A TRUER “AMERICAN CREED”

 

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

 

Recent postings have made a relationship between a sense of identity – how one places oneself in a given group such as a race or an ethnicity or a Yankee fandom – and the polarized politics the nation is experiencing.  The journalist Ezra Klein[1] cites the work of various social scientists that make that connection.  At the center of this association is race.

          There is a long history of such work, but it probably began with the work of Gunnar Myrdal.  His ground-breaking effort, An American Dilemma in 1944, while based on extensive data collected in the South, unfortunately seems to have left an inaccurate account of why blacks were being treated as they were in those states. 

In a few words, that view attributed the maltreatment of African Americans to an inability by vast numbers of Americans to live up to the prevailing beliefs of an American Creed.  That creed has upheld the traditional views liberty, justice, and equality.  The take-away was that Americans were basically a moral people with a moral consciousness but that somehow, what existed was behavior that was contrary to what millions of Americans believed to be moral.

          The solution therefore was for those Americans to just stop behaving as they had been doing.  This oversimplified conclusion has been the subject of extensive criticism.  Center to this criticism are questions about how Americans saw or see themselves.  These critics agree that the problem is not how people, mostly Southerners, don’t live up to their values; but rather, it is based on people having counter values to the American Creed when it came to others. 

That is, many – and not just Southerners, but Northerners and Westerners as well – just did not or do not hold beliefs extending these democratic rights and benefits to those who belong to other racial identities.  In terms of federation theory, what this blogger promotes, Americans in general did ascribe to federated beliefs but only extending them to those who were/are white.  They held on to what this writer calls parochial/traditional federalism. 

Historically, any improvement in the treatment of nonwhite was not the product of redefining federalist ideals, but due to the strengthening of natural rights ideals.  This blog has described how natural rights, in the years after World War II, became the dominant view of governance and politics.  One good consequence of that shift has been the betterment of the treatment of African Americans, but as one can readily see, that improvement has fallen way short of the standards the American Creed established especially in the nation’s founding documents.

What still remains is an ample set of ideals and values that prevailed before the natural rights view took hold, i.e., discriminatory beliefs against nonwhites.  Those anti or non-democratic views are deep-seated among too many Americans.  The remnants of the segregated past still live in the hearts of whites who feel no dissonance in how they view or treat blacks and other nonwhites. 

Instead, there exists a whole view of counter-norms that justify discriminatory practices that still uphold segregation in many aspects of social life, including living arrangements, employment practices, and social gatherings.  Psychologically, people influenced by these counter-norms are able to compartmentalize or re-interpret the American Creed.  Or it is what one might judge to be an extensive rationalization of what is taking place in terms of race relations.

This initial paragraph of an overview article gets at what takes place,

At root, racism is “an ideology of racial domination … in which the presumed biological or cultural superiority of one or more racial groups is used to justify or prescribe the inferior treatment or social position(s) of other racial groups.  Through the process of racialization … perceived patterns of physical difference – such as skin color or eye shape – are used to differentiate groups of people, thereby constituting them as “races”; racialization becomes racism when it involves the hierarchical and socially consequently valuation of racial groups.[2]

These observations of what is taking place are supported by the work of various other social scientists such as Maurice Davie, Ernest Campbell, Hubert M. Blalock and it leads one to understand that the challenge of instituting a true American Creed – true in the fashion Myrdal defined the term – is significantly more difficult than what Myrdal judged the challenge to be. 

Not living up to a standard is dwarfed by the fact that the standard was not held or not held to be moral as originally thought among too many Americans. 

This blog does not see the solution as giving up on the American Creed or its supporting federalist beliefs, but on insisting that those beliefs need to be extended to include fellow citizens whose ancestry goes beyond European origins.  That means, not only turning away from restricting inclusion to non-European based groups and individuals but to also reject radical individualism of the natural rights view with its narcissistic baggage. 

Instead, Americans should extend what David Brooks calls “relationalism”[3] – or what this writer calls liberated federalism.  As this blogger states in his book,

By calling upon civics educators to adopt another perspective, this book asks educators to accept an alternative view of governance and politics.  This other view aligns with the nation’s history but provides an updated version to address its earlier shortcomings and to meet current realities.  This other view can be called liberated federalism.[4]

This language, standing apart, does not communicate the difficulties associated with such a change.  But given how extensive and undeniable the related problems have become, perhaps the nation is disposed to making the necessary changes it needs to make to approach Myrdal’s American Creed.

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[1] Ezra Klein, Why We’re Polarized (New York, NY:  Avid Reader Press, 2020).

[2] Matthew Clair and Jeffrey S. Denis, “Racism, Sociology of,” Elsevier Ltd., 857, accessed December 15, 2020, https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/deib-explorer/files/sociology_of_racism.pdf .

[3] David Brooks, The Second Mountain:  The Quest for a Moral Life (New York, NY:  Random House).  This term relates to a related theory in sociological literature.

[4] Robert Gutierrez, Toward a Federated Nation:  Implementation of National Standards (Tallahassee, FL:  Gravitas/Civics Books, 2020), 16-17 – available through Amazon.

INACCURATE MENTAL BOXES

 

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

 Unfortunately, the psychology of tribalistic thinking reflects a very human way of thinking which does serve an essential function.  Humans form concepts or categories to help them deal with all the information that their senses observe.  Whether one calls them advance organizers or prejudices (when they are negative images), those ideas exist in “mental boxes” and they seem to have certain qualities. 

For one thing, people tend to hold a “parental” loyalty to those concepts, and they lead people to save time.  But since people do not give them sufficient thought, these conceptions have a tendency to lead them to false conclusions and that eventuality can and does result in serious consequences.

          Even among disciplined scientists, who do think about these ideas and go about defining them, reductionist thinking can lead to less than useful conceptualizing as those constructs convert to factors and variables.  Scientists are well aware of this problem and go to meaningful lengths to account for it.  But regular folks, by and large, do not take any steps to rectify any resulting mal judgements.  And as hinted at above, they lead to prejudices and, in turn, to serious behavior patterns against people who are seen as “others.”

          These last biased results happen or are augmented by other associated human tendencies.  One, they appeal of faulty reasoning, particularly believing that correlations necessarily indicate cause and effect.  Two, they encourage people to view others as being either members of one’s identity groupings or not belonging to them.  This is often based on groupings such as race, nationality, and ethnicity.  By so doing they engage in counterproductive Us vs. Them thinking.

          And when confronted by some messaging that points this out, the reaction is usually to somehow ignore the implied challenge or cite rational but morally reprehensible supportive information.  As just mentioned, for example, citing correlational statistics can support negative beliefs about members of some groups.  Then, unjustly, the belief is used to negatively judge a member of such a group and/or support policies that deny rights to members of those groups. 

Yes, crime does exist in greater frequency in disadvantaged neighborhoods, but it is inaccurate to attribute that crime to any identity groupings that inhabit those neighborhoods.  Instead, the more accurate judgement is that historical developments affecting those groups have led to their members experiencing the conditions that cause crime. 

For example, they have lacked economic opportunities, experienced maltreatment by those in the majority, and have been subject to those conditions that placed members of that minority where they find themselves (in the case of blacks, the whole history of slavery and Jim Crow laws are causal realities). 

And when one ascribes to an individual of such a group a negative characteristic, e.g., he/she is a criminal or likely to be one, that is unjust as well as likely inaccurate.  And on an associated level, it has been observed, “This ‘compensation effect,’ which occurs when we compare people rather than evaluating each one separately, … ‘If someone is competing with you, you assume they’re a bad person,’ [Amy] Cuddy says.”[1] 

This last factor has relevance today.  As jobs are being lost to low-wage countries – China, Vietnam, and others – or to automation, racial images become intertwined in these judgements.  Generalizing inaccurately, the racial factor becomes heightened by perceived competitive conditions.  Among the newly un or under employed, one might hear, “Those others – non whites – are stealing our jobs.”

This becomes, for example, fertile ground for bigoted propaganda that bases its messaging on such inaccurate and immoral prejudices toward individuals who happen to be members of other racial groups.  The individuals of those groups fall victim to being unjustly, inaccurately, and counterproductively classified.  And as such, serve as fuel for the current state of polarized politics.

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[1] Marina Krakovsky, “Mixed Impressions:  How We Judge Others on Multiple Levels, Scientific American, January 1, 2010, accessed December 9, 2020, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mixed-impressions/ .  Amy Cuddy is a prominent American social psychologist.

UNIFICATION FOR PLURALITY

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE NECESSITY OF EMPATHY

 

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

 While many people will readily believe that this nation, as any nation, probably has a number of incubating problems, they might question why they should really care.  Afterall, if they are incubating, they probably don’t have much of an effect on the quality of their lives.  But such problems can be, according to the journalist Ezra Klein, social/political explosives just waiting to burst on the scene and their ability to effect people can be extensive. 

Problems of racial relations, opioid use, loss of jobs to foreign producers, laws concerning firearms, tax policies and their effects on equality, abortion rights, etc. are or have been such problems.  Realization of such developments should encourage prudent citizens to know them and address them. 

In that vein, one would be helped to know why incubation of problems occurs.  It turns out and makes sense that a lack of empathy plays an important role.  This posting looks at why this is the case.  According to Klein and backed up by such experts as the American neuro-endocrinologist, Robert Sapolsky, it is difficult to engender empathy for people who do not belong to one’s defining, identity groupings.

          Relevant to this general condition, people view their identity along various domains.  They include the often-cited categories – e.g., race, nationality, ethnicity – but also less thought of classifications – class, careers, social relationships, religion, etc.  And with those categories in mind, when one considers the ever-present realities of life, most prominently the conditions of scarcity, one can see that economic/political conflicts are part of life. 

And often, people cannot resist defining such conflicts in terms of identity.  Both in terms of one’s emotions and what one sees as truth, identity classifications simplify those aspects of life both cognitively and emotionally.  Adding to the relevant mix of factors – factors that cause scarcity and factors that affect how people see scarcity and other social conditions – are ways people are disposed to define their identity.

          In turn, those factors not only determine membership, but also exclusion.  They assist one to identify those who don’t belong to one’s grouping.  The excluded lack some physical, social, economic, aesthetic, or some such quality or condition.  Those other people are seen not as individuals but as reflecting believed – often inaccurately – attributes that somehow “explain” any shortcomings they might be experiencing.  

These shortcomings might include full allocation of civil rights, economic standing, social recognition, or some combination of these types of rights or benefits.  For example, poverty, under such thinking, results from laziness; unjust treatment by authority figures results from criminal tendencies; unfair labor treatment results from illegal status such as is the case for many immigrants.  The point is these problems under the rubric of identity thinking targets groups, not individuals. 

Therefore, two levels of faulty thinking take place:  believing incorrect information and attributing inaccurately supposed group attributes (that might or might not exist) to individuals.  Or stated in more common language, people engage in prejudicial judgements.

Is this natural for people to do?  Yes and no.  It is natural for people to believe well of or empathize with people who belong to one’s perceived identity group; it is natural to not empathize and to hold in suspicion those who do not belong to one’s group.  Yet, to not empathize with other people proves to be inefficient and contrary to the common good. 

It stands in the way – through a variety of dysfunctional social arrangements and processes – of benefiting from the potential these perceived “other” people could contribute.  And given the realities of reciprocity, one can see how unjust treatment emanating from a lack empathy can lead to all sorts of social problems.

So, how can one encourage empathy?  What seems logical is for educators to plan and to implement appropriate civics instruction that at least approaches an important accomplishment.  That is, it identifies and respects what is natural; that is, the instruction recognizes the existence of prejudicial tendencies and does not underestimate the power of their influence.  People are prone to, in part, define their social world in terms of Us vs. Them. 

This suggests that, one, lessons need to point out this tendency and instruct students as to its inaccuracy.  Two, point out that a belief in these inaccuracies leads to inefficiencies not least of which is a less than an optimal economy that can miss providing many potential opportunities.  And three, provide instruction that exposes students firsthand to as many relevant realities as are possible and safe.

This third goal reflects another factor.  It turns out that empathy occurs more readily by experiences that expose a person to the actual, relevant events or conditions.  In the ideal, teaching a student about how migrant workers are treated would be greatly enhanced by students actually spending some time with these workers.  Short of that, videos of their treatment would be helpful.  Just reading about it would be less helpful.  The fuller the exposure is, the more likely an empathetic response will occur, and the more powerful the instructive impact will be.

So, to remind the reader of the initial question of this posting – why care about incubating problems? – the answer has to do with the practical concerns of what results from mistreated and mis-defined members of the polity.  Those problems are affecting significant numbers within the nation. 

That is, a society that harbors an inability to empathize with all identity groups making up the populous – or more accurately, with the individuals who makeup those groups – leads to dysfunctional conditions.  Those conditions are legal, political, social, and economic in nature.  It happens to be a losing proposition on many fronts.

THE ANGLO-SAXON INFLUENCE

 

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

This blog currently is looking at the effect identity, that factor that defines a person (for example, as an Irish American), has had on polarizing the American public.  While this has become particularly virulent, identity always exerts itself in politics.  It is ubiquitous.  And it is not only in politics but in other realms of life.  Take sports.  There, teams count on identities based on localities or educational linkages to sell tickets or paraphernalia to a fan base which results in gobs of money for those teams.

          Usually, such expression does not cause any or much antagonism – yes, there are the occasional fights and strains, but they are usually considered a source of good-natured ribbing or put downs.  One usually speaks of “bragging rights” if one’s team wins.  But of late, the identity factor is being expressed in the political arena seriously and persistently.  And when ethnicity, race, and/or nationality serve as its source, identity, as the historian Schlesinger warns, threatens to debase the nation’s unity.[1]

          Of course, this usually is related to immigration, but it also has to do with race relations, an ongoing source of animosity and violence in the nation’s history.  And it does represent, among unjustly treated people (due to their identity), legitimate protests – e.g., the Black Lives Matter movement. 

But a troubling question is:  to what extent should immigrant, racial, or indigenous groups divorce themselves from the nation’s overarching cultural base?  That is an argument that multi-culturalists pose and its aimed at the adoption of the Anglo-Saxon cultural base – the base upon which the nation’s culture has developed.

That base, it should be remembered, has provided the basic constitutional structures, processes, and legalities upon which the nation rests.  Of course, this reliance has not of necessity staved off influences from other cultures.  And the nation has during the years of its existence entertained and adopted elements of those other traditions. 

Most of them are aesthetics in nature.  Influences in food, music, art, and so on have been a continuous part of the American story.  But in addition, there are other areas – beyond aesthetics – in which varying cultural influences have made their marks.  For example, the whole notion of professional policing originates with the Romans, not with the Anglo-Saxons.

          But today’s expression of heightened allegiance to some political/national/ethnic based identity – an allegiance approaching or expressing a tribalism – does not originate from a communal sense.  It instead stems from an extreme individualism and, as such, reflects a nuanced concern.  David Brooks makes this connection.[2]  He explains how individualism allows for uninhibited natural motivations to go unchecked and part of that package of dispositions is to favor one’s tribe and to degrade other “tribes” – other nationalities, ethnicities, and/or races. 

The classic Us vs. Them mentality is spurred by such thinking.  And consequently, it becomes the fuel that feeds the polarization the nation faces.  One should point out, counterintuitively, and ironically, it serves to undermine the basic individualism that brings it to the fore. 

That is, the individual is subsumed under resulting movements by which this identity is expressed.  Again, the historian Schlesinger warns that the individual is absorbed into a united expression of national, racial, and/or ethnic messaging and his/her personage is subsumed with that process.  The analogy, a silly one, that illustrates the point, might be how people lose their identity when they apply makeup that exhibits team colors to the point one cannot identify who they are.

          But one should not misidentify this allegiance.  It is not an example of commitment.  It instead reflects a type of transaction.  The exchange is this mindless devotion to the source of the identity for an enhanced ego.  “I belong to this group, and it makes me special” is the basic message one projects.  Shouting “USA, USA” when so motivated is basically one that proclaims the shouter’s importance; he/she is an American and, therefore, superior.

And when this is expressed in terms of a nation, one can discover the main difference between patriotism and nationalism.  Patriotism promotes a sense of commitment that one is willing to sacrifice for the common good within the context of one’s nation.  Nationalism, instead, calls for sacrifice so as to be able to promote an expression of oneself. 

The main difference lies in this ultimate targeting, but one can describe it practically:  with patriotism one can protest what one’s nation does if what it does hurts the common good, where nationalism does not allow such a divergence from national policy or for some leader.

As for the Anglo-Saxon influence, why should one be an adherent to its provisions or basic ideals?  First, it should not be seen as a static entity.  It has a long history of evolving even before arriving on these shores.  It either adopted or developed those ideas and ideals that became this nation’s basic constitutional framework and not all of that originated in Britain.  And, in part, that framework calls for a commitment to a union of volunteers that comprises the American republic and its basic values and norms.

Within its tenets, it establishes a partnered arrangement among those volunteers to work toward the common good – a more perfect union.  And the path toward establishing this partnering was not arrived at smoothly.  Religious tribalism predated the other forms mentioned above.  Intolerance among the different Christian sects was common, not to mention the antagonism toward Jews.[3]  

But through them, usually for practical reasons, the evolving cultural base found itself accepting more variance within the population.  And with that, a level of secularization gained ground.

By doing so, that commitment to a partnered populous eventually became institutionalized.  Its adoption to a meaningful degree did not take hold until well into the nation’s history.  This commitment assumes and holds that any polarization in which the populous is divided into two uncompromising alliances – which religious divisions resembled – serves as an antagonistic expression to those federated ideals. 

It is instead a form of tribalism while the Anglo-Saxon based tradition – the one this nation inherited in a more crude form from the British in the eighteenth century and grew through complex developments – calls for a committed congregational arrangement.[4]  The two, the partnered view vs. the nationalist view,  are basically different.

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

[2] David Brooks, The Second Mountain:  The Quest for a Moral Life (New York, NY:  Random House, 2019).

[3] Kenneth C. Davis, “America’s True History of Religious Tolerance,” Smithsonian Magazine, October 2010, accessed November 1, 2020, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/americas-true-history-of-religious-tolerance-61312684/#:~:text=In%20the%20storybook%20version%20most,followed%2C%20for%20the%20same%20reason.

[4] More specifically, this congregational tradition stems from the Puritanical influence that in effect were being encouraged to leave Great Britain in the 1600s.  But one can argue, the established view of formal religion reflected the Roman Catholic Church’s vertical structure while the Puritanical congregation more closely reflected a traditional Anglo-Saxon tradition.  It is their congregational bias that seems to have encouraged the federal structure of the US, with its supporting processes, that this nation implemented.

IT’S A PRACTICALITY THING

 

[Note:  From time to time, this blog issues a set of postings that summarize what the blog has been emphasizing in its previous postings.  Of late, the blog has been looking at various obstacles civics educators face in teaching their subject.  It’s time to post a series of such summary accounts.  The advantage of such summaries is to introduce new readers to the blog and to provide a different context by which to review the blog’s various claims and arguments.  This and upcoming summary postings will be preceded by this message.  And, in addition, by this blogger’s count, this posting is the 1000^th posting of this blog.  Thank you.]

 

In the last posting, this blog shared research pointing out that organizations, including governments and their agencies, are subject to harboring “incubating” problems that can grow and burst upon either their personnel or the people they serve in very impactful ways.  Ezra Klein[1] makes the connection that such problems and their hidden qualities have contributed to formulating the nation’s current polarized landscape.

          The process by which this takes place can be best understood by reviewing case studies of such events but basically what happens is that those who are affected by such problems, in order to gain political advantage, find themselves teaming up with others.  These others are similarly looking for allies in pursuing their claims.  Since governments or political systems are not aware of the aforementioned problems and/or their potential to become virulent, the problems grow. 

This growth with the aligning that takes place, is a cycle that gathers steam and as Klein points out, “This sets off a feedback cycle to appeal to a yet more polarized public, institutions must polarize further; when faced with yet more polarized institutions, the public polarizes further, and so on.”[2] 

These cycles develop their own individual character and specifics, but one can find recurring factors that give each case its vibrance.  For example, the actors seek to satisfy the basic motivation to garner the political assets – in these cases, allies – so as to compete successfully over the issue(s) that they are addressing.  This has always been a basic strategy of weaker competitors,[3] but of late, traditionally powerful actors find the necessity to do likewise.

  By seeking allies, these actors have formed two grand alliances – a right of center alliance and a left of center alliance.  In doing so, each has subdued or found compromise within their ranks over their disagreements, have emphasized their commonality, and highlighted their distinction from the other alliance. 

In this, and this blog will address in later postings, the left of center is a more diverse group than the right of center group but each side, due to the collective size of its opponent, cannot afford to go it alone.  The result is a well-entrenched division not seen, possibly, since the days leading up to the Civil War.

This national arena falls woefully short from an ideal federated arena.  In that ideal state, one does have contentions between and among competing entities, but they are over discreet issues and their accompanying rewards and costs.  These distinct episodes are treated separately or in singular fashion and, therefore, allow those who compete one day can and will be allies the next. 

That is, these participants agree one day and disagree another day within the same congregation of fellow participants.  But when the issues of contention are connected as they are today, competitors and allies become the same set of characters over all the issues they confront.  This adds to any motivation an entity might have to vilify those who are not seen to be in his/her camp. 

This level of demarcation undermines any semblance of congregating in legislative bodies such as in Congress.  That legislative body has become two houses of well-defined belligerents divided into ongoing teams of opponents, the liberal/progressive team and the conservative/nationalist team.  This division simply reflects the electorate of today.

All of this did not happen overnight.  Each issue or area of concern has evolved during its respective incubating periods.  This blog outlined one such concern, that of immigration.  The right of center alliance on this issue was easier to form then the left of center alliance.  That is usually the case, but in terms of this issue, the left had to find accommodation between centered pluralist advocates and multi-culturalist advocates – a pair of well-defined rationales or perspectives that disagree on basic policy choices when it comes to immigration. 

Today, those differences lie just below the surface.  It, along with other divisions, will most likely reemerge when the overall polarization is settled to a workable level.  However, this is but one area of concern.  There are others, many others.  There is gun control, gay marriage, science, religion, business regulations, minimum wage, race relations, policing policies, infrastructure, abortion rights, etc.   Some of these seem to bind naturally to each other, some do not. 

And the binding among advocates can be strained at times, but practicalities push the advocates to look over, ignore, or otherwise find some way to get along with allies and to vilify opponents.  That, in a nutshell, is the current political, polarized landscape and the division seems to be growing and be further entrenched. 

One set of events that encapsulates this national scene was the 2020 election.  A great trivial question at some future date will be, which candidate for president received the second highest number of votes for the presidency in the history of the republic.  The answer will be the loser of the 2020 election.  One can divide the electorate as the pro-Trump faction and the anti-Trump faction. 

During the years of Trump’s tenure, an observation made was about how he would stoke up his base by some action or Tweet.  What wasn’t mentioned was that by the same behavior he would also stoke up the anti-Trump faction.  It happened that the anti-Trump faction proved to be larger on election day and hence it resulted in the Joe Biden victory.

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[1] Ezra Klein, Why We’re Polarized (New York, NY:  Avid Reader Press, 2020).

[2] Ibid., xix.

[3] E. E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People:  A Realist’s View of Democracy in America (New York, NY:  Hole, Rinehart and Winston, 1960).

WALKING A BEAT?

 

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

This blog has made a connection between the natural rights view and scientific research with its methodology.  It’s not that one engages in scientific research naturally.  It took humans a long time to develop science.  Humans are naturally too emotional to readily engage in objectified studies about what they find important.  Even the notion of advancing knowledge for its own sake would seem foreign to people until a few hundred years ago.  At its beginning, science even got people in trouble in that it questioned their more natural tendency to think religiously.

          Probably the most celebrated case of this latter development was the trouble that Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de’ Galilei had.  He actually claimed that the earth was not the center of the solar system; it, he claimed, revolves around the sun, not vice versa.  And how did he arrive at his “speculation?”  He used scientific methods including utilizing his telescope.  But that view flew in the face of religious dogma prevalent in the Western world.

Up to his time, knowledge or what was taken for knowledge, was primarily arrived at through logic (e.g., the work of Greek philosophers) or inspiration (e.g., the work of those who wrote the books of the Bible).  With the pioneers of science, observation became a third viable way.  Its advent was not met with open arms by those in power.  But because of its payoffs, science came to be seen not only as legitimate but essential.

          But can science be deficient?  A growing number of voices are beginning to question its power especially when it comes to the study of human behavior.  It seems that what is judged to be so efficient in the study of the natural world is insufficient in studying human endeavors.  Investigating many questions relating to humans in what they do and how they think and feel, science proves to be short-sighted especially when it comes to complex social arrangements. 

In political science, reductionism, narrowing a study to a limited set of factors or variables, seems to miss the richness of how and why humans behave the way they do in political and other related situations.  The shortfall occurs when those ways of thinking are applied to conditions that organizations exhibit.

          This blogger has posted online an “appendix chapter”[1] that reviews these shortcomings, but here he questions how scientific approaches affect other concerns.  That is, this problem does not only affect the advancement of political knowledge.  It also affects those professional fields that depend on political and the other social sciences as their personnel formulate policies and the implementations of those policies. 

An example of this, one that had to do with national defense, was the inability of Israeli intelligence to see the impending attacks that initiated the Yom Kippur War in 1973.  Organizations tend these days to rely on scientific, objectified protocols to help them determine policy, while their environs do not lend themselves to the reductionist methods sciences employ. 

They also fund scientific research to conduct organizational studies.  This bias, when combined with other institutional practices (e.g., group thinking or rational analyses of cost/benefits), leads to the inability to recognize growing, “incubated” problems.  They exist within their organizations according to research conducted by Sidney Dekker and Shawn Pruchnicki.[2]

These problems fester, grow, and eventually burst upon the scene like the attacks on Israel back in ’73.  This is not a matter of incompetent practices; those practices are responsible for organizations growing and being successful.  By so growing, these organizations become complex entities, and establish the conditions that potentially make the utilization of purely scientific research insufficient.

As this blog has indicated repeatedly, science is powerful.  Its ability to discover reality is without equal.  But in various ways it leads to false security as this Israeli example illustrates.  Through its reductionism it lacks richness.  The study of humans, especially, calls for holistic studies in which the richness of various environments or environmental elements can be considered and analyzed in their wholeness.  This often includes the emotional richness studied subjects bring to situations but cannot be reduced to measurable sets of finite variables.

This writer, from his own experience, can add another telling example.  He can remember, when he was quite young in New York City, the neighborhood policeman walking his beat.  This policeman, who was generally friendly, would capture his admiration as the man in blue who could expertly swing his baton or truncheon.  Such cops are depicted in old films, for example the film, Singin in the Rain. 

Then came the scientific-inspired systems theory to study large organizations – for example, the New York City Police Department – and that “walking” cop disappeared.  And with his disappearance, police departments, such as New York’s, lost a source of invaluable, holistic information.  This became serious in large cities.  While there is a good deal of rhetoric bemoaning this loss, especially with cases such as the incident with George Floyd, cost/benefit analyses prohibit that source's return.[3]

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[1] URL site for this appendix is https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSjZxpifP42VVnhFduKujgUDPJMddmcsh1uRY9DvpNicdYUONOHx56r1jRg4lgxK3ckaiQMJc4Gno0J/pub .

[2] Sidney Dekker and Shawn Pruchnicki, Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science, 2013, accessed July 8, 2020, https://safetydifferently.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/SDDriftPaper.pdf , 1-11.

[3] Apparently, cops do walk where people congregate but not in neighborhoods.  They are labor intensive and judged to being either inefficient or too costly.