WITH LIMITED TIME, A DEPENDENCY

As a civics teacher presents his/her daily lessons, that teacher should keep in mind that in those seats in front of him/her are filled with future adults who will be engaged in a multitude of ways to make a living and that most of their future day-to-day concerns will not be about what their governmental officials will be doing.  They will be concerned with family finance, other family matters, jobs, what’s up with their friends, what’s going on at church, and how their favorite sports team is faring.  What a civics teacher should be about is trying to increase the concern that students have about the privileges and responsibilities attached to their role as citizens.  My attempts in this blog have been to encourage a theoretical slant to that view, one that holds on to a belief and an emotional commitment; that is, I would want that student to begin viewing his/her citizenship as an agreement, an agreement to be a partner with his/her fellow citizens in this project we call the United States of America.  This includes the view of the additional commitment of being a partner within his/her respective state (which in my case is the state of Florida). 

And as a partner, he or she is concerned generally about what is going on, what advances that partnership, and what adds to or detracts from the health of that partnership.  While all this is important, the average citizen can be reasonably pardoned if he/she cannot or will not engage in hours and hours of research related to those issues.  With all that goes on in daily lives, the amount of effort toward becoming knowledgeable and opinionated over these concerns – some being quite complex – will be limited.  How much time, on a daily basis, is it reasonable to expect the average citizen to expend on these civic concerns?  An hour or so?  That’s the time it takes to watch a round of the local news – which is mostly worthless in terms of these concerns – and the national news on TV.  We would hope the average citizen subscribes to the local paper and is able to spend some time at least skimming it for meaningful stories; you know, the ones that don’t cover the latest murder or “kitten up a tree” type of story.  There is an adage today that people don’t read the newspaper anymore, but instead “play” it with all the puzzles and games they print.  But there is always the percentage in the populous that has a heightened interest. 

They view and read more than just the minimum I just described – there is also that portion who views and reads a lot less.  But for those who go beyond the minimum but less than the amount political wonks put in, the function of the pundit is important.  These interested citizens go a bit beyond the hourly newscasts and skimming the paper; they watch news related networks like Fox News and MSNBC.  On those networks, there is a continuous stream of pundits.

And in turn, these citizens who watch and read more than the minimum and less than the “wonk” level, are important.  These citizens are important in that they still speak mostly in the language of the less informed but, being more informed, they can and do become influential among the general population.  People listen to them, if not the pundits, and how they decide to vote or think about an issue can have an augmented effect.  If you know little or nothing about a subject but feel compelled to act in relation to that subject, you might seek advice from someone you think knows more about it than you do.  At the same time, you will seek that advice from someone you can understand and whom you feel is not too different from where you stand in relation to that subject.  There is a literature associated with these phenomena.[1] 

So, if these citizens are influential and they, in turn, are influenced by pundits, how can we view these pundits?  Perhaps one way is to see them as forecasters.  We have weather forecasters and now we have political forecasters.  Their presentations follow a format; either they directly or by innuendo express what will happen if so and so is allowed to happen.  Their stock and trade is to convince viewers how prescient they are in warning the audience what will happen if the political universe is foolish enough not to follow their advice.  They might direct their comments about how good or bad a course of action is or will be, but the ultimate message is a warning.  For a better America, one should heed their opinion.  Of course, this general function can be extended also to columnists in the papers.  If you want to know about any bias on the part of these pundits, either from the network they are on or the paper that runs their column, one can guess quite accurately what side of the political divide they are on – there are exceptions and they are few in number.  What I want to focus on here is on how good a pundit is in forecasting and what some of the factors affecting this level of proficiency are. 

Philip Tetlock[2] provides an analysis of these aspects.  His overall judgment about how good these “political analysts” are in predicting is that they are not so good.  He grades them as poor at predicting beyond a year; they tend to think they know a great deal about what will happen in the future, a lot more than they actually do know.  It turns out that predictions termed as having eighty or ninety percent accuracy, in actuality are in the neighborhood of 60 to 70 percent.  By the way, I still feel that that rate is not bad.  But, he goes on, that when confronted with less than anticipated accuracy, these pundits do not “learn” from their mistakes and hold on to original claims or derived conclusions.  This means, Tetlock holds, that pundits are predicting only a bit better than chance; they are overconfident and do not benefit from their mistakes.  So right off the top, what the media should be about is benchmarking these predictions and if this were done, the thinking is that either these pundits’ modesty would increase or they would become better at their jobs.

But you might ask why, if the rate of accuracy is so low, does anyone listen to these people?  Well, this question is based on a faulty assumption.  It is based on the notion that people listen to become informed, to become educated.  No, this is not the reason.  People listen to pundits to have their already formed prejudices reinforced; they listen to those who already agree with them on the conclusions – what they believe to be true or good or bad – and can provide the arguments and selected facts that bolster those opinions.  Add to this the pundit’s trick to couch predictions in iffy language – such as, “there could be” statements – and the combination is enough of a hedge to allow the system to sustain itself.  But as we look into this form of political communication, we find even more layers to it.  For example, we find that both pundits and listeners are highly reluctant to question, much less change, their basic assumptions.  They might be willing to dabble with the truth or wisdom of those beliefs on the fringes of their belief structures, but the central tenets are untouchable.  They rationalize when confronted with direct hits on those beliefs.  For example, they might emphasize even greater harm if their advocated position is proven to be misguided, as in we’d better not tempt an even worse outcome by going down a particular road (we’d better not negotiate with Iran because it will use its leverage to bolster terrorists).  This is done when their warnings do not have anything to do with the issue at hand (currently preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons).

In the next posting, I want to pick up on Tetlock’s treatment of this question over forecasting and look at what a teacher can emphasize when instructing students on the role and function of pundits.  Such instruction, for example, can point out a benchmark system that students could utilize and then analyze a set of political pundits from various positions on the political spectrum over an amount of time (sounds like a great term paper project).  But this area has been understudied by the general media although there have been some attempts to judge the factual veracity of what pundits and politicians say in the media.  But since pundits play an important role for our citizenry, civics classrooms need to shine more light on what is going on with these “experts.”

---

[1] See for example Lloren, A. and Wuest, R.  (2016).  Are opinion leaders better represented?  Social Science Research Network, retrieved from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2733045 .

[2] Tetlock, P.  (2013).  How to win at forecasting.  In J. Brockman (Ed.), Thinking:  The new science of decision-making, problem-solving, and prediction (pp. 18-38).  New York, NY:  Harper Perennial.

A MILLENNIAL CONTEXT

It’s been a few years since we ushered in the new millennium.  The twentieth century is fading in our memories.  Some of its images are not missed; I can live the rest of my days without seeing another polyester suit from the seventies – how did I see the bright yellow sport jacket as cool?  But there are other aspects of the twentieth century we cannot afford to forget.  That century hit untold heights of inhumanity.

It’s not that inhumanity was invented during the 1900s.  Other centuries have had ample examples.  But due to a couple of “advancements,” our capacities to inflict harm, suffering, and death increased many fold.  These changes included industrialization and urbanization – products of mostly the nineteenth century – and a “crease” in history.  By a crease, I mean a turning point from traditionalism to modernism, a process that began before 1900 and continues today.  It is even expanding beyond modernism with its mechanical views of ethics and detached scientism.

Broad historical developments manifest themselves in a variety of ways.  This crease can be noted, for example, in the number of European colonies around the globe, particularly in Africa and Asia, attaining their independence during the century.  It is in those areas that we see the after-flow of the tension between the biases and interests of the developed and the lesser developed worlds.  Of primary focus are our problems with extreme religious groups and their accompanying tribalism.  On one side there are bureaucratic social arrangements that present themselves as legalistic rationalism that, to a great deal, have left behind as mostly unimportant the concerns for interpersonal relations.  At least, that tends to be the persona peoples ensconced in traditional settings and see their counterparts in the developed world.  Yet, the chasm is heightening with the developed world judging the other side as victims of superstition and dysfunctional familiarity that serve as breeding ground for corruption in those artificial nations’[1] polities and businesses.  Their polities are not judged to be based on the rule of law but on whom you know.

That’s our situation today, but during the last century, these countervailing focuses were found within “advanced” nations.  There, we had the deadly concoction of the modern advances – advanced technologies in killing – and the prejudices associated with the traditional.  Preeminent was the role that racism played in the carnage of World War II.

So, a central legacy of the last century is the ability to inflict pain, suffering, and death and the unresolved tensions between traditional modes of seeing social realities and the modernist and postmodernist views of social organizations.  This is the context of our central conflicts.  There are others, but this seems to be central thus far in the new (or mostly new) century.

---

[1] I write “artificial” in that many of these countries are the product of borders drawn by Western powers.

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.

---

[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.

---

[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.

I CAN’T DO WHAT?

There was a time when smoking was still tolerated in congested areas, but the concerns over it began to cause policies among private businesses and public spaces to change.  Most enclosed areas, public and private, are smoke free zones today.  But before this became the norm, you could find smokers, puffing away, in any sort of business.  One private business was the airlines.  In the transitory period between no restrictions and total restrictions, airlines had designated rows on their planes allowing passengers to smoke and rows where they were not allowed to smoke.  Richard C. Spinoli[1] uses this example to illustrate a second incidence in which some accuse natural rights defined rights (what he calls liberal rights) creating selfish scenarios which are harmful to the community.  As with the “rights illusion,” of which I wrote about in the last posting, this purported possibility is cited as causing or enabling less than admirable social conditions.  Let me illustrate.

The scenario goes like this:  suppose a person books a seat on a flight that is one seat short of being filled.  He buys the ticket and boards the plane to find that all the smoke free seats are taken.  Since he has the “right” to a smoke-free seat, he demands it.  The only option for the airline is to order another plane in which our passenger will be the only one flying along with a crew.  That is, since the person has a right to x, a non-smoking seat, he demands x.  If the right did not “exist,” then the person would have sat there inhaling the unwanted smoke.  I agree that the example is ludicrous.  Worse comes to worst, the airline would buy the seat back, perhaps at a premium to the passenger.  But I am sure not even that solution would be necessary.  Spinoli reviews other alternatives, such as seeing if another passenger from the smoke free seats would be willing to change seats with our disgruntled passenger.  Such options are short-circuited due to our passenger insisting his rights be respected and, therefore, he demands a non-smoking seat be assigned, as opposed to exchanged, to him.  Since the airlines have so many options that would avoid such a scenario, I can’t take this example seriously.  For one, the ticketing agent ascertains whether the perspective passenger is a smoking passenger or not and indicates how many seats in each category are available.  Of course, eventually the airlines instituted a no smoking policy for all seats – problem solved.  But this general tendency still remains – or at least in the argument presented by Spinoli – since a person has a right, he/she will insist on it even if by doing so, others are negatively affected.

Of course, any such right can’t interfere with others’ ability to pursue their rights.  In those cases, the right does not exist.  The old adage goes:  your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins.  An obvious example would be that you don’t have the right to steal someone’s property; to do so would interfere with that person’s right to own and enjoy his property.  But one can imagine legitimate cases when a right of one person, when exercised in a given situation, could make the quality of someone else’s condition less agreeable.  Does the natural rights view of rights and community encourage such situations?  Here is another case.  You are at a movie theater and a few seats over, someone begins using his/her smart phone.  The light is distracting.  The person has a right to use it and decides to exercise that right.  You have a right to see the movie in a reasonable environment:  no unnecessary noises, a relatively dark theater, acceptable volume level emanating from the speakers,[2] and so on.  In some large metropolitan areas, apparently this business with cell phones is still an issue even though movie theaters by and large have policies prohibiting the use of them during the showing of the featured film.  Here I disagree with Spinoli, I believe that living in the era of natural rights, there is a higher incidence of such disregard for the reasonable accommodations of fellow citizens.  The natural rights perspective encourages a “I have a right, and by God, I’ll do it” whatever “it” is and damn the consequences.  I have seen an increased level of such incivility during my lifetime – if it gets bad enough, death might seem appealing.

Here’s another bone of contention:  whether or not states should have helmet laws for motorcycle riders.  Such laws are uncommon in our land of the free; i.e., a positive law, one that tells you to do something.  In this case, we have an important difference.  Those who are negatively affected by the lack of such a law – that is, those not directly injured in some accident – are all of us who end up paying higher medical costs due to the treatment of uninsured cyclists who don’t wear helmets or other negative consequences due to higher incidents of brain damage.  On the other hand, those deprived of the right to go helmet-less are consciously affected by any law that mandates their use.  Would all this be alleviated if there were a more communal disposition among the citizenry?  Once cognizant of what is at stake, more people would readily, if not gladly, relinquish the right to have the breeze going through their hair and accept that the common good is enhanced by such a law.  That kind of reaction, for the most part, has been the case with mandating the use of seat belts in cars; I don’t hear much complaining over that requirement.

I would point out, though, that since I can readily list a few positive laws, it reflects the notion that we don’t have too many of them.  Yes, we have to file our income tax forms – a source of discord among so many, even though income tax allows us to have a more progressive tax code than would otherwise be possible.  But for the most part, the government through its laws enacts negative laws – laws that tell us what we can’t do.  Our liberal strain can be thanked for that.  But it can also be held responsible for a lot of our limited sense of communal responsibilities and a good deal of our incivility.  Oh, by the way, please turn off your cell phones at the theater; I, for one, appreciate it.

---

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

[2] Just had the opportunity to see the film, The Artist, on HBO.  Volume is not an issue since it is a silent movie, a delightful silent movie.

NOT ALWAYS A CASE OF MORALS

A while ago, I shared with you a portion of a TV show[1] in which a parent returns home at an unexpected time.  The parent walks in on his daughter who is engaged in a compromising activity with her boyfriend.  Of course, an argument ensues, mostly between the parent and the daughter – the boyfriend is allowed to escape – and that argument is conducted in the language of rights.  I believe Richard C. Sinopoli[2] would judge the incident as an example of a selfish disposition found in societies and causing deleterious effects.  He would also claim that such events are not exclusive to liberal societies, but for some reason, are highlighted in that many feel that liberalism causes or enables such behavior.  The general problem is characterized by people seeing a good deal of our conflicts as expressions – or a lack of expression – of morality because the conflict is misconceived as offending a “rights illusion.”  That illusion is:  “[b]ecause rights are such an essential aspect of a liberal political morality, they may be taken to represent the whole of morality.”[3]  Sinopoli gives another example.  That situation is of a “barbecuer” who barbecues close to his property line much to the distress of his neighbor.  The distress is not only the irritation caused by the smoke and smells suffusing over the neighbor’s property, but also that the smoke negatively affects the neighbor’s flowers.  Two points:  one, the “barbecuer” is not breaking any contractual arrangements or offending any of the rights of others and his behavior offers an example of what is acceptable, at least from a rights perspective; he is behaving in a perfectly allowable manner.  And, two, beyond that, he is offering an example of what “good” behavior is.  If he continues to distress his neighbor, that’s just too bad; he is acting within his prerogatives.

Obviously, I am being a bit facetious; even the most diehard libertarian would not deem such behavior as good.  But under the natural rights view, why would this person be immoral or, if not immoral, exhibiting behavior one would consider less than good?  Liberalism doesn’t give us a clue.  Let me point to another basis by which to judge what is going on with both the parent and the “barbecuer.” 

Once the discussion in a complex society shifts to rights, the mind takes on a contractual frame of reference.  I have written about contracts as those agreements in which two or more parties agree to some exchange:  I’ll do x, if you do y.  If you don’t do y, I do not need to do x.  I might do x anyway, assuming the contract does not prohibit me from doing it, but that would be at my discretion.  Other than the provisions of any contractual agreements I might be a party to, I am free to act as I choose.  I would point out that the vast majority of interactions one has with strangers falls under the provisions of law or contract.  Think about it; if you’re walking in a mall and see all the people around you, you are under the provisions of the contractual arrangement that governs the mall.  Now let’s see these interchanges from another perspective.  What if instead of a contract, the people involved are still under the provisions of an agreement, but the agreement is not a law or a contract, but a compact.  Here, agreement does not refer to specific events such as barbecuing or how sons and daughters will behave in the house or anywhere else.  Instead, the agreement establishes relationships that are governed by general principles such as respect, reciprocal tendencies, trust, and, in well-functioning relationships, some degree of affection.  And this relates to what I have referred to before:  how do you see – define – fellow citizens that are not family, friends, or others in which there exists no special relationships?  Sure, a parent has a special relationship with a daughter, but not with a neighbor.  What is best here?  In a society in which the natural rights perspective dominates, we tend to fall into the contractual mode of exchange.  In a federal perspective, we tend to fall into the compacted mode of exchange, an exchange mode in which the object is to seek a win-win outcome without a punitive response for non-compliance.  Compacted agreements can have punitive provisions, but these are usually for serious offenses against the compact.  What is sad to me about the prevalence of a rights view is how often even family conflicts – where there are special relationships – surge toward contractual language.

Let me confess to “sinning” along these lines.  The other day I wrote a check for a significant amount of money.  I was paying the fees to attend a series of social events to which I am looking forward.  I needed to send the payment to another city so I placed the check in an envelope and along with two other pieces of mail took the envelope to my mailbox.  Sometime later, the mail truck came by, stopped at our box, and left our mail.  I went out to get the mail and noticed our mailman didn’t pick up our outgoing mail.  This perturbed me, so I took our outgoing mail and walked up the block to meet the truck as it was coming down the other side of the street.  I, unfortunately, through my tone, expressed my displeasure even though the mailman apologized.  I turned and walked back to my house.  Guess what?  My payment got lost in the mail.  I don’t bring this up as an example of someone not meeting his/her contractual obligation; I’m not sure that is the case.  It could just have been a coincidence – mail gets lost, albeit seldom.  But, perhaps if I had taken a different approach, a more compacted approach, I would have avoided paying a $32 stop payment fee.  Just saying.

---

[1] Romano, R. (n. d.).  Men of the certain age.

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

[3] Ibid., p. 30.

THEY’RE NOT LOCKEAN

A lot of political, social, and economic waters have gone under the metaphorical bridge since John Locke gave us the first concise argument of liberalism – the liberalism that promotes a moral code based on natural rights.[1]  In that code, liberty is its trump value.  This view has been viewed by many, including myself, as encouraging, or at least enabling, a level of individualism that is counterproductive to the long term interests of a society.  Since our society has opted to adopt this view as its predominant perspective, I have tried to point out how such a collective decision has deleteriously affected the welfare of our nation.  Of course, not all theorists agree with this assessment.  One such thinker is Richard C. Sinopoli.[2]  What I find as is the case of these defenders is a good deal of reference to John Locke.  The problem is that he wrote in the late 1600s, and a lot has happened since then.

Let me contextualize my comments a bit.  I agree with some of what Locke had to offer.  His analysis of rights was necessary at a time when the chief enemy of federalist ideals was the lingering class of those privileged groups who inherited their privilege from the feudal legacy that still existed, albeit seriously challenged.  By advancing a sense of a social contract, it bolsters the federalist call for a binding covenant or compact to establish a polity.  The “natural” aspect of rights, as Locke wrote of them, in its way, leads one to assume a form of equality.  The binding process relies on free consent, a central quality of a covenantal or compacted union.  As such, individuals who so agree are consenting to the provisions of the agreement and swear (affirm) to such an allegiance.  The theoretical parting of the ways has to do with what the legalistic boundaries of such arrangements are.  Liberalism, legally (if not socially), gives the individual a license to pursue any course of action he/she chooses short of offending or prohibiting others from the same options.  Under this regime of constitutionalism, one is free to adopt whatever morality one chooses:  one can follow a strict Calvinistic code, a pragmatic code, or a licentious code.  The only limit, legally, is that one does not interfere with others’ choices.  Laws are, in part, limited to guaranteeing such ground rules.  I write “in part” in that the view allows laws to maintain security – a good question is:  does liberalism promote, tolerate, or ban compulsory military service?  Those laws that guarantee rights tend to be negative laws; i.e., laws that tell us what we cannot do legally – such as, steal.  They avoid, almost to total exclusion, positive laws; i.e., laws that tell us what to do – such as serve in a socially geared program such as the Peace Corps.  I write “almost” since we do find a few exceptions such as insisting people send their children to school if they are under a certain age.  The general disposition of this view when it comes to laws is:  let people do what they want to do.

I have two reactions.  One, Locke was not so “live and let live” in his outlook.  I would argue that what I just expressed above is the product of general liberal ideals being in effect after several centuries of political, social, and economic history.  Locke was highly opinionated about how people should live their lives and he extended such concerns over the content of laws.  For example, he argued for “working schools” for the children of the poor so as to strip them of the idleness which plagued their parents – why else would they be poor?[3]  He wrote as a champion of the burgeoning class of entrepreneurs who were burdened by the privileges of the idle nobility and of the idle poor.  He promoted laws that would favor business interests and found any inherited advantages as anathema to the common good.  But this moral disdain has been compromised beyond recognition, at least as it pertained to legal matters (and I would maintain, many social matters as well).  Today, the bias is, as good businesspeople would be inclined to cater to consumer whims, do your own thing and, by the way, my product will help you do it.  The forces of consumerism have not been limited to social domains, but have been extended to legal matters.  The one example I listed above, the mandated requirement of education, is currently under severe attack and I see charter schools as seriously undermining the whole ideal of meaningful education for the masses.

Sinopoli offers three incidents or arguments people offer to undermine liberalism’s concern for the common good.  One, people who are socialized to believe in rights – their view of rights having a mystical quality of being ordained as a natural condition – tend to adopt a “rights illusion.”  That is, they view rights as the whole of morality as I have argued that proponents have done, to a great degree, in our contemporary times (since World War II).  Two, people who come to believe they have a right will pursue it because they have the right at the expense of others’ welfare.  And three, those who meet with success tend to minimize or completely refute the role the community (society) has played in their success.  Sinopoli contends that the conditions these arguments reflect are not essential consequences of liberalism – as a matter of fact, these tendencies can be found in other systems.  But since they do exist under liberalist regimes, they should be addressed.  I will in the future review his treatment of these arguments, but for now, let me point out that Western nations, particularly the US, have significant portions of their populations that share in these tendencies and that their frequency is increasing.  I offer the trend in our political discourse as primary evidence.[4]

---

[1] Not a liberalism espoused by progressive Democrats.

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

[3] Kramnick, I.  (1992).  John Locke and liberal constitutionalism.  In K. L. Hall (Ed.) Major problems in American constitutional history, Volume I:  The colonial era through reconstruction (pp. 97-114).  Lexington, MA:  D. C. Heath and Company.

[4] For example, the surge of Trump in the polls and his popularity among primary Republican voters is, to a great degree, attributed to the attention the media has afforded this candidate.  The media outlets, one can argue, are not allocating that attention due to Trump’s positions on issues, but due to the number of readers and viewers his outlandish behavior has attracted.  The media is in the business of securing ratings or selling print.  Trump is a godsend, albeit not, a priori, anymore apt to secure the common good than any one of the other candidates.