A MODERN MODE FOR HANDLING OBSCENITY

My last posting addressed the difference between the traditional and the modern and how that distinction affects reasoning within the construct of federalism. I pointed out that within our national history, a traditional form of federalism played a crucial role in determining the essence of our political ethos. I also pointed out that traditional thought and reasoning is concrete and unequivocal; it commits to definite beliefs. Often the beliefs reflect religious dogma. As such, traditional thought and reasoning lends itself to clear visions of the good and it definitely tends to place priority of a particular vision of the good over that of the right. By “right” the reference is not to what is correct, but to what we as humans have legitimate license to do.

I have also made the argument in past postings that while initially the mental construct that prevailed during the initial phases of our political life was traditional federalism, the growing influence of a modernistic construct grew in prevalence until, after World War II, it became prominent. That construct I have named the natural rights construct. As a modern view, the natural rights construct places the emphasis on the right over the good. In a previous posting, Neutrality and Speech,¹ I trace the history of court decisions and how they reflect this shift in terms of what is judged to be allowable speech. In this posting, I want to take up that effort and look specifically at the shifting view the courts have had on obscenity.

More specifically, I want to address the uneasiness such a shift causes in those who have to deal with the actual policies involved. Probably no area of concern is more “touchy” in our culture than that of sex. Within the Puritanical tradition of American culture, sex and our handling of sexually explicit materials have had a telling history. That history reflects, in stark contrast, the separate phases of how our acceptance of sexual content has become ever more liberalized.

According to Michael Sandel,² this liberalization has taken the following progression: first, prohibition based on local standards of decency, then prohibition based on tortured rationalizations in which thinly veiled concerns for the good are proclaimed to be actually neutral concerns for legitimate state interests such as safety and security and, finally, tolerance of the dissemination and consumption of obscene material with minimal restraints to protect the young or other sensitive zoned localities. This whole shift is predicated on a commitment – a commitment to the First Amendment right of free speech. But I would submit that at its base is the issue over our ever increasing concern for each of us to determine what values we, individually, determine are correct for ourselves. Fortunately or unfortunately, many of us value the consumption of speech that explicitly illustrates sexual scenes and behavior better known as obscenity. Whether this is good or not is difficult to determine under modernistic reasoning. Under such reasoning, even to be considered for legal prohibition, questionable material needs to be demonstrably offensive or threatening to legitimate state interests. For example, in response to the decisions which characterized the tortured rationalization phase, current courts demand that any claim associating the consumption of obscene materials to behaviors affecting the safety or security of citizens needs to be supported with empirical evidence. In such cases, commonsense arguments or arguments based on sectarian precepts are not sufficient. If you argue that obscene materials lead to a higher incidence of rape or other sexual crimes, you have to provide the appropriate studies that support the contention. A possible exception to this general standard is the case of published obscene materials that depict underage youths. In that case, the fact that children do not have a legal standing that permits them to voluntarily submit to that kind of exposure, even when and if parental permission is provided, does indicate a bias toward a priori restraint. But even in that case, I am sure that psychological studies can be readily supplied that would indicate long term problems for those children so exploited. Overall, the point is that any public policy prohibiting the exercise of behavior protected by our identified and codified rights needs to be justified by findings based on neutral ground and supported by empirical study. Religious or other parochial beliefs will not do.

Does a call for a modern version of federalist thought and reasoning abandon what its traditional version called for: a promotion of the good? Here, an advocacy for federalism is challenged not so much from a theoretical point of view, but from a political point of view. How can any concern for the good in our public policy be acceptable to a populace that has adopted a natural rights perspective? Such a populace is readily disposed to see any government action promoting its version of the good as an overreach into our private lives. Whether government policy prohibits the production, dissemination, and consumption of obscene materials falls under such a rubric.

First, the purpose here is not to outline a propaganda program for our public schools. The purpose is to advocate a social philosophy or theory that can provide a foundation for a civics curriculum. Second, as such, a philosophy or theory need not outline a set of beliefs that students are called upon to accept, but it provides a view of politics and government upon which an educator can base instructional questions – exactly what the natural rights construct does for most contemporary civics instruction today. Third, to the extent that federation theory has a moral commitment, those who utilize the theory should not be shy about expressing to students what that commitment is. This should be done not as espousing the truth, but as providing a choice which reflects the view of the majority and can be criticized as to its appropriateness and functionality. Neither should governmental jurisdictions be shy in expressing what the collective sense of the moral is. Expression can and should fall short of prohibitions when such stands come in conflict with protected rights. But such expressions should be clear and direct. Here, the use of proclamations and resolutions can be the vehicles by which such collective judgments can be expressed. And what is the moral standard for such judgments? As I have argued in this blog, my view of what a liberated federalism morality should be is a commitment toward the promotion of societal welfare – with the trump values of societal survival and the advancement of a society's goal and aims (a value that presupposes a normative judgment by the collective).

So how do obscene materials fit or relate to this theorizing or moralizing? In terms of instructional strategy, concern over the advancement of a society's goals and aims brings a focus on the communal quality of that society. Why? Because to reach those goals and aims, social capital is demonstrably important. Robert Putnam³ writes of social capital; he defines social capital as a societal quality characterized by having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation. The instructional question would be: does the publication, dissemination, and consumption of obscene materials diminish the levels of social capital in a society? This is a legitimate question to ask high school students – maybe even middle school students. How does the right of free speech relate to this trade? Is this – the preemption of legislation that prohibits obscenity – what our first national congress meant when the right was added to our constitution or when the authors and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended basic rights protections against state governments? Many such questions can be studied in appropriate classroom settings.

So, the point is that federation theory does not need to abandon its concern for the good. It does, though, need to take on a more modern approach; that is, an approach that shifts away from either propagandizing a set of concrete values, as was the case with the traditional, or a complete abandonment of treating moral questions in the classroom, as has been the case under the natural rights curriculum. More specifically, the use of federation theory needs to be open to incorporate both scientific research and non- dogmatic moral analysis. 

 

1Posting for April 8, 2013.

2Sandel, M. J. (1996). Democracy's discontent: America in search of a public philosophy. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

3Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon and Schuster.

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.

FUNCTIONAL INTERACTION

If I were to be given the task of developing a civics curriculum, my first series of units or lessons or modules (units of content) would have students looking at what I have called the “entity.” If you have been reading my last several postings, you know that I have dedicated them to describing what entities of federated unions are and what the attributes are that make up the meaning of the term. If you haven't, an entity is a member of an arrangement – a collective of people and/or groups. Our nation's political arrangement is a federation and its people and states are its entities. An arrangement that meets the attributes of a federation is an association. So, entities are the basic element of a federation. Most of the time in our discourses of politics or governance, entities are individual persons. If you live in the US legally – and in some cases even if you are here illegally – you are federated with all other citizens and legal residents. You are here by choice and as such, you are agreeing to live by the provisions of our compact, the US Constitution.¹ As my last set of postings has indicated, an entity has status, conscience, and practical attributes. If you care to read more, look at this last set of postings. But as for this posting, I want to address the next area of concern that logically follows what has been described to date: how entities tend to interact and how they should interact.

How entities interact, naturally, depends on the arrangement under consideration. Of course, one can study such cases and formulate general understanding of how they operate and what promotes their efficiencies. A lot of organizational theory is about such concerns. What follows will focus more on how entities should behave, but in so doing I will reflect on some of the general factors affecting their behavior.

To begin with, entities in a federation are equal. We have, by and large, come to accept this idea as natural. I recently had the pleasure of seeing again the 1935 film version of Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities with Ronald Coleman. The film is a good version of Dickens' story. In the film, the corrupt aristocratic view of human nature that characterized those of the advantaged class in pre-Revolutionary France is portrayed. By viewing the film, one is exposed to what are now anachronistic beliefs about those who populate the lower classes. I write anachronistic, but I have had the experience of hearing advantaged individuals from countries with high degrees of wealth disparity voicing the same message. That is, the message is usually couched with the notion that “you don't understand the people of our country,” in thinly subtle language, that “those” people are not equal to us, the rich or the more advantaged; they just don't have what it takes. At best, this is said in paternalistic language; at worst, it is stated in oppressive language. Whatever the language, the result is oppressive relations between the classes. So, this message should not be considered as just something from the past. It, unfortunately, is alive and well and we in our nation should be on guard about any ideology or political or social movement that expresses any form of this ideal.

It can take the form of depreciating the poor or of those with origins from other lands. Perhaps it can express itself against those who lack expertise in given areas of human endeavors. Maybe the victims can be those who lack what are considered social graces of one sort or another or perhaps those who suffer from physical handicaps. Sexual preferences or gender have also been the sources of such unequal sentiments. All of these sources of discrimination and/or segregation should be anathemas to those who claim to be federated with their fellow citizens. In real terms, to the extent a society is free from such inequality – especially in the ways its people interact – is in large part a way to measure how federated the reputed federation is.

But behavior that respects the above concerns can be merely a reflection of tolerance. Tolerance is a minimal quality of a federated union. A federation strives to be more than a society that tolerates what is different or lacking, as in the case of lower income groups. A federation seeks communal links between its peoples. The context of this concern is that an arrangement – and more appropriately, an association – is formed to achieve aims and goals. The relation between entities will finally be judged according to how efficacious they are in relation to those aims and goals. No matter what the aims and goals are – be they licit or illicit – certain qualities need to be incorporated and felt by those who are federated. To the degree they are not present or felt sufficiently, the arrangement or association suffers from dysfunctional realities. Enough of this dysfunction and the collective is in danger of not only failing to meet its aims and goals, but its very existence can come into question. Of course, all of this is very general. The nature and extent to which such concerns exist depend on a host of factors and one would need to be an expert on a given association to pass judgment on the health of any given union. But generally one can identify certain types of factors involved.

Here, I am advised by the work of Philip Selznick.² He utilizes the concept, reciprocal advantage. Reciprocal advantage relates to those relational qualities that bolster a communal sense between entities. It reflects an understanding that certain prevailing values or an underlying ethos provides the intellectual and emotional foundation by which that society can go about performing the necessary actions that lead to success. The sinew of such links is the acceptability of the provisions of the compact that forms the union, emotional ties between the members, shared interests and resources, and mutual respect. Each of these, to the extent it exists, reflects a great deal of past accommodations, compromises, sacrifices, and shared experiences. It also depends on past successes. For example, beyond the political necessity in securing our independence, our ability to defeat in the Revolutionary War the greatest power on earth at that time surely gave this young nation a sense of inevitability that it would reach great heights. Success breeds success.

After a curriculum addresses what an entity is and how entities figure into the structural make up of federations, it should look at how and why entities interact with each other. This concern understands that a communal sense between the members of an arrangement or association increases the chances of success; it is sensitive to the whimsical nature of fortune and fate and it avoids the disruption that a lack of dignity and integrity can cause to any collective effort.

1As constitutional scholar Donald Lutz argues, our compact includes our national constitution and the state constitutions. So here in Florida where I live, I am federated with my fellow citizens under the provisions of the US Constitution and the Florida constitution. See, for example, Lutz, D. S. (1992). A preface to American political theory. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.

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

PRACTICAL ATTRIBUTES

This posting continues my review of the attributes of an entity – members of a federated union. To date, in the last series of postings, I have described the attributes of status and conscience. Please, if interested, review those postings if you have not yet read them. This posting will describe an array of attributes I summarily call practical attributes. These are: useful resources, character, and roles. And again, the utility of these attributes is to focus the attention of a student of politics or government. This focus can lead to questioning of what goes on when political or governmental actors engage in their work. Appropriate questions can derive insights about the behavior of groups or collectives engaged in politics.

Entities are a main element of a federation since it is willing individuals and/or groups that make up a federation. As such, entities are the membership that will determine the actions of such groups. These groups – either arrangements lacking to some degree in federated qualities or associations that meet the threshold of those qualities and therefore are considered federated – are begun and maintained to meet some set of goals and aims. The assumption is that groups, all other things being equal, are better equipped to achieve their aims and goals if they are federated. Through this assumption, a student can do several things: one, look at groups and attempt to describe and explain why a group is, from a political perspective, either successful or not; two, can inquire into why groups act they way they do; and three, can inquire into how a group should act. Such studies can provide meaningful insights into a group's actions.

Federation theory does not get any more realistic than when it directs our attention to the practical attributes of an entity. Through this aspect of the theory, a student of politics and governance is drawn to those resources that an individual or group might command in order to get its way. After all, that is the purpose of politics – be it altruistic or selfish or something in between. Practical attributes can be seen from two perspectives: from that of a political actor and from that of a student of politics and government. What follows will go back and forth between these two perspectives.

So, what are these useful resources? First, there is, in a given political event, the useful knowledge of relevant conditions that an entity has. Who are the significant actors; what are the relative power levels of these actors; what is the topography – physical, financial, and other social factors – of a given political interaction; and what are the stakes – the interests of the various political or governmental actors involved? For example, when trying to gauge the likelihood of a politician to act in a certain way, it is useful to know which related parties have the ability to secure votes, have access to money, and/or command relevant expertise – apparently politicians respond to these types of people. These questions relate to some of the assets one needs to have in order to be effective in politics and knowing what the actors know about these assets is also useful in being able to describe and understand political and governmental action. Second, there are the personal qualities that can make a difference such as levels of common sense, physical attributes, – health, strength, physical power, athleticism, dexterity, endurance, attractiveness – sociability, – listening skills, communication skills, charm, humor, friendliness, tolerance, disposition toward accepting the unexpected – and an entity's availability to act in relation to time and location – better known as timing. All of these combine to formulate a person's political skills such as in lobbying or campaigning.

The second practical attribute is character. Character relates to another attribute, conscience,¹ but not in terms of the content of an entity's conscience, but in terms of the depth to which the entity holds that content. Any significant depth presupposes that that content is held by the entity as a result of reflection. An entity has character when the person or group has taken the time and effort to think and emotionally commit to the moral ideals which make up that person's or group's conscience. Character also refers to how simple or complicated one's commitments are; does the entity have a uni-dimensional moral perspective or is it complex and nuanced? This latter concern can be dicey in that there is a fine line between being complex or being compromised. Compromised positions generally reflect duplicity or opportunism.

The third practical attribute is role(s). Role refers to status,² but as opposed to expected levels of leadership, roles are the specific functions an entity fulfills or is expected to fulfill. Two entities can have the same role, but one might have more status than the other. Role reflects what one expects the entity to do; status reflects the respect the entity enjoys in relation to what the person or group does. While status reflects how an entity is seen in an arrangement, a role is usually the planned actions that were in mind when the position for the entity was created or revised. Yes, a role can be one of leadership, but it also can be one of follow-ship. Roles, when planned, are created for strategic reasons, although, at times, roles develop through experience and can be informal – they just happen. Their importance can vary over time and, when we compare comparable groups, similar roles can be created or are evolved, but the actual role might vary. They can also vary within a group over time. Therefore, roles are dynamic and changeable. To illustrate, the role of husband and wife varies between families, over the history of families, and over time within a given family.

Again, in terms of character and role, these attributes serve as guides. They suggest questions of given political and governmental groups and their activities. They assist us in asking the questions that lead us toward understanding what is going on and what should be going on with our government, our institutions as far as they are political, and our general social surroundings.

1As I described conscience in my last posting: “ a conscience, in terms of federated commitments, relates to how an entity believes and feels about the values and norms of the federation in which the entity belongs.”

2As I described status in my posting of June 3, 2013: “status is a reflection of how much leadership standing a particular entity either has or is thought to have.”

THE IMPORTANCE OF CONSCIENCE

Do you hear that little voice within you when you do something bad? Does everyone have an inner voice and does everyone's voice say the same kinds of things? Are those voices taught or are they innate? Of course, these questions relate to the existence and content of consciences. When we hear of horrendous behavior and, when the perpetrator is caught, we hear his or her justification for the insidious act, we wonder how a person can believe in what he or she is saying; how can that person possibly believe that what he or she did is justified? The bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building and the justification that Timothy McVeigh provided comes to mind. I saw the interview; I believe he believed in what he was saying. How does that happen? How can someone's moral compass be so out of whack with what the vast majority of people agree is evil?

In the last several postings, I have been sharing my view of what an entity within a federated union is. First, entities are members of a federation. An entity can be an individual or a group. A review of the attributes of an entity is useful when one is looking at the actions of a federation. By understanding what entities are gives students a handle on one of the important elements that constitute a federation. The last few postings of this blog described and explained the importance of status. Each member of a federation has status and that reflects either the power a member has or that member's reputed power. Status affects how members interact.

A second attribute of an entity is the entity's conscience. Conscience refers to the ideal domain of an entity's thinking. I believe thinking and feeling can be seen as constituting three different domains: the domain of the real, the domain of the ideal, and the domain of the physiological. The real is what we hold to be objective truth. The ideal refers to what we believe should be. And the physiological refers to what our chemical makeup either forces us to do – as in the case of breathing, if not impeded – or encourages us to do – as in engaging in sexual behavior. Some of this encouraging can be quite strong and oftentimes influences us on subconscious levels.

Be that as it may, a conscience, in terms of federated commitments, relates to how an entity believes and feels about the values and norms of the federation in which the entity belongs. That is, it relates to the entity's ideal domain. Of course, the union has an interest in encouraging its members to have positive beliefs and feelings toward those values and norms. A smartly run union will expend resources to encourage those beliefs and feelings. I emphasize the word “encourage” – as opposed to “enforce.” For one thing, it is impossible to force anyone to believe in or feel positively toward any set of values. But beyond that, any attempt to force such beliefs or feelings in a society we generally describe as a free society will most likely backfire and the “instructed” member will probably look for ways to exit or undermine the union.

But I stray from my purpose in this posting. Here, I want to address how studying entities benefit by analyzing their consciences. Whether the object of a study is to look at the general nature of federations or how the members of a union behave, the student is well served by looking at what motivates the members. Primary motivational force for any actor – be it a person or group – is the sense an entity has in what is moral or immoral. And while morality can have a variety of foundational standards – from religious standards to informal norms – which can lead us to a variety of expectations, the moral expressions of a federation need to be included in any analysis. Why? Because, as a unit capable of collective action, the health of a federation and the manner in which it acts can be described, explained, understood, and even predicted, to a great extent, by how it defines and binds its membership. What is generally seen as good or evil, to the extent the perception is shared, provides a powerful insight into what binds the membership and what motivates it to act. A student, therefore, should ask what those values are and how strongly they are held by the membership both individually and collectively.

A simple illustration would be to look at the antebellum period of American history. While the disagreement over the morality of slavery is obvious, it is only one of the many value conflicts that existed. The North was becoming an industrial giant and the South wanted to maintain its plantation economy. This intensified a series of antagonizing values and norms. Views on religion, gender issues, etiquette standards, and the like became more pronounced. For example, dueling was still in vogue in the South and almost passe in the North. The nation had been drifting apart on many fronts and what constituted the content inhabiting the consciences of the different sections of the country became starkly distinguishable and contradictory.

Contemporary examples include nations such as Egypt. Looking at the period after the uprisings of 2011, there seem to be profound moral conflicts brewing which are pitting the more traditional Islamist believers against more secular segments of the population. The issues separating these interests are ones of conscience. The health of the nation can be judged to be in peril because moral disagreements are neither easily glossed over nor amenable to compromise. Hence, the upcoming years for Egypt, whether one considers it a formal federation or an informal one, will probably be highly challenging and its prospects of establishing a stable political environment are not at all guaranteed.

So, where are the values of a federated union expressed? In a formal federation, a collective is formed by its members agreeing to the provisions of a covenant or a compact, and the values of the union are stated in the bill of rights of that agreement. The terms of the bill of rights consist of agreed upon values in the form of individual negative rights – actions that the collective cannot call on its members to perform or advantages to give up – positive rights – actions the collective is committed to perform for the benefit of the members – and/or actions that the federation or an entity should or should not perform. In the history of our nation's compact, the initial expression of values is contained in the Declaration of Independence. By mostly condemning the king of Great Britain for committing a list of atrocities, the Continental Congress expressed the values this new nation was to uphold as being sacred. If what the king “did” was immoral, it would be wrong or immoral for an American government to do likewise. This list of values was later superseded by the first ten amendments to our Constitution – our formal Bill of Rights. To the degree we all share in the imbedded values of these documents, they have become part of the little voice that defines what is moral and what is immoral – it becomes imbedded in our conscience.

Our own current conditions point out one more aspect of how conscience serves us by affecting how we define our values. As I was watching the news tonight, there seems to be a slew of charges that, in the name of fighting terrorism, our national government is being with violating some of our collective values. It seems that the national government has been monitoring our phone calls and emails. So far, it hasn't been established that the government has been listening in on our calls, but whom we call and who calls us has been recorded. The same goes for emails which is even “worse” in that I believe they are being subject to being read. This pits our values concerning privacy against our values concerning security. And that points out that any expression of values in the form of rights or otherwise needs to be spelled out through experience because values we hold can easily conflict and reality is complicated. Time and the development of historical forces need to be experienced before we know what we strongly value both in absolute terms and in terms of their relative strength. It is our conscience that inhibits us from allowing us to betray our values by rationalizing them away for what is opportune in a given situation. As such, conscience is that attribute in which an entity fights, in tempting situations, against giving up who the entity is. By not abandoning what the entity believes, he, she, or it establishes its true identity through those values or principles making up the entity's conscience.

THE IMPORTANCE OF STATUS

I am dedicating a series of postings to the concept or element of an association I call an entity. An entity is one individual member of an association. An entity can be a person or a group. Entities, in joining an association, become federated with the other entities making up the association by agreeing to the provisions of a covenant or compact. For example, each citizen of the United States is federated with all other citizens under the provisions of the compact, the United States Constitution. By the way, so are the states, such as New York and Florida. All entities in an association have equal standing; that is, each is subject to the same rules and opportunities within the association – at least to the degree the association is a true federation. But that does not mean all members enjoy the same status, and this posting is dedicated to delineating what a variance of that attribute means.

In its most simple terms, status is a reflection of how much leadership standing a particular entity either has or is thought to have. In terms of other entities, there is deference to those who have higher status and this deference takes the form of respect and willingness to do the bidding of those who hold higher status. Effective leadership might even solicit adulation. In a true federalist union, such deference reflects legitimate power relations in which leadership is exercised to further the aims and goals of the association. In short, status, effectively used, assists the association in fulfilling its functions within its environment. Status relates to the command structure within the association, and clear and legitimate hierarchies allow the association to be efficient and productive. That is true in any arrangement, but in a federalist arrangement, the tendency should be toward more horizontal organizational structures and less vertical ones. That is, all members in the federated union should be allowed and encouraged to participate in the different levels of decision-making that the group conducts.

There is an entire literature dedicated to these themes in the field of organizational studies. Current business thinking, particularly theorizing that relates to high tech industries, has promoted this more, but limited, federated way of defining manager-subordinate relations at the workplace. Incorporating the theoretical thinking of the developmental psychologist, Abraham Maslow, and his theory of “hierarchy of needs,” management is encouraged to institute policies that have workers actively take ownership over the firm's methods of producing and marketing whatever the firm's product or service is. This is mainly done by sharing, to the degree that it is reasonable, decision-making authority and responsibility. Names in this literature that have garnered a certain level of notoriety are Douglas McGregor (of Theory X and Y fame) and W. Edwards Deming (of Japanese organizational theory fame – see the work of William Ouchi). This whole trend in organizational theory can be traced, in this country, back to the 1960s and has been, I believe, mostly motivated in our country by the promotion of individualism. The concern seems to be how to make individuals self-actualizing workers.

This development, for the most part, has been welcomed as it replaced a total “top-down” approach that was bolstered by the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor and, later, by the systems approach (Elton Mayo). Here, motivational studies were highly influenced by modified behavioral psychology. Workers, under these views, were seen as being able to be manipulated in order to derive from them the highest possible levels of efficient and productive work output. The more modern approaches of McGregor and Ouchi have been a reaction to those theories, but how truly workers' roles are seen as federated ones with fellow workers and management is questionable.

The whole subject field of organizational studies is a complicated one. But my modest insights are more in line with what happens in schools. There, school reform can be highly advanced – I would say, can only have a chance – if school managements institute truly federated arrangements. Factors that need to be addressed are vision, trust, levels of agreement, professional practice and knowledge, institutional culture, norms, sense of morality, affect, and status allocation. From my experience – and I will concede that the variance between different sorts of organizations is quite extensive – schools offer significant challenges in instituting those changes that will lead to meaningful improvements. Status is very important to professional workers. Professionalism, as it has come to be understood in our modern world, indicates a way of making a living that entails high degrees of skills and trust among said workers and said workers and the general population. In both of these concerns, schools do not exhibit ideal levels of recognized proficiency. Whether or not teachers and other educators are worthy of the status of a professional is not my concern here. What is my concern is the lack of a recognized proficiency among our citizenry and the lack of resulting trust that hinders schools from meeting the expectations we might have of them. The whole situation demonstrates the importance of status and how a deficient system of allocating status can make an institution dysfunctional.

Whichever system of status allocation a particular organization adopts, it should be one that promotes not only trust, although trust is essential, but an affect of communality among the members of the arrangement. While I cannot give you any sense of a level or an amount of communality that is needed, one telling sign is: do the workers, group members, citizens of a particular populace, genuinely care what the answer to the question “how are you?” is? To the degree that they care is the degree to which a collective enjoys community among its members or citizens. As such, when the degree is sufficient, the association has a baseline level of status that each member enjoys and relishes. He or she is much more apt to truly want to pursue the common goals and aims of that association. Therefore, an organization or a society that wants to address its proficiency in meeting its self defined goals and aims – its vision of perfection – needs to address the role of status among its members.