sometimes it isn't
Some times the answer is the market
Other times the answer is non-profits (both religious and non-faith based)
Some times that answer is the neighborhood
The key is figuring out which of these archetypes of community is the best to answer the questions that face our times.
Because there are questions that face our times; serious and significant issues which will determine the very life of our nation and the future of our children, whether born or just the hopeful dreams in our heads.
The Republicans aren't even seeing these questions, they claim there aren't problems.
The Grand Old Party doesn't see a future, but looks to the past. They don't see a climate crisis. They don't see an energy shortage. They don't see a global community facing food and water shortages.
They don't see the shrinking middle class. They see a suffering investor class in need of nearly a trillion dollars, while claiming that the same trillion spent on health care or education would be a waste.
That's kind of why I became a Democrat.
Because in the Democratic Party led by Barack Obama Government isn't always the answer, but at least they see the same questions facing me, my nation and our shared future.
And there are proposed pragmatic answers - no Ostrich-esque head burying, pragmatic responses to the issues that face the United States of America in the 21st Century.
The answer won't always be the right one.
Mistakes will be made.
But we will never find the answers if we refuse as a nation to look into the questions.
This new Democratic Party isn't about that tax and spend stereotype, but about leveraging that which is best about America and applying it to solve the problems that the majority of us see.
That's why these answers are complicated. The answers aren't simple soundbites like "tear down this wall." They are complicated multi-point plans that leverage the networked nature of our 21st century society and apply all portions of our society to creating the change, not just the change that we are looking for, but the change that we need.
Let's look at climate change and the pending energy crisis
The GOP is simple soundbites. "Climate Change is a myth" "Drill baby Drill"
That isn't a solution, it isn't even an answer. At best they get partial credit because they recognize a portion of the problem, while avoiding most of it.
Obama on the other hand?
I don't need to tell this group, but his plan is a nuanced application of government oversight, tax cuts to imbue market incentives, tax raises to prevent the gouging of the poor and middle class, community and individual action. It is a plan that increases research and development, that encourages a redustion in usage by individuals and corporations and it is a plan that only the federal government can oversee, because only the federal government can address the entirity of our nation.
Government is a necessary answer to the questions that face our fine nation.
This balance between the spider graph of governments (local and national), of business (global and small), of charities (faith based and humanely founded), of communites (friends and families) is what is necessary in the modern world. Any one of these takes too strong a role and we wind up in a society that ignores the questions and can't even attempt the answer.
So in these times of global terrorism, of market meltdowns, of climate crisis, of the false dilema of health care or food, of a middle class that shrinks while Brazil and China's grow talk to your neighbors and ask them if government is the answer to this questions.
Ask them how the free market is doing at solving the presence of al-Qaeda in Waziristan?
Ask them how their church is doing dealing with financial market meltdown?
Ask them how the cul de sac is going to solve the global climate crisis?
Ask them how their family is figuring out how to get health coverage for the working poor in America?
Then tell them that sometimes government is the answer, but it is especially the answer in these times, with this leader. Tell them that you see the problems facing them, and that it is only with the entirity of society trying to find solutions that we will succeed.
Tell them that government isn't always the answer, but it is sometimes and it is now.