NEEDS OF THE PUBLIC INTEREST

I imagine that there are many ways to view politics.  I have offered in this blog a partnership view.  That is, we, through the compacted agreement of the founders, are parties to a grand partnership in which all of our ultimate interests are bound together, at least in the long run.  Sure, we have our individual interests that oftentimes materialize over short-term events, but in pursuing them, federalism offers an ideal:  maintain those interests within the parameters of the common good.  I have also written that while one hopes for the best, one needs to prepare for the worst.  We know that not all of our fellow citizens abide by this general ideal.  On the contrary, many vigorously pursue goals and aims that are contrary to the common good. 

We have the most obvious cases of criminal pursuits such as fraud, embezzlement, murder, drug dealing, computer hacking, and the like.  A bit disheartening is that in our popular culture, we might glorify such behavior.  This has always been a disposition, but under a natural rights era, the disposition to do so has become less guilt-ridden.  There are cases not so well known, but equally distasteful of legal activities when people in power or holding certain assets allow themselves to take advantage of legal means to advance personal interests at the expense of the common good.  The cases of Wall Street executives who received generous bonuses during the months of the financial crisis of 2008 come to mind or the bank executives who received bailouts from the government but then refused to use those funds to support capital investment projects.  We blame the legislation – of which those executives surely played a role through their lobbying activities – but doesn’t some blame need to be placed on those who took advantage?  So prevalent is this type of behavior that any allusion to a partnership is considered merely an illusion.

Samuel P. Huntington some years ago referred to politics as a Hobbesian world: “unrelenting competition among social forces – between man and man, family and family, clan and clan, region and region, class and class – a competition unmediated by more comprehensive political organization.”[1]  In its raw state, this is an amoral arrangement; that is, there is no good or bad, it just is.  But there is an impractical angle; how do a people get anything done in such a social environment?  How can one plan, invest, dedicate him/herself when a constant turmoil surrounds the individual, the family, or any other group?  The obvious need is to impose some sense of morality and this is what successful societies and polities have been able to do.  But there are some (pre)requisites.  Morality presupposes the continued presence of trust born from predictability.  Predictability emanates from repetitive patterns of behavior and activities.  That is where the importance of institutions becomes apparent.  Huntington identifies the interests of public institutions – those established and maintained by our political apparatus – as the public interest.  A healthy maintenance of the public interest is what allows a people to manage the Hobbesian world out there.  My point is that part of that process, a central part, is to construct a view that holds to, believes in, an ideal.  That is what federalism provides and the natural rights construct, I am afraid, undermines.  But let me continue with Huntington’s analysis.

Huntington goes on to admit that ideals and values have been used to bolster the trust factor, to assist in the formulation and maintenance of public institutions.  The problem is that these constructs have been either too vague and general or too specific in their implementation.  Other constructs include the “divine rights of kings” view or Marxism.  By their nature, ideals tend to be broad as they are to be applied to a vast variety of situations.  And then when they are applied by political actors, they tend to be interpreted in too specific terms so as to offer advantage to those actors.  No; the solution to this lack of functionality is not to rely on constructs, but to count on political institutions advancing their own interests.  Let the president protect the Presidency, let Congress protect Congress, let the Supreme Court protect the court system.  In this way, a competitive arena is established (by the way, this reflects a federalist value for countervailing powers) and, by doing so, the regularization of political action can be established and preserved.  In short, it is these institutions defining and protecting their institutional interests that define for the polity the public interest.

An important distinction, though, needs to be made.  An institutional interest is not the interests of those who are involved in the institution.  Individuals die; institutions, which are successful, do not die.  Therefore, individual interests are relatively short-lived; institutional interests are long-lived.  This is what I refer to when I write about our long-term interests.  I disagree a bit with Huntington.  He refers to individual interests as short-lived.  I take his point, but being a person who has had my share of years on this planet, I can definitely identify interests I had as being short-termed and interests that I have had and continue to have as long-term.  I can also see that pursuing some short-term interests interfered, threatened, and even destroyed some long-term interests.  Yes; I will die, but I am glad that in my life I respected important long-term interests.  Today I can enjoy the continued benefits of having been able to do that.  It also allows me to further appreciate Huntington’s greater point: that a society and its members need to respect our collective long-term interests as exercised through our institution and why this current presidential election cycle is causing some deep rooted concerns over what I see unfolding on my TV.  That is also why the complete obstruction by Congress of the president and his agenda has also been worrisome.  Short-term interest of the opposition party can make the system dysfunctional, which has repercussions in the electorate.  Can the current atmosphere of the presidential campaigns be the manifestations of such strategies; the short-term threatening the long-term interests of our polity?

I believe Huntington captures this sentiment in the following:

In another sense, however, the legitimacy of governmental actions can be sought in the extent to which they reflect the interests of governmental institutions.  In contrast to the theory of representative government, under this concept governmental institutions derive their legitimacy and authority not from the extent to which they represent the interests of the people or of any other group, but to the extent to which they have distinct interests of their own apart from all other groups. … [For example, t]he interests of the president … may coincide partially and temporarily first with those of one group and then with those of another.  But the interests of the Presidency … coincide with no one else.  The president’s power derives not from his representation of class, group, regional, or popular interests, but rather from the fact that he represents none of these.  The presidential perspective is unique to the Presidency.[2]

Huntington goes on to argue that this level of institutional protection is what furnishes realistic expectations that in turn allow trust and ultimately morality to our otherwise “dog-eat-dog” world.  It is this respect for institutions that is missing in parts of the world where we see one turmoil replacing another and where outside intervention seems to have no effect.  “Their political cultures are often said to be marked by suspicion, jealousy, and latent and actual hostility toward everyone who is not a member of the family, the village, or, perhaps, the tribe.”[3]

An interesting study is that of societies who have gone from being traditional – that is, lacking modern institutional arrangements – to being modern.  Japan is one such society.  Can one view Japan’s activities prior to World War II in this light?  Still and all, Japan offers a model of how this transition can be done successfully.  Are there any models of the reverse?  For example, is the US, as exemplified by our current politics, showing the way toward a “traditional” political landscape?  I don’t for a minute believe this, but when a candidate is offering a “cult of personality” form of campaigning, do we see a drift toward something unsavory?  Stay tuned.

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[1] Huntington, S. P.  (1968).  Political order in changing societies.  New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, p. 24.

[2] Ibid., pp. 27-28.

[3] Ibid., p. 28.

STEP RIGHT UP

With this posting, I will complete a series of several postings which review Richard C. Sinopoli’s[1] reaction to certain criticisms people have leveled against the natural rights perspective.  The first criticism is what Sinopoli calls the “rights illusion;” i.e., the criticism expands the natural rights’ moral basis to encompass “the whole of morality.”  In other words, as long as one lives within his/her rights, he/she can go about doing whatever he/she wants and be able to claim a moral posture by so doing.  The second criticism is the claim that since one has a right, one can insist on exercising it even when such behavior is deleterious to others.  The last two postings address these two criticisms.  This posting will look at a third concern.

The third criticism is that there is in liberal societies a proclivity to downgrade or deny the contributions of others in one’s successes.  As an aside, this proclivity does not seem to ameliorate any tendency to blame others for one’s failures.  But the general sense that one is solely responsible for one’s successes has become a sort of battle cry among the political right.  At least President Obama was criticized for pointing out that no one is completely responsible for his/her success.  Again, as with the other two claims, Sinopoli does not deny that people feel this way in our liberal society, but that people who feel this way are not exclusive to liberal societies and that liberal beliefs are not responsible for it.  He certainly does not attribute a person’s lack of understanding of how societies operate and create the conditions that allow success to natural rights (what he calls liberal) thinking.  I disagree.  I would associate this lack of attribution to any individualistic society like our own and that, in our case, a causal link does exist between a bias toward natural rights thinking and this sense of self-aggrandizement.

As with the other two contentions, Sinopoli cites John Locke to bolster his position that natural rights thinking has no causal relationship to the offending belief: 

He who travels the road now, applauds his own strength and legs that have carried him in such a scantling of time, and ascribes his own vigor; little considering how much he owes their pains, who cleared the woods, drained the bogs, built the bridges, and made the way possible; without which he may have toiled much with little progress.[2]

But as I have indicated in previous postings, the ideas comprising the natural rights perspective today, at least as it is generally held among the populous, is not the natural rights of Locke in the seventeenth century.  In this blog, I have cited expert opinion that has placed Locke’s contributions in an era in which his main arguments were against the legacy of feudal privilege and, in addition, against the idleness of the poor (based on their misunderstanding of what caused poverty).  As late as the nineteenth century, other writers can still offer a greater appreciation for the social context for success.  Sinopoli reports this as he cites the French writer Tocqueville.  Tocqueville could see how in aristocratic and classical republican societies,[3] a clearer sense of how the individual is well ensconced within the social matrix of society prevailed.  Who the individual is or what that individual can accomplish is very much dependent on the social milieus in which he/she is situated.  We had a sense of this in the TV show, Downton Abbey, especially during the early years of the program.  As a matter of fact, many of the story lines of the show are about how the more liberal notions of the twentieth century constantly conflicted with traditional, feudal beliefs and values.  Generally, the show depicts the heroic struggle of individual characters striving to be themselves – to become viable individuals – and, by doing so, rejecting the more circumspective roles individuals were expected to adopt in the good old days.  What saves the day in these plots is the binding relationships demanded by family, even among two warring sisters.  Again, there is a surviving reliance on a collective source of strength and an inability to totally shed the support a communal structure provides.  This will come later on, at least in our development in the US.

My point is simple:  to deny there is no relationship between a basic lack of understanding of how society works when it comes to success or failure and a general belief system that promotes the role of the individual in determining life’s values and goals is unreasonable.  Even, in the end, Sinopoli has to hedge his bets.  Let me quote him:

The relation between liberalism and community cuts in several different directions.  The more categorical claims of an inherent opposition between rights-based liberalism and community are not sustainable.  In fact, liberalism can claim as one of its virtues a profound recognition of the centrality of community to virtually any conception of the good; further, a recognition of the inviolability of each person can enhance community by assuring each member of the polity that her vital interests will not be sacrificed for the sake of others.  Yet, if there is no inherent opposition, it is at least empirically plausible to contend that liberalism can be destructive of community in some instances.[4]

You think this might be a little modest?

To begin with, the fact that Sinopoli claims a positive relation between liberalism and community interests exists does not make it so.  I agree that a respect for individual rights is essential to a healthy society and its polity, but more needs to be explained.  Let me cite a problem or two.

First, Sinopoli does not explain how self-interests need to be defined or somehow constrained in order for their pursuit not to negatively affect the common good.  When the individual is not only allowed, but also encouraged, to shoot for the moon and there is no sense of mutual responsibilities and accounting for mutual contributions, we experience many of the self-indulgent views and behaviors we currently see in our social interactions.  But beyond that, rudderless morality, our current history tells us, tends toward sensationalism.  Even the most important aspects of life become stages for the thrill seeker who is always trying to outdo the last escapade.  The wanting of something becomes more important than the satisfaction, partly because the satisfaction is short-lived and the anticipation for the next thrill becomes all-consuming.  We are told by Donald Trump, for example, I could act “presidential,” but if I did, only about twenty percent of his audiences would show up; to be presidential would be so damn boring.  So there goes another institution down the path of “barker-ism;” our lack of substance belittles another essential process in our political and social landscape.  Is this level of the problem just our version of a common diversion found in many other times and places or is there reason to believe we are embarking on a serious projection that will lead to highly dysfunctional results?  The contention of this blog is that we have reason to worry.  As I have argued, civics education is a factor in all of this and we need to change how we are going about “doing” civics if we hope to turn this projection around.  A good first lesson in a more responsible civics classroom is an explanation of how we, as individuals, are not totally responsible for our successes – or our failures – but that we are part of a greater whole.

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

[2] Ibid., p. 32.

[3] A federalist polity can be classified as a type of classical republican society.

[4] Op cit., Sinopoli, p. 33.  Emphasis added.