“MY FELLOW AMERICANS”

I have just returned home from a long car trip. One stop on our trip was a visit to Franklin D. Roosevelt's home and library. Of course, one needs to stroll through the gift shop at the end of seeing the exhibit and there I bought a souvenir coffee mug. On the mug there is a famous FDR quote: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” This is a nice sentiment, but is there any justification for such a contention? After all, such progressive aims usually mean tax dollars being taken from some to be given to others. How do we justify this type of policy other than to say it might make us feel better or that we have religious obligations to support such actions? After all, as I have stated elsewhere in this blog, secular reasoning – reasoning that does not impose religious beliefs on others – demands that government action promote societal welfare; that is, the policy needs to further ensure the society's existence or advance the aims and goals of its people. I choose to rely on secular reasoning when it comes to evaluating public policy. I believe, as an educator, that any attempt at moral education in our public schools needs to be secular in its approach – short of that, we are merely indoctrinating young people to our biased beliefs. Therefore, if civics instruction were to entertain whether or not FDR's words should be taken seriously, then his contention needs to be analyzed by secular standards. What could they be?

Richard Dagger¹ makes such an attempt of imposing secular reasoning to the question: do we have any obligation toward the less advantaged? He begins this analysis – by way of providing context – by simply claiming that we have an obligation toward others because of our right to autonomy. What he specifically claims is that individual autonomy is reliant on individuals respecting the demands of civic virtue – that virtue that is concerned with societal welfare. Why do we have such an obligation? There are several reasons: concern over corruption (the antithesis of civic virtue), concern over necessary sacrifice for maintaining national independence, and the factual reality that we are, no matter how autonomous we feel, interdependent in a variety of ways such as providing the rule of law, providing the common defense, providing protection from diseases and disasters, providing education, and providing a general cultural promotion of individual rights. These last realities of interdependence are all accomplished by communal institutions and manned by, for the most part, civic-minded individuals. All of these factors point to obligations based on practical concerns. Civic virtue relates, in terms of motivation, to those behaviors that make the levels of social trust and bonding necessary to meet these obligations that are inherent with social interdependence. But Dagger is still not finished in justifying us having special concerns for those disadvantaged fellow citizens. He approaches the affirmative position from the point of view that we have an obligation to better the plight of those who are less advantaged and live in our nation. He asks: why do fellow citizens deserve more assistance than those who might live in other nations?

Early on in this blog, I stated that liberated federalism argues we should hold a concern for the disadvantaged from the perspective that any one of us can find him/herself in a disadvantaged state. But there is more to it. As a member of a federated union, we have value due to our humanness, our potential, and our consent to belong to the union. Federalism is based on a societal union that is formed through agreement to a covenant or compact which obligates us to its terms regardless of what others do. Yes, as Dagger points out, there are a number of other justifications for privileging fellow citizens for special concern:

• the psychological bonds for fellow citizens; after all, we can't actually hold equal emotional commitment for every member of the human race – although in diverse nations, this is often challenged by having conflicting emotional ties encouraging us to include or exclude those who belong to other racial, ethnic, religious or other groups less identified with one's own identity –
• proximity of our fellow citizens – although given where you might live, citizens of other countries might live closer – and
• efficiency of sharing resources with those who live under the same national jurisdiction – although efficiency might be better served, for a variety of reasons (such as the distribution facilities available), by providing assistance to citizens of other nations.

But when we are considering fellow citizens, we are talking about a special interdependence, one of reciprocity. We are dependent on each fellow citizen meeting his or her obligation – such as obeying the law – in order that a society can function and our own welfare can have the chance of blossoming toward its potential. This reciprocity is further advanced by a system established under a federal model – one of consenting members coming together to form the societal and political union that define and constitute a national essence. Therefore, due to a variety of reasons, some accidental and others inherent in the nature of societies, we do have secular reasons to not only be concerned with all human beings, but also have a special concern for those with whom we share citizenship.

What does all this mean for civics education? I believe each of Dagger's reasons for having special concern for our fellow citizens should be shared with students. Students should then express their own feelings toward each of them. Perhaps using the emotional reaction that Americans expressed after such events as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor or al Qaeda's attack on 9/11 could be used as context for such discussion. Having been around for the 9/11 attack – I was teaching during that time – I can remember how people responded. There was a visceral reaction of anger and disgust and a lot of it had to do with the attack being directed against Americans. So there is an emotional link between citizens. It's just there. Good citizenship, according to a secular way of thinking, though, calls for a reasoned reflection on the part of citizens that would aim at justifying any special considerations people have for fellow citizens that extend beyond the purely emotional.

1Dagger, R. (1997). Civic virtue: Rights, citizenship, and republican liberalism. New York, NY: Oxford.

SHALLOW CLAIM FOR LIBERTY

Advanced nations and their social structures tend to be pluralistic, at least by historical standards. The economic opportunities that characterize these nations act as magnets culling immigrant workers from areas of the world where such opportunities do not exist. In nations where such diverse populations exist, they struggle to find some semblance of social harmony. In pluralistic societies, where a common vision of the good is difficult, it is highly daunting for a political system to count on such a uniting vision. At its core, this is the allure of a natural rights conception – or known philosophically as a liberal conception – of political governance. Where there is little to no chance of formulating a set of aims and goals that reflects the vast opinions and desires of a population as to what is worth attaining, then a system, according to natural rights advocates, should organize itself around the notion that everyone be free to define what is the good for him or herself. Of course, there is the exception to those values that seem to be universal; the value for peace and the protection of property should be recognized as transcending values. The value of stability, if you will, can be the basis by which a nation can be established and even advance as each member of the society strives to advance his or her interests. Perhaps the words of Michael Sandel can express this idea better:

Society being composed of a plurality of persons, each with his own aims, interests, and conceptions of the good, is best arranged when it is governed by principles that do not themselves presuppose any particular conception of the good; what justifies these regulative principles above all is not that they maximize the social welfare or otherwise promote the good, but rather that they conform to the conception of the right, a moral category given prior to the good and independent to it.¹

By the “right,” Sandel simply means what we consider our rights – those areas of behavior we are free to pursue, such as speech and religion. If one is at a loss in trying to promote a notion of the good authoritatively, the solution is to get the government, as much as is humanly possible, out of meddling with questions of what is good and what is not good, especially if any such effort interferes with a person's rights.

And here comes the word games: the Constitution identifies in its Preamble a list of goods and one in particular goes beyond the ideal of peace, protection of property, or stability. That good is the promotion of the general welfare. Given this aim, it follows that in order to pursue a more perfect union, we need to define – in particularly concrete terms – and promote something called the general welfare. This state of a general welfare is not stated in our founding document as individual welfare – as in a phrase, “to advance each citizen's opportunity to maximize his/her interests” – but it is stated as a common state inclusive of all citizens as a whole. Now, natural rights devotees might argue that only through a system that allows all individuals to pursue his/her interests (that is, through a free market) will the general welfare be pursued. But now, with this admonition, the “good,” in this natural rights perspective, takes on more substance. When one argues for such a system, a whole array of goods seems to come into play. To establish and maintain a viable free market, a whole style of life becomes operational. And not only is such a style extensive, but it is downright inimical to many people's vision of a good life. You can include, for example, traditional ways of life that one can associate with those immigrating from lesser developed nations.

This stream of argument that natural right advocates present, such as for liberty and getting government out of our lives, seems very shallow. When we view how the defenders of the free market have used government agency to further their aims in our history – the use, for example, of coercive means to put down labor unions or, more recently, the use of government to interfere with reproductive rights – then one wonders how sincere these claims for liberty are. For each of these uses of government, there are rationalizations, but I think it is quite fair to say that those in power, including those who lead in “liberal” economies, tend to lean toward the power of government when it comes to promoting their visions or versions of the good.

1Sandel, M. (1998). Liberalism and the limits of justice. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Quotation on p. 1. Emphasis in the original.