Bill Berkowitz

OAKLAND, Jun 10 2005 (IPS) — In countries across the globe, independent organisations are struggling to build civil society. Depending on who is defining the goals of civil society, it can be alluring or unappealing; both transparent and ambiguous.

Some see civil society as contributing to the growth of democratic institutions and greater citizen participation, as well as an expression of an abiding concern for the underclass, the poor, elderly, sick and disabled.

Others see it as an expression of a new global economic and political order that includes limited government and market-oriented economies.

In the United States, Don Eberly has been a champion of a vigorous brand of conservative civil society. Eberly’s vision has the government’s social safety net being replaced by the financial support of private foundations and individual philanthropists, and the good works of faith-based organisations and perky volunteers.

Despite his conservative agenda, Eberly has earned praise from a bipartisan assortment of columnists, authors and scholars for his civil society advocacy.

The Washington Post’s liberal columnist, E.J. Dionne, acknowledged that "Few know or care more about civil society than" Eberly. Francis Fukuyama, the author of "The End of History and the Last Man", sees Eberly as being at "the centre" of the civil society movement "throughout the decade, both as an organiser and a writer and thinker".

And Amitai Etzioni, the academician and scholar who has authored 24 books, maintains that "Nobody is clearer on this important issue [civil society] than Eberly and few are his peers."

However, a closer look finds that Don Eberly has a profoundly partisan political agenda.

Since the advent of the George W. Bush administration, Eberly, who co-founded the National Fatherhood Initiative in 1994 and is one of the architects of the president’s faith-based initiative, has been a Team Bush impact player.

At a recent Washington, DC dinner hosted by the National Fatherhood Initiative, First Lady Laura Bush promoted her Helping America’s Youth project: "Celebrating fatherhood is something our whole society should be doing," she said.

Her Helping America’s Youth project unites the "Responsible Fatherhood" initiative, which provides training grants for community and faith-based organisations to devise methods to keep fathers involved emotionally and financially with their families, with the president’s "Healthy Marriage" initiative, which aims to promote heterosexual marriages.

While both the "Responsible Fatherhood" and "Healthy Marriages" initiatives had been kicking around conservative think tanks for the better part of two decades, the administration can thank Don Eberly for helping propel them into the public policy arena.

Neoconservative cultural critic Gertrude Himmelfarb once wrote that "When we speak of the restoration of civil society it is a moral restoration we should seek." "Moral restoration," along with building the conservative century, is what Eberly is about.

He gives great weight to an observation once made by Michael Novak – the veteran conservative Catholic scholar – 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 Heritage Foundation-sponsored conference in 2000, Eberly told a group of Congressional representatives that the defeat of totalitarianism and the rollback of the welfare state were the two greatest achievements of Republicans and conservatives during the past two decades.

A post-speech essay published in Essays on Civil Society: An American Conversation on Civic Virtue – a publication of Eberly’s Harrisburg, PA-based Civil Society Project û spelled out his thesis for social transformation: shrinking government and building a society based on "traditional American values".

After the defeat of totalitarianism, "the second major question before the country and the Congress for the past several decades wasàtam[ing] a seemingly untamable welfare state" Eberly wrote.

"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 itàthe welfare state."

Before Bush took office, Eberly was extolling the virtues of "compassionate conservatism" – the rather elusive concept often credited to Marvin Olasky, the editor-and-chief of World magazine, an evangelical weekly.

Politically, said Eberly, 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 monopolised by liberals, while adding a practically useful modifier, to the noun conservatism."

But compassionate conservatism "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 patently 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’s "values crisis" is addressed by organising "for social change outside the political process," and 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 "rein in government," the "great challenge" of the 21st 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 sectorà.[and] build up the good society."

Eberly served as deputy director for the Office of Public Liaison during the Reagan Administration. In 1994, he founded and served as first president of the National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI), whose 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 Organisation of Fathers, between 1994 and 2003, the NFI received over 3.4 million dollars 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!, maintained 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 dollars 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 the aftermath of the taking of Baghdad, Eberly was sent to Iraq, and he 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 programme for boys and girls, which the country has lacked, starting with getting a huge infusion of soccer balls into the country."

While Eberly doesn’t snag headlines or regularly make the rounds of television’s talking head shows like many of his conservative brethren, he nevertheless provides the backbone for the right’s so-called family values agenda.

*Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His WorkingForChange column "Conservative Watch" documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the U.S. Right.