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postings. Of late, the blog has been
looking at various obstacles civics educators face in teaching their
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Can a moral view that places moral questions to the discretion of each person,
in effect, project far reaching moral standards on a vast array of issues? At first consideration, this question poses
an irony. Moral standards, one would
think, propose a set of “oughts.” They
tell people how to behave. But if the
individual is to decide what any standard that he/she will accept, then any such
moral theory can only hint at a moral path.
But that overly simplifies things.
First, to give this view a
quality, one can easily see this approach as a form of liberty – the ability to
live by one’s choices. Observing the
natural world, one sees that animals live by such a standard. They do what they want – their morality is to
do their own thing. Applying this sense
to humans, therefore, one can call that view of liberty a natural liberty.
With natural liberty, though, one restriction seems prudent. In order to avoid the violence, one sees in
nature, one needs to insist that natural liberty be constrained by people affording
other people the same level of liberty. In
practical terms, that limits one’s choices by insisting that each person
respects others’ rights. As the adage
states, “one has the right to wave his/her arms up to where another person’s
nose starts.” Animals are not
appreciative of any such limitation, at least, not in terms of rights. Yes, smaller animals regularly yield to larger
animals, and in effect that limits their options, but morality is not what they
are considering.
But to get back to humans,
this amoral sense – one that Machiavelli described – relies on a hefty moral
sense. Admittedly, it probably is best
judged to be founded on moral positions of omission rather than
commission. To sustain a society that
has a prevailing natural rights view, a certain approach to contentious situations
needs to be defined and maintained. Where
these situations exist moral challenges tend to be most strident.
What method can be adopted to avoid violence when political interests are
in conflict? A look at another area of
possible contention or of opposing interests can be helpful. That would be economic competition and the
reliance on what Jonah Goldberg calls the “Miracle.”[1] That would be free markets.
That is, the application of market values and processes can be applied to
other domains or arenas without applying extensive moral guideposts. Markets have demonstrated a means of cooperation. They are based on each person being free to
pursue his/her interests with a minimal set of rules. For the most part this approach can illustrate
how a natural rights view can allow governing, politicking, and other social processes
to proceed with minimal moral overview.
And in doing so, this purportedly amoral view turns out to be a highly
extensive moral view. This posting
attempts to describe this seemingly contradictory messaging. At its base, the main message is that a view
of governance and politics, at its core, cannot avoid a moral foundation, at
least, in part.
And this value commitment expresses itself in a wide spectrum of public
policies. To summarize, by casting the
political arena as one solely composed of consumer-citizens – a citizenry
competing for public assets – as opposed to a square – where partners are expressing
their individual views of what promotes the common good – it will strongly tend
to bolster what one can readily see as a moral position.
That moral stand would see as preferable a strong disposition, i.e., a reluctance
to propose or support governmental initiatives or governmental solutions to
societal problems. If people approach
politics from their limited set of personal interests, their concerns for
societal problems become easily subject to such thinking as “free rider”-ship
in which each depends on others to solve shared problems.
In short, such a view favors right-of-center (conservative) politics and
degrades left-of-center (liberal) politics as this latter orientation imposes values
on people. Note, this conservatism is of
the natural rights variety, not of the religious-parochial-traditional
sort.
How does it degrade liberal thinking? Because it judges that efforts to advance the
common good through legal means, would impose authoritative expression of
values on individuals. This imposition,
therefore, is antithetical to the basic value orientation of the natural rights’
moral – or is it amoral? – view.
Any resulting legislated programs or criminal laws would generally
reflect some moral expression by others. No, they do not radicalize this
notion, but this sort of judgement does have a strong influence on natural rights
advocates.
And one can see this bias expressed in the textbooks American secondary
schools utilize. This claim needs to be supported
by evidence and future postings will provide a summary of such evidence. But assuming such evidence exists, then this
market-oriented approach has several consequences.
· First, it promotes a self-serving citizenry which runs counter to what
the founders of the nation envisioned.
After all, the goal was for a more perfect union that included an
improving general welfare.
· Second, it encourages a view of governance and politics as being a
continuous succession of isolated confrontations in which rewards and
punishments (costs) are calculated in short-term time dimensions.
· And third, it renders the study of politics to consumer issues at the
hinderance of communal interests. For example,
such views place in low priority the needs of infrastructure improvement because
the rewards are in the future while the costs are present.
Adding to this “valued” bias is a
realization that the view caters to the way people naturally think. They have by nature only a limited propensity
to think altruistically. They do have a
natural tendency to concern themselves with the interests of those defined
under the category of Us, but that’s where the concern naturally ends including
any disposition to broaden who is included in the Us.
To extend that concern, on two fronts (who
is defined as Us and what one’s responsibilities are for others), one needs to
be taught to embrace these concerns or perspectives. And by logical deduction, this counters the
natural rights’ bias. But, to some meaningful
extent, this concern constitutes, in the eyes of many, what citizenship is all
about. If that is true, one can readily
accept that civics should encompass these issues and that, under the natural
rights bias, these issues are being ignored because they are not as proactively
valued as they should be.
Instead, the prevailing value is that
they should not be. And what about the evidence? Starting with the next posting, a summary
report of the prevailing textbooks will be offered. A point should be remembered as the blog shares
this information; textbooks, for all practical purposes, define the curriculum
being taught in American schools. This dependence
is not by law, but by practice.
Unfortunately, most teachers see the textbook as informing them about what
the curriculum is. That is, they see
their jobs as “teaching” the contents of those books.
[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).
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