Scott Rasmussen's Number of the Day for April 27, 2017
The Number of the Day columns published on Ballotpedia reflect the views of the author.
April 27, 2017: Volunteering to meet community needs and help those who need some assistance is so commonplace in America that we often overlook it’s importance.
Alexis de Tocqueville, an inquisitive Frenchman who visited the United States in 1832, reported that “Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite.”[1] That remains true today as volunteers provide 7.8 billion hours of service with an estimated market value of $184 billion.[2] And, this doesn’t include the tremendous amount of informal volunteering to help friends and neighbors meet the challenges of day-to-day life. Monday’s Number of the Day, showed that this service comes from 62.6 million Americans across all demographic categories.
My forthcoming book, Politics Has Failed: America Will Not, shows that it is impossible to understand the American system of politics and government without understanding the role of volunteers and independent voluntary associations. The men who drafted the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution lived in a world of voluntary associations. They couldn’t imagine the world without it.
For example, Ben Franklin “started a subscription library, an academy for the education of youth, and a volunteer company of fire fighters.” Not only that, “he also took part in founding a hospital and a fire-insurance company.” He also got engaged with a number of business opportunities that included helping “to promote a Western land company.”[3]
This life experience was the only reliable guide to draw upon when constructing a government. No matter how well read the Founders were, “History had produced no truly relevant models of representative government on the scale the United States had already attained, not to mention the scale it would reach in the years to come.”[4] They could learn from histories of Greece, Rome, and England or from the theories of Locke, Montesquieu, and others. But the only relevant practical experience for leaders of the new nation was the reality of how things had worked in the colonies.
It was natural, therefore, that while drafting the founding documents of our nation, the role of independent associations in problem solving and governance was simply assumed. It would be like twenty-first century Americans assuming the existence of smartphones and the internet.
As a result, they did not design a government to solve all of society’s problems. They made the rational assumption that voluntary organizations would continue to play an ongoing role in the governance of society. Americans working together in community has always been one of the distinguishing characteristics of the United States.
- April 26, 2017 519,000 elected officials in America, serving 87,576 governing bodies
- April 25, 2017 10 counties voted for losing presidential candidate in last three presidential elections
- April 24, 2017 62.6 million volunteers in the United states use their freedom to work together in community
- April 21, 2017 656.4 billion dollars spent in restaurants and bars in 2016; tops grocery spending for first time ever
- April 20, 2017 2,226 solid Republican counties won by McCain, Romney, and Trump
- To see other recent numbers, check out the archive.
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See also
Footnotes
- ↑ de Tocqueville, A. (1835). De La Démocratie en Amérique.
- ↑ Corporation for National & Community Service, "Volunteering and Civic Life in America," accessed April 27, 2017
- ↑ Schlesinger, A. "Biography of a Nation of Joiners." The American Historical Review, Vol L, No. 1 (1944): 3.
- ↑ Dahl, R. (2003). How Democratic is the American Constitution?. New Haven: Yale University Press. (page 9)
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