PERSON PROFILE

Don E. Eberly

Don Eberly's Conservative Civil Society

An advocate of shrinking government, Don Eberly, the head of the Civil Society Project promotes faith-based organizations, private philanthropic initiatives, traditional families, volunteerism and the building of a 'values' society. Whose 'values' is the question.

by Bill Berkowitz
for MediaTransparency.org

POSTED FEBRUARY 5, 2005--

You won't find him on many of television's talking head programs, you wouldn't be able to pick him out of a line-up, and his essays aren't sexed-up or buzz-worthy, but for more than 15 years, Don Eberly has been one of the leading advocates of a strain of conservative advocacy known as "civil society."

Although vague and often ambiguous, "civil society" advocates intend to shrink government by handing over responsibility for maintaining and administering what's left of the social safety net to faith-based organizations, corporate and community groups, families and philanthropic initiatives. As neoconservative cultural critic Gertrude Himmelfarb has written, "When we speak of the restoration of civil society it is a moral restoration we should seek."

And moral renewal, along with building the conservative century, is what Eberly is seeking. He gives great weight to an observation made by Michael Novak (bio at AEI), the veteran conservative scholar who is currently the George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute (website). Novak maintains that "The American political party that best gives life and breath and amplitude to civil society will not only thrive in the twenty-first century. It will win public gratitude and it will govern."

During a conference held in 2000, and sponsored by The Heritage Foundation in commemoration of the five-year anniversary of the class of 1995, Eberly told a group of Congressmen and Congresswomen that the defeat of totalitarianism and the rollback of the welfare state were the two greatest achievements of Republicans and conservatives over the past two decades. An essay derived from that speech, and later published in Essays on Civil Society – An American Conversation on Civic Virtue (Volume 2000, No. 1) – a publication of Eberly's Harrisburg, PA-based Civil Society Project, (website) laid out Eberly's thesis for social transformation – shrinking government and building a values society based on tradition American values.

After the defeat of totalitarianism, "the second major question before the country and the Congress for the past several decades was how could we tame a seemingly untamable welfare state" Eberly writes. "The entire weight of sophisticated opinion – buttressed by every school of prestigious school of public policy in this nation – was that increasing segments of American society would steadily come under the managerial supervision of a credentialed, enlightened, bureaucratic elite.

"The fact that we are now instead talking mostly about the miracle-working power of local faith-based charities, which in their ragtag existence represent the antithesis of the public administration state, is nothing short of breathtaking. Their very existence, not to mention their effectiveness, is an affront to the pedigreed and professional social service bureaucracy."

For Eberly, "it was not merely welfare spending that was conquered, but the idea behind it...the welfare state."

Where would conservatives go from there?

Before George W. Bush took office in January 2001, and laid out his faith-based initiative, Eberly was arguing the virtues of "compassionate conservatism" – the elusive concept credited to Marvin Olasky (cv), editor-and-chief of the evangelical weekly, World magazine (website). Politically, compassionate conservatism "triangulates the ideological claims of big-government liberalism on the one hand and a pure laissez-faire conservatism on the other. It steals the mantle of compassion, long monopolized by liberals, while adding a practically useful modifier, to the noun conservatism."

But compassionate conservatism is not the end-all be-all in and of itself writes Eberly: It "does not speak to the need to recover virtue throughout the majority society, apart from which we are left with partial remedies directed selectively to the poor," which is unfair. "The moral pathologies afflicting American society are no respecters of class, ethnicity, or geographic boundaries. The problems of divorce, co-habitation, fatherlessness, out-of-wedlock pregnancy, abortion and as host of other moral ills are not confined to the poor."

Eberly sees a "values crisis" in America and claims that it can only be addressed by Americans organizing "for social change outside the political process"; renewing the non-governmental sector of civil society, particularly the development of voluntary associations.

If the "great challenge" of the 1980s and 1990s was to "reign in government," the "great challenge" of the twenty-first century is to "rebuild non-governmental institutions – to not merely replace government with the economic market, but to replace more and more of the public sector with a viable social sector.... [and] build up the good society."

In an essay entitled "What Chills Me About the Future", Eberly argues passionately for a society where achieving the common good is a fundamental priority. He criticizes what he calls, "the Republic of the Autonomous Self, where the individual is the only real sovereign, where 'mediating' structures have been leveled, and where rules proliferate and yet lack legitimacy."

"Where does the citizen come by the capacity to be helpful, respectful, and trustful toward others? Mostly through involvement in functioning social institutions, especially the family." And while he doesn't state it in this essay, Eberly is clearly referring to the so-called traditional family.

Eberly argues "Most democratic reforms...are directed toward fixing the procedural state without addressing the underlying cultural and social crisis." While recognizing that the unequal distribution of society's wealth, the declining participation by voters, and "the uneven distribution of power are...serious problems," Eberly claims that "democracy is fragile in a way that no campaign finance reform and no amount of increased voter participation can cure. The more serious problems of American democracy have to do with the erosion of democratic character and habit," also known as values.

"Rights-based individualism," which flows from "the pernicious idea that 'the personal is political,' [was] brought to the American debate first by the feminist movement and since by any number of 'identity politics' factions," has aided the erosion. But are the feminist movement, the gay rights movement, and even the civil rights movement examples of oppressed people pressing for social justice and equality, or are they examples of "the pernicious idea that 'the personal is political'"? Eberly doesn't really deal with this question.

In his view, "many of the most corrupting viruses [in society] are now being borne along not by sinister politicians but by an entertainment and information media culture, and that this omnipresent culture is displacing the core social institutions that once shaped and molded the democratic citizen."

Back in the good old days, the culture could rely on "parents, priests, and pedagogues" to direct "the socialization of the young." These days that is left to "television, film, music, cyberspace, and the celebrity culture of sports and entertainment."

For Eberly, "the function of culture in a free society is to establish and maintain boundaries around beliefs and behaviors considered necessary for maintaining a democratic society.... Much of what passes for culture today is, in fact, anti-culture. Its chief aim is to emancipate, not restrain - to give free reign to human appetite, not moderate it."

Eberly rails against the "Break the rules!" "Have no fear!" "Be yourself!" mantras that now predominate in the culture. Thus, Eberly returns to two of his major themes, shrinking the government and the role that faith-based organizations, community groups and private philanthropy can play in restoring a "civil society."

In the end, "people are either ruled by character and civility or they are ruled by cops and lawyers," Eberly concludes. "When social institutions and authority collapse and the capacity to govern human affairs through voluntary, consensual means erodes, all roads lead to the state.... A society in which atomized and poorly socialized individuals continually organize to use the state against each other is a society in which the individual and the state are advancing but civil society, a place of consensual and voluntary action, is in rapid retreat."

Eberly, who served as deputy director for the Office of Public Liaison during the Reagan Administration, co-founded (along with Wade Horn), and served as first president of, the National Fatherhood Initiative (website) in 1994. The organization's stated mission is to "improve the well-being of children by increasing the proportion of children growing up with involved, responsible, and committed fathers." Originally named the National Organization of Fathers, NFI received nearly $3.3 million from right wing foundations, primarily from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the F. M. Kirby Foundation and the Scaife Family Foundations, according to Media Transparency.org.

Trish Wilson, writing in the publication Feminista!, claimed that Bradley and Scaife "showered the group with funding for a wide variety of functions, including a 'National Fatherhood Tour and Ad Council Campaign' in 1995 and 1996. In 1998, the conservative Earhart Foundation provided $10,000 for support for the preparation of a book, 'The Faith Factor in Fatherhood,' edited by Eberly."

In 2001, Eberly left NFI to serve as deputy director at the White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI). In its early days, the organization struggled with its mandate and message and Eberly became embroiled in a not-so-civil controversy involving the Salvation Army, one of the nation's largest charities.

Six months after the initiative was unveiled, the Washington Post revealed that top-level administration officials had been conducting secret meetings with the Salvation Army to enlist its political and financial support for the then-flagging project. An internal Salvation Army document indicated that in exchange for the organization's support of the president's initiative – which included plans for an Army-sponsored $100,000 public relations campaign – the charity would receive assurances that any legislation passed by Congress would contain a provision allowing religious charities to sidestep state and local anti-discrimination measures barring discriminatory hiring practices on the basis of sexual orientation.

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank reported that the meetings included Karl Rove, the president's chief political strategist, and Don Eberly, who was then serving as Deputy Director of the new agency.

In the aftermath of the U.S.'s taking of Baghdad, Eberly was sent to Iraq and served briefly under General Jay Garner and later under L. Paul Bremer, as Acting Minister for Youth and Sport. In a U.S. Chamber of Commerce "Newsmaker" interview, Eberly talked about "rapidly transferring government functions to the Iraqi people," and "build[ing] a dynamic sports program for boys and girls, which the country has lacked, starting with getting a huge infusion of soccer balls into the country."

Iraq's soccer team, which became the "surprise-team" of the soccer competition during last summer's Olympic Games in Athens, garnered headlines when team members expressed their dissatisfaction with President Bush and the U.S, occupation. According to Sports Illustrated's Grant Wahl, Iraqi midfielder Salih Sadir, "had a message for U.S. president George W. Bush, who is using the Iraqi Olympic team in his latest re-election campaign advertisements."

"Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign," Sadir told SI.com through a translator. "He can find another way to advertise himself." Ahmed Manajid, who played as a midfielder, also responded to Bush's ads: "How will he meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women?" Manajid told Wahl. "He has committed so many crimes."

Later, when asked to comment on Wahl's piece on the ESPN2 broadcast of Cold Pizza, Eberly suggested that the quotes had been "engineered." And he reiterated a quote from a Reuters interview of Mark Clark, a British consultant for the Iraqi Olympic Committee and himself a former CPA official. According to Wahl, "Clark's statement, which was passed along by Eberly, was this: 'It seems the story was engineered.'" Clark also claimed that it was "possible something was lost in translation" in the SI.com story.

Wahl subsequently reported that he played the tape of "the original interviews (and the accompanying translations) for Chawki Rayess, an Arabic/English interpreter working for Olympic organizers in Athens...[who] confirm[ed] that nothing was lost in translation."

Although not normally associated with such Religious Right demagogues as the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson or Dr. James Dobson, the head of the multi-million dollar mega-ministry, Focus on the Family, Don Eberly nevertheless plays an essential role defining America's twenty-first century culture wars.

Don Eberly on PBS' ThinkTank

Bill Berkowitz
MediaTransparency.org
January 30, 2005

Wade Horn, The Marrying Man

Wade Horn is the co-founder and former head of the National Fatherhood Initiative, who now works for the federal department of Health and Human Services.

Read the full report >

RELATED LINKS

Internal Links

External Links