Georgia Center for Opportunity Walks the Conservative Walk

On June 14 I will travel to Atlanta for an evening with the Georgia Center for Opportunity, a regional partnership event co-sponsored by National Review Institute. The evening is one in a series of events NRI does around the country. I’m especially enthusiastic to focus on a state-policy group at work as part of NRI’s Center for Religion, Culture, and Civil Society. Our national politics and civil life will not get better without frontline — community, state, faith-based — work to help struggling families and individuals to thrive.

Randy Hicks is the president of the Georgia Center for Opportunity and talks about its work below. Join us for a wide-ranging conversation if you happen to be in the Atlanta area June 14. Details can be found here. — KJL

Kathryn Jean Lopez: Why “opportunity”?

Randy Hicks: Our ultimate objective at GCO is human flourishing, but that’s not something we can guarantee for any individual because there are so many factors in determining whether or not someone is in fact flourishing, including individual choices. But as a society we can do a better job of creating an environment in which people are more likely to flourish, and that starts with opportunity — the opportunity to get a good education, the opportunity to find a steady job, and the opportunity to form a healthy family life. Put differently, we can’t force anyone to flourish — we can’t even make someone seize opportunity — but we can create conditions in which people are more likely to seize opportunity for themselves. That’s also why our work is focused on the three elements of the success cycle: education, work, and family formation. Get those three things right, and you’ve practically ensured yourself some healthy level of social and economic stability and mobility.

Lopez: Why is employment so important to human dignity?

Hicks: It’s interesting that you should ask this now. Just the other day Eduardo Porter, a writer for the New York Times, wrote a column in which he argued that the Universal Basic Income is a bad tool for fighting poverty. His reasons? Well, first off, he says the math doesn’t make sense. But it appears that his larger concern is that it would create disincentives to work. Importantly, he talks about work as not just a source of income, but as a source of pride, as an organizing force in one’s life, and as a tool for personal and familial progress. I think he’s right.

As a person of faith, I believe we’re made for work. As human beings created in the image of God, we are wired to create, to live with a sense of meaning and purpose, to bring order to our world, and to enjoy the fruits of our labor. It’s helpful waking up in the morning knowing that the success of someone or something depends largely on me. Dependency can be disheartening and psychologically mind-numbing. The issue with many welfare programs is not just that they’re expensive, but they often deprive people of that opportunity to enjoy earned success.

Lopez: Is this especially important for former prisoners?

Hicks: The majority of people in Georgia’s prisons are there because they couldn’t find a legitimate way to make a living. A high percentage of them went to schools that failed them or grew up in unstable home environments that weren’t conducive to learning. Or both. The reality is that people without those things I just mentioned — a source of pride, something to organize their lives around, a way to improve themselves — are more likely to engage in risky and even illegal behaviors. Hopelessness does that to us.

For ex-offenders, “work attachment” is the number-one predictor of whether or not they will avoid returning to crime and re-engage with their families in a constructive way. They need work for all the reasons I’ve just mentioned, which are the same reasons you and I need work!

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Lopez: Is it possible to talk about family formation without falling into some of the most controversial issues of the day involving marriage and identity?

Hicks: Great question. My immediate answer is, I’m not sure. I can tell you that there’s a lot of receptivity to what we’re trying to do to strengthen families at the community level largely because people want their own relationships to be healthy, and they want the people they care about to be in healthy relationships as well.

Whether one is a theist or not, most of us can agree that we’re wired for relationships. That’s why the stories that captivate us are mostly about relationships, why we’d prefer a broken bone over a broken heart — broken bones heal more easily than broken hearts — and why the harshest form of punishment (short of capital punishment) is solitary confinement. We’re not standing on street corners shouting about marriage, we’re trying to make sure people understand what it takes to have healthy, fulfilling relationships, and that partly requires that we understand the attitudes and behaviors that sabotage our own longings.

So, can we avoid the controversies? Perhaps not entirely, but sociologists and various groups on the right and left agree that healthy family formation (along with education and employment) is vital to opportunity and social mobility. If that’s the case, we have no choice but to stand firmly in the gap and actually do things that make a difference, not just bemoan the current state of things.

Lopez: What have you done in Georgia that you would like to export to other states?

Hicks: I’m inclined to let others determine whether or not there’s something worth exporting. We’re still figuring out a lot ourselves. But since you asked#…#I think it might be along the lines of what I just talked about: a focus on people struggling at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum. Our efforts need to go beyond glib references to free markets and the role of civil society. Broadly speaking, I agree with Arthur Brooks that conservatives need to do a better job of talking about the human costs associated with the welfare state, not just the economic costs. There is a moral imperative to our reform efforts, and it stems directly from the de-humanizing effects of so many social programs, no matter how well intentioned they might be. We should be champions of opportunity and human potential, not simply champions for our preferences for how government ought to be done.

Lopez: What got you into this public-policy work? What have you learned to most appreciate about getting things through a statehouse? What are you most grateful for?

Hicks: I felt called to it. I was raised in a family that was committed to public service. Frankly, I was hoping in my early 20s to escape it entirely. But I truly felt as if God was calling me into this work. I don’t think everybody is and I don’t expect everybody to have the same level of interest that I do. I am in this work because I see that public policies are consequential.

Lopez: Can focusing closer to most Americans’ hometowns than Washington, D.C., renew our politics?

Hicks: I believe so. For most of us, our greatest point of political leverage and social impact is going to be where life happens — in our homes, neighborhoods, towns, and cities. It’s through local engagement that conservatives generally and people of faith specifically can actually live according to their philosophical commitments and beliefs. Do you believe in the principle of subsidiarity? If so, live it out in your community. Are you committed to limited government and federalism? If so, give expression to that commitment locally. Doing so may be the only way to stave off a virulent strain of cynicism.

— Kathryn Jean Lopez is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and editor-at-large of National Review Online. She is co-author of the updated How to Defend the Faith without Raising Your Voice.