if we give up our freedom and rely on the government to "take care of us".  The earth is strewn with the corpses of those who accepted that notion.

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