What's wrong with America?

Ken Lawrence is a patriotic man who spent most of his working life in the defense industry. He's 74 now and anxious about the well-being of his country.

A tall, lanky man who once ran the Bradley Fighting Vehicle program, and whose concern was external enemies, is now worried about internal dangers.

He's old-fashioned. He thinks we should make things instead of speculating on markets and houses, that we should balance our budgets, make the economy work for us instead of against us. That we should have civil discussions about what we want our government to do, then pay for it.

Since retiring in 1997 he's been trying to understand the economy.

I took him up on an e-mail invitation to talk about his ideas. When we sat down in the dining room of his Mill Creek home, Lawrence took out a stack of charts he'd made.

He was a mechanical engineer before he became a manager at FMC Industries, and later, United Defense Industries, so making the charts helps him understand the economy. It also helps that he ran a $500 million-a-year program and was constantly dealing with the government.

At first, he just wanted to figure out whether a smaller workforce could support retirees like him and his wife.

Then he discovered in the numbers disturbing income disparities, a huge gap between the richest Americans and the rest of us. "It was so discouraging, I decided to think about something else," he said. But the numbers kept bothering him. Then he watched the deficit climb and started writing to newspapers and even to the president warning of the need to address our debts.

"I'm a conservative," he told me. He drives a 16-year-old car though he could afford a new one. He believes in careful money management. A big part of our problem is that too many Americans don't want to pay for the government we need.

Lawrence's family had a farm in North Dakota. They lost it. He suspects his father wasn't the best businessman, but a depressed economy and a drought didn't help. The family moved to Jamestown, N.D., and soon after, when Lawrence was about 7, his father died.

"We were on welfare," he said, "And my mother was not a lazy woman."

There are things we need government to do, he believes. People grumbled about the government then, but they were all being helped by it in some way. The wheat variety that allowed his family to farm in North Dakota was developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Even as people grumbled they recognized the government as their own and saw the need for it, but he thinks maybe people now just don't understand it.

When Lawrence was a kid, schools taught civics, he told me, and he doesn't remember anyone saying we should hate the American government.

What are people now so fearful of, he asked. "Did the Russians take over the government? I thought it was our government," he said, "I thought we elected the government."

He sees people flying flags from their porches and hears them say how much they love America, but he is skeptical.

He points to citizen initiatives in Washington state as a particular problem. Anti-tax initiatives handcuff elected officials, but the people who put them on the ballot are not accountable when problems arise.

The focus shouldn't be on how to avoid paying taxes, he said, but rather on what we want our government to do.

When he analyzed federal and state spending, he didn't find much to cut. The cost of running government isn't high, he said. Most of the money that comes in goes back out as Social Security checks, and for Medicaid, and other disbursements, and for defense. Cutting out everything else would barely make a dent in the deficit, but it would hurt most Americans.

If we're going to address the deficit, we have to raise taxes.

He pulls out a chart to show the economy was stronger when taxes were higher. But there is more than data to it — it is attitude.

He recalls Ronald Reagan declaring government isn't the solution, government is the problem. Something in America changed then.

He doesn't understand how anyone can claim to be patriotic while looking out only for themselves.

"America is Americans," he said, "It's not the ground or buildings."

Lawrence said we need an attitude change, and he's right.

Jerry Large's column appears Monday and Thursday. Reach him at 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com.