AN ESSENTIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

From time to time, in one’s readings, he/she runs across a particularly moving bit of writing.  This posting starts with such an example:

The vision of autonomy [as has been captured by the US Constitution] incorporated an ideal of community.  Autonomous, rights-bearing individuals would live in groups and collectivities and participate in public life.  Their “happiness,” as Thomas Jefferson knew, required community.  They would know themselves, as individuals and as citizens, through their capacity to construct intentional and voluntary forms of solidarity.  And many, particularly the many in the nineteenth century raised within a powerful Christian culture, interpreted the development of individual capacities as an overarching right, because it enabled one to fulfill a variety of duties to others.  One was obliged then to become an autonomous citizen, so that one could participate usefully in communities.[1]

And in these few words, Hendrick Hartog captures the ironies of a host of what on the surface seems to be contrary realities.  It also gives one a sense of priority.

          In the main, the contrary nature of civil society is one in which individuals to be useful, productive, and proactively engaged in common causes must feel themselves individually vibrant and willful.  But that individuality is important primarily for the sake of the common welfare.  The rights enjoyed by those entities of an association or a communal arrangement are derived from that prerequisite.  It is in that framework that individual rights should be judged and in which they are legitimate.

          To solidify that notion, one can state that the collective – or more fruitfully considered the community – would be engaged in illegitimate action when it sought to deprive or otherwise hamper the exercise of those rights.  Of course, more needs to be explained to contextually place such a relationship in a meaningful consciousness that places or instills imagery to such an arrangement.

          What’s the alternative?  How else can a polity see the relationship between the participants and itself?  What remains is various forms of paternalism ranging from coercive, punitive paternalism (the harsh, unloving parent depicted in so many Victorian novels) to spineless, continuously yielding parents that spoil their off springs.  Of course, one can have a loving parent, but one that holds the reigns within which the child can function. 

In any of these cases, the potentials for the common good – and ultimately the individual good of its participants – will fall woefully short of its potentials.  What Jonah Goldberg calls the “miracle” – the wellspring of assets derived from market economies – counts on individuals feeling free to pursue what they perceive their interests to be.[2]  Yet such a view needs to be within the parameters of communal demands.

          Hartog claims he sees this choice between establishing a polity of citizens with a functional consciousness of rights or forming one of paternalism as being at the heart of whether that polity will be equipped to formulate a populous of free adults.  In turn, this concern defines what constitutes one’s consciousness of constitutional rights. 

And given both the monopoly over coercive means and the access to national assets, a government must lead a polity’s efforts in assuring that the more productive choice is made.  Can anyone, for example, perceive a citizenry having a viable, general consciousness of rights without a sufficiently viable public-school system?  This blogger cannot and probably more than any other factor goes into motivating him to write this blog. 

Yes, when all else fails in addressing a related challenge, a government might be called upon to enact positive laws (insisting on what citizens must do like sending their children to school), but mostly to avoid a paternalistic role, it needs to rely on negative laws and policies (outlining what citizens cannot do like infringe on each other’s rights).  But in either case the trick is:  government must not fall into a regime of policies reflecting a paternal force.  And all this leads to complexities. 

Which ones?  Hartog identifies three types or characterizations:

[There are] three distinct, yet interrelated, ways of characterizing the rights required to secure constitutional aspirations.  The first characterization, and the most familiar, is that of the right as a “trump,” a claim that, once established, triumphs over competing values and claims.  The second, and the most important for a historical understanding of American constitutional rights consciousness, is that of a right as a duty on public authority to undo – to destroy – the structures that maintain hierarchy and oppression.  The third is that a right as a duty to reconstruct itself or its relations to its citizens, or lose legitimacy.  They offer three ways of describing the demand that lies behind the assertion of claimed right.  The first says, “Mine!”  The second says, “Not theirs!”  The third says, “Do what is necessary, or I will never again trust you!”[3]  

Each of these deserves its own treatment and will be, in turn, the subject of future postings.

          But overall, this cited writer gives his readers a sense of how imbedded certain values and attitudes must be within a populous for this tricky business of insuring a compact-al agreement works.  This blogger, as alluded to above, is probably more motivated by his concern over what is damaging that consciousness today.  For him, a key word in the cited quotes above is duty.  Duty seems to be more and more cast in illegitimate lights.  And this condition undermines a lot.  The whole structure – as alluded to by Hartog – depends on these reasoned and emotional commitments.

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[1] Hendrick Hartog, “History of Rights Consciousness,” in Major Problems in American Constitutional History, Volume I:  The Colonial Era Through Reconstruction, ed. Kermit L. Hall (Lexington, MA:  D. C. Heath and Company, 1992), 11-14, 2. 

[2] 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).

[3] Hendrick Hartog, “History of Rights Consciousness,” 5.

CURRENTLY, HOW WONDERFUL?

On March 23, 2018, this blog posted an entry that reviewed how complex public moral questions can be.  In that posting, “A Category of Complex Issues,” it described how a polity must deal with the free rider problem.  That is the problem in which rational calculations lead some to commit immoral and even illegal acts.  It argues that a view of governance and politics solely based on a natural rights view of such concerns falls short of addressing this overall problem.  In short, that construct does not provide enough reason to be good.

          This posting attempts to pick up on this theme and considers what Richard C. Sinopoli[1] sees in the work of John Locke – the father of the natural rights view – in how it deals with moral questioning.  In so doing, Sinopoli gives his readers a more nuance view of Locke’s writings – more nuanced then one gathers from present day depictions of that 1700s’ philosopher.  This will not be an attempt to sanctify Locke, but to be more accurate in reporting what he judged individual rights to be and how those rights related to moral questions.

          Yes, Locke bases his argument on a view of humans as naturally disposed to seek a dominance over others.  But he sees natural humans capable of being taught or socialized in ways that are conducive to the demands of a just society.  Sinopoli, though, judges Locke’s view of this socializing process as relying on a hedonistic psychology or on self-serving drives in their cruder form.

          Before describing this psychology, it is worth remembering why one does so.  One should note the role calculating appropriate social values and dispositions play in the maintenance of a functioning society or polity.  The writings of enlightened thinkers, though, did not agree fully on this role.  A point of disagreement ranges around the role and the meaning of virtue.

          Locke sees virtue as a restraint on natural tendencies whereas his contemporary writers such as Francis Hutcheson and Thomas Reid viewed humans as more apt to pursue socially amenable drives such as compassion or benevolence as natural.[2]  Sinopoli points out that Locke did not see the existence of virtue as did classically influenced writers, especially those who wrote in the tradition of Aristotle. 

Instead of natural tendencies or biases, Locke counted on educational experiences to instill the more cooperating, coordinating, and compromising behaviors upon which a polity depends.  He did not favor enforcing such values – even as important as they are.  The government – other than providing the rational deterrent for antisocial behaviors; i.e., coercive punishment – should not play a role in this socializing process. 

That should be left to social entities such as families and churches.  Of course, other communal entities play a role.  They can be social organizations – businesses or labor groups.  But one should remember, that the role of public education was not an issue in Locke’s time since it did not exist outside of orphanages.

          Admittedly, Sinopoli cannot cite one single work in which these Lockean ideas are spelled out.  They are gleaned from a variety of the philosopher’s writings.  If Locke had dedicated one targeted writing effort to these concerns, perhaps he would have explored all these complex implications surrounding his proposals. 

For example, how could a citizenry get together, as individual agents pursuing individual goals, and come up rationally with the necessary supports or rewards to develop such a socializing strategy?  How could they create those entities that would do the necessary work to bend the natural biases of selfish beings – those unsocialized youngsters?  He foreshadowed the work of behavioralists by supporting a system of compassionate rewards and punishments to do the job, but he does not give his readers a how-to account for accomplishing this.

This blog will pick up on this development at some future point, but for now a reaction seem to be appropriate.  First, how realistic is it to depend on self-centered agents mustering the necessary collective understanding and willingness to meet the challenge younger selfish beings impose on society?  Is that not being too optimistic? 

For example, just think of the problems current concerned people have in convincing their fellow citizens of the dangers posed by climate change.  Even that relatively immediate emergency is not enough for many to accept policies that hint at any short-term sacrifices to offset a long-term existential disaster.  In meeting this emergency or in properly socializing a younger generation, humans must have more going for them then a natural selfish bias. 

The fact that humans have been able to establish generally congenial social environments indicates that Hutcheson and Reid were closer to describing human nature.  Also, what one sees developing from an adoption of natural rights thinking is not this communal, cooperative effort to encourage socially minded individuals, but an advancement of a non-communal view. 

This nation’s public and private institutions have shied away from communal social messaging, with certain exceptions here and there.  Consider that in public schools today, one finds a paucity of effort to socialize the young along these concerns – one can argue that an effort to do so has become illegitimate.  The natural rights construct today argues it is up to everyone, individually, to determine his/her views concerning any social responsibilities one might have beyond obeying the law.  A more “everyone has the right to do his/her own thing” prevails.

If the reader doubts this, just consider if the film, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” were released today as a featured film – even with a more secular bent – how it would be received.  Probably it would be viewed as an out-of-date sentimental piece of Hollywood fare.  Yes, in a recent Christmas Eve showing it was able to muster about four and half million viewers,[3] but then again, it’s become more of a Christmas tradition for some than a serious bit of art with a practical, serious message.

This blog has argued that Locke’s views have become more individualistic as the years have gone by.  This is seen as a natural development when a people are given a legitimizing rationale for acting self-centered-ly.  As such, the nation’s public schools – be it coercively or compassionately – have more and more drifted away from fulfilling any role in socializing youth as Locke envisioned.  Consequently, many of the current generation has been described as narcissistic and selfish.[4]

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[1] Richard C. Sinopoli, The Foundations of American Citizenship:  Liberalism, the Constitution, and Civic Virtue (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1992).

[2] Gary Wills describes how these writers’ ideas affected Thomas Jefferson and others of the founding era.  See Gary Wills, Inventing America:  Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (New York, NY:  Vintage Books, 1978/2018).

[3] Rick Porter, “TV Ratings Sunday:  NFL and ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ Lead Christmas Eve,” TV by the Numbers, December 25, 2015, accessed December 2, 2019, https://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/daily-ratings/tv-ratings-sunday-dec-24-2017/ .

[4] Jean M. Twenge and W. K. Campbell, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement (New York, NY:  Free Press, 2009).

A GOBBLING CONCERN

Here’s hoping everyone’s Thanksgiving was grand.  Really, isn’t Thanksgiving the best?  Family get-togethers (a joyful event for this blogger), a grand meal, no gift-giving (or more accurately, gift-buying) hassle, and even a parade (a spectacle this blogger attended as a child) marks the day.  What more can one ask for?  But now, it’s time to move on and, oh yes, prepare for the next holiday or two.

          And that next family-oriented day or days rely on economic conditions to be what one hopes for.  So, what better time to address the economy.  Of course, that’s a topic this civics-oriented blog looks at from time to time.  One writer this blogger depends on for this area of concern is William K. Tabb.[1]  The last posting citing Tabb is entitled “Are They Misdirected Moves?” and it appeared July 5, 2019.[2]  That posting ended with a foreshadowing that Tabb’s work would be revisited again and here is that next visit.

          Tabb points out that among the American electorate there seem to be two polar opinions concerning the role government plays in the economy.  One is that government meddling – or intrusion – can be best considered opportunities for disasters.  Government proves to be ineffective and surely incompetent.  The little good it might eke out is over-taken by the harm it produces.  Usually, that view is associated with conservative people and, in turn, with those citizens that identify themselves as Republicans.

          The others – the liberals or those associated with the Democratic Party – see market participants as being the “out-of-touch” or shortsighted people who engage in mindless herd behaviors.  They refer to the inevitable, resulting crises that spring up every so often causing serious harm not just to numbers of businesses, but to the lives of real people.  Of course, the most recent example was the 2008-09 financial crisis that turned into the Great Recession. 

They blame market believers for being too self-centered to realize macro forces that lead to the downturns.  Good times lead to over exuberance and over purchasing of investment assets – like stocks or real estate – often with borrowed money.  Result is the makings of bubbles which look like the ultimate solution to securing economic riches.  But bubbles burst.  Here’s Tabb’s description of the last crisis:

There is now a good deal of research that links rapid increase in credit creation in an economy with the likelihood of financial bubbles and busts.  When serious economic crises occur, government intervention on a significant scale is required, as [former FED Chairman] Greenspan was to acknowledge … This suggests the unenviable, but necessary, task of taking away the punch bowl when the party becomes too exuberant.[3]

Here’s a thought, Trump’s trade “war” with China is functioning as not currently taking away the bowl but inserting a leak.  And that leak might be discouraging the irrational exuberance alluded to above.  The closest indicator that might suggest a bubble in the stock market, for example, is or has been forming is stocks’ price to earnings ratio (p/e ratio) indicator.  In 2018 it was getting a bit high, but since then it has significantly dropped. 

Perhaps trade woes had something to do with that.  In any event, the economy presently seems strong without the usual concerning indicators – like inflation – causing much worry.[4]  This blogger is not aware of any significant concern for a forming bubble.  There is the concern among some over corporations borrowing too much money.  This seems to be encouraged by persisting low interest rates – as this blogger has asked before:  is this a bubble-like effect?

But this brings up an important distinction when considering economic issues and trends.  There are production issues and there are financing issues.  One refers to the production of wealth – hence, it being called production issues – and the other fuels production.  And leading Western economies, like the US, have become more centered on the financial end of the equation.  Tabb describes how that end has become dominant.

He writes:

Financialization has become the leading organizing logic of accumulation in Anglo-American-style economies and has had impacts elsewhere to a substantial degree.  In its shortening time horizons of production capital, it allows a redistribution of profits from the realm of production of actual goods and non-financial services to speculator profits and enlarges the sphere in which money is made from money.  Speculating on and manipulating the future value of financial assets implies consequences for citizens.  It increases uncertainty and risk with regard to decisions about financing consumer purchases, homes, education, retirement, and other quality-of-life decisions.[5]

And with those sobering thoughts, this blogger hopes the reader’s holiday goes on unperturbed.

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[1] William K. Tabb, The Restructuring of Capitalism in Our Time (New York, NY:  Columbia University Press, 2012).

[2] Robert Gutierrez, “Are They Misdirected Moves?”, Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics – a blog, July 5, 2019, accessed November 28, 2019, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2019/07/are-they-misdirected-moves.html .

[3] William K. Tabb, The Restructuring of Capitalism in Our Time, 6 (Kindle edition).

[4] One should not make investment decisions based on what a blogger might opine – especially when the blogger writes about civics education issues.

[5] William K. Tabb, The Restructuring of Capitalism in Our Time, 10-11 (Kindle edition).

CONTACT, CONTACT

One instructional program on TV is PBS’s show called NOVA.  This writer can’t claim to be a regular watcher – to his detriment – but from time to time he happens upon one of their broadcasts that catches his interest.  This past week, one did; that episode is entitled “The Violence Paradox.”[1]  One element of the show reminded this blogger of the work of a prominent psychologist, Gordon Allport, and his famous book, The Nature of Prejudice. 

More specifically, the program, while not mentioning Allport or his work (at least this blogger does not recall it does), it did mention a theory that Allport’s work help formulate.  That theory is contact theory.  It was first introduced by government agents as a reaction to what promised to be a violent development; i.e., the desegregation of the armed forces during the Truman administration. 

The NOVA program set out not only to provide insight into the causes of violence, but how knowledge about violence has led to certain remedial programs and strategies.  It points out that overall levels of recorded violence have decreased.  This being the case during a time when the ability of humans to kill each other has increased – or “exploded” – with the technologies of weaponry such as the killing efficiency handheld arms and that of bombs, including nuclear weapons.  In that, the titled paradox exists.

          What this downward trend in actual violence and their related statistics – such as relating to homicides (a decrease of over 90%) – indicate, humans are doing somethings right.  What one of the program’s guest social scientists, cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, urges:  people should find out what that is. 

It turns out that not all of that welcomed development emerges from what humans are doing; some have to do with physical evolutionary factors at work.  But for the sake of this posting, this blogger will skip that part of the story and encourage the reader to look up the program online.  What this blog highlights are those human efforts that relate to federation theory.

And that connection draws one back to contact theory.  Simply stated, contact theory postulates that if people of different groups intermingle – it helps if that occurs over common interests or in seeking common goals – people get to know one another.  Once they do, as in the military, then a lot of the baseless fears or misconceptions attached to the others can first be questioned and then mostly dismissed.  But that conclusion gets ahead of the story a bit. 

The first insight derived from applying contact theory is the realization that violence is contagious.  It can be contagious as incidences first might occur in isolation, but they happen in close proximity.  As people perceive these events, some are predisposed to seeing it as part of living.  Or it can be contagious from victimization of prior violence – one wants revenge for violence being inflicted on a relative, a friend, or a fellow gang member.  This naturally leads to a cycle of violence.

Either way, soon an epidemic of violence can erupt.  These phenomena are behavior patterns and are appropriate for social scientific analysis.  Contact theory was first developed in a purely scientific vein – trying to find out what is involved both psychologically and sociologically with outbreaks of violence.  But when social agents – police, social workers, and even educators – want to stem the incidence of violence, this notion of contagion can be helpful and applied to social settings where one sees or seriously suspects that such a contagion is possible.

Some urban areas have organized neighborhood efforts – one national group so organized to assist such efforts is Cure Violence International – that once a number of violent events are noted, street agents go out and start talking to neighborhood resident and seek out what is happening on the streets.  They proactively insert themselves when they see or are informed of a problem or potential problem brewing. 

The effort then has these street agents bringing the potential or actual belligerents to talk to each other.  In this, these agents are trained to implement what contact theory identifies what should be done.  Initially, people might not listen to each other.  They yell their grievance and express how they perceive that the other is responsible for the brouhaha.  They also might communicate they are not going to take it anymore.

 The neutral “peace” worker, though, does listen and tries to verbalize each side’s position in perhaps less angry or antagonistic language.  He/she evaluates how the angry people are behaving – pointing out, for example, that they are not listening to what the other is saying – and works through with appropriate words to get the two parties to at least agree that each is a person. 

Like him/herself, that other person only wants not to be bothered by whatever the concern is and to be respected.  Can’t the other agree that this can be possible for each?  Most often than not, it works out and the belligerents end up shaking hands.  This account oversimplifies the process, but in the main that is what the street agent tries to accomplish.

With significant numbers of these workers on the streets, the number of violent results has decreased in highly volatile, large urban areas.  The worker has worked at establishing a point of contact between the two he/she has identified as the potential violence inflict-or or violence victim.  But contact can be accomplished through various venues. 

The PBS program goes on to hypothesize that one historical development that helped masses of people “contacting” others in an imaginary way, was the expansion of literacy and the availability of the written word.  Therefore, the invention of the printing press and the eventual distribution of written material helped people realize how similar they were to others and encouraged an emotional disposition to feel empathy for others they did not know personally.  The written material allowed them to learn of other peoples’ challenges.

Another study looked at antagonism or lack of understanding between groups that historically have proven to be prone to a great deal of violence.  That would be between religious groups.  When one thinks today of religious violence, one tends to think of the violence in the Islamic lands.  There are others, for example, the violence in recent decades between Muslims and Hindus that characterizes the conflicts between Pakistan and India.  But the problems between the Shiites and Sunni Islamic sects attract most people’s attention today. 

Hidden can be the challenges that Christians face in those areas.  In Iraq an experiment put some to the ideas associated with contact theory to the test.  There, through an effort to mix Christians and Muslims together in soccer teams were tried to see if that contact led to more cordial and interactive results.  To a limited extent it did; perhaps if the experiment continues the effect can not only increase but also become more established.

The PBS show speaks of other developments.  For example, the expanding view of rights seems to have had quite an effect especially if rights are institutionalized.  Here, the US Bill of Rights and the subsequent UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights have had their effects globally to upgrade the general sense as to the importance of life and the liberty necessary to make life meaningful.

This blogger also thinks something that has affected humans’ view about violence and death resulting from violence has to do with the commonality of death.  This possible factor is not derived from contact theory, but this blogger feels it is worth considering.  It seems reasonable that if a people experience a regular dose of death among those who are about them, the perceived value of life would be affected. 

Killing someone doesn’t seem to have the same degree of tragedy generally if the victim stands a good chance of dying shortly from some disease or accident that characterized life in the years prior to modern medicine.  This blogger’s wife tells a family story of how a great uncle in the earlier years of the twentieth century died of a horse biting him on the cheek.  The uncle contracted tetanus – formerly known as lockjaw – and suffered his fate.  Events like that was fairly common.

In any event, the federalist angle to this review of violence and how to avoid it relate to federation theory’s bias toward encouraging contact.  This is augmented with the version of that construct this blog has called liberated federalism.  That version disavows parochial biases, but instead not only tolerates plurality, but encourages it.  Schools, through their curricular choices particularly with civics instruction, can play a very important role in promoting the lessons of contact theory if federation theory guides their curricular choices.

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[1] “The Violence Paradox,” S46/Ep22, NOVA, PBS, broadcast November 20, 2019, accessed November 24, 2019, https://www.thirteen.org/programs/nova/the-violence-paradox-gl0tal/ .

ONE ON ONE RESPECT

One element of federation theory – a political construct this blog has promoted as a guide in formulating a civics curriculum – is the goal to achieve a federated citizenry – hence the name of the construct.  By wishing this characteristic on a populous, one is aiming at encouraging a sense among a people that they view each other as partners.  In turn, that reflects an ideal and that ideal holds that if an advantage befalls one citizens, it befalls all of them.  And the same can be said of disadvantages.

          Before one can approach such an ideal realistically, a lot must be in place – one does not intelligently just think that all his/her fellow citizens’ interests, their honesty, and their general aims are honorable enough and fall in line to reasonably allow such a feeling of federation to bloom.  But that does not preclude that one can hold such a view as a worthy goal worthy of one working toward approaching; all this while knowing that complete achievement, if not impossible, is very difficult.

          With this general sense or goal, to meaningfully influence a polity, those who seek it have several areas to address but none more important than how citizens interact.  This is a wide field of human behavior and bits of information concerning it can be found in analyzing many sorts of interactions between and among a nation’s populous – both within the citizenry and among the nation’s resident population.

          One area where such information can be “culled” would be how people behave in challenging settings such as when they interact with their doctors.  Ostensibly, that relationship can and should be a cooperative one.  Tort law recognizes that relationship as doctors having legal responsibilities toward their patients and some call this relationship an example of a fiduciary duty. 

And, to wit, there is a great deal of case law in which the main topic is either alleged or proven are in cases of negligence charged against doctors.  One can judge such incidences – as these tort cases – as falling woefully short of the ideal stated above in which federated relationships are formed.

          In this area, the writer, Malcolm Gladwell,[1] shares interesting and relevant information. On the surface, this blogger assumed that a lawsuit involving medical practice reflects poor doctoring or, at least, that a patient perceives that poor doctoring occurred in his/her treatment.  Gladwell disabuses his readers of such a notion in its purer version.

          It turns out that malpractice is not the main factor in determining whether a lawsuit results from a treatment.  As a matter of fact, poor treatment has little to do with it.  And that fact is what makes this insight relevant to the concern of this posting; i.e., how a people advance toward being federated.  Bottom line, it turns out, it is those doctors who are ranked as highly skilled who are more apt to be sued than lower skilled ones.  Actually, many, if not most, poor physicians never see the inside of a courtroom as a defendant in a tort action.

          Yes, a patient who goes to court feels or actually has suffered poor medical service which has resulted in harm, but, as Gladwell claims, something else is involved.  And that something has to do with the personal interaction between a doctor and his/her patient.  Citing the work of Wendy Levinson, one can find that how a patient and doctor speak to each other is a better predictor of whether such servicing will lead to legal action than the doctoring that has taken place.

          For example, according to Levinson, on average, “un-sued” doctors – in this case surgeons – would talk to their patients for three more minutes than surgeons who got sued.  That difference is reported as being 18.3 minutes as opposed to 15 minutes.  But what seems more important is the tenor of the conversations.

           Psychologist Nalini Ambady listened to the tapes of conversations produced by Levinson and with sophisticated analysis, judged whether the conversations could be seen as having “warmth, hostility, dominance, and anxiousness …”[2]  That psychologist concluded, from the analysis she conducted of the taped conversations, that she could accurately determine which surgeons were going to be sued and which were not.  Who were the unfortunate ones?

          They were the surgeons that, surprisingly, sounded dominant.  One tends, this blogger believes, to associate dominance with expertise, something, one suspects, is a good thing when it comes to surgery.  But it turns out that more important is a tone of concern that a surgeon projects.  In turn, a patient reads certain qualities into how the surgeon converses.  Most important – more important than expertise – is respect and caring which is communicated by the softer tone. 

When things go bad, it seems patients are more apt to hold back on legal action if they feel the medical treatment was conducted with respect and this blogger feels that says something in how people get to feel federated with other people.  If one is apt to place such importance on respect and perceived caring in terms of medical services – getting operated no less – then how important is it in everyday interactions?  The obvious answer is very. 

Gladwell writes:  “It isn’t necessary, then, to know much about how a surgeon operates in order to know his[/her] likelihood to being sued.  What you need to know is the relationship between that doctor and his patients.”[3]  One can paraphrase this conclusion to make a broader point.  It isn’t necessary, then, to know much about how a citizen reflects on his/her citizenry in order to know his/her likelihood to being federated.  What one needs to know is the relationship among his/her fellow citizens.  Is it based on caring and respect?  If so, federation is possible.

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[1] Malcolm Gladwell, Blink:  The Power of Thinking without Thinking (New York, NY:  Bay Back Books, 2005).

[2] Ibid., 42.

[3] Ibid., 41.

A LACK OF PRODUCTIVE CONCERN

This blog has often made the claim that since the years following World War II, this nation has shifted from holding federalism – as a mental construct describing and explaining its governance and politics – as the dominant construct in favor of the natural rights construct.  Its writer has hinted at evidence through many postings that support this claim.  Most of that evidence has been anecdotal. 

In the political science literature, this writer is not aware of reductionist studies – studies that have delineated relevant variables in independent/dependent hypothetical formats which are then tested – concerning this claim.  He has cited the work of respected theoretical scholars that report on the role federalism has played in American politics – e.g., Daniel J. Elazar.  Their work, in turn, is based on empirical as well as historical studies. 

But despite this state, this blog writer feels he can cite the work of social scientists, respected social commentators, and respected journalists when their work seems to support or refute this claim.  He believes the journalist, Sam Quinones, provides, in his book reviewing the explanatory elements of the opioid crisis,[1] evidence that seem to indicate that the social/political landscape of the US has gone through serious transformation in the history of this nation since World War II.

This posting limits its commentary to Quinones’ introduction to his review of what he found to be the current conditions in the US.  What seems to have particularly changed in America is the segments of the population that is being victimized by illicit use of drugs.  This blogger remembers when he was young, what constituted the nation’s drug problem.  During the fifties, the problem was an urban one and, in terms of heroin, was limited to jazz musicians.

Since then, of course, a lot has happened.  In terms of drugs, the sixties saw an upshot of drug taking – mostly marijuana and psychedelics – among college students.  Then there were soldiers coming home from Vietnam with heroin addictions – the drug was easily obtained in that country.  Later, there was the popularity of cocaine and crack.  But all of that has, in the US, been by-passed in terms of the numbers of users and in terms of the extent of health issues including deaths resulting from the use of opioids.

Today, that class of drugs accounts for more deaths than car accidents which was the major cause of accidental deaths for decades.  Easily, one can see how Quinones judges this more current scourge of opioids – in the form of pain killers and heroin – as the worse one this nation has ever experienced.  And yet, until recently and still to a certain extent, this tragedy has been relatively invisible.  And that not only refers to its rate of incidence, but also in terms of its victims – knowledge of who and where they are.

It is true that the incidence of opioid consumption seems to be concentrated in certain areas, but these areas of numerous and one can consider this plague a truly national one.  Some of the areas where kids are dying include the Rust Belt of Ohio, the Bible Belt of Tennessee, and areas of Southern California including Mission Viejo and Simi Valley. 

Cities hit by this drug epidemic vary; they include Salt Lake City, Indianapolis, and Albuquerque.  Clustered cases can be found in northwestern states, southern states, and mid-western states – Oregon, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Alabama.  And in these areas, there are numerous deaths, but also, for each death, there are hundreds of addicts.

That’s an idea of the where; here’s the who:

Kids got hooked in college and died there.  Some of these addicts were from rough corners of rural Appalachia.  But many more were from the U.S. middle class.  They lived in communities where the driveways were clean, the cars were new, and the shopping centers attracted congregations of Starbucks, Home Depot, CVS, and Applebee’s.  They were the daughters of preachers, the sons of cops and doctors, the children of contractors and teachers and business owners and bankers.

          And almost every one was white.[2]

          And what is the connection of this tragedy to the claim that this nation has drifted from federalist thinking?  A federalist based political culture might not have totally avoided the growth of this epidemic.  During years in which federalism was dominant, the nation suffered from an alcohol epidemic.  No, the number of deaths attributed to that earlier problem does not compare, but the nation’s experiment with Prohibition was not initiated without cause. 

But that problem was faced and known among the general population – even Tocqueville wrote of local efforts to address it back in the 1830s.  He wrote:  “Societies are formed which regard drunkenness as the principal cause of the evils under which the State labours, and which solemnly bind themselves to give a constant example of temperance.”[3]  Under a nation with a federalist outlook, such a problem would not be allowed to hide.

Yes, of late, one can find news items concerning the opioid crisis.  Most of them have to do with the legal liabilities facing drug companies that aggressively marketed these opioid products.  Much rarer are stories of local communities facing the problem and actively combatting it – at least on the national news broadcasts.  In that demonstrable apathy, one finds a significant negative effect that the shift away from federalism represents.  This social problem needs, if not demands, a more communal and collaborative approach to face its challenges, challenges that include treatment, law enforcement, counseling, and moral support.

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[1] Sam Quinones, Dreamland:  The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic (New York, NY:  Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015).

[2] Ibid., 7 (Kindle edition).

[3] Alexi de Tocqueville, “Political Structure of Democracy,” in Alexis de Tocqueville:  On Democracy, Revolution, and Society, eds. John Stone and Stephen Mennell (Chicago, IL:  Chicago University Press, 1980/1835), 78-101, 78-79.