Rebuilding Haiti

As Haitians and the rest of the bewildered world are still trying to make sense of the tragedy last week that took place in this Western Hemisphere’s poorest country, the policy establishment in Washington, DC is already seizing this crisis as an opportunity to rebuild a nation that for decades has seen nothing but misery and poverty. Given its long history of failed development efforts, dysfunctional and corrupt governments, high crime rates and poverty, the early thinking , according to this article, From Haiti’s ruins, a chance to rebuild a nation, “encompasses a broad swath of issues. Policymakers in Washington are considering whether to expand controversial trade provisions for Haiti and how to help fund the reconstruction for years into the future. The rule of law needs to be strengthened, particularly when it comes to immediate matters like addressing property rights, inheritance and guardianship in hard-hit neighborhoods.”

From a policy perspective, all this is good and promising. But rebuilding Haiti must begin with a proper principled grounding, the kind that entails breaking the habit of dependence and passivity that has enslaved its people, towards forming a liberal character that is the foundation of an energetic, vibrant population.

This grounding must be informed by principled individualism and enlightened self-interestedness. As Tocqueville puts it, “ The individual is the best judge of his own interest and that society has no right to direct his behavior unless it feels harmed by him or unless it needs concurrence” (Democracy in America, 66.) Haitians must understand that their rights as individuals, when consciously asserted, can limit the powers of government. This thinking translates to an active citizenry that participates in public debates, votes for leaders on the basis of merit, and gets involved in political associations. Such citizenry expects its political parties to run on a vision and on a principled agenda. It demands that the mass media allow themselves to be used as a vehicle for articulating opinions and criticisms. The principle of individualism grounded on enlightened self-interest gives rise to a political authority that governs in order to arbitrate competing interests of equally free and strong individuals rather than control the political destiny of a passive populace.

Enlightened self-interestedness, in turn, will make Haitians become creative and enterprising in their search for economic opportunities. Government does them harm by implementing top-down economic policies that will only make them depend for assistance and subsidies. Rather, any development program should adopt a bottom-up approach, where self-interestedness becomes the engine that spurs individuals to action. A Thai Foreign Affairs official argues that any socio-economic program sponsored by the government cannot be truly good, since it has the tendency to limit or separate the ties that bind a citizen’s individual freedom with his sense of social responsibility: “How can we expect any kind of “development” to grow out of a relation in which the government, taking a paternalistic position, treats the people not as its constituency to whom it is accountable, but rather as something to be patronized and thus controlled?” (Interpreting Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, 524.)

Haiti will recover from this tragedy, as it rebuilds its nation and its soul.