EVOLVING FROM TRADITIONAL TO MODERN

A recurring topic of this blog has been the tension between traditional thought and modern thought. Each has its own reasoning and rationality. Each, in the course of human history, has had enormous influence on how we humans have seen the world, including both the physical and social world.

The traditional has a reasoning scheme that is non-compromising. It is definite in its view of truth and goodness. The modern, on the other hand, is not definite and relies on practitioners, such as scientists, to be open to options, to hold out for the possibility of being wrong. The traditional, in its definite way, claims a whole series of actions as sinful, taboo, or otherwise unacceptable. The modern is more in the mode of let's try it; let's see how it works. Standards for the traditional are received from the past – often from sacred sources. For the modern they are discovered through experience. The modern is scientific in its thinking. The traditional is constructed from general narratives that are finessed to address the specific. The modern delves in subjective analysis of what is with no a priori answers.

In trying to promote a modern version of a traditional construct – that is, promoting liberated federalism to take the place of traditional federalism – I have dealt with making distinctions between what constituted the political set of ideas and ideals that prevailed during an earlier time of our national history and what I see as the more useful version of federalist thought. Let me illustrate the tension that exists as it pertains to these two forms of federalism. Both believe that polities should be formed by parties, be they individual persons or groups, who come together to first agree to form the polity and second to accomplish said formation by the use of a compact. It is a congregational approach. But in the traditional version, the emphasis is on the locality of the separate entities making up the union. In a more liberated version, the emphasis is twofold: the individual person and the overall union. So, in practical terms, take the formation of our national union: almost from its very inception, there was a political battle between those who wanted to sustain an almost unquestioned acquiescence to the whims of the states and those who wanted to empower the newly created central government to be the last authoritative word on the issues of the day. The traditional, in federalist terms, was represented by such luminary founding fathers as Thomas Jefferson¹ and James Madison (who initially favored a powerful central government) and the more modern view, again in federalist terms, which was represented by George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and John Adams. So strong was this clash that it led to the beginnings of our two political party system. In terms of Western history, the traditional has been associated with aristocracy and more local control while the modern has advanced centralized power structures with its alliance with urban centers and the bolstering of individual rights. This trend expressed itself within the American context with the rise of the natural rights construct which first challenged traditional federalism and eventually replaced it as the prominent political construct.

One issue that was contentious for the first eighty or so years of the republic and demonstrated the tension between the traditional and the more modern was that of slavery. The traditional, with its accepted view of truth regarding the institution, rationalized the facts surrounding slavery so as to justify what was becoming more and more questioned. Beliefs about the relative capacities and even humanity of slaves were conjured up so as to support the practices surrounding slavery. And all this was accepted with traditional reasoning. There was no testing of ideas; there was no or very little doubt over what was proposed as being true. And slavery was not the only area in which such an approach was used. These parochially based views, oftentimes incorporating tortured religious tenets, took on the language of the sacred. God's will was often invoked as underpinning what was advocated. Before feeling smug over such foolishness, remember that such reasoning is not totally foreign from present day political discourse. For example, much of the resistance to gay and lesbian rights is couched in such traditional reasoning.

A few weeks after the 9/11 attacks, I stated at a conference that our enemy was the traditional. I can chalk up such a remark to the level of frustration and anger I felt at the time. As I saw it, here was a cadre of men who, motivated by traditional religious beliefs, commandeered the three hijacked planes causing over 3,000 deaths, mass destruction, and a significant negative effect on our national economy. The ratio of perpetrator to the amount of suffering caused by these zealots is one of the highest in history. And as far as I could tell, the bulk of their motivation was caused by traditional religious beliefs. That clash between our modern culture and their traditional beliefs and reasoning is still very prominent on the world stage. But I have reflected on this tension since that horrendous day and have mellowed in my overall view of the traditional.

Philip Selznick is more insightful about the tension than I was at that conference. The modern in Western tradition began with the Enlightenment. It swayed European thinking away from prejudices which serve to obstruct clear reasoning. The first great human development spurred by this new thinking was probably the French Revolution. Selznick quotes Edmund Burke and his view of how traditional reasoning might have served France better than the modern reasoning that characterized the thinking of the revolutionists:

The concrete reason [of traditional thought], because it is not a wisdom merely of the intellect, is not a wisdom only of the few; it is latent and potential in all individuals of the community. The mass of Englishmen, who live according to traditional prejudices and habits, are safe, because customs are “the standing wisdom of the country.”²

Selznick goes on to state that concrete thinking does not align with modern or critical thinking. Here, I think the good professor is appropriately reserved in his support of traditional reasoning. While critical thought is permissible in most traditional constructs, it is usually highly constrained within acceptable parameters and the issues that are analyzed tend to be of peripheral concerns – “how many angels fit on the head of a pin?” type of concerns. But Selznick and Burke do hit upon an important point. By applying Darwinian logic, given the fact that a set of traditional “truths” makes it through all the travels of a people, the surviving cultural beliefs must have some truthfulness or functionality attached to them. In their effort to wipe the intellectual slate clean, the French, as a result of their revolution, witnessed severe levels of atrocities. The moral foundation was set aside and experience with the new social reality had not sufficiently transpired to allow a newer moral regime to take hold. It was reasonable to hold on to those moral precepts of the past that would have restrained the more severe practices that came to characterize the Revolution and its aftermath.

So, in my attempts to present a newer form of federalism, my efforts have not been to demonstrate the baseless-ness of the traditional, but instead to demonstrate a newer reasoning that develops from what has existed before – a more modern version of federalism as “growing” from the traditional. A tension is inevitable; after all, there is a level of rejection. But the rejection is not pell-mell or indiscriminate. Instead, the effort is to identify, address, and choose the options that assist in helping students understand and appreciate the centrality of federalist thought and reasoning as they are introduced to the politics and government of their nation.

1In the case of Jefferson, there is a bit of irony. He was smitten by the French Revolution while he was there in France serving as the US minister. As pointed out elsewhere in this posting, that revolution epitomized modern, unrestrained thought and reasoning. What Jefferson didn't seem to realize was the dedication of the revolution to the ideal of the General Will as espoused by Rousseau which in turn promoted a strong centralization of power.

2Selznick, P. (1992). The moral commonwealth: Social theory and the promise of community. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Quotation on p. 40.

HAVING A TICKET TO FLY

There is an athlete who enjoys a fairly widespread fame among those who follow the sport he plays. While the sport is not considered one of the major sports, it does have extensive follow-ship in the US and in many countries around the world. In the coming summer Olympics, in 2016, the sport will be played for the gold medal. Generally, his reputation is that, if not the best player of this sport, he is second or third. He is considered a good family man and has a beautiful family and is considered a great guy. There have been personal health concerns for himself, his wife, and his mother. His sport is one that people by the millions play for recreation. He and his sport are popular enough to provide him with a very lucrative career. His yearly earnings from playing the sport range from four to five million dollars. From endorsements, he earns another $30 million a year. And, of course, there is the income his accumulated worth earns. His total worth, according to one internet source, is said to be in the neighborhood of $180 million dollars. He has worked hard to be proficient in his sport. He provides a great deal of inspiration and entertainment to millions of viewers. In short, he is rich because he can gather a crowd.

We put all these facts together and they provide the context for what transpired recently. It turns out that his daughter was about to graduate from eighth grade and she was slated to give a speech during the ceremony. The athlete was scheduled to begin playing a big event in his sport – one of the four big events of the year. The ceremony was set for Wednesday and the beginning of his participation in the sporting event was to begin on Thursday morning. He arranged for his presence at his daughter's event and then he hopped on his private jet so that he could, with little sleep, be at the sporting event the next morning. The graduation took place in California and the sporting event took place near Philadelphia. The press picked up on his jet hopping and portrayed the episode as he being a good father. I agree. As a matter of fact, I'm a fan of his and generally root for him. I'm one of those guys who play the darn sport for recreation and enjoy following it on TV. And I too admire that he was willing to sacrifice his comfort and concern for the sporting event in order to be there for his daughter. But there is one part of the story that some might consider irrelevant, but I don't. While the press reported on this other aspect initially, it has been lost sight of since. That part is that the athlete expressed his opinion over how much he will be paying in taxes now that his home state, California, has upped the income tax rate.

Before getting into this part of the narrative, let me point out that the athlete has tried to disavow what he expressed about taxes and, perhaps upon reflection, agrees with the sentiment I am about to share. In short, the athlete complained that he was paying too high a rate of his income in taxes – taxes that not only included those going to California but those that go to the federal government. He indicated that his total tax rate would be around 50%. His later disavowal of his comments was not so much a rescinding of his initial message or the facts of his claim but rather he was indicating that he felt taxes to be a personal matter and he should not vent his information or feelings in public. But my take is that there is definitely a public angle to this story.

What is the worth of a good athlete? How important is he or she to the betterment of the society? To the commonwealth? Of course, in attempting to answer such questions, one is led to express opinions, and we, in a predominately capitalist society, don't depend on speculation to determine how answers to such questions are formulated – not in a practical sense anyway. We don't count opinion even if the opinions are expressed by experts. What we do is institutionalize markets – mostly free markets – to determine the worth of individual workers and what services or products they provide. Of course, the answers to the questions are given in monetary amounts. History indicates that in terms of providing the most good for the most numbers, markets, not opinion or force or any other system, work best. But they are not perfect. I believe this athlete's case demonstrates this imperfection.

What makes this athlete so rich? His talent? His hard work? What if this athlete played his sport in the early 1900s before there was TV with vast audiences? Having TV leads to the enormous amounts of money advertisers provide for airing their messages during the broadcast of sporting events such as the major sporting event referred to above. He, as a single competitor, would not be as exposed to the public as he is now; his ability and likability would not be transmitted to the TV audience, and his name would not be so well known. If that were the case, the companies that hire him today to endorse their products would not be interested in hiring him to do those ads. Or let's say his talent was not in the sport he excels in but instead badminton. Now badminton as it is played in the Olympics is not an easy game. It is demanding and calls for every bit of training and hard work our athlete's sport demands. Yet very few people can name the top performers of that sport and the sport is seen only on national TV during the Olympics and not for long periods of time. There is no badminton player commanding the amount of money our highlighted athlete makes. In other words, there is no intrinsic reason for our athlete to make the tens of million of dollars he makes in terms of the work he has put into the sport. And besides, for all the inspiration and entertainment he provides, we can surely survive comfortably without it. It simply, on its own merits, is not that important. And this is coming from a fan who really enjoys viewing it and playing it.

So, for someone in his category complaining about taxes that seem more than fair considering all of the above factors, I don't only think it is in bad taste; it reflects an attitude that legitimizes shirking the responsibilities that are attached to good fortunes which some among us enjoy. While I'm sure you, if you keep up at all with American sports, know the athlete I am referring to, I am not using his name because there are other factors involved. Has the state of California been responsible in the past with tax dollars? If not and to the degree it hasn't, is it just that a single group of people is burdened with rectifying those mistakes? And by so doing, is the state rewarding bad behavior? These are also legitimate questions that should be asked and answered. But our athlete's case does bring up questions of responsibility that befall the different segments of our society. It does call on us to make judgments about what is the fair compensation one owes the state for benefits and advantages one enjoys. I understand that certain officials in the state of Florida have expressed welcome to this athlete if he should decide to move there. Florida has no personal state income tax. Generally, the tax burden in Florida is far less than in California. Our athlete is free to make the move, and if and when he does, others will have preceded him. Another prominent athlete – who lives in Florida – from that sport expressed publicly that he supported what our athlete said initially.

As I am alluding, this type of questioning brings in a whole set of other concerns. For example, which state is meeting its responsibilities to meet the needs of its people more equitably? I have dedicated a lot of space in this blog to the importance of equity and I will not address that here. My present concern is that when states compete for high income people at the expense of providing both the opportunities for all to have a real chance in life or providing the minimal floor of economic well-being so that all can survive with dignity, then bad consequences emerge. That is, we are neglecting both the potential cast off of human resources and inviting the potential harm derived from those segments of the population disadvantaged by the realities of societal economy. This latter concern includes the safety and security concerns of the commonwealth. Whether California taxes too much or Florida not enough is not what I am passing judgment on here. That is not my present issue. What I am saying is that hard questions should be asked about an athlete who can afford to hop on his jet to take in his daughter's graduation from eighth grade while resenting his tax burden – a tax burden which is so high because he makes so much. I don't think our athlete can honestly sing the Jimmy Buffett verse:

The taxman's taken all my dough

And left me in this stately home

Lazin' on a sunny afternoon

And I can't even sail my yacht

He's taken everything I've got

All I've got's this sunny afternoon

In the summertime¹

We don't know about sailing yachts, but we know he can fly quite comfortably.

1Buffett, J. (1994). Sunny Afternoon. Margaritaville Records/MCA.