REQUISITE FUNCTIONS

[Note:  If the reader has taken up reading this blog with this posting, he/she is helped by knowing that this posting is the next one in a series of postings.  The series begins with the posting, “The Natural Rights’ View of Morality” (February 25, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-natural-rights-view-of-morality.html).  Overall, the series addresses how the study of political science has affected the civics curriculum of the nation’s secondary schools.]

This blog of late has been reviewing an approach to political science that originated in the 1930s but took hold in the fifties and sixties.  That is the systems model approach that attempted to incorporate a more natural science methodology to the study of politics.  Through what was called the behavioral revolt, the discipline took a decisively quantitative turn – with an extensive use of statistics – to see if political behavior could be predicted as well as scientists of natural phenomena had been able to provide. 

As the century approached its end, the practitioners of this behavioral approach became convinced that it could not be as predictable.  While the systems approach has not been totally abandoned, it has been modified as it is pursued through the study of more specific realms of political behavior and by using less or none-quantitative methods.  The last posting reviewed this turn.  This posting will continue with its review of the systems approach and turn to the work of Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr. [1] 

For the general reader, this might be getting into the weeds a bit – and if the reader thinks so, he or she might skip this and the next posting – but the work of Almond and Powell adds richness to the systems model.  It also provides some insight into why the presentation of American government takes the form it does in civics textbooks.

The Almond and Powell model, the structural-functional model, provides this guidance in a more underlying fashion.  One will not find the term structural-functional anywhere in a civics textbook.  But a casual review of how the material of such a textbook is organized will readily demonstrate how the structure of the political system constitutes the main elements of such a text.  Those texts explain those elements by reviewing their functions.[2]

This model further enriches the political systems model by adding a more substantive view of what governmental decision-makers must take into account as they make their decisions.  Their model does this by adding a requisite dimension to the systems model.  These functional attributes of the model are reviewed in civics courses as commonsensical concerns government and the citizenry consider as they go about their political activities.

More explicitly, Almond and Powell describe how political systems need to satisfy certain functions in order to survive.  A political system not fulfilling these functions can be considered dysfunctional and to the degree that a system is dysfunctional it is creating damaging stress to that system.  Stress is mentioned in a prior posting which reports that Easton, the main theoretician of the systems model, expresses concern over stress, but Almond and Powell place a greater emphasis on this problem.

Sufficient stress can threaten the continuance of the system or, at least, affect its “health.”  For example, Almond and Powell identify the function of rulemaking as a requisite function and to illustrate, one can cite the years of the Obama administration.  During Obama’s years in office beginning in 2010, the US Senate fell under control of the opposition party.  Through filibustering, the rulemaking body of the government, the Congress, became stymied, resulting in the federal government not meeting the pressing problems facing the nation.[3]  That is, the situation became seriously dysfunctional. 

This inability to make necessary rules (laws), therefore, caused significant stress and led many citizens to view the central government as illegitimate to a meaningful degree.[4]  Over the subsequent years, the situation has not improved a great deal.  The last meaningful legislation to pass Congress was the enormous tax cut the Trump administration was able to get through since both the Congress and the presidency were controlled by the Republican Party.  That condition lasted for only two years and consequently the esteem that government enjoys continues to be very low as inaction prevails.[5]

Whether or not this is totally accurate, to the extent that it is true, the situation illustrates Almond and Powell's point.  That is, the functions they list are requisites for a healthy, surviving system because they allow the system to handle demands on government.  The list of functions these theorists include are the aforementioned rulemaking as well as rule-application, rule-adjudication (these first three align themselves perfectly with the three branches of government), interest articulation, and interest aggregation (the input elements of the political system). 

While civics textbooks are organized around the substances of these functions – they demonstrate the obvious structural elements of the government in relation to these concerns – they do not use the language of Almond and Powell.  They, the textbooks, also do not place any importance on the cultural environment of the system or the elements of the society that are not directly part of the political decision-making process (of which some elements reside within government and some without) which are elements of Almond and Powell’s model. 

That is, these theorists highlight the political culture of a political system.  This culture applies meaningful limits on what demands, and behaviors are acceptable.  Their devised list of functions can be generically applied to any political system, but their account of political culture allows scholars to tailor their research to the varying political realities of the differing systems around the world (Almond and Powell have been leading contributors to the field of comparative politics).

By emphasizing requisite functions, an obvious consequence is that the system, to fulfill these functions, must establish and maintain appropriate structures – departments, agencies, offices – and institutionalized processes by its various structural elements – e.g., how interest groups go about their business.  The total of these structural and procedural elements become important parts of the system that is analyzed and studied by the implementation of this model. 

Again, civics instruction does describe some of these structural processes and other attributes but in a hit or miss fashion given the proclivities of a given textbook author.  One should remember that constructs function as a source of questions and concerns for those pursuing knowledge in a field of study.  In terms of secondary school curriculum, any textbook instruction, under a natural rights bias, is aimed at satisfying the perceived consumer demands of the typical citizen.

This overview of political systems can give one a sense of the types of questions political scientists ask when studying political behavior, such as questions relating to the inactivity of Congress just mentioned.  As this model is applied to civics and government instruction in the nation’s classrooms, though, a teacher and his or her materials, such as the textbook, can borrow those questions and inquiries for his/her resulting instruction. 

It has been noted that current efforts in this regard have been influenced by the perceptions of a consumerist view of governance, which, in turn, has been the targeted concern of the typical textbook.  That is, the main concern tends to be what a future consumer of governmental service needs to know in order to be a satisfied or, at least, a placated citizen in his/her interaction with government.

Michael Lewis provides a quote that reflects this view among the American public.  That is, he quotes a NOAA official, Kathy Sullivan.  Lewis writes:

The relationship between the people and government troubled [Sullivan].  The government was the mission of an entire society:  why was the society undermining it?  “I’m routinely appalled by how profoundly ignorant even highly educated people are when it comes to the structure and function of our government,” she said.  “The sense of identity as Citizen has been replaced by Consumer.  The idea that government should serve the citizen like a waiter or concierge, rather than in a ‘collective good’ sense.”[6]

The upcoming review of the leading American government textbook will demonstrate this bias.  Oh, there are exceptions in that book, but they are few entries in a thick textbook and are easily lost and ignored.

“Traditionally ... civics courses in American schools have been more narrowly defined. They have focused almost exclusively on the structure and function of government, particularly at the federal level.”[7]  This blog will and has more fully critiqued this approach among American civics courses, but here it is useful to point out that this model was not designed to provide a foundation for educational purposes. 

It is offered by academics for purposes such as providing guidance for research.  While the judgment here is that it falls short of what Daniel J. Elazar sets out as the goals of political science, it also misleads what civics instructors of secondary courses should be aiming to accomplish. 

Nevertheless, it has been incorporated by educators to outline the structural and substantive content that comprises our civics curriculum.  While most civics and government courses of study at the secondary level do not present anything like a political science course, the systems approach does provide it an organizing template. 

The courses generally begin by looking at the overall theoretical/philosophic foundation of the system with a strong emphasis on individual rights.  Then the focus shifts toward certain sources of demands such as interest groups and political parties.  This is followed by looking at the formal system – the government – itself.  This latter coverage looks at the following in this order:  the Congress, the Presidency, the bureaucracy, the Supreme Court, and the court system. 

The course ends with a very abbreviated – and mirroring – version of the state governments.  This short overview is meant more to “cover the bases” then to add any substantive material.  In order to assist in this description, this blog will give the reader in the next posting a general description of one of its key concepts that further enriches this theoretical view.  That concept is power.

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[1] Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr., Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston: Little, Brown. 1966).

[2] This blog in a future posting will review the best-selling high school text and that review will demonstrate this utilization of the structural-functional model.

[3] Thomas E. Mann Norman J. Ornstein, N. J.  “Finding the Common Good in an Era of Dysfunctional Governance,” Daedalus:  Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 142, 2 (2013), 15-24.

[4] This dysfunction continues to the day of this writing (2020) but not through the filibuster.  Today the culprit is extreme partisanship.

[5] This might be altered by the demands of the coronavirus with which the system is currently dealing.

[6] Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk (New York, NY:  W. W. Norton & Company, 2018), 193-194 (Kindle edition).  NOAA stands for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

[7] William T. Callahan, Jr., “Introduction,” in Citizenship for the 21st Century, eds. William T. Callahan, Jr. and Ronald A. Banaszak (Bloomington, IN: Social Studies Development Center, 1990, 1-9, 2.

INPUTS, OUTPUTS, AND FEEDBACK

If the reader has taken up reading this blog with this posting, he/she is helped by knowing that this posting is the next one in a series of postings.  The general concern of this series is reporting on what constitutes contemporary civics courses in US secondary schools.  To this point, the blog has argued that in congruence with the dominant political culture – dominant since the years after World War II – civics curriculum has counted on a view of governance and politics this blog has called the natural rights view.  That bias has affected what is taught in those classrooms.

The reader is encouraged to look up the last five postings[1] if he/she has not read them, but overall, the message has been that civics instruction has reflected a view that emphasizes natural liberty – the right to determine one’s values and the rights to pursue those values – as an ultimate or trump value.  In turn, the presentation of the American political system so guided assumes a citizenry’s concerns with government is more in line with those interests of consumers for governmental services.[2]

In terms of any morals associated with citizenry, current civics treatment follows the advice of the political theorists, Niccolo Machiavelli, governance and politics are amoral – morality has nothing to do with it.  No, instruction doesn’t do this by saying it is amoral but by avoiding moral topics or issues for students to address.  The general tenor of civics instruction is to inform students as consumers as to what government offers and how one can gain access to those services.

The blog has moved on to the point that it is reviewing what political science has to offer.  By way of context, many in that field are also guided by the natural right view.  This is important because civics relies on political science for the bulk of its content.  So, if that academic field of study is following certain theoretical, practical, or methodological biases, that guidance will affect what is taught in secondary schools.

So, how has political science operationalized these amoral ideals?   With a sense of what natural rights advocates hold as their morality/amorality and with a bit of historical foundational information, the reader is now set to see how natural rights advocates view politics and government from an academic perspective. 

What is emphasized here is that many political scientists adhere to the political systems theory and positivist methodologies.  Of course, these elements are described and explained below and in subsequent postings, but what is hoped for is that the reader considers what the implications these choices have on promoting good citizenship – the purpose of civics education – and why an advocate of federation theory would be in disagreement with this approach. 

The natural rights construct has a mostly unified theoretical foundation.  Mainly relying on the work of David Easton[3] from the 1950s and 1960s, educators who adopt the natural rights construct see government as a complex entity whose main function is to provide services.  This entity is characterized as having intra-active components which give it its systemic quality. 

The government or the political system basically takes in demands and supports from the citizenry – inputs – and, responding to those stimuli, issues outputs in the form of policies and other outcomes.  The term “output” is the preferred term for policies – such as laws and regulations.  This writer has heard the quip that calling these laws and regulations output is better than the term, put out (an example of political science humor).

The political systems model views citizens as generally being self-sufficient and mostly capable of solving their own problems.  When confronted with the rare occurrence in which they believe they cannot meet some significant demand on their own, they will seek government action.[4]

Individually, or more commonly through some collective, they communicate to an appropriate government agency(ies) what is desired.  Michael J. Sandel describes this interaction, as pointed out above, as one that takes on a consumer perspective.[5]  Consequently, government is seen as a third-party entity.  This basic view of government holds certain other assumptions to be true. 

They are: one, government's main purpose is to protect the rights of citizens to lead their lives as they themselves determine.  Two, government maintains a neutral position as it oversees a competitive process among citizens as they pursue favorable governmental decisions.  And three, individuals engage in the competitive process from a motivation of self-interest.

Derived from these assumptions, important implications are in play. First, due to limited resources, citizens' demands are usually seeking mutually exclusive outcomes, i.e., one citizen's or one interests group’s gain generally means another citizen’s or interest group’s loss.  Consequently, some citizens will be disappointed, causing issues to arise.  Easton, concerned with this outcome, identified stress management as a main concern for political systems.  Enough unsatisfied and unattended demands can cause stress and if excessive it can lead to the system's collapse or for it to become dysfunctional to a meaningful degree. 

Second, these assumptions make the political systems model highly applicable to the natural rights' emphasis on the individual and its accompanying moral (or amoral) view.  With just a bit of imagination or imagery, one can see how market oriented this view of politics and governance can be.

To emphasize one thing:  if one approaches the typical civics teacher and asks about the political systems model, he or she will probably not know what one is talking about.  Even those who received a degree in political science might not be familiar with the above language.  The political systems model no longer enjoys the dominant position among political scientists that it once held.[6] 

One stills finds the methods associated with systems studies being applied to marketing studies, political campaigning, and other areas of interest.  And it remains the dominant construct in our civics and government classrooms.  This is by default for several reasons.

For one it lends itself to a descriptive approach to government.  Government textbooks view government somewhat as a machine.  It has parts and the parts interact to provide some change that is sought by consumers.  This mechanical view corresponds to inputs (demands and supports in political systems or fuel in a machine), conversion (the government in the political system or an engine in a machine), and outputs (laws, for example, in a political system or the machine's activity, for example moving a car and its passengers). 

Those who promote the political systems model often object to a machine analogy.  They claim that a political system also has feedback, a self-reflected response to the consequences of its output that through certain processes become new demands and supports.  Through this process, a system seeks to attain an equilibrium in which contradictory forces reach a workable balance.  They, therefore, use the analogy of an organism to describe their model. 

For purposes here, though, civics instruction does not address this feedback function very well or at all.  While a prevailing view of governance and politics is motivated by giving students an understanding of this service providing institution, it is mostly made of descriptions and explanations – truth claims about the subject matter – for someone who is being introduced to the apparent elements of a governmental – consumer satisfying – system. 

This approach might sound a bit too simple to account for all political activities.  It needs, one might say, something else.  Well, to provide that something else, Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr. offer, while not included in the presentations one finds in civics courses, a more rounded view of the systems approach.  Next posting will give the reader an overview of these political scientists’ model, the structural-functional model.

[Note:  This blog in a previous posting, “Back to Basics, I” (February 2, 2020), mistakenly attributed a description of the three options by which polities are initiated (choice, force, and accident) to Federalist Paper, No. 2 by John Jay.  The correct attribution should be to James Madison, Federalist Paper, No. 1.  This correction has been made online.]

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[1] The series begins with the posting, “The Natural Rights’ View of Morality” (February 25, 2020).  See Robert Gutierrez, “The Natural Rights’ View of Morality,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics,” February 25, 2020, access March 13, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-natural-rights-view-of-morality.html .

[2] Michael J. Sandel, Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996).

[3] David Easton, The Political System (New York, NY:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1953) AND David Easton, A System Analysis of Political Life (New York, NY:  John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1965).

[4] Justifying a government role in a capitalist economy, for example, is limited to certain conditions.  Among these conditions is when “public goods” are provided.  That is, public goods are desired goods or services whose consumers cannot be segregated.  For example, a person wants a traffic light at a nearby intersection to make his or her life safer, but since everyone who drives through that intersection would benefit, that person is not motivated to pay for the light.  National security is another example that falls under this category.  Another condition occurs when a market for a product is a natural monopoly – such as electricity.  Generally, monopolistic power has proven to be excessively abusive.  Therefore, the government is deemed justified in regulating such a market.  There are other conditions, but the point is that in order to be legitimate, these government actions cannot be simply initiated by rulers, but need to be justified in a predominately capitalist system as exists in the US.

[5] Michael J. Sandel, Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy, (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996 AND Michael J. Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy:  The Moral Limits of Markets (New York, NY:  Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012).

[6] Initially political systems approach with its related behavioral studies were meant to imitate the natural science approaches with the anticipated successes those sciences experienced starting in the nineteenth century and straight through the twentieth century.  But alas, no such success was being achieved.  Consequently, the political systems approach broke down to various derived approaches like cybernetics, public opinion studies, conflict theory studies, political sociology studies, comparative politics studies, political economy studies, etc.  In addition to this diverse, more specific areas of study, older methodologies are currently held in higher regard. They include philosophic and historical methods.  In addition, more recently, one finds hermeneutics studies enjoying respected standing within the discipline.

FOUNDATIONS OF THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW

For teachers who teach civics, the discipline of political science formally fulfills the role of being the academic content source, at least for the most part.   When considering the role of a construct in relation to an academic subject, particularly a natural science, there is a broad-based view of the subject matter that prevails among the scholars who do research in that subject.  For example, the theory of evolution plays that role in biology. 

As a social science, though, political science does not have a universally accepted theoretical foundation as exists in biology, physics, or chemistry.  Yet as a study of human endeavors, political science is easily affected by notions of right and wrong – normative considerations – which purely scientific approaches avoid.  From the choices available, civics educators, by and large, have adopted the political systems model as their theoretical foundation and by doing so have turned away from most moral concerns.

They, especially classroom teachers, might not be conscious of that choice; the choice might have been handed to them without their realization.  How?  By mostly assigning them a textbook.  Ask typical teachers why they teach what they teach, and they will probably say something along the lines that what they teach is what their textbooks cover.  In turn, those textbooks in civics follow a natural rights view of government and politics.

As such, this choice of adopting the natural rights view has consequences because any resulting content is logically derived from that construct.  That includes its emphases, questions, and desired outcomes.  Generally, a natural rights construct, by using the political systems model, promotes a view of politics as an overarching procedure that is aimed at arriving at consensus through legitimate, competitive processes. 

This last statement might sound a bit ephemeral.  The upcoming text of this blog, in this and following postings, will outline these elements as it attempts to describe and explain how natural rights adherents view the subject matter. 

On a more basic level, one can ask:  what are the origins of this construct?  There are two theoretical traditions at work. One is the tradition known as the Enlightenment.[1]  The chief idea inherited from the Enlightenment is that humans should operate from a rational basis.  People, according to this view, know what they want, know what their interests are, and should make rational calculations in trying to match their perceived reality with their desires. 

The Enlightenment also gave the scholarly world a deep respect for natural forces and rejects the influence of otherworldly forces.  Therefore, according to these precepts, it is in everyone's interest to learn about the natural environment at least insofar as it affects people.  The means by which one does this learning is best served by using a “scientific method” with a profound reliance on mathematics (in the form of statistics).

The second tradition was initiated by Niccolo Machiavelli.  Machiavelli began what is considered modern political thought.  It stands counter to traditional or classical thought that was founded on the ideas of Plato and Aristotle.  Basically, Machiavelli proposed that people are not motivated, and should not be expected to be motivated, by altruistic goals. 

Therefore, leaders, especially supreme leaders such as princes, kings, presidents, prime ministers, and the like, should rule from a position that advances their power.  Politics is amoral and only power can be counted on to achieve success.  Concern for constituents is limited to those policies that advance the ruler’s (s’) power. 

For example, Machiavelli counsels a ruler not to provide resources to the poor.  To do so would make the ruler seem weak because he or she would apparently be motivated by sentimentality and then hated when he or she could not afford to provide assistance at some inevitable future date.  Machiavelli urged leaders to be both a fox, as in being crafty, and a lion, as in being strong and fearless.[2]

Summarily, these traditions encourage students of politics to see that activity as a no-nonsense aspect of life in which decisions of distribution are made.  The decisions as to who gets what, when, and how are calculated to advance decision-makers, be they in authority or just common citizens, in their interests.  Analysis of and participation in civic activities demand an objective, non-sentimental, and self-serving approach.  One should remember, politics exists in a reality of scarcity in which people ultimately compete “to get theirs.”

The currency of such a competitive landscape is power.  Under this approach, if one holds a political morality that is limited by the relatively simple dictum that everyone should be free to do what he or she wants as long as one does not interfere with the rights of others, then one is left or encouraged to adopt an amoral view of governance and politics.  Those self-centered views lead to an environment in which the individual is left fending for him/herself, family, perhaps friends, and business.

As such, one can readily see how these two traditions can be cited as the foundation for what John Locke developed in the 1600s and how the self-serving aspects of Locke’s work has been influential in the subsequent years, especially in the US.  Part of the consequences of such thinking eventually can be detected in political science when that discipline attempted to imitate the methodologies of the natural sciences during the mid-twentieth century.  More on this to come in upcoming postings.

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[1] The Enlightenment was a philosophic development in European history that only affected philosophy but through its tenets affected politics, science, and communications.  Also known as the “Age of Reason,” it took place from 1685 to 1815.

[2] The Machiavellian ideas expressed here are those expressed in The Prince.  Elsewhere, this political writer somewhat softens these “Machiavellian” ideas as in Discourses on Livy.  See Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (New York, NY:  A Mentor Book, 1952) AND Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy (Chicago, IL:  The University of Chicago Press, 1996).  One more bit of advice Machiavelli extends to the prince:  it is good to be both liked and feared, but it is more important to be feared.

AN EXTRAORDINARY AREA OF CONCERN, Part 2

There are those among the populace who argue for unrestrained markets.  These are markets that fall in line with the moral precepts of the natural rights view of governance and politics.  This connection was described in the last posting of this blog (if the reader has not read that posting, he/she is encouraged to do so).  The more extreme advocates of this position are called libertarians. 

According to them, restraints are deemed immoral because they short circuit a person’s choices to determine his/her values, that is, they hinder natural liberty[1] and this is particularly true for the business class.  Much of the rhetoric espoused by the Tea Party members, for example, falls under this designation. 

They criticize the government's set of interferences in the economy which was triggered by the financial meltdown of 2008.  They have bad-mouthed the government's stimulus spending, the bailouts of the banks, and the bailouts of the American auto makers. 

They see, as part of the overall “deal,” that a person who does act according to his/her choices should be held accountable for those choices and government bailing out “sinners” or “foolish” actors is interfering with these consequences.  This, in their eyes, is immoral and as such, heightens the debate over such policies beyond what is prudent to what is “sinful.”

These libertarian positions have been countered with arguments that without these actions by the government, the economy would have fallen to depths matching those of the Great Depression of the 1930s – initially a time with few restraints.  This would have most negatively affected lower income people who had little or nothing to do with the actions that led to the meltdown.  If anything, those who support government intervention might have argued for more of it by providing for those who lost their lower income jobs.[2]

But for those who hold an uncompromising view of free markets, any intervention would have been not only a misfortune but also an evil.  It is an evil that not only undermines this view of virtue, but also in practical terms leads to unwanted results, i.e., a less then optimal economy.  And to those who seek deep penetrating restraints on markets, such as socialists, free marketeers promise not only an immoral turn or less than optimal results but also right down debilitating consequences.

Why?  According to them and often overlooked are the challenges that such restraints place for businesspeople.  This is especially true when they consider whether to hire or dismiss workers.  Excessive restraints in the form of overregulation, excessive taxes, or policy that muddies their ability to ascertain future business conditions cause them to delay expanding their businesses and with that, the ability to increase the number of available jobs.  This is not all incorrect.

Of course, such decisions to impose restraints, according to free market advocates, hurt the economy.  Risk is always something facing those who run businesses.  But this, to voice an opposing view, is a counter reality – one that dismisses prudent considerations – and can be righted by a demand for balanced economic policies, which is something natural rights morality does not recognize due to its moral bias. 

Government has a role, but not an unlimited one and one is better served with a morality view that does not a priori cast potentially prudent measures as evil.  The trick is in nuanced policy.  That is a policy that takes into account not only the interests of those who are significantly adversely affected by the economic conditions of the day, but the interests of the business class that generate the wealth upon which the whole system depends.

One last word on this.  Defenders of restrained markets point out that many of the conditions that led to the '08 meltdown were present during the late '20s, the period leading up to the Great Depression.  For example, there were high rates of leveraged purchases of assets (such as stocks and bonds, borrowed money, or real estate) and highly skewed income and wealth distribution rates in favor of the superrich. 

Libertarians might suggest that the restraints which were in place leading up to the situation of 2008 did not prevent the downturn.  Advocates for restraints, on the other hand, can counter and the media has well documented how during the years prior to the collapse, the US government had softened or done away with significant restraints.  These changes ranged from deregulation of financial services – many dealing with real estate assets – to inaction regarding the income and wealth disparity between the rich and the dwindling middle class. 

They would attribute the origins of this trend to the nation’s most libertarian president to date, Ronald Reagan – although the current Trump administration does emulate the “Gipper” on this account.  They would say that while restraints to the market need to be well thought out – unintended consequences and all – history seems to clearly indicate that they are necessary for successful capitalist economies.  Remember:  unintended consequences are not the sole province of governmental interventions; they haunt actors in free markets as well.

With this overall moral view, how does this disposition affect political perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors?  How do they affect civics classes?  More specifically, if people are guided or heavily influenced by the natural rights perspective, how do economic factors affect their view of governance and politics?  To consider this, it is helpful to consider a set of conditions. 

And that set is introduced by this question:  what is the connection between the motivating values of the natural rights’ moral view and civic realities that its followers choose to consider?  And a further question, with those civic realities, which ones do they propose for discussion in public forums such as in civics classroom?  The thing about moral beliefs, honestly held and felt, is that the moral values motivate a person to develop corresponding views of reality. 

These views include not only what is physically seen as real, but also the ways in which to find out what is real.  Soon in this blog, this writer will address the effects of natural rights thinking on how political scientists seek the truth.  That includes both the substance of perceived truth and the methodology used to seek that truth.[3] 

No concern is more influential in how people see what is worth pursuing than economic conditions and opportunities. By outlining a natural rights view of morality and its centering on the value of individual liberty, those beliefs serve not only in determining economic values, but civic and political views as well.  There is an indivisible connection between basic economic interests and how people consider either morality or politics.

Educators, in designing what is taught in a course, naturally must determine what view of reality they will present.  They have the task of determining which construct they will apply from the academic discipline which supplies the raw content of the course.  Moral perspectives have an ample influence in that determination.

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[1] As oppose to federal liberty.  Natural liberty says one has the right to do what one wants to do; federal liberty says one has the right to do what one should do.  See “The First ‘On Liberty,’” Intercollegiate Studies Institute:  Educating for Liberty, October 28, 2011.  Accessed on July 1, 2018, https://faculty.isi.org/blog/post/view/id/686/ .

[2] This is pointed out to bolster the claim that while free markets and their moral standing have substantive grounding, positions supporting government interference or the implementation of restraints on markets can also be justified on moral grounds.  

Among the moral claims supporting government action is that a person should not be affected negatively by social arrangements that punish those who had little or nothing to do with creating adverse conditions, especially if they are catastrophic.  Beyond this moral argument, one can also argue that such actions as those of the Obama administration[2] and those of FDR's administration in the '30s saved the free market system, albeit with significant restraints, by staving off a popular revolt.

[3] For example, if one believes the Old Testament is the foundation of one’s moral outlook and he/she happens to find buried, under a lot of dirt, an old and ample sized boat (or does it have to be a ship?), he/she might believe Noah's ark has been found.  Well, maybe that's a stretch, but perhaps beliefs related to the Shroud of Turin reflect the moral beliefs of those passing judgment on its authenticity.

AN EXTRAORDINARY AREA OF CONCERN, Part 1

This blog has had a bit to say about the natural rights view of governance and politics.  In summary the main points have been that that view has become prominent among Americans; that it promotes the belief that individuals have the right to determine their values; and the right to pursue those values with only one restraint, i.e., that no one be allowed to interfere with others having the same rights. 

This, in turn, has implications on one’s morality.  The last posting hinted at a connection between this political/moral perspective and economic concerns and activities.  There is a good reason for this connection.  The moral element of the natural rights construct is the moral foundation of a capitalist or free market economy.  What does that mean?  This posting attempts to answer that at a basic level.

One can readily find critiques of free markets, especially among leftist political writers.  This writer has deeply felt concerns over unregulated markets or over how libertarians and other strongly conservative advocates support free markets.  This blog has expressed those concerns, but here this writer wants to sing about its qualified merits. 

This is done here because nothing illustrates the meaning of the moral positioning of the natural rights construct – which is the main topic of concern being addressed here – more than when one considers free markets.  No economic arrangement as capitalist/free markets has led to such levels of enormous wealth.  So much so that the political writer Jonah Goldberg calls it “the Miracle”[1] with good reason.  And that reasoning needs to be reviewed to garner the positive moral aspects of capitalist thinking.

This is so because by its nature, free markets provide the means by which to overcome the obstacles that keep people economically constrained.  Wealth is created and accumulated by the acts of many.  Free markets situate people in this endeavor by them seeking individual goals.  Initially, as societies moved to this mode of production and distribution, many were coerced into their roles (here one can cite the exploitive conditions that early factory workers or miners sustained), but over the longer term more people than in any other means of production benefitted. 

Hence, each actor, under current forms of capitalism, takes care of his or her own interests by his or her own means.  A person so engaged has a targeted motivation to fulfill his or her role that both advances the person's interests and those of society – at least most of the time.  Rest easy; this review will forego the economics of it all, but it points out that history has not known a more impressive success story.

The question is not whether free markets work, but whether free markets, in the long run, work best under certain restraints placed upon them.  In this posting, the argument is made for restraints on free markets as necessary components of a well-functioning capitalist economy and how restraints (usually through some form of regulations) affect natural rights’ morality.  According to those who advocate for restraints on free markets, their arguments have to do with the social conditions that unfettered markets help create as was the case during the early development of free markets.

These advocates would argue:  Without any restraints, free markets create dysfunctional levels of skewed income and wealth distributions.[2]  They also set up very dubious practices such as the selling of products that most feel are, for moral reasons, beyond limits.  This might include the selling of babies, the selling of military service, or other civic oriented duties such as a person's vote.  One is apt not to think of these examples or see them as beyond the pale, but one should remember that America has not had a totally unregulated economy.

In terms of this, Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote:  “As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the state is not far from its fall.”[3]  Unfettered markets enable and encourage citizens to view their civic life in monetary terms and this can cause expensive outcomes to a government and its people.  And with enough of that, one starts encroaching on moral concerns.

But nothing essentially says that a free market cannot have restraints.  Supporters of restraints would point out that the US economy from 1945 until the end of the century functioned with meaningful restraints and experienced vast growth.  Yes, given the advantages World War II provided the US in relation to other industrial nations, one can argue that those times were not common. 

But as the Noble Prize-winning economists, Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, argue, reasonable restraints, such as those imposed by governments with mixed economies, do not impose debilitating consequences regardless of global conditions.[4]  In their book, Good Economics for Hard Times, ample evidence supporting this claim is cited.

[Note: The next posting will pick up on this topic.]

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[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).  Yes, Goldberg is a leading conservative national writer and former editor of the National Review.

[2] For a historical account of this claim the reader is referred to New York, a documentary series produced by Public Broadcasting Service. This series, directed by Ric Burns, depicts the New York economy run by an exceptionally free market system resulting in segments of the city's population being extremely rich and “half,” as Jacob Riis designated it, living in abject poverty.  See Ric Burns and James Sanders, New York: An Illustrated History (New York, NY:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1999).

This was particularly the case in the nineteenth century.  The nation is again experiencing large income and wealth disparities among its population.  This has spawned a literature currently available; for example, the following book:  Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty.  This has taken place as the restraints instituted by FDR’s New Deal policies have been weakened or, in some cases, eliminated. 

This more recent trend began under the administration of Ronald Reagan and has been accelerated under the Trump administration.  Another history that focuses on the rise of industrial cotton production and lends insight to the trend highlighted here is Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton:  A Global History.  Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton:  A Global History (New York, NY:  Alfred A. Knopf, 2014).

[3] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book III, chapter 15, translation by G. D. H. Cole (London, England: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1762/1973), n. p.

[4] Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Good Economics for Hard Times (New York, NY:  Public Affairs, 2019).  Capitalism, with structural restraints, has also lifted the fates of millions of people in the developing world.