Tuesday, December 8, 2020

UNIFICATION FOR PLURALITY

 

[Note:  From time to time, this blog issues a set of postings that summarize what the blog has been emphasizing in its previous postings.  Of late, the blog has been looking at various obstacles civics educators face in teaching their subject.  It’s time to post a series of such summary accounts.  The advantage of such summaries is to introduce new readers to the blog and to provide a different context by which to review the blog’s various claims and arguments.  This and upcoming summary postings will be preceded by this message.]

 When considering the current political environment of the nation, one should consider the state of its political culture – the sum total of its beliefs, values, customs, norms, attitudes, and processes.  The common summary terms describing the culture today have been diverse, polarized, or tribal.  This blog has set about to describe and explain why that is the case.  One condition that seems to have summoned the forces of division has been the incubation of various problems or issues that have “exploded” on the political stage. 

They include a renewed spotlight on civil rights (more specifically police mistreatment of primarily African Americans), abortion, immigration, health policies (especially those relating to the COVID crisis), tax policy, inequality, etc.  And given how people faced with political weakness – they seek out allies – most sense that that is their relative position in the political arena.  Hence, the nation’s politics has evolved into two grand alliances:  that of the left of center and of the right of center. 

But in so doing, within each, compromising has had to take place to maintain those alliances intact.  One area of concern where this amalgamation of demands has taken place is within the left of center alliance in which two major sets of opinions have an uneasy compromised position.  That would be between those who espouse the assimilationist position in the treatment of immigrants and those who hold a critical multicultural position. 

The first sees the nation best served by the immigrant populations working toward knowing and accepting, at least in terms of public action, the basic Western derived beliefs and values upon which the nation is based.  The other view holds that immigrants should not give up on their cultural backgrounds and live their lives within the dispositions they bring with them – possibly in communities so populated.

The late historian, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., wrote a warning adopting the multiculturalist position, especially if public policy would be based on its belief.  This blogger mostly agrees with Schlesinger and adopted a set of provisos the historian offers.  They are:

·       One, that the Western derived tradition is not a unitary orthodoxy but relies on a cultural process.  That process would be a reflected way by which incoming traditions be incorporated into the prevailing, dominant way of life.  As such, the nation would have an evolving philosophy; one that forms and fulfills its beliefs and values through undiluted beliefs in debate, being self-critical, being tolerant of disrespect, of protest, and even of irreverence.  That is, there would be an acceptance of people holding other than dominant sentiments and beliefs and retain their rights to assert those beliefs.

·       Two, that Americans, immigrants and non-immigrants alike, should recognize the essentially European origins of this nation’s culture as both historically true and in its proclivity to invite and accept accommodation of other traditions (a sense not honored in most cultures).  In short, it invites, through an evolutionary process, an adaptation of non-European cultural traits within the basic constitutional framework that the nation holds.

·       Three, not to claim that the inherited “European” way is ideal for all humans, but that it is better for Americans.  Why?  Because it has provided for the nation’s identity.

·       Four, as opposed to the emphasis multiculturalist voice, one of group rights, the prevailing espoused values express a foundational commitment to guard and promote individual integrity.  It does this by its allegiance to its Bill of Rights, the rule of law, and its democratic processes.  The federal take on these esteemed elements is that they should be defined and exercised in a communal mode of application.

·       And five, to allow the acceptance of this inherited tradition to function so as to promote efficiencies.  That is, economic actors can more efficiently do their work if they can reasonably predict and share general views with other economic actors (that being everyone) [1] and, toward that end, a shared cultural tradition, within the nation, is essential.

 

In short, while recognizing the central function that the Western derived culture plays in setting up cultural guardrails to protect constitutional values, the nation can be very accommodating to the various cultural traditions that find their way to these shores. 

Is this easy?  Of course not.  It calls for compromise – a federal requisite.  In this case, one needs to find that middle ground between nationalists and their proclivity to be against non-Western immigration and multiculturalists and their bias against socializing immigrants of Western based cultural norms and standards particularly those relating to its constitutional/legal framework. 

To repeat a previously quoted comment in this blog, “Our task is to combine due appreciation of the splendid diversity of the nation with due emphasis on the great unifying Western ideas of individual freedom, political democracy, and human rights.”[2]

Or as the Lincoln historian, Ted Widmer, puts it, “They [Americans of 1865] were not naïve; they knew that the Declaration [of Independence] set a difficult standard, one that they would often fail to reach.  But to pretend it did not exist was to slowly become a different kind of country, with no moral standard at all.”[3] That equally goes for how the nation absorbs peoples from across this world. Widmer’s observation reflects what is at stake with this issue.



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

[2] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America:  Reflections on a Multicultural Society (New York, NY:  W. W. Norton and Company, 1992), 138.

[3] Ted Widmer, Lincoln on the Verge:  Thirteen Days to Washington (New York, NY:  Simon and Schuster, 2020), 461.

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