“MY FELLOW AMERICANS”

I have just returned home from a long car trip. One stop on our trip was a visit to Franklin D. Roosevelt's home and library. Of course, one needs to stroll through the gift shop at the end of seeing the exhibit and there I bought a souvenir coffee mug. On the mug there is a famous FDR quote: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” This is a nice sentiment, but is there any justification for such a contention? After all, such progressive aims usually mean tax dollars being taken from some to be given to others. How do we justify this type of policy other than to say it might make us feel better or that we have religious obligations to support such actions? After all, as I have stated elsewhere in this blog, secular reasoning – reasoning that does not impose religious beliefs on others – demands that government action promote societal welfare; that is, the policy needs to further ensure the society's existence or advance the aims and goals of its people. I choose to rely on secular reasoning when it comes to evaluating public policy. I believe, as an educator, that any attempt at moral education in our public schools needs to be secular in its approach – short of that, we are merely indoctrinating young people to our biased beliefs. Therefore, if civics instruction were to entertain whether or not FDR's words should be taken seriously, then his contention needs to be analyzed by secular standards. What could they be?

Richard Dagger¹ makes such an attempt of imposing secular reasoning to the question: do we have any obligation toward the less advantaged? He begins this analysis – by way of providing context – by simply claiming that we have an obligation toward others because of our right to autonomy. What he specifically claims is that individual autonomy is reliant on individuals respecting the demands of civic virtue – that virtue that is concerned with societal welfare. Why do we have such an obligation? There are several reasons: concern over corruption (the antithesis of civic virtue), concern over necessary sacrifice for maintaining national independence, and the factual reality that we are, no matter how autonomous we feel, interdependent in a variety of ways such as providing the rule of law, providing the common defense, providing protection from diseases and disasters, providing education, and providing a general cultural promotion of individual rights. These last realities of interdependence are all accomplished by communal institutions and manned by, for the most part, civic-minded individuals. All of these factors point to obligations based on practical concerns. Civic virtue relates, in terms of motivation, to those behaviors that make the levels of social trust and bonding necessary to meet these obligations that are inherent with social interdependence. But Dagger is still not finished in justifying us having special concerns for those disadvantaged fellow citizens. He approaches the affirmative position from the point of view that we have an obligation to better the plight of those who are less advantaged and live in our nation. He asks: why do fellow citizens deserve more assistance than those who might live in other nations?

Early on in this blog, I stated that liberated federalism argues we should hold a concern for the disadvantaged from the perspective that any one of us can find him/herself in a disadvantaged state. But there is more to it. As a member of a federated union, we have value due to our humanness, our potential, and our consent to belong to the union. Federalism is based on a societal union that is formed through agreement to a covenant or compact which obligates us to its terms regardless of what others do. Yes, as Dagger points out, there are a number of other justifications for privileging fellow citizens for special concern:

• the psychological bonds for fellow citizens; after all, we can't actually hold equal emotional commitment for every member of the human race – although in diverse nations, this is often challenged by having conflicting emotional ties encouraging us to include or exclude those who belong to other racial, ethnic, religious or other groups less identified with one's own identity –
• proximity of our fellow citizens – although given where you might live, citizens of other countries might live closer – and
• efficiency of sharing resources with those who live under the same national jurisdiction – although efficiency might be better served, for a variety of reasons (such as the distribution facilities available), by providing assistance to citizens of other nations.

But when we are considering fellow citizens, we are talking about a special interdependence, one of reciprocity. We are dependent on each fellow citizen meeting his or her obligation – such as obeying the law – in order that a society can function and our own welfare can have the chance of blossoming toward its potential. This reciprocity is further advanced by a system established under a federal model – one of consenting members coming together to form the societal and political union that define and constitute a national essence. Therefore, due to a variety of reasons, some accidental and others inherent in the nature of societies, we do have secular reasons to not only be concerned with all human beings, but also have a special concern for those with whom we share citizenship.

What does all this mean for civics education? I believe each of Dagger's reasons for having special concern for our fellow citizens should be shared with students. Students should then express their own feelings toward each of them. Perhaps using the emotional reaction that Americans expressed after such events as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor or al Qaeda's attack on 9/11 could be used as context for such discussion. Having been around for the 9/11 attack – I was teaching during that time – I can remember how people responded. There was a visceral reaction of anger and disgust and a lot of it had to do with the attack being directed against Americans. So there is an emotional link between citizens. It's just there. Good citizenship, according to a secular way of thinking, though, calls for a reasoned reflection on the part of citizens that would aim at justifying any special considerations people have for fellow citizens that extend beyond the purely emotional.

1Dagger, R. (1997). Civic virtue: Rights, citizenship, and republican liberalism. New York, NY: Oxford.

SHALLOW CLAIM FOR LIBERTY

Advanced nations and their social structures tend to be pluralistic, at least by historical standards. The economic opportunities that characterize these nations act as magnets culling immigrant workers from areas of the world where such opportunities do not exist. In nations where such diverse populations exist, they struggle to find some semblance of social harmony. In pluralistic societies, where a common vision of the good is difficult, it is highly daunting for a political system to count on such a uniting vision. At its core, this is the allure of a natural rights conception – or known philosophically as a liberal conception – of political governance. Where there is little to no chance of formulating a set of aims and goals that reflects the vast opinions and desires of a population as to what is worth attaining, then a system, according to natural rights advocates, should organize itself around the notion that everyone be free to define what is the good for him or herself. Of course, there is the exception to those values that seem to be universal; the value for peace and the protection of property should be recognized as transcending values. The value of stability, if you will, can be the basis by which a nation can be established and even advance as each member of the society strives to advance his or her interests. Perhaps the words of Michael Sandel can express this idea better:

Society being composed of a plurality of persons, each with his own aims, interests, and conceptions of the good, is best arranged when it is governed by principles that do not themselves presuppose any particular conception of the good; what justifies these regulative principles above all is not that they maximize the social welfare or otherwise promote the good, but rather that they conform to the conception of the right, a moral category given prior to the good and independent to it.¹

By the “right,” Sandel simply means what we consider our rights – those areas of behavior we are free to pursue, such as speech and religion. If one is at a loss in trying to promote a notion of the good authoritatively, the solution is to get the government, as much as is humanly possible, out of meddling with questions of what is good and what is not good, especially if any such effort interferes with a person's rights.

And here comes the word games: the Constitution identifies in its Preamble a list of goods and one in particular goes beyond the ideal of peace, protection of property, or stability. That good is the promotion of the general welfare. Given this aim, it follows that in order to pursue a more perfect union, we need to define – in particularly concrete terms – and promote something called the general welfare. This state of a general welfare is not stated in our founding document as individual welfare – as in a phrase, “to advance each citizen's opportunity to maximize his/her interests” – but it is stated as a common state inclusive of all citizens as a whole. Now, natural rights devotees might argue that only through a system that allows all individuals to pursue his/her interests (that is, through a free market) will the general welfare be pursued. But now, with this admonition, the “good,” in this natural rights perspective, takes on more substance. When one argues for such a system, a whole array of goods seems to come into play. To establish and maintain a viable free market, a whole style of life becomes operational. And not only is such a style extensive, but it is downright inimical to many people's vision of a good life. You can include, for example, traditional ways of life that one can associate with those immigrating from lesser developed nations.

This stream of argument that natural right advocates present, such as for liberty and getting government out of our lives, seems very shallow. When we view how the defenders of the free market have used government agency to further their aims in our history – the use, for example, of coercive means to put down labor unions or, more recently, the use of government to interfere with reproductive rights – then one wonders how sincere these claims for liberty are. For each of these uses of government, there are rationalizations, but I think it is quite fair to say that those in power, including those who lead in “liberal” economies, tend to lean toward the power of government when it comes to promoting their visions or versions of the good.

1Sandel, M. (1998). Liberalism and the limits of justice. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Quotation on p. 1. Emphasis in the original.

WHAT IS IT YOU DO?

A while ago, I suggested that a good exercise or project for high school students was to identify those individuals in their communities who held power. I went on to suggest a method to do this and an initial inquiry into where these individuals worked and lived. I cautioned that students not be too aggressive in finding this information and that they should depend on publicly available sources. The main idea of this second phase of the project was to look into how much these powerful people actually mix with other segments of the community, especially with those who are lacking in advantages – the poorer segment of the local population. In this posting, I want to suggest a further step in this inquiry: devising questions that could be used in interviewing the powerful.

Again, this methodology is suggested by an old study: Community Power Structure: A Study of Decision Makers by Floyd Hunter.¹ The next apparent step in Hunter's study was to formulate questions that would be part of a survey to be administered to the forty identified powerful members of the community he called Regional City. Hunter's account of the interviews does not contain the questionnaire, but from the type of information the study reveals, I have devised a set of questions – at least initial questions – that seem to have been asked of these people. I will list these questions in no particular order, but I will advise any teacher who wants to pursue this type of assignment that the overall aims are to see how the individuals saw their good fortune, how their success reflects a system that provides equal opportunity, how the individuals are using their good fortune to promote equal opportunities for other members of the community, what kinds of experiences – particularly reflecting their own efforts – seem to aid one in becoming powerful, and how conscious the powerful are of how dependent they are on communal resources to advance their careers.

Of course, the tone of the interview should be complimentary of these individuals' positions and accomplishments. It should avoid in any way reflecting jealousy, rancor, an accusatory tone, or negativity. I would suggest the general approach can be to communicate a purpose for the interview; that is, to share with students those qualities useful in attaining success – students would benefit from such insights. This positive demeanor need not be devious or untruthful. In the process of obtaining and reporting this information, one can report, as context, the true conditions that lead to advancement and an honest account of how likely it is for any particular, hard working person to eventually meet this type of success. I believe that educating young people as to these matters is a very responsible thing to do. It is responsible in terms of students' personal interests and in terms of educating students as to the true level of equality that exists in their community.

Naturally, what I am proposing is just a suggestion, but I want to emphasize that these questions are listed here only to spur in teachers or a class of students ideas that can serve as a starting point. Students should be totally free to take them and change them in any way they might feel would be suitable given the aims the teacher offers to guide their efforts. Here is the list:

• With what business are you employed?
• What is your role in that business? Generally describe your duties.
• With what other businesses are you or your business linked or associated?
• With what associations – such as professional or communal – are you or your business engaged?
• What are your roles in those associations?
• How would you describe your role or activities in advancing community interests?
• How many jobs does your business provide?
• How would you describe these jobs – in terms of actual duties, skills, pay, and the like?
• How would you describe your role concerning civic affairs?
• How would you describe your rise within your business – in terms of time, experiences, level of effort and difficulty, and the like?
• What previous jobs did you hold before coming to the present business or employer you presently have?
• Do you have any family members employed by your business – now and before you took on the top position of leadership?
• How does your business, your industry, your community, the nation promote leadership?
• Are these methods of promoting leadership effective? If yes, how? If not, in what ways are these methods deficient?
• Given a position of leadership, as the one you hold, what are the moral responsibilities of a person holding such a position to the welfare of a community? Please expand.
• To prepare for a position such as the one you hold, what type of educational experiences are essential? Which are, if not essential, useful? Which are, if not essential or useful, a waste of time?
• Given all the factors that affect you and your business, what is right with your community, with the region where your business is located, with the nation, with the world?
• Given all the factors that affect you and your business, what is wrong with your community, with the region where your business is located, with the nation, with the world?
• If you were asked to account for your success, what percentage would you say was due to your effort (hard work) and what percentage was due to good fortune? Please explain.

In regard to these kinds of questions, I will share with you, in some future posting, what Hunter found out about the leaders he studied. While his study is now dated, it would be interesting to compare what business and other community leaders say today with what their counterparts reported over a half century ago. Also, it would be interesting for the students, before administering the survey, to answer the questions as they believe an ideal powerful person should answer them. They can then compare their version of the ideal with the reality that exists in their community.

1Hunter, F. (1953). Community Power Structure: A Study of Decision Makers. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.

PRIVATE EYES ARE LOOKING

What value does privacy have for us? Given the recent uproar over the revelations regarding the methods used by the National Security Agency (NSA) in gathering information on the communication activities of Americans, one can assume quite a bit. The idea of government having access to our phone calls, emails, other social media use, and the like makes us very uneasy. We know that the history of totalitarian regimes and their reliance on gathering such information lend to our imaginations of government overcoming our liberties – and rightly so. After all, the founding generation had such concerns, one, from our experiences under British rule and, two, from concerns that a newly formed central government could exert such power over our recently gained freedoms. So concerned were they that the political process produced and ratified the Fourth Amendment. That bit of constitutional law protects against government unreasonably searching and seizing our things, including our papers and other information without a warrant. My purpose here is not to review or comment on this NSA scandal, but to suggest that if all this is troubling, we might want to give some very serious attention to what the private sector is able to acquire in terms of our personal information.

I want to review some of these capacities – relying on Amitai Etzioni's account¹ – of how private corporate entities, often in conjunction with government and sometimes not, have magnified the ability to gather a great deal of information about us. Never mind that the Communication Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (1994) requires that telecommunication businesses build in capacities for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to have the ability to perform wiretaps. Private corporations, for their own uses, have developed and expanded their abilities to gather information on us. Seemingly, their purposes are limited to marketing aims, but the potential is chilling. Someone is keeping track of what you buy on the Internet, whom and how often you email, what you watch on cable, where and when you go about town or wherever else, your net worth, your real estate holdings, social security numbers, where you live and where you've lived, phone numbers, fax numbers, neighbors' names, and on and on. A lot of this information is in the public domain, but some is not, and these businesses that make it their business to know about you are using more and more sophisticated technologies to do their work. Here is Etzioni's summary of these efforts:

In short, corporations do almost everything that the federal government has been banned from doing under various laws … . [O]ne must note, first of all, that the violation of privacy by private agents often has the same effects as identical violations committed by government agents. Thus, when gay people who seek to keep their sexual orientation private are “outed” by the media, or banks call in loans of those they find out have cancer, or employers refuse to hire people because they find out about their political or religious views, privacy is violated in a manner about as consequential as if the same violations had been carried out by a government agency.²

All of these potential abuses – chilling just in terms of their possible eventuality – could dampen our liberty in very real ways. And before you think that all of this is limited to private entities, remember that all of this information is available to government.

It's not as if we haven't had presidents who formed lists of enemies and attempted to circumvent constitutional safeguards in order to discredit and intimidate opponents of their policy aims. Oh! I know a plot for a political thriller: devotees of Richard Nixon gather DNA from some old hairbrush of the former president and clone a slew of humans with this DNA so they can grow up to be the former president's genetic copies. Eventually, one is bound to become a future president and accomplish what Nixon tried to do. The only thing is, in the future this Nixon will have much more advanced technology and a stored bank of information that private corporations have already accumulated. We can call the thriller, Boys from Silicon Valley.³ Oh, that's right; the plot has already been used.

Let me share two businesses Etzioni identifies as particular firms that are doing quite a bit of gathering and have contracts with government agencies in which they share a cache of information. There is Choicepoint – 35 government contracts including with the Justice Department – and SeisInt – gathering criminal records, SSNs, bankruptcy information, property ownership, family names, credit, and other information.

Of course, such activities are an affront to the natural rights view of government. In terms of this construct's concern over private businesses gathering such information, this construct is not so clear. After all, what these businesses do, as long as laws are not broken, might not be really interfering with others' rights. If you come to the conclusion that such gathering is what someone wants to do, then others can be free to protect that information from being detected. Don't use social media, don't write emails, don't watch cable TV, don't go on the Internet, don't make a call on your phone, don't own a cell phone, don't live a modern life. A federalist concern transcends this view. The mere fact that if a person's individual ability to freely and in a non-threatened way participate in the political process is limited in any way, then federalist thinking is concerned with such a development. Such an eventuality diminishes the ability of people to be federated with each other. And this concern can be what a civics class can use to address this whole area of invading a person's privacy.

1Etzioni, A. (2013). The bankruptcy of liberalism and conservatism. Political Science Quarterly, 128 (1), pp. 39-65.

2Ibid., p. 50.

3For the sake of the younger readers of this blog, Boys from Brazil (1978) is a film starring Gregory Peck and Lawrence Olivier. The plot idea in the text is borrowed from this film.

WHO WERE THESE GUYS?

Who were the founders of our nation? I mean, really, who were they? Were they the guys whom we see depicted on those paintings? Or were they other people? Jack Rakove makes the very convincing argument that the founders were the people who made up the ratifying conventions that voted for the constitution that those guys in the paintings proposed to them.¹ Yes, the “painted” bunch wrote our constitution, but that document didn't take effect until it was ratified by nine of the conventions. It was eventually ratified by all the states. In total, by my count, there were 1,648 representatives at the various ratifying conventions. Not all conventions had the same number attending: the largest had 355 (Massachusetts) and the smallest had 26 (Georgia). More populated states tended to have more representatives, but there was no ordering of the number of representatives by the population size; Virginia, the largest state with about 821,000 people, had 168 attendees at its convention. In almost each state, a few of the representatives at their respective conventions were also members of the Constitutional Convention, but they made up a relatively small portion of the 1,648 representatives.

I relate some of these facts regarding the ratifying conventions because I want to support a claim I have made in numerous postings; that is, that more than any other mental construct, the founders held a federalist construct or worldview in terms of their political perspectives. Note: I don't say it is the only influential construct. As it turns out, this notion of how the founders saw politics, governance, and ideal citizenship is somewhat contentious today. According to Richard C. Sinopoli,² there are scholars who attribute to the founders a strong republican view. This would be in keeping with my contention since federalism is a particular form of republican thought. There are others who argue that the founders were influenced by liberal thought – what I have called a natural rights perspective. Here, the emphasis is on the idea that the founders were motivated in their political writings and actions by a desire to promote individual rights. Some of these scholars see these founders being swayed by the ideas of John Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers.

I want to point out that I never claimed that the founders were ideologues or “true believers” of the federalist train of thought. Again, what I do believe is that more than any other construct, the founders were influenced by federalist thinking. Whether they consciously knew they were following a federalist line of thinking or even went about identifying themselves as federalist devotees or not, I, frankly, don't know. I have never read anything that makes me believe they thought this way other than the fact that those founders who were promoting the new constitution of 1787 jumped on the title, Federalists. But what I do think is that their ideas and how they saw government needed to be organized and structured – from local government to national government – following a federalist model. That model first took root on American soil with the writing and implementation of the Mayflower Compact. The basic format of the compact agreement can be noted in just about all of the founding documents that set up local jurisdictions, regional arrangements, colonial/state charters and constitutions, and of course, our national constitution – even our first constitution, the Articles of Confederation.³

Here is Sinopoli's take on how “republican” or “liberal” the founders were: “Normatively, I conclude with at least two cheers for a conception of liberalism that recognizes the value of community and participation even if it is not one such liberals as Madison and Hamilton themselves would have endorsed.”⁴ This scholar points out quite emphatically that the founders harbored both republican concerns for community and liberal concerns for individual rights and prerogatives. He seems to lean in favor of the side of the debate that sees the founders as liberals, but goes on to argue that liberalism can include a concern for communal interests. I believe that the nuanced view of the founders can be best described as federalist because integral to the federalist view is its concern with the commonwealth being formed by independent and free-willed individuals who voluntarily enter compact agreements – a presumption of liberty that is extensive and profound. By the late eighteenth century, these founders had become quite accustomed to the, by that time, traditional way of seeing political arrangements. They saw them structurally as outgrowths of the arrangements which had formed their congregational churches. It was just the way these types of things were/are done.

This goes for those attending the Constitutional Convention, although among these elites the concerns for individual rights were beginning to take a stronger hold as they saw their property rights becoming more and more threatened by “highly democratic” state governments. These entities, the states, were experiencing policy decisions – such as whether higher taxes on the big land owners and talk of nullifying debt contracts should be instituted – that were beginning to undermine the institution upon which their riches relied. Incidents such as Shay's Rebellion were highly unsettling. But as the argument over the new constitution went out to the countryside and the people got to elect their representatives for the ratifying conventions – when it got closer to the regular folks – we find a different emphasis expressed. Sinopoli points out:

Anti-federalist conceptions of civic virtue and the sources of allegiance also resided in a complex moral and political psychology, one that relied on ties of personal acquaintance and the bonds of benevolence to explain political loyalties and to argue for the inevitable weaknesses of such loyalties in a large, extended republic.⁵

Anti-federalists – a poor title for those who opposed the proposed constitution – were elected to these ratifying conventions. They were fearful of this large national government being formed and being able to take away the prerogatives of their state governments. Again, for these founders, they believed the emphasis in governance should be on the independence and integrity of the entities that make up the national federal union – in this case the former individual colonies. These entities, now the separate states, were closer to the communities they knew and loved; they were closer to the biases, prejudices, and parochial beliefs that constituted who they were. Both Federalists (promoters of the proposed constitution) and Anti-federalists were all federalists; their argument would have been better titled Centrists vs. Anti-centrists – that would have been more descriptive. The question was not whether federalism had to be instituted or dismissed. The question, better posed, was whether the level of governance was better at local federal entities or a national federal entity. The resulting compromise was a dual federal arrangement which is today symbolized by a flag with fifty stars.

1Rakove, J. N. (1996). Original meanings: Politics and ideas in the making of the constitution. New York: Vintage Books.

2Sinopoli, R. C. (1992). The foundations of American citizenship: Liberalism, the constitution, and civic virtue. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

3A scholar who has done extensive work in this area is Donald S. Lutz. You can find a good summary of his work in Lutz, D. S. (1992). A preface to American political theory. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.

4Op cit., Sinopoli, p. 15.

5Ibid., p. 15.

VOTE FOR THE BANDITRY OPTION?

Boy, there has been a lot of ink used to describe why we have government, how governments come about, and what governments can be expected to accomplish. In this writing, there is much disagreement; among political thinkers there are many approaches to this subject matter. That is, there is a variance in how these questions are perceived and answered – in how they see the relevant history of governance. One thing these writers seem to agree on, though, is how they, at least in part, answer the question: why government? Governance is needed, they contend, in order to manage and, if needed, settle disputes. This does not refer to all disputes, but those that cannot be settled through agreements due to human emotional bonds or through shared interests. Samuel P. Huntington¹ claims that government is not needed when social collectives are small with a common set of interests, a shared sense of values, and a relatively high level of affection between the members. But as societies grow, taking in more diverse interests, and relying on good humor and a common past does not seem to work too effectively in promoting solutions to the conflicts among interests that will inevitably materialize. At some point, a designated, non-interested party, with authority, is needed to render those decisions that will relieve or even settle such disputes. That function seems to be the one agreed upon reason for government. Even conservatives agree with that reasoning.

By conservatives, I am referring to those citizens who would agree with the general proposition that former President Ronald Reagan announced: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government IS the problem.” A political thinker who seems to provide theoretical backing for this view is the late Mancur Olson. He argued that as societies grow, the social bonds grow weaker, interests diversify, and people have the logical motivation to not participate in the solutions of societal problems. They instead are motivated to become “free riders” – that is, they logically decide to enjoy the fruits of collective action, but do not put in time, effort, or money to support such action. Instead, in order to get them to put some skin in any group or collective effort(s), people need particular incentives to entice them to participate in the collective action. Government is the product of those among us who see the need for government – this dispute settling function – and exploit this reality through chicanery to place themselves in positions of power in order to steal – commit banditry – from the community they govern. Hence, the government they head becomes “the problem” as it sucks the resources from the productive members of society to provide themselves with lavish lifestyles. Not only do they steal, but they are also highly ineffective in solving the problems they supposedly set out to fix. Olson distinguishes between two types of bandits: “roving bandits” – a basis for anarchy – and stationary bandits who provide protection against roving bandits. The stationary variety, in their process of establishing government, also provide the beginnings of civilization which can eventually evolve into democracy that puts a lid on the excesses of banditry by aligning the workings of government more closely with the interests of the people. But then again, there is the problem of “free ridership” and one can readily see the best solution is for government to do as little as possible.

Of course, this line of reasoning precludes a more active view of governance. Active governance is one that sees government as that agency that can coordinate and head collective actions to strive to achieve collective ambitions. These ambitions are difficult to satisfy without government when the potential of satisfying the ambitions neither provides for private profit nor profit which can be derived by particular parties, be they individuals or businesses. Such ambitions can reflect moral considerations or they can be a generally shared desire for some accomplishment that people feel reflects well on them. The first type of ambition would be exemplified by the War on Poverty during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration in the 1960s. The second type of effort would be exemplified by the space program that was started during the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration and continues today, albeit on a much reduced level. Of course, the crowning event of the space program was the US's landing a man on the moon in 1969. Most Americans take pride in that accomplishment. The role of government in either of these types of efforts, in order to be successful, is indispensable for it is only government that can summon the resources such efforts demand. But that view of governance would surely not see it as a form of banditry.

The philosophic foundations for more active governance come from varied sources; they can be deduced from thinkers from Plato and Aristotle to Karl Marx. The degree of governance with which these thinkers would feel comfortable runs the gamut from a role in which government is an encourager and a focal point expressing collective ambitions to a role as determinant agent mandating, even using coercion, to establish some ideal or “perfect” society. As a guiding mental construct, federalism lies closer to the former sort of approach – one of encourager or focal point. For federalists, perfection, if that word can be used here, lies not in some final societal condition or program or in an arrangement among citizens, but in the process of promoting the participation Olson seems to think can be derived only from particular or specific incentives that “buy” that participation. Its approach comes in direct opposition to the sentiment espoused by Olson and other critics of government action.

How do you elicit that type of participation characterizing an active government in a diverse society when there is no unifying ethnicity, religion, or occupational base? There is no guarantee, but I feel federalism in its component parts addresses some of the concerns.

For one, federalism respects the smaller units that compose a societal makeup. It is more in tune with a political environment that is apt to have more shared interests. In the US, that would be the respect and constitutional powers that are retained by the states. In addition, the evolve-ment of “home rule” within states allows localities a great deal of leeway in how they run their affairs. And while states don't have state religions anymore – a prospect some states have mentioned reviving – there are efforts in all states to promote a sense of loyalty or fidelity to that state's common history and shared values. There are attempts to celebrate the history of that state with stories of sacrifice and other folklore. While these efforts at times run contrary to agreed upon national values – often in regard to race issues – overall, a healthy respect for local modes of living and their related values has been an honored aspect of American life.

Federalism also emphasizes the foundational arrangements that originally created the society and government. They are the product of an active choice by a population to go through the process of forming an agreement by which that people will be governed. By formulating and agreeing to the provisions of a constitution, the people of a state are federated to each other by binding themselves to a compact – a solemn agreement by which they promise to live by the agreement no matter what any other party does or does not do.

Is all this idealistic in light of Olson's concerns? Perhaps, but what happens when there is no such idealism? We might create the institutional requisites for governance, but the resulting arrangement is one totally based on transactional relations, particularly in our politics. When that happens, we have to face overwhelming problems: a population not willing or able to make the sacrifices a people might and probably will be called upon to make for the common good and a population primed for nihilism. So, as I see it, those are our choices. I choose that we not only take up the federalist option – leaving all that banditry talk behind – but also that we promote it to students in our public schools.

1Huntington, S. P. (1968). Political order in changing societies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE

Please don't take the title of this posting as being somehow threatening. Some postings ago, I suggested that a useful exercise for high school government students to engage in is to identify those individuals in their community who hold power. I mentioned a few ways to do that, but basically the idea was to see which residents hold leadership positions in several economic areas such as industry, professional services, financial services, and the like. After the areas are identified, a student can find which entities within the different economic areas reported the largest budgets. The leaders of those entities, one can safely assume, wield relatively more power than their fellow community members. In order to further confirm their power position, one can, as a further step in this inquiry, check out the physical attributes, such as where their offices are, the physical appearances and physical amenities of these offices, the leaders' residential areas, their commuting patterns – what they see going to and from work – and their areas of socializing. This need not be too intrusive – we don't want kids being accused of stalking – but a general view and understanding of the physical environments these leaders experience can give one a sense of the exposures these leaders of the community confront as they go about their mostly work related activities.

One hypothesis they can test is: “[i]t can only be said that location tends to isolate the men of power from the mass of citizens less powerful than themselves and from community problems.”¹ That is a conclusion that Floyd Hunter arrived at in his respected study on community power holders. He reached this conclusion from inspecting and visiting many of the areas where the identified leaders lived and where they worked. And the finding seemed more true for those leaders who represented organizations with more financial resources than those that had less. Of course, these more cloistered leaders could afford lifestyles that protected them from exposure to the more seamy and distasteful realities such as slum neighborhoods and crime ridden areas. But the question remains: how sensitive can these leaders be to the problems of their community if they are constantly shielded from them?

And this says nothing of the influence they enjoy over governmental decision-makers. So it is not just that they are potentially ill-equipped to address problems but, through their influence, they will proactively prevent those more exposed to the problems to implement the policies that might be helpful; to address those problems will probably call on diverting resources from those projects and maintenance programs they might understand as being in their interests to pursue and support. At least that might be an off-shoot of the physical conditions surrounding the lives of the powerful.

Of course, direct exposure is not necessarily needed in order to get a sense of what is “out there.” One can read and see media that reports on conditions. We know of philanthropic efforts by the wealthy across the nation. Each metropolitan area can boast of a community of charity givers and organizers that do much needed work to relieve – not solve – the level of deprivation in their communities. But it is only government that can really put a dent in the level of deprivation that confronts those needier members of the community. And, of course, this whole area of concern, from a federalist perspective, is one of equality – in terms of meeting essential needs and providing meaningful opportunity. So if those most influential are partial against such government action, the chances of local political will being sufficiently present to address the needs of the poor, even to the degree federalist thought would lead one to favor, would be small indeed. Our students should become cognizant of these relevant conditions within their community – not necessarily a simple aim to accomplish. Here is how Hunter describes the level of transparency involved:

They [the powerful] are able to enforce their decisions by persuasion, intimidation, coercion, and, if necessary, force. Because of these elements of compulsion, power-wielding is often a hidden process. The men involved do not wish to become identified with the negative aspects which the process implies, and their anonymity will be respected.²

But once informed, whether students then choose to become concerned or even involved with these political dynamics is a value choice they should be free to make. 

 

1Hunter, F. (1953). Community power structure: A study of decision makers. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. Quotation on p. 22; emphasis in the original.

2Ibid., p. 24.