[This blog is amid a series of postings that
aims to share with the reader a history of the nation – albeit highly summary
in nature – from the perspective of a dialectic struggle. That is the struggle between a cultural
perspective that emphasizes more communal and cooperative ideals of federalism
and the individualistic perspective of the natural rights construct.
The general argument this blog has made is that
federalism enjoyed the dominant cultural position in the US until World War II,
and after a short transition, the natural rights view has been dominant. Whether one perspective is dominant or the
other; whichever it is, that fact has a profound impact on the teaching of
civics in American classrooms.]
Can one attribute American political culture’s
adoption of the natural rights view to pragmatism? Of course not. What that philosophy did do was to provide a
line of thought and reasoning that undermined a more directed sense that
Americans should be a federated population.
Instead, it casts, as ideal, a populous being able to put aside the
binding obligations such a federation demands – that one cannot be simply
justified in catering to one’s sense of what works with one’s beliefs,
emotions, interests, and station in life.
Instead,
it upgrades one’s proclivities, biases, and tastes – what makes one feel good –
to justify most chosen options or desired options one might pick or harbor. Through the work of the pragmatists, such as
William James, their ideas were first introduced to US culture in the late
1800s and took significant hold on many Americans. And as the twentieth century began and
progressed, those more individualistic notions helped make acceptable more laissez
faire views in the economy.
Under a capitalist regime, one can let go,
without any guilt, of any responsibilities toward the fate of workers,
consumers, or small level producers.
This indifference mirrors the main tenets of the natural rights view
and, at the same time, served the interests of large corporations so they could
conduct their businesses to maximize their profits.
Now
to apply these notions to the new economic world that the global corporations
introduced, one can see how communal arrangements lost or had diminished their
reliance on people fulfilling their federated duties and responsibilities. And also, their dominance led to a path: economic activity experienced fast economic
growth, followed by a skewed mal distribution of income, and eventual collapse
as the resulting imbalances resulted in global depression.
Such a progression seemed, in hindsight, as simply
an inevitable result given that actors just pragmatically furthered their
individual interests. It led to highly
irresponsible activities that were unsustainable given economic realities. These activities included exploiting workers,
abusing consumers, and crushing competition wherever possible. Included in such activities were reckless investment
strategies that created unsustainable “bubbles” such as in the stock market, and
most of that was repeated in the early years of the current century.
When that stock market bubble eventually burst
in 1929 (and in 2008) and investors lost billions of dollars, the world faced catastrophic
consequences as businesses went bankrupt and millions of jobs were lost. Spurred by the crisis of the Great
Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was confronted with a decision.
Was he going to first steer federal policy to
create industrial associations, communities of interests within each industry,
as called for under the National Recovery Act?
Or was he going to empower governmental, central planners to set
national economic policy? This was not a
policy position based on personal pragmaticism, a la James, but
on a national mandated program that would rely on a hefty level of pragmaticism
but at a national level.
That decision was never made, for it was World
War II that ended the depression before a comprehensive economic policy was
established. But, despite this injection
of huge federal spending, creation of millions of jobs, and healthy levels of
consumption – all to fight the enemy – the nation was left with a change of
heart.
And a good part of that newer perspective was an
orientation to look to Washington, D.C. for solutions and more of an amoral
view of governmental policies. That newer
view shed concerns for the partnering nature of citizenship and instead, in pragmatic
style, sought for what “worked” in the immediate challenge the polity faced at
any given time. And that took shape,
economically, with the default policy of liberal, Keynesian economics.
This approach called for governmental actions
which first manipulated fiscal policy and later monetary policy to promote
economic growth (a compromise acceptable to all competing parties). Such an approach relieved the government from
making judgments about the aims of any competing interests. Like a professional unattached mechanic –
catering to some degree to pragmatic notions – the central government could
raise and lower government spending, taxes, and money supply to get desired
results.
While how much raising and lowering was not
immediately evident, experience could provide better answers as these tools
were utilized and evaluated as time went by.
But that ability would place enormous power in the hands of the
bureaucrats of the central government.[1]
In that, local institutions became less
powerful because they were not able to meet the demands of citizenry; they were
less able to make authoritative decisions concerning the interests of average
citizens.[2] As a consequence, in this vacuum, there arose
the anonymity of the individual and the general legitimacy of radical
individualism.
Individual
versus State is as false an antithesis today as it ever was. The State grows on what it gives to the
individual as it does so on what it takes from competing social relationships –
family, labor union, profession, local community, and church.
And the individual cannot but find a kink
of vicarious strength in what is granted to the State. For is he not himself a part of the
State? Is he not a fraction of the
sovereign? And is he not adding to his
political status as a citizen what he subtracts from his economic, religious,
and cultural statuses in society?
He is; and in this fractional
political majesty the individual finds not only compensation for the frustrations
and insecurities to which he is heir in mass society but also the intoxicating
sense of collective freedom.[3]
As Nisbet goes on to explain, the State becomes
more in charge of the larger concerns at the expense of the influence of
associations and local governments, and there remains no one involved in
addressing smaller, day-to-day concerns.
These
latter concerns are numerous and in total are significant to Americans’
everyday lives. They include the issues
involved with civility or such matters as whether children are benefitting from
well financed communal programs.
We
have tended to miss the subtler but infinitely more potent threats bound up
with diminution of authorities and allegiances in the smaller areas of
association and with the centralization and standardization of power that takes
place in the name of, and on behalf of, the people.[4]
The people, as a result, lose control of the
major issues while feeling little to no restraints over their individual prerogatives
in conducting their personal – person-to-person – lives.
This includes how they interact within their
families and among their acquaintances.
With this newfound anonymity, the communal restraints of the past are
dismissed and then forgotten. Or, stated
in other words, the drift toward obsessive individualism becomes pervasive and
legitimates a sense of “do your thing” without any sense of obligation or duty
to the federated union.
[1]
Michael
J. Sandel, Democracy's
Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996).
[2] Ibid. AND Robert Nisbet, The Quest for
Community: A Study in the Ethics of
Order and Freedom (San Francisco, CA:
Institute of Contemporary Studies, 1990).
[3]
Nisbet, The Quest for Community, 228.
[4] Ibid., 229.
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