One of the major distinctions between a republic and an empire is that republics have citizens, while empires have subjects. Unlike citizens, subjects are primarily clients of the state; they derive their livelihood from the state and its attendant bureaucracies, and are expected to render it service when called upon to do so in exchange for said livelihood.
It is the natural tendency of any bureaucracy to expand the scope of its clientele as widely as possible; how else are its agents to measure success, except by the influence exerted over the lives of others, and the amount of largesse they can bestow upon (presumably) grateful recipients? And as the various bureaucracies of the Federal Government multiply in form and function - encompassing in their charters every conceivable facet of the human experience - it becomes increasingly difficult for the individual to avoid being counted as a client of one or another of these entities, the very fact of such a relationship providing further statistical 'proof' of the vital role played by said institutions in the everyday life of us all (and by extension, justification for expanding the funding, personnel, and power of the bureaucracies, ad infinitum).
So, whenever a bureaucracy doesn't seem to be succeeding in its mission to dispense funds from the public treasury amongst its perceived client-base, there is definitely a cause for concern in certain quarters:
"I am concerned, and I think the administration is concerned," said Kenneth R. Feinberg, the federally appointed lawyer who oversees the fund and makes its final decisions. Mr. Feinberg has estimated that the fund, which has paid out $623.1 million, could distribute as much as $3 billion. There is a basic award for every death, which is increased to reflect a family's economic loss as a result of the victim's demise. Mr. Feinberg plans to meet Tuesday with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City to discuss the mayor's unease about the pace of applications, and several members of Congress have asked Mr. Feinberg to visit their home states to help raise awareness about the Dec. 22 deadline, which is built into the fund statute and cannot be waived.
"The statute has a little more than three months to run," Mr. Feinberg said. "So where are the rest of the people?"
Note the phraseology - 'the administration is concerned', 'unease about the pace', and so forth. The last I checked, nobody in the administration seemed to be using such vivid language in regards to the pace of the pacification and reconstruction of Iraq or the situation in Afghanistan, where American troops are still being killed on a regular basis. So why the 'concern' and 'unease' over something as mundane as the pace of applications for a victims-compensation fund?
What to make of the fact that they're so eager to disburse funds that they're perfectly willing to hand over large sums of public money to the families of illegal aliens - illegal aliens themselves - while, incredibly, making promises not to enforce the immigration statutes with regards to same (some victims, as members of protected classes, apparently being above the law of the land)?
For some low-income families, fear seems to be as much at work as grief, he said. About 100 undocumented workers are thought to have died in the attacks, but the fund has received claims on behalf of only about 30 of them. The others, he said, are afraid of deportation or other sanctions if they file, despite written reassurances to the contrary from Justice Department and immigration officials.
Are our solons possibly worried about the potential of bankruptcy-inducing lawsuits filed by families of the 9/11 victims to disrupt a fragile, near-moribund economy?
The fund, created by Congress as part of a legislative package to protect the airline industry from ruinous litigation, requires those who file claims to waive their right to sue over the attacks — other than lawsuits filed against the terrorists who planned the attacks and those who are accused of harboring or financing them.
Mayhap. But then a Mr. Kenneth Feinberg, who oversees the fund on behalf of the Government, seems to wave aside such notions:
But citing Justice Department statistics, Mr. Feinberg said that only 69 disqualifying lawsuits have been filed, and only three of those were filed in the last five months. "Most people are not suing and have not filed with the fund," he said. "You have to ask why."
His own answer — one that was echoed by the leaders of some family groups that coalesced after the disaster — is that many people are still too paralyzed by their grief to confront the logistical burden and emotional pain of filing a death claim.
"I have met with thousands of families," Mr. Feinberg said. "And you would be amazed at the number of people who, when I say the deadline is approaching, still come up to me in tears and say, `I'm not ready.' "
Perhaps Mr. Feinberg is amazed, but I think those of us who aren't in the business of signing up grieving families as bureaucratic clients are not similarly bemused. At least for the middle-class, life insurance is the primary method of ensuring that a family's financial obligations are met in the wake of the unexpected death of a wage-earner. The modern, seemingly-unquenchable thirst for entitlements doesn't quite extend to seeking out additional windfalls accruing from the deaths of loved ones, at least in most families.
And that thought is apparently a troubling one to our self-appointed dispensers of largesse; they view it as an affront to the culture of victimization they've so carefully fostered in America, an implicit and reflexive (and, therefore, all the more insidious) challenge to their self-anointed status as the Source of All Good Things. Whenever the hoi polloi shy away from the outstretched hands of government alms-givers, 'concern' is expressed via semi-official information outlets in hopes that the poor, misguided souls will realize the error of their ways and return to the warm embrace of those who know best:
When the fund was first set up, it was the target of fierce criticism by some bereaved families, who resented its limitations on their right to sue and disputed its formulas for calculating their economic losses and emotional suffering. One of the most vocal and active critics was Charles G. Wolf, whose wife, Katherine, died in the trade center's collapse.
But Mr. Wolf said on Friday that he does not think that lingering anger and dissatisfaction are the reasons for the low application rate. Indeed, he said that Mr. Feinberg has recently proven to be so much more flexible and fair in his policies and decisions that Mr. Wolf now plans to file his own claim with the fund and is actively encouraging others to do so.
"For the mental health of these victims, they need to file," Mr. Wolf said. "They need to put closure on something."
It is quite revealing of the mindset of our elites that in their worldview, the citizens of a nation born in revolution, wracked by civil war, drawn into the major global conflicts of the previous century - and taking up the challenge of saving the world from the twin dangers of Nazism and Communism in the process, not to mention being currently engaged in policing the globe at large - are now reliant upon the generosity of the public treasury not only for emotional closure in the face of personal loss, but for their very mental health!
As we've seen, though, we aren't really viewed as citizens, anymore. We are instead thought of as subjects of the state, and are therefore perceived to exist solely in order to serve it, and to bind ourselves to the state ever-more-closely by partaking of its generosity. Hence the perplexity of those like Mr. Wolf when confronted by those who still view themselves primarily as individuals concerned with life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and therefore as independent actors posessing their own moral compasses, quite apart from the prescriptions of the experts:
But he still meets resistance, he said. One parent told him that a fund award would seem like "blood money." The man seemed only partly persuaded by Mr. Wolf's argument that he should file a claim and "do something wonderful with the money — establish a foundation, give it to charity in your daughter's name."
It seems that at this late date, we haven't all lost our basic sense of dignity, even in the face of gross injustice and mass tragedy. And some of us even dare to think of ourselves as free men and women - citizens - rather than as the needy clients of an ever-expanding, self-perpetuating Ministry of Love.
A cause for concern, indeed.
