This posting aims to continue the topic this blog
took up in its last posting. That
posting, entitled “The Natural Rights’ View of Morality” (February
25, 2020), asked and began to answer the question: what influence does the moral beliefs of the
natural rights view over governance and politics have on a person? And a subsequent question is: what does such an influence mean when it is
applied to the staff of a secondary school especially among that school’s
civics teachers?
That posting pointed out that the main
element of that influence is that it encourages people to see politics from a purely
personal perspective. Since that
construct emphasizes a person’s right to determine his/her values and the
rights associated with advancing those values, the construct directs a person
to look inward and remove him or her from the interests of others. The problem is that in the US, a nation that
has a federalist foundation to its polity, it counts on a proactive posture in
relation to communal concerns, at least more so then what natural rights view promotes.
So, a value orientation that affects
this relationship between how people feel toward others and the needs of maintaining
or, perhaps, strengthening a more communal foundation should not only be of concern
to people in general but also should have a targeted effect on what is taught
in civics classes.
Contextually, one understands that holding a
belief as a moral claim, a person upgrades that belief as a guiding
principle. The belief becomes more than
a standard by which to judge what is prudent; its advocate elevates the belief
to a life guiding principle. As this
principle becomes more central to one's moral standing, one will be disposed to
encourage others to abide by that same standard.
Policy preferences that are held because of this principle are
given more importance than would otherwise be the case. The bearer of such a value, in the extreme,
becomes ideological about it. In such a
case, practical aspects of related situations or the interests of negatively affected
parties are mundane and dispensable. On
the other hand, for “true believers,” related positions and arguments – those
that oppose that person’s belief – become extremely important; they are judged
as being hazardous. To the extent that
anyone is so affected, related or derived concerns become very serious.
For most educators of civics, this is not the case; a commitment
to natural rights values – particularly that of liberty – is more moderate. The extreme is mentioned only to provide a
point of comparison for the varying positions different advocates might
take. As for these advocates, to any
degree of fidelity, they follow the tenets of classical liberal political
thought.[1]
To the extent it applies, one benefits from understanding what
constitutes classical liberal thought. Again,
liberal thought believes that individuals should be free to form their own
values and goals in life along with the freedom to act toward fulfilling those
values and goals. Following John Locke's
standard, the right to pursue one's value choices is limited only by the rights
of others to do likewise.
This is a legitimate expression of a version of liberty,[2]
but that legitimacy does not make it optimal when one considers the interests
of the commonwealth. As a trump value,
the sanctity of a person to be such a free agent has been identified by the
term, individual sovereignty.[3] Or as Locke stated, “every man has a Property
in his own Person.”[4] Many can agree with such a sentiment. Most Americans believe in liberty. The question becomes: how central to one's core beliefs is such an
allegiance and, in turn, how does that centrality affect the common welfare?
As this blog has stated elsewhere, one might believe in liberty;
one might even cherish it, but is it one’s ultimate or trump value in a general
sense or in terms of civic concerns?
Those who hold liberty so centrally as the ultimate value tend to see
government's most important function, even its only function, as guaranteeing
this form of liberty.
They see government securing individual sovereignty with the least
amount of coercion possible. They
ascribe to this political position a moral quality to the point that they see
challenges to liberty, as just mentioned, as extremely important. Such devoted advocates – the ideologues –
define how moral a person is in his/her civic behavior by how well he/she lives
according to the tenets of liberty.
By applying this whole
moral concern to the work of civics curriculum developers and implementers,
they would obviously champion individual rights in their proposed instructional
plans. They believe individual students
are free to develop for themselves any set of moral beliefs if such beliefs do
not trump liberty as defined above.
Applying this moral claim to civics curriculum, of course, places
individual rights as prominent. And, in
line with this blog’s contention, that construct is currently dominant among
Americans.
What that means in public
schools is that, under the auspices of a natural rights view, students can
follow any religious tradition – Christian, Judaic, Islamic, secular humanistic,
etc. – if one is not coerced into doing so.
Which means one does not prohibit others from the same choices. In summary, all reasonable moral claims are equally
tolerated. Or, using other words, the
natural rights moral stand has little to say about most moral questions. At least that’s the impression it gives.
It promotes an
individualism whose effects have grown through the years and has become in the
last seventy-five years or so the moral foundation for how Americans define
their nation’s institutions. That is, it
has become the prevalent construct and it has taken on a more institutionalized
role. For example, the reigning economic
view, according to William K. Tabb,[5] is
the neoliberal view that was initiated by the Ronald Reagan administration and
its economic policies. Those policies
glorified individualism in the nation’s markets and, even after the 2008
financial crisis, is still the operating view of economic policy makers.[6]
As such, one can judge
how such a position among fellow citizens has become ever more ingrained and a
source of many of our assumptions about our social world. With that influence, it steers, more than any
other view, the political views of Americans and into many other realms of life. As such, it undermines certain other value
positions or traditions.
For example, a bias
against welfare programs might emerge.
Not that such a policy is necessarily anti-liberty, but with a natural
rights moral standing, a person is free to see the value choice that rejects any
responsibility toward others as simply another choice with no a priori
importance attached to it. Americans in
general have lost much of their communal biases or dispositions.
That is, one is not held
to supporting such a policy or rejecting it because these are personal value
choices with little demand for any justification.[7] Further, there should not be any legal stigma
on anyone’s indifference to the plight of others; to lack such concern is,
again, just another value choice.
To federalists, this is
abysmal and dangerous. To them, given
their perception that the polity was based on federalist values, such a natural
rights bias among the general population is a recipe for serious problems. Which problems? One can look around to find out. This writer, in another venue, has reported
certain dysfunctional attributes afflicting the American polity. [8]
That is, by asking the
question, what is the current state of civics education, he reports that among
Americans low levels of knowledge over governance and politics, low levels of political
engagement, high levels of uncivil behavior, and, compared to other countries,
high levels of criminality exists.
On a related matter, today
one can see how the spending by a billionaire through sophisticated TV adds can
make him a contending candidate in the Democratic primary contests. This is not to counter the prudence of his
nomination, if he were to get it, but to just point out what the power 30-second
TV bites can have on the political perceptions of people in general.
This leads to the
question: can a billionaire “buy” an
election? Of course, the question, can a
billionaire buy a politician, has long ago been answered and the answer is
quite divorced from federalist values.
And this type of disconnect leads one to one more concern over natural
rights values. That is, as hinted at with
the reference to neoliberal view, their association to market perceptions and
values should be questioned. Hmm, a
topic for another posting? This writer
thinks so.
[1] Not to be
confused with the position on the political spectrum that lies left of neutral
and further left than the conservative point on the spectrum. Actually, classical liberal thought is
considered a conservative view.
[2] Federal liberty is another version.
[3] Jeffrey Reiman, “Liberalism and Its Critics,” in The Liberalism-Communitarianism Debate,
ed. C. F. Delaney (Lanhan, MD: Rowman
and Litttlefield Publishers, Inc., 1994), 19-37.
[4] Meir Dan-Cohen,
Harmful Thoughts: Essays on Law, Self,
and Morality (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2002), 296.
[5] William K. Tabb, The Restructuring of
Capitalism in Our Time (New York, NY:
Columbia University Press, 2012).
[6] The
neoliberal view has been under attack since the 2008 crisis, but its replacement
has yet been defined or taken hold. As a
matter of fact, it has been given new life under the Trump administration.
[7] As a matter of fact, since
welfare depends on tax dollars, such a program does inflict costs and,
therefore, welfare laws impose the choice of some – those who support them – on
other citizens. That imposition obviously
defies the natural rights view of liberty.
[8] Robert Gutierrez, “How Effective Is Civics Education?” A
PDF accessed February 28, 2020, https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=CED163627385DD3C!11783&ithint=file%2cdocx&app=Word&authkey=!AHFo6PFBnpUkePw .
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