BY WILLIAM F. GAVIN

All right class, another school year has begun and it is a good time to go over some basic information you might have forgotten over the summer. Barack Obama, stop slouching in your seat and get that supercilious look off your face. Hillary Clinton, I trust you remember that “What difference does it make?” is not an acceptable answer in my class.

Fact One: The United States of America is composed of three separate but mutually dependent parts. First, the people and the work they do, second, the communities and organizations the people voluntarily form, and third, the government the people choose.

Fact Two: Libertarians look at government and see only the harm it can do. Liberals and progressives look at government and see only the good it can do. Only conservatives have a balanced, rational view of government, acknowledging its virtues but wary of its inherent capacity for excess.

Today’s class will concentrate on the community-building capacity of the people, since it is a subject not emphasized in most discussions of national strengths. Joseph Biden, yes, you in the back row, take that foot out of your mouth and stop showing off! You may have been chosen class clown, but that doesn’t impress me.

Where was I? Oh, yes. In George Will’s August 31 column in The Washington Post he quoted Representative Paul Ryan: “Society functions through institutions that operate in the space between the individual and the state . . . government exists to protect the space where all these great things happen . . . [government] has a supporting role [as] the enabler of other institutions.”

George H. W. Bush gave examples of such “intermediary institutions” (as sociologists call them) in his “thousand points of light” acceptance speech at the 1988 Republican convention:  “. . .  we are a nation of communities . . .  the Knights of Columbus, the Grange, Hadassah, the Disabled American Veterans  . . .  the Business and Professional Women of America, the union hall . . .”

Community is a word with positive, political connotations. Decades ago it referred to small groups of people who live in one geographic area. Ronald Reagan’s 1980 appeal to “family, work neighborhood, peace and freedom” didn’t refer to community because back then “community” and “neighborhood” were synonymous. But since then, the definition has been expanded to mean almost any group, no matter how large or small, no matter where they live, that has some unifying principle of solidarity, e.g., the gay community, the arts community, etc.

The Democratic Party has in recent years recognized the political appeal of community, just as Republicans seem to have forgotten it. But instead of the pluralistic vision of a “nation of communities,” Democrats preach about one big national community, in which big government is a first-among-equals partner and benefactor.

Now at this point, class, I want you to listen carefully and take notes: our Founders knew that government cannot be part of a nation of communities because government has unique, specific powers and functions granted to it by the people. The Founders also knew that a unified government with separation of powers is a good idea and that a unified nation with separate functions for communities and for government is also good (see the Tenth Amendment). Yet this Democratic fiction evidently has appeal to many voters who haven’t thought through what it means. It might be worthwhile to examine why this national community idea appeals to progressives.

The idea had its most dramatic depiction in New York Governor Mario Cuomo’s keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1984: “The Republicans believe the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of our old, some of our young, and some of our weak are left behind by the side of the trail.”

Governor Cuomo did not tell us who the wagon master is. But we can guess it is good, ol’ progressive big government who stops Republicans—the varmints! –from pushing old Widow Jones and adorable Baby Elsie off the Conestoga wagons.

In this cartoon view of reality, government is not the sheriff, on the outside of the wagons, carrying on his legitimate, essential, and limited duties, but a lovable, earnest community leader, a warmhearted pal, inside the wagon train. Progressives never tell us what the settlers can do or who they can turn to when the wagon master starts telling people what to do and when to do it, in every aspect of their lives, and, drunk on rot-gut ideology, leads the wagon train in any direction he chooses. After all, in this vision the wagon master has the coercive power of the state. The reason that progressives do not tell us all this is because they envision themselves as the wagon masters.

Finally, we already know what a true national community is because Benito Mussolini described it perfectly. It is a nation in which the motto “All in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state” is the governing principle. In other words, it is a nightmare from Hell. And yet progressives believe that our government is part of the national community that can guide us unerringly through crises, build our businesses, and tells us what is good for us. And yes, I’m speaking to you, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, so stop your chattering.

All right, there’s the bell, class dismissed. And Barack Obama, you will report to me after school and write on the blackboard “A president should have a foreign policy strategy” five hundred times. And don’t you dare carry that bag of golf clubs into my classroom again, young man!

Editor’s Note: William F. Gavin was a speech writer for President Richard Nixon and long-time aide to former House Republican Leader Bob Michel. Among his books is his latest, Speechwright, published by Michigan State University Press.