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, June 11, 2019

SOCIALIZING PRODUCTIVE CIVILITY


To this point, this blog has been reviewing the work of Jonah Goldberg.  He has offered a foundational construct – a view of how and why governments exist and why liberalist government emerged and has been maintained since the 1700s.  The following quote summarizes a lot of what he is trying to get his readers to understand:  “When we fail to properly civilize people, human nature rushes in.  Absent a higher alternative, human nature drives us to make sense of the world on its own instinctual terms:  That’s tribalism.”[1]
          Proof?  Look at those urban youths that find themselves in struggling families – both economically and socially – and are attracted to join a street gang.  The sense of belonging these arrangements offer the young person goes a long way toward explaining other attractions, that of the Klan or the Mafia.  These are all forms of tribes. 
Instead, to avoid such membership, the young person needs to be taught to seek that sense of belonging in those groups that further the common interest (the family, the workplace, the school, and possibly the church – assuming the religion involved has a pro-civic theology) to counter this attraction.  Of course, these institutions need to be operating in such a way that they advance this sense of belonging – they need to project a federated relationship among their members.
          Goldberg points out Benjamin Franklin’s observation that those colonists who were abducted by indigenous tribes at a young age and “went native,” would likely refuse to leave the tribal life for the more “European” lifestyle when the opportunity was offered.  Why?  The speculation is that the native life more completely satisfied this human yearning – the interpersonal relationships that characterized the indigenous tribes.  Obviously, humans have an innate need to have the relationships that add meaning to their lives.  Tribal life does that.
          But tribes have limited resources.  And the resources are not only those having to do with environmentally based assets – such as minerals – but human resources in terms of talents, knowledge, dispositions, sensitivities, experiences, motivations, and other assets.  Goldberg understands the lure of the tribe but points out its limitations.  That is why the Miracle – the economic advancement liberal governance has made possible – had to oppose the tribal option.
Liberal democracy, though, through its mechanisms provides one an understanding of these limitations.  It encourages inclusion beyond the tribe.  This writer believes – and this is central to his criticism of Goldberg – that liberalism, on its own, does not provide the substantive narrative countering the alienating sense it ignores in its explanations.  That is, Goldberg might point this out, but the purely liberal construct does not.
While liberal writers, such as Adam Smith, point out the need for community, the theory itself ignores it and provides nothing to establish, maintain, or advance it.  Apparently, scholars have pointed out, for example, how incongruent Smith’s two major works are – they are incongruent on this very notion. 
These scholars refer to Smith’s two major works:  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations – the work more based on egoistic motivations of humans – and The Theory of Moral Sentiments – the work that points out the need for humans to be sensitive to the needs of all, both rich and poor.  This was called the “Adam Smith Problem.” [2]  Generally, the judgement here is:  natural rights literature ignores the need to express benevolence and emphasizes the egoistic interests of the individual.
What one sees when socialization toward liberal democracy is wanting, people seek the tribal relationships that often exist to address the alienation the individual is likely to feel.  For example, the attraction of gang life demonstrates the emotional bent the young harbor that lead to membership in these ultimately anti-communal groupings.  What Goldberg points out is the naturalness involved when such a move or decision to join a gang takes place.  The young person is merely seeking those intimate relationships.
          He also names the set of emotions that leads to such strivings:  romanticism.  Goldberg describes his use of this term:
The core of romanticism, for Rousseau and those who followed, is the primacy of feelings.  Specifically, the feeling that the world we live in is not right, that it is unsatisfying and devoid of authenticity and meaning (or simply requires too much of us and there must be an easier way).  Secondarily, because our feelings tell us that the world is out of balance, rigged, artificial, unfair, or – most often – oppressive and exploitative, our natural wiring drives us to the belief that someone must be responsible.  The evil string pullers take different forms depending on the flavor of tribalism.  But the most common include:  the Jews, the capitalists, and – these days on the right – the globalists and cultural Marxist.[3]
Romanticism fills in in what liberal democracy tends to ignore.  Democratic capitalism, that construct’s “off-spring,” does not provide meaning beyond the motive to gain profit, yet humans seem to need meaning – a meaning anchored in human relationships.  Without such meaning and left with a view one can basically seek one’s self-defined interests, many, if not most, will seek those interests by means that counter the common good. 
That is, reaction to liberal democracy is reactionary.  Emotional, romantic movements are against liberal democratic rule and rely on sentimental corruptions – as in decay, putrefaction, rot – that strives to return to more natural modes of thinking and feeling.  Romanticism fights against inclusion among the peoples of the earth.  Why?  Because such inclusion is emotionally offensive to humans’ natural bias against those who don’t belong to one’s tribe.
Goldberg writes:
The Miracle ushered in a philosophy that says each person is to be judged and respected on account of their [sic] own merits, not the class or caste of their ancestors.  Identity politics says each group is an immutable category, a permanent tribe.  Worse, it works from the assumption that what benefits one group must come at the expense of another.[4]
In one way or another – some being very imaginative – liberal democracy repudiates this basic view.  There are those, in the academic world, who focus on alleged oppression.  Goldberg cites Howard Zinn’s work, People History of the United States.  It makes the case that US economic policy has been a series of exploitive actions.  This blog has identified this view as the critical theory construct.
          That strain of argument can be classified as extreme leftism.  But there is also extreme rightist arguments; this being in the forms of populism and nationalism.  Both the extreme right or left magnify the incidence of ingratitude for the accomplishments of the Miracle.  Goldberg claims that both are at best based on half truths or pure fiction.  Despite that, these intellectual denizens have become very popular and are dominant in certain circles including academic social studies.
          This writer – a critic of Goldberg – highly recommends his cited work.  He ends his introductory chapter to that work with the analogy of the fable of the golden egg, the Miracle, and with a scene from The Godfather.  Highly entertaining and apropos.  The next posting will pick up on this theme and continue this report of Goldberg’s foundational construct.  That posting will be this writer’s critique.


[1] Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West:  How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy (New York, NY:  Crown Forum, 2018), 12 (Kindle edition).

[2] See “Adam Smith (1723-1790),” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, n. d., accessed June 10, 2019, https://www.iep.utm.edu/smith/ . 

[3] Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West:  How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy, 13 (Kindle edition, emphasis in the original).

[4] Ibid., 16.

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