[Note: As regular and ongoing readers of this blog
might know, this blogger has since November 1, 2022 taken a break. This is in line with the history of this blog;
the blogger has taken a break after every four hundred postings. He did so after 400, 800, and 1200
postings. It’s time to pick up the blog
with the next 400 offerings starting with this posting. As of his counting, the posting below is
number 1201. This blogger’s initial plan
is to resume the twice a week schedule in issuing new postings on Tuesdays and
Fridays. This is tentative in that he is
dealing with other projects so he will see what can be maintained. REMINDER: this blogger, Robert Gutierrez, has
two published books, TOWARD A FEDERATED NATION & FROM IMMATURITY
TO POLARIZED POLITICS. The first
offers a suggested future for civics education, and the second reports on what the
obstacles to that future are. These
books are available online through Amazon and other booksellers.]
So, here this blog resumes, and its first topic is to critique the
natural rights view of governance and politics.
When it comes to these concerns, that view has been dominant in the US since
World War II and that dominance has grown in the ensuing years. Actually, it has grown to such a degree that
current writers, pundits, and scholars have been highlighting its influence
more and more. They might not use the
term natural rights, but the concern over a lack of citizens expressing and
behaving themselves with a sense of obligation and duty has become recurring in
the national media.
One such effort, a book,
is by Richard Haass entitled The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizenship.[1] The focus of that book is how Americans have
become deficient in terms of even identifying the need for having such
obligations and duties. He writes that
due to that deficiency the following has resulted,
The
most urgent and significant threat to American security and stability stems not
from abroad but from within, from political divisions that for only the second
time in U.S. history have raised questions about the future of American
democracy and even the United States itself.[2]
It is the position of this blog that the dominance of the natural rights
view is the prime factor that has led to this state of affairs.
While this blogger
considers himself as a guarded, limited supporter of the natural rights view,
he believes, overall, as apparently Haass does, that that view, as a dominant one,
is highly detrimental to the health of the national commonwealth. This posting begins a critique of that view
in which this blogger will outline the detrimental effects the natural rights
view has had on the health of the nation’s governance and politics.
That is, while the
overall usefulness of this construct is acknowledged, the perspective is judged
to have serious and even dysfunctional elements. This and the following postings review the
negative aspects of the perspective. By
way of previewing this critique’s content, the following points will be
explained:
·
The construct
has a limited view of decision-making.
This is important because the construct’s position on decision-making is
narrowed to transactional aspects of governance and politics. The position on decision-making serves as one
of the construct’s basic operating assumptions.
·
The
construct’s tie-in with the market view of political decision making presents a
reality that is highly and unnecessarily cynical of republican governance.
·
There
exists a contradictory argument within the natural rights perspective about the
quality and sanctity of individual rights and the perspective’s mechanistic
view of decision-making.
·
In its
expanded version of the view’s account of the political system, one that
encompasses the concerns over requisite functions offered by Gabriel Almond and
G. Bingham Powell, there is nothing inherently definitive over the functions
identified in the Almond and Powell’s model.[3]
·
Systems
approaches, derived from the natural rights perspective to problem solving,
produce fragmented, elemental strategies.
This implies that it is better to proceed politically under the
pragmatic bargaining mode in negotiating solutions with conflicting
parties. That is, it is better not to
have strongly held, emotional positions and one should be willing in all
cases to compromise. The result
might be that nothing is beyond compromise.
·
Due to the
overemphasis on individualism, as encouraged by the natural rights perspective,
the organizing factions, as interest groups or political parties, have become
more difficult to formulate among the general population – each while
encouraged to compromise hold its interests as unassailable. This is true because faction formulation and
action presuppose compromise with others’ interests. Since the system responds to factions, not
individuals for the most part, cynicism results from the perceived lack of
demand accommodations to individual participants.
·
While
essentialism – as the encouraged educational philosophy – supports teacher
(adult) authority, its glorification of market values has led to a consumer attitude
toward schools. Parents, along with
their children, define schools as consumer suppliers and themselves as
consumers, as opposed to partners in the educational process.
·
This
construct does not adequately address how subgroups – racial, ethnic, aged,
sexual oriented minorities – might not share generally in their legitimate
standing within the polity.
·
And, of
course, there is the excessive focus and promotion of individualism that
undercuts American society from generating the adequate levels of community,
cooperation, and collaboration.
And with that, this blog takes up with where it
left off …
No comments:
Post a Comment