The meaning of "public"

It seems to me that a large number of Americans -- and certain this society at large in its current form -- doesn't have a clear meaning of what "public" (as in the public good) means. And the situation has gotten worse after many years of Republican control of both Congress and the White House.

Take an article by Faiza Akthat in the New York Times of October 23rd. It's about how schools on Long Island are hiring public relations firms to improve their "image" and convince the locals to vote in favor of school budgets that are increasingly being turned down. It's a sad state of affairs when "public" schools have to spend $25,000 to $100,000 a year on a publicist to convince the people they serve that they need sufficient resources to provide what those same people (rightly) expect of them.

But this doesn't go only for schools, of course. The US military has to resort to (often deceptive) ads campaigns to lure young people into service (see why I actually favor the reinstatement of the draft), and why "public" radios throughout the country are currently engaged in Fall fund raising campaigns. Moreover, the majority of so-called "state" (i.e., again, public) universities now receive less than 25% of their funds from their respective states, the rest coming from ever-higher tuitions (which defeat the very idea of public access to education) and private donations (mostly elicited through the lure of expensive and not exactly educational sports teams).

Add to this that there is no public health care (except for emergency systems such as MedicAid for the very poor and MediCare for low income retirees), that the public pension system (social security) is already grossly insufficient and may go belly up within a decade or two, and the emerging picture is one of a nation of individuals, not citizens.

The whole idea of a social contract is that the group (a nation, a society) is more than the sum of its individual components (pace the libertarians), because there are interactions among individuals, mechanisms put in place to try to lift everybody to a higher standard of living, education, and security. But Americans have bought into the idea that public is synonymous with evil, or at least grossly inefficient (forgetting the waste of corporate welfare and the scandals regularly plaguing the private sector). They have been convinced that "looking out for numero uno" is the best strategy for everybody, which somehow magically solves society's problems through the invisible hand of the marketplace (neglecting the important detail that this may work for economic issues, and even that to a limited extent, but that the latter are most certainly not the same as improved quality of life and social justice).

That's why our President doesn't want to extend MedicAid to the victims of Katrina, even temporarily, and relies instead on "faith-based" voluntary contributions to help with the relief. It is therefore surprising that we don't also have a faith-based missile defense system (as was suggested in an obviously sarcastic fashion by Richard Dawkins after the 9/11 attacks). Maybe Jesus was too much of a socialist to entrust him with the really important stuff.