WHO TO TRUST?

 

The very first sentence of a book by the Nobel Prize winners Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo over economic challenges is “We live in an age of growing polarization.”[1]  Early in their book they cite the following: 

·       81% of Americans who identify with one of the major parties has a negative opinion of the other party;

·       61% of Democrats classify Republicans as being racists, sexists, or bigots; 55% of Republicans dismiss Democrats as spiteful; and

·       Roughly one of every three Americans express their disappointment if a close family member married someone of the opposing political party.[2]

Other works cited in this blog support this overall descriptive conclusion by providing further relevant statistics.

          These feelings of disdain have become so much a part of the political environment that one tends to define politics as including this sort of emotional response to having political disagreements.  But this is not new.  Thomas E. Ricks, in telling the story of four founding fathers, describes how reluctant their acceptance of political parties and their entailed level of factionalism was.  But then he goes to describe that once accepted, with the exception of George Washington, they were not shy in practicing a fairly virulent form of the practice.[3]

          But to get back to the two Nobel laureates, their point is, and is supported by a good deal of related responsible theorizing, that to sustain a healthy democratic polity, such dissent needs to be reasonably respectful and that demands for a level of understanding.  Understanding of what?  Well, at minimum one should attain an understanding of the contentious issues under debate, of the affected interests of the other party, and of the motivations – both recognized and hidden – that encourage people to act as they do.

          And since the current stage is polarized, the highlighted issues under contention do not stand alone.  As this blog has also explained, there are political forces at play that have become operative because of the system’s polarization itself.[4]  Banerjee and Duflo describe these issues as coming “together as a bunches of grapes.”  But they go on to say that at play are certain core beliefs that determine these various opinions over the array of concerns.

          These beliefs refer to such aspects of life as gender roles or the role of hard work.  With these more fundamental biases, they lead one to believe, for example, if one supports liberal or restrictive immigration policies, supports liberal or restrictive trade policies, or active or limited government role in the economy. 

But while such mental posturing has always functioned in this way, more seems to be at play presently and this blog, as just alluded to, has addressed earlier this more encompassing political environment.  The concern here is a more specific consequence, that being that the current state has become so prevalent within the current arena that a qualitative augmentation has taken place.  “We seem to be back in the Dickensian world of Hard Times, with the haves facing off against the increasingly alienated have-nots, with no resolution in sight.”[5]

So, does this situation just reveal or reflect the Marxian dictum, that all social maladies boil down to class warfare?  Banerjee and Duflo claim that nations are doing little to solve the basic conditions feeding the polarization.  One does not read or listen to reports in the news or other sources describing a turnaround in how wealth or income is becoming less inequitable, only that they are becoming more so.

And one finds that the general attitude among people is not to look to economists for explanations or proscriptions as to what to do.  Generally, they are not seen as reliable sources of good information or so claims Banerjee and Duflo.  This was supported with a survey study they conducted.  They found that only 25% of Americans trusted economists know what they are talking about when it comes to economics.  Is that the worst judged professional group?  No, politicians do worse.

Further they report other research that points out how much economists disagree with the basic opinions of average people.  They can’t seem to agree on tariff policy over steel and aluminum, much less what one would consider prudent in terms of controversial issues such as the economic effect immigrants will have on an economy as a study asked in the case of Germany. 

And the gap between economists – who, by the way, don’t always agree among themselves – and common folk can be quite significant.  In administering an opinion questionnaire of twenty questions, the gap of disagreement was as high as 35 percentage points between how the economists answered a question and how others did so.  It’s no wonder that one can observe people ignoring economists.

Hence, a goal for this blog is to investigate this gap.  Why?  Because this writer does have faith in what economists have to say as long as they back it up with evidence.  That is, he at least believes they, the economists, are not out to lie to their fellow citizens.  Having experienced the “academic” way of finding the truth, he generally holds as truthful academic efforts to report what’s happening and why.

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[1] Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Good Economics for Hard Times (New York, NY:  Public Affairs, 2019), 1.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Thomas E. Ricks, First Principles:  What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country (New York, NY:  HarperCollins Publishers, 2020).  He analyzed George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison with telling information regarding Alexander Hamilton.

[4] See, for example, Robert Gutierrez, “Twiddle Dee and Something Else,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics” (August 14, 2020), accessed February 18, 2021, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020_08_09_archive.html .

[5] Banerjee and Duflo, Good Economics for Hard Times, 2.

FOUR ELEMENTS

 

A little research into the origins of American political thought brings one to the fact that there are at least two or three overall approaches to how and from where those ideas and ideals come.  One school, represented among others by Daniel Elazar, Donald Lutz, and the Center for the Study of Federalism harkens to the role of local government. 

A second school looks to the influence of classical thinkers such as those of ancient Greece and Rome.  Here, an example scholar is the historian and Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas E. Ricks.  And yet a third school is a “bottom up” approach, that this writer considers to be a critical theory approach and is exemplified by Ray Raphael.  This blog supports and promotes the federalist approach of Elazar, et al. but suggests to interested readers that they should avail themselves to all three to attain a well-rounded exposure to the nation’s history.

Key to this federalist view is the identification and analysis of founding documents.  Lutz provides a thorough review of colonial documents in his edited book, Colonial Origins of the American Constitution.  In that volume, he presents eighty of those documents.  As is often the case, the federal strategy seems to find a compromise between those influenced by perennialism – a philosophy in education that good education consists of studying the classical thinkers – and those who look to the common folk, the bottom up approach, for what pushes social and political agendas.

In comparing the first two approaches, the more elitist, perennial approach and the federal view, Lutz writes,

… there are two constitutional traditions running through colonial documents.  The first tradition can be found in the charters, letters-patent, and instructions for the colonists written in England.  In certain respects, the United States Constitution favors this tradition.  The second tradition is found in the covenants, compacts, agreements, ordinances, codes, and oaths written by the colonists themselves.  While the U.S. Constitution embodies aspects of this tradition as well, it is in the early state constitutions that we find the full flowering of this second tradition.[1]

With a bit of license, this writer sees this quote as indicating that while the influence from Europe – emanating from English elites and classical education – was real and of consequence, local American sources in their rule making provide a great deal of direction as to the practical, everyday concerns of the colonists. 

And while official documents of early Americans, in part, were also written by well educated colonists, they had to live with the everyday reactions of their fellow companions in mostly frontier environments or small towns and cities.  That is, the politics they faced were close and personal.  And, as background, those conversations were within certain parameters. 

One, there was the perceived need to write basic laws and this seems to emanate from two traditional, legal/cultural movements.  And two, what was established by these early Americans had staying power and can readily be cited as part of the current situation of today.  They, therefore, came from, one, abroad and, two, from domestic sources. 

From England, one had a written constitution, but it was a compilation of common law and legislative ordinances.  This was more or less stitched together and, to a degree, lacked definitive direction.  The other tradition was the accepted practice of Americans writing out their own basic law made possible by the practical expectation that England could not rule them from far away as it ruled its citizens in England.

But in addition, there was one more factor to this second tradition.  Besides the practical inability of English government ruling Americans in the various colonies was the congregational tradition that the initial Puritanical settlers brought with them.  Not only were they disposed to writing foundational documents for their religious communities, but this practice seemed a natural mode of establishment for government as well.  And setting the tone for this was the original motivation to reestablish themselves in this new uninviting environment as they escaped another such environment.

That is, many of them made the trip to escape religious discriminatory practices in Anglican England.  Serving as an underlying factor was the hierarchical structure of the Anglican Church – headed by the monarch who replaced the Pope under Henry the VIII – and the horizontal, congregational structure of Puritanism.  This variance from traditional, centered religious structure had its effect on governance in general as being something to avoid.

And moving to this newer setting in America meant they could run their affairs as they saw fit.  Of course, a set of rules is still needed and that tradition of writing and expressing agreement with a covenant provided the method by which those rules were devised, argued, and agreed upon within the various congregations.  Lutz further writes,

… [They used] self-written covenants as part of their political definitions.  It is a very short step move to a blending of these two traditions wherein Americans would find themselves writing single, amendable documents constitutions.  The Pilgrim Code of Law, for example, begins by referring to both the charter from the king and the Mayflower Compact as its legal basis.[2]

And these foundational documents, according to Lutz, eventually had four recurring elements.

          Element one is “the founding or creation of a people.”  That is, a group identifies itself as having a combination of attributes or characteristics apart from other people and that that group decides to identify that fact and formerly announce to the world that it exists under that identification.  It can be based on an allegiance to a place, a set of ideas and/or values, and/or other cultural elements.  It is significantly more substantive than a fandom of some team or community; it has a wholeness that profoundly defines its members as in “we are Americans.”

          Element two exists when such a transcendent declaration demands “the founding or creation of a government.”  When this is so, the foundational document provides for it.  Apparently, John Locke points out the following distinction, that element one is a unanimous decision and, element two, establishing a government is a majoritarian agreement. 

And these first two elements suggests a structured arrangement within such documents:  first one identifies the people, “We the people of the United States…”, and then, after listing some reasons, states the origins of that people’s government, “,,, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States.”  But one asks:  this is a “constitution” of what?  And the answer is, of a government.

To further define matters, there is the third element, “the self-definition of the people in terms of shared values and goals so that the founded people may cross generation.”  That is, the document shares with the world on what basis this people define themselves.  This is the origin of bills of rights that begin to appear in these constitutions, and they appear just after the declarations of elements one and two.  Unlike with the federal constitution, if one looks at state constitutions, one finds this order:  a people, an establishment of a government, and a statement of basic values.

And why not at the federal level?  Initially, the idea was that the Declaration of Independence already fulfilled this function.  But that was not good enough for those who had doubts about ratifying the constitution of 1787.  Its defenders promised that as the first order of business when the new Congress convened was to submit a bill of rights as amendments and that promise was kept.

And finally, the fourth element is “the specification of a form of government through the creation of institutions for collective decision making.”  Interestingly, this term constitution is originally only applied to this fourth element of the document but through use it has now been ascribed to the whole document. 

This later change is a bit unfortunate in that it leads people to miss the importance of the whole document being a compact and by so doing the miss the fact that it, the constitution, creates a partnership among its members and their posterity.  In addition, by pointing out these elements, one can compare any foundational document with other such documents.  For example, how do American institutions compare to those of other established governments and their people. 

In terms of the US, those institutions would include popular elections, majority rule, minority rights, separation of powers, bicameralism, checks and balances, among others.  Along with these institutions are their accompanying structural features such as the executive, the legislative, and the judicial branches.

And this last bit of concern hints at what this blog will address next when these foundational documents are again taken up.  That will be the definition of key terms associated with these documents and their developments.  Eventually, the plan of this writer is to look at a sample of these early documents, and test the notion that early on Americans shared, as a dominant view, a federalist understanding of what governance and politics is and/or should be.

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[1] Donald S. Lutz, “Introductory Essay,” in Colonial Origins of the American Constitution, ed. Donald S. Lutz (Indianapolis, IN:  Liberty Fund, 1998), xxi.

[2] Ibid., xxii.