Let me wish all a happy
new year. May 2015 bring peace and
prosperity to all, but may it have enough discord so that all bloggers like
myself have something to write about.
You do need to keep us off the streets.
You might have noticed
this space has not been active since last July.
I begged whoever reads it to allow me a respite. And a respite I have taken and enjoyed. A lot has happened since I have posted and I must
comment that our president went through a string of misfortunes leading up to
the mid-term elections. Since then, his
luck has changed. The economy is doing
well, a development that began before the election but upon which Democrats
could not seem to capitalize. As we
know, the Republicans have taken over both houses of Congress and the next
years will see little cooperation between the executive and legislative
branches of our central government. The
Republicans also did well at the state level.
What that means, among many effects, is that austere forces will prevail
in terms of government spending. In
turn, that will be a dampening influence on our overall economic comeback. Yet other forces might overcome this soft
spot – hopefully so.
On this first posting
back, I want to comment on an argument that might be seen as countering much of
what this blog has promoted. Richard
Dagger[1] expresses the notion that
community, while a positive thing, can more or less be excessive and that is
not so good. He also believes that too
strong a sense of community has a stunting effect. How? As
the shared sense of community grows, a population might easily develop and feed
into exclusivity. That is, a recurring
problem is in social arrangements in which the people tie themselves
individually as members of a community which in turn fosters among themselves
an “us versus them” concept or construct.
This, in turn, marries the individual to the norms of that community to
the point that its members discard other views and discourage or, might even
seek, to abolish any tolerance for any diverse view or way of life. Intolerance might even take on an
authoritative posture as the group might legislate against any symbolic or
behavioral expressions of different ways.
The most obvious occurrence of such a policy was the Jim Crow laws of
the South in the pre-Civil Rights era of the 1960s. We still suffer from the remnants of those
intolerant policies. How many of our
current problems between the police and African American males, for example,
are a product of this tension? But even
to a lesser degree, everyday disdain for the unusual or foreign can function –
or dysfunction – in such a way as to cause narrowness and bigotry. Further, it can stunt the individual from
realizing potential within himself or herself as would any other limitation. By its very nature, intolerance is just
another example of putting blinders on to the realities of life, to the
opportunities life offers. In Dagger’s
words:
Membership
is usually defined not only inclusively – that is, in terms of who the members
are – but also exclusively, by ruling some people out. Thus one may appeal to membership in an
effort to exclude as well as to include people.
A self can be so situated, so imbued with a sense of membership in a
community, that he or she will fail to acknowledge the claims to membership
made by those he or she considers to be outsiders.[2]
But is this necessarily
so?
I have chosen this topic
for my first posting as a way to ease into the main theme of this blog: the nation could benefit from a more
heightened sense of community and that a means to that end is to establish in
our secondary schools a civics curriculum that enables and even encourages a
more communal approach to the study of governance and politics. In addition, that approach should be
pervasive throughout the curriculum – both in the explicit and the implicit
elements of the curriculum. To do this,
one needs a well-thought out mental construct to guide the choices one makes when
choosing the content of such a curriculum.
I am proposing, through this blog, a federation theory construct and
much of what this blog has stated are descriptions and explanations of what that
choice entails. The issue Dagger poses
in his book is a legitimate one: can you
have too much of a good thing – so much that it becomes a bad thing with
serious consequences? Yes, you can, but
that is why I am introducing a version of federalism that addresses this very
problem and one that is addressed by contemporary communitarian writers such as
Michael Sandel and Amitai Etzioni. They have described their positions as being
sensitive to the problem of intolerance and Dagger’s representation of their
efforts is, in my estimation, too critical of their efforts. That aside, under the auspices of federation
theory, the individual is given the latitude to be a self-defining participant
in the grand partnership we call citizenship.
As a matter of fact, he or she is obligated to be as open and as much a
seeker of truth and beauty as he or she can be.
This is not only for his or her own well-being, but for the well-being
of the community. There is no either/or
here, at least not necessarily. Both the
interest of the community and those of the individual are mutually served when
the individual is disposed to question and criticize common or conventional
wisdom. A citizenry so populated is more
open to innovation and improvement.
