Sprirt of Public Administration

James Jones

POLS 546

Dr. Connelly

May 5, 2006

Do public officials and the public at large have obligations to future generations? Should the moral and ethical responsibility of public officials extend to future generations? These are central questions posed by Frederickson in chapter six of The Spirit of Public Administration. Frederickson begins chapter six with typical Frederickson utopianism as he quotes the Athenian Citizen’s Oath. This normative idea of man does not take into consideration man’s innate need for rationality, or the teleological philosophy of utilitarianism particularly associated with John Stuart Mill or Jeremy Bentham. In the contemporary post-9/11 world, security, happiness, pleasure, dignity, and the like, trump the deontological ideals of fundamental principles of right and wrong. Issues of social equity and intergenerational equity create policy that may be good in a general sense, but is seldom good for everyone. The Platonic ideal of Eros, “a love for one who is to be,” is a overly optimistic view of human nature. Based on finite and unequal allocation of non-renewable natural resources and a doubling of the world population, a population who will consume these non-renewable natural resources (contributing to massive movement of people across sovereign borders), Frederickson’s ideal of intergenerational equity is not sustainable. We often hear about “social justice,” “environmental justice,” “immigrant rights,” and other variations of the concept of social justice. The meanings of these terms are frequently obscured, often deliberately. Rather than expressions of rights under the rules of law, such terms are often used to mean conformity to a particular political ideology. Thus, we see immigrant advocacy organizations blurring the line between “justice” and illegality, between rights duly arising from American citizenship and “justice” for those who violate our immigration laws. The conservative media, seemingly interested in catering to corporate demands for cheap labor, push for huge immigration numbers while downplaying the legality of foreign workers. The liberal media present themselves as stalwart champions of the underdog and promote interests of illegal aliens as if legal status were irrelevant. In doing so, the media creates injustices for American citizens. The open borders agenda results in a stream of one-sided heart-wrenching human interest stories that may generate greater reader interest, but which essentially eviscerates the law of our land and abrogates the concepts of justice, borders and nationhood. Justice under the rule of law has been replaced by “justice” for lawbreakers, promoted with cruel disregard for the concerns of the overwhelming majority of citizens. Focusing solely on the interests of “justice” for immigrants, both legal and illegal, causes us irresponsibly to ignore the unsustainable society we are creating for future generations. The harsh reality is that with our excessively high levels of immigration, America’s population will double within the lifetimes of today’s children. In 1965, Congress changed our immigration law, resulting in upwardly spiraling immigration numbers to our present level, which is nearly six times the traditional, sustainable level. Had we maintained a balance where in-migration equaled out-migration, U.S. population would have stabilized by mid-century. The legacy we are leaving to our children is one where every city will be effectively twice as large, with all the proportionate miseries and demands on our environment, namely, twice as much sprawl, gridlock, congestion, school overcrowding, pollution, and demands imposed upon our farmland and on diminishing aquifers. Intergenerational justice, the concern about the well-being of future generations, must be given equal consideration to “social