Does
the title of this posting sound familiar? It has a special place in
my memory; it was the title of the first Beatles song I ever heard.
My limited research indicates that the song was released in the UK in
1963 – a year before Beatlemania hit the US – and reached number
one there. In the US, the song was also released but did not do very
well, but I remember hearing it and liking it. A friend of mine
really liked it. I invoke the title not to go down memory lane –
although there is nothing wrong with that – but to point out that
its message succinctly summarizes how many of us feel about
government policy. Most of us just want the governmental action to
please us, individually, and we care little for what the effect has
on the country. Some of us, myself included, think this is
unfortunate, but that is the way it is. This self-centered sentiment
is behind the famous quote of Ronald Reagan's when he was running for
president against President Jimmy Carter: “[a]sk yourself, are you
better off now than you were four years ago?” This is a far cry
from asking: “are we, as a nation, better off than we were four
years ago?” This latter question is just too collectivist for
some; it is just too ethereal for many.
Which
leads me to think: is all this talk about patriotism on the part of
so many just so much hot air? Is it more accurate, when it comes
down to brass tacks, to see our fellow citizens' views as mainly
concerned with “us and ours.” Okay, this might just reflect
human nature and one should not get high and mighty about it.
Historically, Americans have sacrificed plenty – for whatever
reason – and that sacrifice has resulted in great rewards for all
of us. The sacrifices of the “Greatest Generation” come easily
to mind. But in practical terms, when creating public policy, one
needs to be very conscious of the limits and context in which we
expect a public, and that includes the American public, to be willing
to sustain sacrifice in order to arrive at the common good. Heck; we
even have currently a public philosophy, stated proudly and boldly,
that it is a virtue to be self-centered.
Much
of this blog has been dedicated to this apparent reality. I have
never stated that the purpose of this blog has been to promote a
belief in which people can be expected to or actually sacrifice their
self interests in order to advance societal welfare. As Tocqueville
pointed out, citizens should pursue their self interest, but it
should be a self interest better understood. People should have an
understanding that takes into account such factors as to how our
social realities will in the short term or, more likely in the long
term, affect how well we can live. It helps to have an active and
robust ideal sense of what should be and that sense should take into
account the welfare of others – both locally and nationally, if not
globally. The ability to feel this way requires, if one gives
credence to psychologist Lawrence Kholberg's theory on moral
development, ever higher levels of maturity.
I
have in the past indicated a dual mental approach to this tension
between selfish tendencies and selfless needs. I have written about
having a “real” perspective in which one acknowledges the need to
be protective against the selfishness of others while maintaining an
ideal disposition to seek out and promote a more communal reality
around us. The first is an expectation; the second, when one is
comfortable enough, is a hoped for – and willing to work toward –
potential. Unfortunately, prevailing political perspective promotes
the first and sees the second as merely sweet sentiments in which
only young children can believe – such as believing in Mr.
Roger's Neighborhood.
Of
course, I am referring to the natural rights perspective and I want
to particularly focus in this posting on that perspective's reliance
on positivism as its main method in seeking the truth. In regard to
this link, Philip Selznick1
provides us with an important insight. To approach it, let me start
with a question: what is the general welfare? I think this is an
important question in that our constitution identifies promoting it
as one of our purposes in forming a national government. So it seems
that getting a handle on what that means is a fundamental civic
responsibility. I will note that however you define it, the
inclusion of this aim indicates that we are instructed by our
founding fathers to think idealistically and not to limit our
political pursuits to self interest – ill understood. But how are
we to discuss this question? What language should we use? I am not
asking whether we should use the English language. But each view of
politics promotes a certain use of words, symbols, and phraseology –
its own language. And the prevailing view, the natural rights
perspective, is no exception. The language it utilizes is the
language of positivism. So when we ask what general welfare is, we,
without reflecting, tend to employ positivist language. When we do,
we are, according to Selznick, limited. That is, that positivist
language strives to be definitive and to exclusively see political
and other social elements that are amenable to being measurable. “In
the ethos of positivism, all the great moral ideals – love,
justice, the common good – are remorselessly subjected to a
nominalist solvent. No such idea has meaning, none has practical
worth, save as it is reduced to some definite indicator.”2
For example, Selznick provides the following progression:
well-being becomes happiness which in turn becomes pleasure. The aim
is to identify some associated factor that can be observed and
measured – pleasure can be measured by asking people how
pleasurable something is or whether it is more or less pleasurable
than something else. And all of this leads to a further development
in that the language of positivism blends nicely with utilitarian
views of morality.
Of
course, utilitarian views are grounded in self interest. Things are
considered good or evil in terms of how people view those things: do
they like them or not? And on that basis, morality is defined as
being that state in which the most “good” for the most number is
achieved. I have defended, in this blog, some elements of this line
of thinking, but overall, its reliance on self interest ultimately
dooms this view of morality, especially as it pertains to judging the
individual actions of people. Governments, by necessity, have
significantly more leeway when it comes to this type of moralizing –
in the tradition of “render unto Caesar …” – but there are
limits and one limit is the example government extends to citizens.
So, for example, the practice of the death penalty, even if it can be
proven that executing murderers does overall reduce the incidence of
murder – which has not been proven – what of the example the
state provides in killing some of its citizens? But I digress a bit;
the issue here is that positivist language steers clear from the
qualitative and that in order to reach a truer understanding of
reality, in order to avoid approximations (well-being vs. pleasure)
of the truth, our language has to discuss, describe, and analyze in
the realm of the vague and speculative. Why? Because reality is
that complex and “resists” the definitive. Perhaps when it comes
to government, our mantra should not be “please, please me,” but
instead be “do right by us.”
1Selznick,
P. (1992). The moral
commonwealth: Social theory and the promise of community.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
2Ibid.,
p. 51.
