With
the last posting of this blog, I began what will be a series of
postings that will review and explain the attributes of entities that
make up a federated association. That posting defined an entity as
being the basic unit within an association – its individual
members. That is, federated entities are individuals or groups that
have decided to become parties of an association with other entities
and agree to the provisions contained within the instrument, a
covenant or compact, that formulates the association. This posting
focuses on the autonomous nature of federated entities.
First,
an entity is either a human individual or a group of humans. Animals
or any other organism cannot make up an association. This is so
because those who decide to join a federated union do so upon
reflection. This is a reflection motivated by the fact that those
who join are accountable for the consequences of their decisions.
Each entity is held responsible for meeting the obligations and
duties that are integral to such a union or that are spelled out in
the compacted agreement. A simple example of such an obligation
would be that since our constitution gives the government the
authority to issue taxes, American citizens are expected to pay
taxes. Americans can also be drafted into the military even though
that duty is not being called for at present. They might have to
serve on a jury; they must drive their cars according to traffic
laws, and the like. Beyond these more formal obligations, a truly
federated union counts on its citizens to be good neighbors, be
helpful to those in need, and to take part in the governmental
processes that hold the union together. In general, one is expected
to bolster the common good. Most of us just accept all of these
types of obligations and duties as a given – part of being alive.
For the great majority of us, we are simply born into this social
reality – a nation founded on federalist principles – with all of
its laws, norms, and whatnot and we, by and large, accept this whole
system of expectations and responsibilities without much thought.
But
given the theoretical assumptions of a federated system, at some
point in time, we individuals, as autonomous beings, should reflect
on all of it and there is no better place than in a civics or
government class to do so. There, a teacher should seriously present
to his or her students the very nature of the decision to be an
entity in our federated union. Why not leave sleeping dogs lie? Why
conjure up images that might suggest to some, “Hey, I don't need to
play along with all these duties and obligations?” One should do
so because the integrity and resulting dignity that such a position
bestows on a purposeful entity, one who does reflect on his or her
membership, is something a truly federated member can incorporate
into his or her sense of self. A purposeful membership generates a
sense of self worth based on a meaningful, consciously based choice.
One
can be an autonomous person in the wilderness – where no one tells
him or her what to do – but how meaningful would such a life be?
“To each his own,” but for most of us a valued life calls on us
to interact with others – not just some of the time, but most of
the time. A social existence is a precondition for a life worth
living. But one has few existing options when trying to decide under
which type of system one is going to live. One can be a citizen of a
federated system or a non-federated system. To be a citizen of a
non-federated system, one's autonomy is already compromised as one is
situated within a monarchical arrangement – a subject of a king or
an emperor – a dictatorship (varying in its oppressiveness from an
authoritarian regime to a totalitarian regime) – with little or no
rights – or an aristocratic society where one is within a pecking
order of some aristocratic hierarchy – to get a sense of this
latter arrangement, watch Downton Abbey. Only in a federated
system is one's autonomy so fully recognized.
As
an autonomous member who decides to join or to remain a member of
such a union, an individual should keep in mind that that status is
the result of a decision. The whole theory is that the system is
formulated by its individual members – or their representatives –
coming together to form and maintain the system. As such, there is a
moral dimension to this process. One's liberty within such a society
is anchored within the foundation of a federated union. That is to
say that liberty is defined in terms of the freedom one holds to do
what is the moral thing to do – by upholding the duties and
obligations of the federation not due to coercion, but through
voluntary membership. One does his or her part in securing the
welfare of the federation because one wants to.
Of
course, all of this sounds a bit idealistic. But if one were to
review the different elements of the US's governmental structure, one
can find this type of theory in action – sometimes to our
collective pride and sometimes to our collective frustration. For
example, why do we call the law-making body of the central government
a congress instead of a parliament? The term, congress, reflects
this ideal of collective participation. Our congress is a place
where we congregate to make our binding decisions; it is not where a
ruling party jams its agenda down everyone's throat. As a
consequence, we might at times be grateful that the likelihood of
what we might consider highly odious or highly extreme is not likely
to become law. On the other hand, we oftentimes become highly
frustrated with the system's inability to get laws passed while
demanding social conditions go unaddressed.
Is
there another option? Is there the possibility of a union of
citizens in which there are only minimal obligations – the
possibility where the emphasis is on each person defining what even
constitutes an obligation? I believe there is not. Under a
libertarian utopia, for example, where everyone has an almost
self-defined liberty with no social obligations other than what one
individually adopts, there will arise an unrestricted, elite class.
Our national history that has from time to time (the current period
being one of them) approached such a system, has resulted in a skewed
distribution of wealth and income. Such distributions undermine any
sense of equality. Money is power and concentrated power renders our
ability to see the majority of our fellow citizens as being
autonomous in a real world as highly unlikely. And here the moral
questions of how well our system allows for its citizens to live
reasonable lives in terms of material well being become more than
just philosophical wondering. Hungry children, families that cannot
provide health care, people who live in areas of extreme crime and
degradation are realities in which segments of the population lose
any semblance of autonomy. Enough of this and the whole structure of
freedom, liberty, and equality, based on the underlying principles of
federation, becomes untenable.
And
so a civics curriculum, based on the federation theory, would
repeatedly emphasize the decisions citizens make and would treat
little of our political and governmental lives as merely the expected
or the traditional. Instead, politics and government would be
presented as a “contact” sport in which all are expected to
voluntarily “play.”
