A Crucial Element of Democracy

This is a blog by Robert Gutierrez ...
While often taken for granted, civics education plays a crucial role in a democracy like ours. This Blog is dedicated to enticing its readers into taking an active role in the formulation of the civics curriculum found in their local schools. In order to do this, the Blog is offering a newer way to look at civics education, a newer construct - liberated federalism or federation theory. Daniel Elazar defines federalism as "the mode of political organization that unites separate polities within an overarching political system by distributing power among general and constituent governments in a manner designed to protect the existence and authority of both." It depends on its citizens acting in certain ways which Elazar calls federalism's processes. Federation theory, as applied to civics curriculum, has a set of aims. They are:
*Teach a view of government as a supra federated institution of society in which collective interests of the commonwealth are protected and advanced.
*Teach the philosophical basis of government's role as guardian of the grand partnership of citizens at both levels of individuals and associations of political and social intercourse.
*Convey the need of government to engender levels of support promoting a general sense of obligation and duty toward agreed upon goals and processes aimed at advancing the common betterment.
*Establish and justify a political morality which includes a process to assess whether that morality meets the needs of changing times while holding true to federalist values.
*Emphasize the integrity of the individual both in terms of liberty and equity in which each citizen is a member of a compacted arrangement and whose role is legally, politically, and socially congruent with the spirit of the Bill of Rights.
*Find a balance between a respect for national expertise and an encouragement of local, unsophisticated participation in policy decision-making and implementation.
Your input, as to the content of this Blog, is encouraged through this Blog directly or the Blog's email address: gravitascivics@gmail.com .
NOTE: This blog has led to the publication of a book. The title of that book is TOWARD A FEDERATED NATION: IMPLEMENTING NATIONAL CIVICS STANDARDS and it is available through Amazon in both ebook and paperback versions.

Tuesday, February 26, 2019

NIETZSCHEAN POWER OF THE WILL


Of recent date, civics teachers have a new challenge.  That is to explain what it means to have a president of the US claiming he is a nationalist.  What does that mean?  Is it a good thing or a bad thing?  Is it a position that advances the interests of the US, especially in the long run, or is it a precursor to serious international tensions, like those that led to World War I?  One of the identified reasons for that global conflict was the nationalism that existed early in the twentieth century.
          As a government teacher, this writer presented and reviewed the political spectrum.  He drew a horizontal line on the board (they were green then) and then marked the line with five short vertical lines equally spaced.  Going left to right, each vertical line was labelled as follows:  socialism/communism, liberalism, neutral, conservatism, nationalism, fascism/Nazism. 
Without going over the whole explanation, he generally distinguished main ranges of ideas that separated the left end of the spectrum from the right end.  The point was, as one went out from the middle, the distinguishing beliefs became stronger.  So, as one goes from the center of the spectrum or continuum, the beliefs become so strong, a qualitative difference takes hold.
For example, there is an orientation toward an international bias or concern on one end of the line stretching toward a parochial bias or concern on the other end.  On the left, internationalism is so strong, the socialist notion of a global alliance of labor is a central tenet of communism.  On the other end, nationalism is so strong it is defined as a racial allegiance under Nazism.
Nationalism, not necessarily fascism but akin to it, can be seen as a palatable attachment to an “us” versus a “them.”  There is a “we,” as a superior segment of the world population, against a “them,” an inferior (in some sense) segment of that global population.  Nazism, a form of fascism, extends this notion to a racial level where there is a belief the national group is basically represented by a single racial grouping.  That was the case under Hitler.
One can, with the rise of nationalism, both here in the US and in various European nations, question what is going on.  Are these countries revisiting these earlier, hateful conceptions?  While the work of Friedrich Nietzsche was distorted by the Nazis, a bit of his work can be considered when one wants to understand what nationalism is promoting and, in that earlier time, became useful to that ruthless regime. 
Central to Nietzsche’s ideas was his claim that religion no longer provides a sense of morality a people, a nation, or a polity can count on.  Religion used to provide that external standards of morality, but no longer.  After all, God had died.  Jonathan Glover,[1] in his study of twentieth century moral development, addresses this turn, this “crease” in history. 
He simply states, “In our time, the problem is how to accept [Nietzsche’s] skepticism about a religious authority for morality while escaping from his appalling conclusions.”[2]  The conclusions are not of concern here, instead this posting addresses how Nietzschean ideas provide some insight to nationalists’ arguments.  And out of necessity, to do this, one needs to begin by reviewing Nietzsche’s basic argument.
          In terms of Western devotion to religious authority, one sees its institutionalized status being established in Europe during the middle ages – the age of nobility.  But religiosity undermined the very basis of power upon which those nobles’ positions rested.  And to understand, one needs to go back further in history.
With the fall of the Roman Empire, any centralized source of power in Europe was destroyed.  This left the chaotic situation in which politics depended on local power holders – i.e., the barbarians who settled after their series of invasions of the former Roman territories and exploited their positions of power.  But how to maintain their power was a real concern.  These barbarians saw it necessary to utilize the already established psychic allegiances of the local populations in devising their approach to ruling these conquered peoples.
          Chief among these was the allegiance to Christianity (and with it, the Judeo traditional beliefs that had been incorporated into Christianity).  This Judeo-Christian religiosity entailed a morality – a view of goodness and evil.  The nobles, while benefitting from a more compliant, subjected people by adopting this view of morality, sacrificed a basic tenet of their power to an undermining set of beliefs. 
Their power was established through an expression of will – i.e., these barbarians’ force of will to dominate.  It made them the superior and their subjects, the inferior.  But by adopting a morality of the inferior, they undermined their own basis of power.  As Glover describes it:  “The values of the barbarian noble caste, these more complete human beings, were subverted and replaced by the ‘moral’ values of people inferior to them.”[3] 
And of particular harm, the process diminished values of power and strength – values of the superior – toward compassion and love – values of the inferior.  The obvious implication is that with this development, the superior nobles disempowered themselves by opting to adopt the conquered peoples’ value systems. 
          And this tradition of powerlessness can be traced to Christian forebears, the Judaic people.  There is a history of a conquered people who, up to the time of Nietzsche, had lost their very homeland.  These enslaved people preached those very values:  the virtues of the weak and poor – that of losers.  And yet, what seems to be a Nietzschean recognition, one no longer can see this irony as an irony because the religious values of the weak have won – they are mostly assumed among people as what should be the moral basis of a civilized people.  Go figure!
          But this problem does not seem to deter Nietzsche; he poses two basic questions:  In terms of good and evil, what value do these qualities afford societies?  And, should moral values support abundance, will-to-action, courage, certitude, and the future or should they reflect impoverishment, distress or indeterminateness, and degradation or deterioration? 
Nationalism assumes one chooses – virulently – the former set of values or dispositions.  It also sees values of community (especially beyond immediate settings), collaboration, even partnership (beyond those established for immediate, short-term purposes) as weaknesses undermining the will of the lone actor seeking his/her desires.
One, with these biases established within one’s understanding of Nietzsche’s message, can begin to see how individualistic nationalism can be.  External moral commitments lead one to hand over to “metaphysical” views – these include the views of religion and science – one’s opportunity to self-create. 
On the other hand, if one refuses to adopt such debilitating ideas then one can take on an approach to life that reflects how all of existence – outside human society – goes about the business of existence.  This includes animal life and physical forces.  Each of these entities just do their/its thing with no regard to moral concerns.  This, as it is applied to people, almost takes on a Lockean view of pre-societal humans.
As for meaning to life or existence, those who seek it or believe they have found it, assume a set of beliefs about the world.  Yet, Nietzsche didn’t believe in any transcendent or intrinsic meaning to life or existence.  If one does away with any “objective” meanings, then in life one is free to create – called self-creation – one’s own life. 
“Self-creation is how the ‘will to power’ expresses itself in human life and Nietzsche sees the will to power throughout nature.”[4]  A “do your thing” sense is upped to the ultimate degree.  Not for the world in general, but for that part one inhabits.  In that world, not much concern is extended to a common good, the common takes care of itself as it competes with other common or collective entities.  One nation acts as a single entity through the efforts of that leader who willed him/herself[5] to power in an amoral environment.
This theme needs a bit more words to describe it.  They will be offered in the next posting.  But for now, what is described here can give one a sense of how nationalism seems to be an outgrowth of an individualism that defies any external standards.  With each person taking on a totally free sense, all interactions become competitions and zero-sum calculations take on the common way to engage with others.  Any sense of binding with others undermines the strength of one’s will to action.  This is true at the individual level and at the national level.






[1] Jonathan Glover, Humanity:  A Moral History of the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 1999).  This posting’s analysis is based on Glover’s account of Nietzschean philosophy.
[2] Ibid., 11-12.  The quote uses the British spelling of skepticism.
[3] Ibid., 12.  In no way does this writer accept this historical view.
[4] Ibid., 13.
[5] It should be pointed out, Nietzsche had little expectation for women; he saw them weak, religious, and irresolute.

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