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, January 4, 2022

BACK ON THE OL’ PLANTATION

 

To date, this blog has reviewed two of the three political subcultures that Daniel Elazar[1] identifies as existing within the US borders.  They are the individualistic and the moralistic.  The remaining one is the traditionalistic which basically is found in the southeastern states.  This posting addresses this last one and, as with the other two, it will relate George Lakoff’s socialization models[2] to its attributes.

          The characteristics of the traditionalistic subculture are:

1.    Power should be maintained by the elite classes which have been mostly determined by the conditions of birth.  This pre-industrial view sees society as a hierarchical arrangement determined by the nature of things.  In the hands of the elite, government is capable of doing good things.

2.    Good is defined as government’s ability to maintain the given distribution of power within the society.

3.    Politics is the product of personal relationships.  Political parties are superfluous, and their only function is to recruit individuals to fill positions not wanted by elite members.

4.    Leaders of traditionally governed areas play a custodial role and will initiate change only when overwhelmingly pressured to do so from the outside.

5.    Of the three subcultures, the traditionalistic one is the least viable.  Predominantly in the South, historical events such as the Civil War have limited its spread and legitimacy.[3]

 

Generally, these attributes suggest a strong alignment with the strict father morality model of political socialization.  Underlying Elazar’s findings is that the historical trends established within the three regions where the three subcultures are found today, owe their biases to the historical patterns established in the colonial period.  Here are the findings of a 2018 relevant study (as described in its abstract):

 

Results indicated that perceptions of parenting style across regions varied as a function of parent gender, such that parents, particularly mothers, were more authoritarian in the Southern sample. Moreover, latent profile analysis produced two perceived mother–father dyad parenting profiles: (1) congruent maternal and paternal parenting style and (2) a high authoritative and authoritarian mother coupled with an extremely high authoritarian and authoritative father.[4]


The exception to this finding as depicted in the popular culture – see the movie, Gone with the Wind, – are the elites who tend to pamper their children and follow the nurturant family model of morality almost, if not definitely, to a fault. 

One can speculate, to the extent one feels comfortable with this delineation among southern parenting styles, how these trends affect political thinking from race relations to the role the government should adopt in relation to the economy.  What can be easily documented is how the South has been safely ensconced in conservative politics. 

That, in turn, has been antagonistic to welfare, abortion rights, and government efforts to assist low-income families.  For example, while there are prosperous southeastern states (e.g., Florida and Georgia), in terms of GDP per capita, of the five poorest states, that region has four states (Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky, and South Carolina).[5]  Yet, in terms of distribution of benefits by the federal program which are managed by the states, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), while the average among the states is 25% of the populous, the southern states report a telling distribution.

That is, Florida 8%, North Carolina 9%, Alabama 9%, Mississippi 11%, South Carolina 11%, Tennessee 12%, and Georgia 12%.[6]  While some of these states are relatively well off, others have challenged economies as compared to the states in general.  The point is that the concentration of these states is in the southeast – the former states of the Confederacy; that illustrates the conservative, traditionalistic biases outlined above.  It also reflects the dispositions that a strict father morality encourages.

Through the distribution of the various subcultural ideals and values throughout the country, they go a long way to provide one with a sense of how and why the various cultural attributes are what they are among the regions of the country.  Yet, throughout the country one can sense an overarching cultural reality, a unifying sense of what is ideal in terms of the nation’s governance and politics. 

Highly tested, including the experience of a Civil War, one can detect a central federalist dominance up until the end of World War II.  Since then, individualism has held sway.  And with this more individualistic trend, how did communal federalism historically fare with the quickly developing social/political culture?  The next posting will further attempt to answer that question. 

But first a recurring message that this blog shares with its reader in its first posting of the month.

[Reminder:  The reader is reminded that he/she can have access to the first 100 postings of this blog, under the title, Gravitas:  The Blog Book, Volume I.  To gain access, he/she can click the following URL:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zh3nrZVGAhQDu1hB_q5Uvp8J_7rdN57-FQ6ki2zALpE/edit or click onto the “gateway” posting that allows the reader access to a set of supplemental postings to other published works by this blogger by clicking the URL: http://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/ and then look up the posting for October 23, 2021, entitled “A Digression.”  In addition, “A Digression” points the way to other supplemental works by this blogger.]



[1] Daniel J. Elazar, American Federalism: A View from the States, (New York, NY: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1966).

[3] Michael F. Holt offers a detailed account of how this tradition was limited to Texas in its western expansion.  Basically, to the extent this subculture was linked to the plantation system and slavery, the physical conditions of soil and weather had significant limiting effects; farther west, the plantation system was not profitable or even possible.  See Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party:  Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, Inc., 1999).

[4] Cliff Mckinney, Melanie Stearns, and Mary Moussa Rogers, “Perceptions of Different Parenting between Southern United States Mothers and Fathers.” Journal of Child and Family Studies, 27, 11 (November, 2018), accessed January 2, 2022, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326662232_Perceptions_of_Differential_Parenting_between_Southern_United_States_Mothers_and_Fathers .

[5] “List of States and Territories of the United States by GDP,” Wikipedia (n.d.), accessed January 2, 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories_of_the_United_States_by_GDP .

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