DON'T MESS WITH THE GIPPER

Chris Matthews, the MSNBC political commentator, is currently the subject of a number of interviews as he is promoting his new book, Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked. The focus of the book is the relationship between President Ronald Reagan and Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill. The common knowledge of how these two leaders interacted is that even though they seemed to agree on little, they were able to work out compromises, and during their years as president and speaker quite a bit was accomplished. One of the points Mr. Matthews makes about Reagan is that Reagan was feared and that fear helped him get things done, especially in foreign relations, particularly in dealing with the Soviet Union. The event that conveyed the idea that Reagan was not to be taken advantage of was his breakup of the PATCO¹ strike in 1981. According to Matthews, this policy of Reagan's sent a message around the world in that the President not only ended the strike, but also prohibited the air controllers who refused to return to work from ever working for the federal government again. I do know that all of organized labor has suffered greatly as a result of that strike because the legitimacy of labor's aims and tactics has been seriously questioned by the American public.

What exactly is at stake in situations when a leader or some other person of power is trying to engender fear? In political terms, fear is an emotional response to a threatened use of coercive power. Coercive power occurs when one party gets another party to do something it would not ordinarily do in order to avoid a punishment – that is, being deprived of something the second party wants or needs. Usually the emotion of fear is felt as the affected party – the party whose behavior is being altered – anticipates or realizes the potential of the impending punishment. The level of fear corresponds to the perceived costs inflicted by the punishment. A “slap on the wrist” does not generate much fear, but a heavy fine or a long prison sentence or a savage beating would probably cause a great deal of fear. Punishments come in many forms. There can be physical pain, financial ruin, lost love, or frustrated ambitions – just to name a few. Sometimes the onslaught of punishment might reduce fear and cause a person to feel other emotions such as apathy or the desire for revenge. It might incite angered responses or despondency or for some, fear might increase.

It doesn't take much in life to figure out that fear is a potent emotion and a powerful weapon for those who can engender it. Matthews cites the political thinker and writer, Nicole Machiavelli, who wrote in the Prince: princes should strive to be loved and feared, but if they have to choose, they should choose being feared over being loved. Reagan was feared and loved. Whether he was feared more than loved is subject to historical interpretation, but when the chips were down, I agree that he was more feared than loved. But can a leader be feared too much? Is it one of those weapons that can be overused? Does its overuse cause negative consequences that might, in the long term, be problematic for the leader who is guilty of such an excess?

Alan Greenspan, in an interview on CNBC, stated that in terms of financial matters, fear is a much stronger emotion than greed or optimism. The former Federal Reserve chairman said you can see this in the course of a financial “bubble.” A bubble, which reflects either optimism or greed – perhaps both – grows slowly over time. The growth period can last a year or more. But once the bubble bursts – for whatever reason – the decline in asset values falls precipitously and of course this reflects fear. So, according to Greenspan, you can measure the relative strengths of these emotions as they are expressed by the behavior of investors and he estimated that fear was at least four times stronger than greed or optimism. So, one can conclude, at least in relation to these other two emotions, fear is quite strong and quite memorable.

I didn't live during the Great Depression, but people my age were brought up by people who did. A common notion among us war babies and baby boomers as we reflect about our parents is that the effect of living through the Depression was long lasting and the one theme our parents would repeat when speaking of those times was the fear that they experienced during those years, the fear of not knowing what the future held. And we also now can compare their behavior patterns concerning money – their proclivity to count every penny – to our children and their behavior patterns. We see shows such as House Hunters on HGTV where young couples look for housing and demand every new feature not in the future, but right now. If you are like me, you find yourself asking what mom or dad would think if they saw these “spoiled” people on TV.

If we can all agree that fear is a potent force, then what are the legitimate uses of it and what constitutes going over the top? Does federalist thinking have anything to add to these concerns? Let me share what I believe to be the case concerning fear. Inciting fear is not immoral per se. Surely an effort to cause mental or untold harm by inciting fear would be immoral, but as a political strategy that is used only to attain particular aims, then it would seem the effects would be limited. But even in these more limited cases, one needs to look at any deliberate use of it by certain criteria. My bias for federalist thinking suggests to me that certain considerations should be taken into account even in these more limited cases in order that its practice be moral and, in the long term, effective.

In order to be moral, a leader or person of power who tries to instill fear must be seeking a legitimate goal. That is, the goal needs to either help procure the society's survival or advance that society in attaining some aim or goal it sets for itself. This I have summarily called the value of societal welfare or, to use constitutional language, an attempt to make a more perfect union. No, this is not an argument that claims the ends justify the means because the means is not causing real harm; it is merely causing a discomfort that one cannot totally avoid in life. Fear springs from too many sources to count; it is just a condition of life. And if used legitimately, fear, whether emanating from another person's threat or from the factors of a situation, serves to motivate functional behavior on our parts. I lived in Miami, Florida in 1992 and watched the impending hurricane, Andrew, making its way toward my home. The fear I felt caused me to take prudent steps in trying to ameliorate the damage of the storm. I might have been hampered by ignorance, but not by the level of fear the news reports engendered. Fear can be a good thing.

If a strategy to engender fear is not legitimate in terms of its aims – and therefore not moral – then to be effective, the perpetrator needs to at least be able to give reasons that are accepted as legitimate by sufficient numbers of people. Reagan stressed in the PATCO case, for example, that the workers had broken their contracts and therefore he was within his legitimate power to take the actions he did. Not only does the goal need to be legitimate, but the punishment needs to be within the bounds of the reciprocity principle. That is, it can't overkill or stretch significantly beyond the harm that is being addressed by the policy. The air traffic controllers were about to cripple airline passenger service back in 1981, therefore devastating the business and personal travel plans of the American people. This action would have seriously affected millions of people and cost the economy significant amounts of money. Reagan was able to sell the idea that this was unacceptable and that it offended the principle that government could not stop providing an essential service – sort of like soldiers going on strike. Therefore, it was reasonable to fire the controllers in order to stop their ability to, in effect, extort the American people. Reagan wouldn't hear of such a thing and was able to convince the American public that his decision was, in effect, being forced on him. It is no secret that Reagan was not friendly to unions, despite the fact that he had previously been president of an actors' union, and that the unions in general were not supportive of Reagan. Ironically, PATCO was one of only two unions who had supported him in his election campaign. Whether his actions were moral or not I will leave to you to decide. What the case does demonstrate is what a leader must do and say when attempting to evoke fear in a segment of a population and at the top of that list is the ability to sell both the legitimacy of that threat and its proportionality.

Equal to the consideration of not being too harsh, those who are attempting to incite fear have to make sure that the threatened punishment is harsh enough – it surely was in the PATCO case. It has to inflict significant pain. If not, the party at which the strategy is aimed will lose respect for the leader and might encourage even more egregious behavior. In settling on the specific threat, one needs to remember that pain has a relative dimension. What is painful for one might be simply an inconvenience to another or not painful at all. Or it can be something avoided or neglected. He who decides to engender fear needs to know his/her target and other practical elements surrounding the conditions in which the threat is being extended. And, as far as observers are concerned, the threat needs to be transferable to their imagination – they have to feel, boy, I'm glad I'm not the one being threatened.

Studying cases in which fear is a factor can be very telling as to the nature of politics. For example, I think that in the recent standoff between the Tea Party Republicans and the Democrats in Congress, the Tea Party members did not instill enough fear in Democrats to be able to get their way. It wasn't that the potential punishment wasn't severe enough, but rather that it lacked believability. The target couldn't imagine the instigators were willing to share in the mutual pain a default to the debt limit would cause or that those who could stop this eventuality would not stop it. The result is that the Tea Party members have lost respect in the eyes of their opponents either in government or among many citizens.

While the fear factor did not influence enough controllers in the PATCO strike – they continued the strike and landed up losing their jobs – Reagan established his ability to inflict punishment in such a way that people believed he could and would do so in the future if the stakes were high enough. While not all of us agree that President Reagan was the best for this nation, we all must agree he was able to garner our respect.

1Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization – the labor union of the air traffic controllers

DIVISIVE FORCES

While not all political systems are federal – either from a structural point of view or from a philosophical point of view – all systems have to have a federal element in their makeup. That is, every political system has to bring together the different interests or factions that make up the polity within the geographic area under its authority. Using functionalist language, systems must satisfy a systems maintenance function. The people of a nation have to feel, to some meaningful degree, federated with their fellow citizens. If we look around the world at political systems that are finding it difficult to sustain themselves, the basic problem is that there are interests within their jurisdictions that don't want to “play ball” under the binding understandings that prevail as the systems' foundations. We might judge, in those individual cases, that those who are balking at the mode of the prevailing politics have every justification to do so, but that is not what concerns me here. In the cases in question, the politics have become disruptive and potentially dangerous for the people caught up in such disruptions. Look at the current conditions in Egypt or Syria. Can we detect an underlying condition or set of factors that account for the upheaval?

In both those cases, there are either sectarian or tribal divisions in which violent conflict reigns among groups. Now, there doesn't need to be one hundred percent agreement among the interests or factions of the populace, but there needs to be, again to some meaningful level, agreement over the basic constitutional provisions which define the “legitimate” structures and processes of the system in question. All systems must address this concern of how well the interests are dealing with their conflicts, not just in terms of who is winning and losing, but in terms of the legitimacy of their political ways of handling those conflicts.

We Americans are not immune to these concerns. This recent crisis over the shutdown and debt level reflects in some very basic ways this concern. Currently, we Americans are not being paranoid to worry over what's happening to our politics. I am not trying to overstate this; we, as a nation, have many unifying forces that help us overcome the more divisive aspects of our politics. But to the extent we reflect these less than optimal conditions, we, upon analysis, do exemplify some of the same divisive tendencies plaguing more disrupted nations. How can one describe these tendencies? Simply stated, modernization – a turning away from traditional ways and beliefs – has put enormous pressure on segments of the population that share in the traditional perspective that up until recently characterized most nations of the world.

The traditional perspective is noted for being religious, agricultural, parochial, and committed to time-honored, established institutional mores, rituals, symbols, and biases. Ever since the industrial revolution, more and more people throughout many areas of the world have given up, to varying degrees, on traditional ways of thinking and behaving. While many social forces might be contributing to this change, there exists no more meaningful one than urbanization – the movement of vast numbers of people to cities where all the traditional assumptions about life come into question and under attack. If for no other reason, the cosmopolitan nature of urban life challenges traditional beliefs, and those who are swept into this migration to cities find the new environs opposing many cherished beliefs and prejudices.

Consequently, with these social evolutions, people who have not fully accepted modern ways of thinking feel more and more under siege. They feel their whole way of life is threatened and the resulting fear can very well lead to extreme behaviors. This is especially true if we mix in religious fervor as is the case in more rural areas – although many who move to the city cling to their religious beliefs and have access to well- organized religious outlets. With its accompanying beliefs, this fervor is characterized by a particular belief in a highly judgmental higher being; one that is, we are warned, disposed to bring down upon us the harshest of punishments if we do not believe and live according to “inspired” precepts. This latter element in the traditional provides a very strong source of zeal toward protecting the traditional. In many nations, many are so motivated by this zeal that they end up expressing their anxieties by engaging in extremely divisive politics.

So this is the backdrop to many serious clashes. We can see it in our own nation to some extent. I would claim that to the degree there is any discussion of succession in our political talk, it is deeply rooted in this basic conflict between the traditional and the modern. And it is in this setting that I found most interesting a recently issued report by an advisory council to the CIA. The United States National Intelligence Council's report suggests the possibility of non-state governing entities which are based on organized efforts in areas such as finance, education, media, logistics, and health care. Fed up with the inability or unwillingness of nation-state governments to address problems and issues in areas such as those I just listed, special arrangements are being established. Organized around urban centers, these entities are derived from governmental subcontracting agreements:

A quick scan across the world reveals that where growth and innovation have been most successful, a hybrid public-private, domestic-foreign nexus lies beneath the miracle. These aren't states; they're “para-states” – or, in one common parlance “special economic zones.”¹

Probably the most noted one of these para-states is centered in Dubai. They can be found in Africa, Middle East, and Asia. They are highly numerous in China. My questions are, what will this do to the conflicts fueled by threatened, traditionally minded populations; will they exist apart from the less urban areas of nations, unaffected and coexisting or will they add to the turmoil we already see taking place? How can federated forces within these nations be encouraged and strengthened so that any such development as this apparent one will be accommodated? This is a challenge and one that can be softened with populations that are knowledgeable and sensitive to the need of citizens to feel federated with their fellow citizens – yet another challenge for civics education.

In this blog, I have presented the liberated federalism construct as a synthesis between natural rights and critical theory. From the natural rights, liberated federalism gets its concern for the individual and for respecting those rights that reflect the private domain of people's lives. From critical theory, the proposed construct gets its concern for equality. But from the social/political evolution we have experienced in the last fifty or so years, liberated federalism gets its concern for a secular based public policy. A lot of this evolution has to do with the increasing levels of urbanization we are experiencing, a development that makes parochial conception ever more unworkable in the diverse environments so many people find themselves. How we account for the segments not exposed to these new social forces – or if exposed, unwilling to accommodate – will take highly sophisticated strategies aimed at promoting federalist commitments among populations if national entities are to retain any viability in the future.

1Khana, P. (2013). The end of the nation-state? The New York Times, October 13, Sunday Review section, p. 5.