LIBERTY AND CIVIC VIRTUE AS RIVAL IDEALS

To radicalize an idea, ideal or claim about reality is to believe the idea, ideal, or reality claim should always be held to be true or it should always be advanced above all other views or choices. This view or choice is determined to be the most appropriate, irrespective of the particular factors involved in any given situation under which the idea, ideal or reality claim becomes relevant. For example, in a given situation, if I radicalize the ideal of liberty, I would choose the option that promotes liberty no matter what else is going on. In terms of liberty, the most clearly stated expression of a radicalized view was issued by the presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater, when he stated, “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice!” People also forget that in his very next sentence, he doubled down his extremism by stating, “And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” Of course, one needs to define terms – like what we mean by liberty or justice – but however we define liberty, Goldwater's first sentence in effect chides us to pick, in a relevant situation, the option that advances liberty the most. I believe that much of a given philosophy is about radicalizing an idea, ideal, or some claim of reality. Post structural/post modernism, for example, relies a great deal on the truth that the meaning of symbols is dependent on the context in which they are used. The implications of this insight can be far reaching, but should it be the basis by which we view all social reality? I don't think so and I find the whole approach of radicalizing ideas, ideals, or truth claims to be mostly counterproductive.

I have, in this blog, reviewed the mental construct, natural rights, and have pointed out that that construct holds liberty as a trump value. In its more extreme forms, as in libertarian thought, the ideal, liberty, becomes radicalized. In the extreme, the ideal takes on an antagonistic posture toward other ideals such as civic virtue. This is true, not so much in theoretical terms, but in practical terms. Richard Dagger provides the following definition for liberalism – the more philosophic term for natural rights – which is authored by Lance Banning: “… [A] label most would use for a political philosophy that regards man as possessed of inherent individual rights and the state as existing to protect these rights, deriving its authority from consent … .” ¹ Dagger goes on to describe civic virtue as follows: “Someone exhibits civic virtue when he or she does what a citizen is supposed to do.”² How do these two ideals relate to each other? On the surface, I think it is self evident that these ideals are relevant and important to civics. But how they relate to each other is not so self evident.

In my presentation of these ideals in earlier postings, I have expressed agreement with Dagger in that I don't see the ideals as necessarily antagonistic to each other. They are distinguishable from one another but not, in essence, incompatible. There is a tension, though, between the two when one of them is radicalized. This happens, for example, when liberty is radicalized. If a person acts under a radicalized view of liberty, there will be times, probably often, when practically unrestrained behavior, even if limited by legal restraints, will lead to self determined choices that have no concern for what is supposed to be done. These behaviors will be aimed to advance self interests at the expense of the common good and such acts, by any practical consideration, do not constitute doing what one is supposed to do. To express such a concern, as I am doing here, does not indicate that one is anti liberty or anti civic virtue. The problem is in the radicalization.

Let me review, before I expand on how the two ideals can be at odds, on how the two not only can be compatible, but also how they must be compatible. If for no other reason, a necessary compatibility between the two lies in the reality that no case exists in history – at least in modern history – in which a complete disregard for liberty leads to a citizenry that can be dedicated to the more noble aspiration to do what is supposed to be done. Yes, there have been cases in which inspirational leaders have established regimes in which liberty has been squelched, but the duration of these regimes is limited. To some minimal degree, people will only be concerned with what their behavior should be when each person has a sense of liberty to decide what to do. Total coercion, which is a total lack of liberty, might solicit obedience for a time – in some cases, a long time – but the costs of maintaining the means of coercion will finally become too high and forces, to institute liberty, will find ways to express themselves. The most recent expression of this generalization is the Arab Spring.

Under conditions of coercion, the common good would not only be hard to find, but also hard to define. Under such conditions, civic virtue will be in short supply in everyday intercourse between citizens. As a matter of fact, to our modern eyes, civic virtue will be expressed by actively revolting against such coercion. In short, liberty is a social condition that is part of the common good.

Again, I don't want to leave you with the notion that the natural rights construct or traditional liberalism radicalizes liberty. Only with adopting an extreme version, such as becoming a libertarian, does one approach doing so. Presently, libertarianism has, through the Tea Party, become somewhat popular and is extensively covered on national TV and other media. My concern is that such exposure helps to popularize libertarian ideas, ideals, and reality claims. Further, I worry that all of these mass media treatments, in a perverse way, will encourage secondary students to accept more radicalized versions of natural rights' views. I would hope that even if a civics educator does not accept a more republican view, such as federation theory, to guide his or her choices of course content, that such an educator would become familiar with a more communal approach and use its concerns to formulate appropriate classroom questions. These questions would be designed to make the more extreme nature of what is being espoused by radicals apparent. Whether or not a student accepts and adopts such views is his or her prerogative, but such a choice should be based on reasonable and responsible reflection on the implications such a choice implies.

Teaching about conflicting ideals is not easy. Part of immaturity is a lack of the ability to appreciate subtlety and nuance. In teaching secondary students, a teacher needs to be careful not to present ideas, ideals, and/or claims of reality in such a way as to encourage students to radicalize them. There is a natural tendency not only among teenagers, but also people in general, to radicalize beliefs or values. We easily divide reality into either-or perceptions. Good or bad, goodness or evil, right or wrong, liberty or tyranny are just a few of these “bi-polar” divisions. But reality is seldom so easy, and this can definitely be said of realities relating to issues that make up the subject of civics.

1Daggar, R. (1997). Civic virtue: Rights, citizenship, and republican liberalism. New York, NY: Oxford. Quotation on p. 12.

2Ibid., p. 13.

A CONCERN: DETERMINING WHO CAN VOTE

The dust has settled. President Obama won and the House of Representatives is still under the control of the Republican Party. Actually, all the characters making up the leadership of our central government are still in place. Perhaps, with the beginning of his new term, the President's cabinet will probably have new personnel, but not yet. I shared, in a series of three postings not so long ago, what I learned from the latest election. With this posting, I want to share a concern I have that emanates from that election.

Apparently there was a concerted effort to deny many of our fellow citizens the opportunity to vote in a reasonable fashion. Central to federalist thinking is the promulgation of the principle that a governing process must give those affected by the actions associated with any endeavor a say in what happens relative to that endeavor. This principle applies foremost in regard to the endeavors of our government. Our main method, but not our only method in having that say is through voting. While the right to vote is not guaranteed directly by the Bill of Rights, it is considered a central right – it makes our claims of being a democracy meaningful.

So when there seems to be a planned and concerted effort to deprive significant numbers of citizens the ability to vote or to make it so unreasonably onerous to vote – as in unreasonable wait time in long lines snaking themselves into polling places – this federalist principle is being violated. During this last election, I personally know some people who waited over four hours to vote here in Florida. It has been charged against the Republican Party that they engaged in such efforts. I will not pass judgment on whether the charges against the Republican Party are true or not. The charges originate from the fact that it was in states run by Republican governors and legislatures where the most egregious laws making it more difficult to vote were instituted and where the longest lines were. The methods employed in making voting more difficult were either eliminating some early voting dates, a provision I will not include in my comments below, or by making new demands in terms of voter identification. The word here in Florida is that the primary voting ID, a driver's license, is going to be more difficult to obtain in the future for everyone, but especially for anyone who has had a change of name – such as most married women (heaven forbid if a woman has been married multiple times). The accusation has been made that such policy changes have been put into place to deprive or make it more difficult for minorities, low income citizens, women, and others who are more likely to vote for Democratic Party candidates.

True? I don't know for sure – no sense going into what I believe regarding anyone's guilt – but what I do understand to be true is the legal standard these policy changes must meet in order to judge whether what has been done meets constitutional mustard. Answering this question brings me back to an issue I addressed in a recent posting titled The Neutral Corner (posted November 19, 2012), which gives a short history of how our courts have established a bias for the right over the good. That is, the courts are working under a bias supporting our rights, like freedom of speech, over what the people's legislatures consider the good, such as legislation to control spending on political campaigns, to be. I argued that such a bias has helped institutionalize those forces that have encouraged a movement away from more federalist views which endorse the right of local communities to define the good for their people. The movement has been toward the ideal that individuals are free to make such determinations for themselves. This latter view is well ensconced in the prevailing political beliefs of our times. I have given that mental construct the name, natural rights construct. The bottom line here is that such a view has led us to a neutrality when it comes to public policy. I reluctantly accept that that is how we view such concerns and that that is not going to soon change. We are, for the foreseeable future, strong believers that government has a limited role in projecting on us what it believes to be the good even if that version of the good reflects what the majority of the community in question believes. This is not to say that jurisdictions cannot pass legislation to advance some view of the good. But the jurisdiction has to be certain that such attempts do not counter a more heightened view of what are considered the rights of citizens. All this leaves us with the question: what constitutes rights?

In terms of voting, which is what we are concerned with here, is it a right? Is it a basic right? Well, federalist theory believes it is for the reasons I outlined above. As a matter of fact, in the most important footnote found in any Supreme Court decision, Justice Harlan Stone in United States vs. Carolene Products Company suggests Fourteenth Amendment rights should especially be used to protect people's rights when legislation hinders access to the political process. I would claim that voting is central to that access. How should this protection manifest itself? That protection is exercised by courts. Under this heightened role, courts will only give their constitutional approval to laws that have been enacted under certain conditions. Lawmakers first need to make a reasonable and successful claim that the interest the state has in passing the legislation is of such importance that limiting a Fourteenth Amendment right¹ is justified. A famous example is a law prohibiting a person from yelling fire in a crowded theater which would limit free speech. And second, that claim will be only successful if the state can provide evidence that the interest of the state in question is being harmed by some tangible evidence, some real condition in fact. What could be a state interest? Something such as public health or safety, as in the example I just stated, are legitimate state interests.

So let's apply this to the 2012 election and laws that in effect limit access to voting. The interest stated was that the state was concerned with fraudulent voting. The claim was that people were voting who did not deserve to vote. The legislatures of these states said that to prevent this fraudulent voting, a person showing up at the polls needs to show appropriate ID. In many states it had been the case that utility bills or the like were sufficient IDs. The newer laws called for state identification cards such as a driver's license. What becomes problematic with these provisions is that in many cases the added requirements unduly affect certain demographic groups such as low income people. By demanding, for example a driver's license, those who do not drive, often the case with low income voters or the elderly, are discriminated against. Yes, these citizens can now get some other state ID, but that calls for a process that can be quite daunting or inconvenient and often requires people to take off from work. In some states the changed law made it more difficult to obtain these state identifications such as the case in Florida I alluded to above. But doesn't the state have a legitimate interest in having only those people who are legally allowed to vote vote? Of course it does.

But if voting is a basic right, as the cited footnote above suggests, then the burden is on the state to prove that such fraudulent voting is not only taking place, but taking place in large enough numbers as to undermine the validity of an election. Stated in other words, lawmakers need to document that there is enough voter fraud to warrant a change in the law and that the change reasonably addresses the conditions that led to the fraud taking place. Republicans have not provided that evidence. And they haven't been able to do so due to a lack of trying – they have tried extensively. Many argue the evidence is not forthcoming because the necessary levels of fraud simply do not exist.

Let me take this line of thought a bit further. From the history of this jurisprudence – a bit of which I wrote of in The Neutral Corner posting – we know that a judicial debate has been going on over what rights should be protected by the courts. Each side of our political divide – liberals and conservatives – have been extra keen to protect different rights. Conservatives have been very interested in protecting contract and property rights, as in the case of rights of employers and employees being able to bargain over conditions of employment – such as hours and wages. On the liberal side, progressives are concerned about political participation rights, legal rights (such as having legal representation), equal access to public services (such as education), health care, and rights such as free speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of association (especially in terms of labor union membership). In short, they have been concerned about rights that are affected by economic inequalities. Conservatives, given the political issue in question, also share in their concerns over some of these same rights – such as right wing advocates wanting their right to contribute to political campaigns protected under the freedom of speech provision. But what I do want to emphasize is the notion of rights which are endangered by economic inequality.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke of the dangers faced by the “necessitous men [and women].”² In his four freedoms, two freedoms come to bear on this discussion: freedom from fear and freedom from want. FDR claimed we can't have equal rights when there are extreme economic inequalities. This concern brings us to where we started: in order to have a say in our common politicking and governing, each of us has to be so situated in economic terms in order to have a reasonable voice in what is being decided. The attempts to limit the vote in this last election demonstrate how some will disregard this aspect of freedom. State legislatures and governors – who are powerful officials – might be so inclined to act or attempt to act in such a way as to limit the less privileged from participating.

1 Fourteenth Amendment rights are designated as what the amendment calls due process rights and equal protection rights. From court interpretations these include most of the rights listed in the Bill of Rights and certain other rights that are considered central to our political culture and tradition.

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

A NATURAL BASIS

A few postings ago, I addressed what it means for nations to be modern. I used the views of sociologist Philip Selznick¹ to emphasize the overall effect of modernization focusing on how it has encouraged a more self-centered individual – a citizen who lacks sufficient concern for his/her fellow citizens. Of course, this does not describe everyone who lives in a modern nation. I believe it still doesn't describe most people. But it does describe a tendency or trend in which more and more citizens seem to be becoming that type of person and the tendency is becoming more obvious and consequential. In different modern nations, this tendency takes on varying avenues of development. I have mentioned in this blog how the adoption of the natural rights construct to guide our instruction of government and politics has enabled the drift toward self-centered-ness. One can consider this adoption one of the ways our nation is expressing its modernness.

Symbolically, the latest illustration of this trend, I believe, is the recent expression of thousands of citizens indicating that they wish their state, such as Texas or Florida, be allowed to secede from the union. I know, I know; it's just so many citizens blowing off steam after the results of the last election. While I haven't seen any analysis of the people signing this petition – ironically an opportunity provided by the White House website meant to solicit citizen input – I'm sure most of them are not only Romney voters but also advocates of the extreme right agenda. How can I make a logical connection between expressing a wish for secession and selfish dispositions? I can because the extreme right agenda has been based on libertarian thought and that thought has been one that champions an extreme individualistic view of citizenship and economic participation. Under the guise of promoting liberty, their concern can be easily seen as looking out for number one. You might disagree. Fine, but that's my take. If you don't agree with that example, this blog has offered a multitude of other ones that illustrate a more self-centered citizenry than what was once considered good citizenship.

To counter this trend, the mental construct that I have proposed in this blog, federation theory, calls for a citizenship that is armed with a moral sense that is outer-directed. That is, as citizens, individuals have obligations and duties toward fellow citizens and those obligations and duties take many forms. Federation theory unabashedly promotes a curriculum in our schools, for example, that presents to students descriptions and dilemmas that call on them to contend with moral questions based on the obligations and duties citizens have for each other. But from where do these moral tenets originate?

One of the trends associated with the modern has been a move toward the secular and away from the religious. Selznick addresses this. He mentions that one way this trend becomes known is by the realization that morality in modern culture is no longer discovered but created. Let me restate the central ideal of the natural rights position, the prevalent view of our politics: you have the right to do what you wish as long as you do not hurt others or impede others from having the same right. But the question remains: what constitutes “hurt” or hurting someone else? In traditional society or a society that was traditional in the not so distant past, religion tells people what constitutes a trespass. But with the modern, this source loses its legitimacy. We can't rely on discovering what a god determines the moral is and this includes defining the “hurt.” And this doesn't even address someone having to choose between options that promise to hurt someone else no matter how one chooses. In such a case, one often faced by governments, how do you choose? What serves in place of a holy book for the source of what is moral in an ever more secular society?

Selznick points to the argument offered by those who believe in naturalism as a source of ethics. Citing John Dewey, he points out that following nature, which we are definitely a part of, gives us hints or even provides explicit lessons in ways morality can be defined. I believe federation theory relies primarily on a naturalist view. It presents a moral basis for two very important natural aspects of being human. We are both social animals and we are individualists. Past postings have described how this construct gives due respect to these two aspects of our nature. On the other hand, the competing constructs among academics who work to advance the thoughts of one of these views, natural rights or critical theory, express a definite bias toward one of these aspects by emphasizing one of them at the expense of the other. Natural rights emphasizes our individualistic nature at the expense of our social needs and critical theory does the opposite.

Let's put some context to this vague notion:

We may readily agree that the workings of the cosmos – including natural selection in biology – are careless of moral outcomes; that morality is indeed an artifact of mind and spirit, a world our “won ideals have fashioned.” But this fashioning does not take place in a vacuum; it is by no means wholly arbitrary or autonomous. Biological, psychological, and social conditions affect the reach, realism, and relevance of moral ideals. A morality that does not transcend nature may be unworthy of the name; but one that is out of touch with nature invites corruption, defeat, and opportunity forgone.²

Selznick, by so writing, shows us how morality becomes again a subject to be discovered, not totally constructed or imposed. At least we can believe this in terms of morality's outer limits or boundaries. Nature, in all its forms including the human, provides the consequences that outline what is permissible and what is not in moral terms. Pollution generates toxins injurious to our health and injustice generates behaviors injurious to our long term aims. Literature fills its pages with our innate understandings of these connections between what we perceive our desires to be and our modes of behavior geared toward attaining those desires. We must even judge the desires themselves. But it is behavior that has natural consequences and we cannot escape that reality – hence, a basis for defining the moral.

1Selznick, P. (1992). The moral commonwealth: Social theory and the promise of community. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

2Ibid. pp. 18-19.

HIDDEN CHALLENGES AND THEIR ORIGINS

A teacher facing a class and charged with instructing students about the governance and politics of their nation has a somewhat unique responsibility not faced by other teachers. Sure, in some way or other, all teachers have unique aspects regarding their subject matter and their duty to teach it. But in this posting, I want to relate what I find unique about teaching civics and government. I believe that when the job is to teach about these areas, a teacher is dealing with a subject that begins and ends with moral issues. In between there are other types of issues – resource availability and distribution, power arrangements, egos, histories of relationships, and the like – but in the end it's about “who gets what, when, and how,” as Harold Lasswell pointed out, and who should get what, when, and how as Daniel Elazar pointed out. These questions can literally be about life and death, or they can be about progressing toward or away from ideal states when the ideal is a reflection of values, mores, customs, and varying degrees of thought-out theories concerning life both at the individual and societal levels. The teacher faces a group of youngsters who already have embedded within them prejudices and dispositions even before the teacher begins a lesson. In most cases, the outlooks they hold are not even consciously recognized, but are the innermost springboards for how they will respond or react to words or images that the teacher will present to them.

Recent work of cognitive scientists has been shedding light on how these mental recesses function not just for secondary students, but for adults as well. One cognitive scientist is George Lakoff. In this posting, I want to share one the fundamental insights he establishes in his book, Moral Politics, and apply it to the challenge our teacher faces every time he or she introduces a new topic.

Suppose I, as a civics teacher, begin a lesson by asking the following: should an emergency room at a nearby hospital provide medical care to a person brought in with a serious medical condition but who has no means to pay for the care? Some students will readily agree that care should be given and express their surprise that I would even ask such a question. For those students, it's just common sense that such treatment should be forthcoming to a person so in need. Others will probably say “of course not” and again ask why I would ask such a question. Their take is that if you need to “purchase” a good or service you should be ready, willing, and able to pay for it. Yet, while others will simply say they don't know, for many of the students who do “know” it's just a matter of common sense. While I don't know what the distribution would be in a given class among those expressing the different possible answers, I was always taken with how many students see their responses as merely expressing the obvious and not be able to appreciate the complexity of such a situation. Yet, even when seen as common sense by many in the class, the fact that not all agree begs the question: so, how common is this sense?

This situation poses the following concern for a teacher who doesn't want to simply impose a “right” answer to the question of whether treatment should be given to the indigent patient. The teacher must probe the situation in such a way as to not turn off either the students who “know” the patient should be given treatment or the students who “know” that the patient should not be given the treatment. Lakoff addresses this seemingly troubling challenge. He writes:

One of the most fundamental results in cognitive science, one that comes from the study of commonsense reasoning, is that most of our thought is unconscious – not unconscious in the Freudian sense of being repressed, but unconscious simply in that we are not aware of it.¹

In order to visualize these unobservable mental operations, Lakoff has conceptualized two categories of such unconscious systems of basic inclinations that go into forming the content of our “common sense.” The two categories are metaphorical common sense and radical categories.

Metaphorical common sense operates when we unconsciously see some type of reality in such a way that we are susceptible to accepting a certain language of reference. That is, the language refers to the reality in question – the case of the indigent patient, for example – as exemplifying some other simpler reality that is similar enough to stand in as an organizing vision for that which is less understood. For example, if in my question above, a student is inclined to believe that the above patient should get the needed treatment, a narrative could be one relating the incident to a child needing help from a parent. Such a student might argue that like that child, the government, the proxy parent, makes it illegal to turn away such a patient. The metaphor of a family with parents making sure the children – citizens – are taken care of, at least as far as providing essential things in life such as health care, is quite common in our political literature. On the other hand, a student who argues against the help might use a related image of tough love parents. These parents are willing to administer the harsh lessons of life that teach the would-be patient and others that there is no such thing as a “free lunch” in this world. By doing otherwise, the government or the hospital would be subordinating irresponsibility.

Both use, as often is the case when alluding to government, the metaphor of a family to devise explanatory narratives that reflect deep seated biases. One possible metaphor is that of a nurturing parent in this family arrangement. Such a bias would probably favor providing assistance for our indigent patient. The other version or bias, the one that would deny the treatment, could possibly rely on a strict parent metaphor. Such students would be concerned with the precedent such treatment would set and make it more likely that others would learn that one needs not worry about being indigent when it comes to health care.

Again, the other category of unconscious biases is what Lakoff calls radical categories. Radical categories refer to those tendencies people have in wanting to cast others, who have certain similarities among them, with certain characteristics which are not justified given the facts relating to those so categorized. Lakoff identifies a list of radical category types or prototypes. I won't list them here – get a hold of the book for his complete review – but one of them, to give you a sense of what Lakoff is referring to, is “typical case prototype.” In this type, all members of a group share characteristics unless otherwise distinguished. If someone is described as an American, the bias might be to visualize a white male Protestant. If I said a bird, a common bias is to think of a feathered flying creature the size of a robin or cardinal. In discussion, these biases can and often do conjure up images of reality that can easily be misleading or they can betray or be instrumental in formulating conscious beliefs that are over-generalizations – a primary source of prejudices.

The danger is that in a discussion about our needy patient, a teacher unaware of the varying biases which lead to unfounded conclusions about the situation can find it difficult to discern the unconscious mental origins of the thoughts students express. If a teacher is so disadvantaged, he or she might find it difficult to question the student in such a way as to solicit appropriate introspection. The student, if challenged ineffectually, might simply dig in his/her heels and not entertain any further considerations. Such an interaction between teacher and student can easily end in frustration for the teacher – the purpose of the lesson not being met – and a student who might feel a range of emotional reactions that are counterproductive. These might be the sense of being picked on because he or she doesn't share the teacher's opinion or self- righteousness for standing up for what is obviously true, in the student's eyes, against the authority of the teacher.

This posting is meant to simply present this area of concern. I hope to address it further in the future. But let me conclude this take on this problem area by pointing out again that I believe this concern is somewhat unique to civics and government teachers – at least to the degree it pertains to current societal issues that are very much confronting the nation's citizens on a daily basis. Not only is confronting these unconscious biases germane to civics' discussions, but the biases also pose hurdles to teachers which are highly varied and possibly intense in a given classroom. 

 

1Lakoff, G. (2002). Moral politics: How liberals and conservatives think. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Quotation on p. 4.

ABSTRACTION AND MOTIVATION OF FEDERATION THEORY

I want to address, in this posting, the final two concerns in my critique of federation theory. In the past, I used the ideas of Eugene J. Meehan¹ to evaluate the three separate mental constructs I have presented in this blog: the natural rights construct, critical theory construct, and federation theory construct. Each of these constructs is or can function as a theoretical guide to educators in determining content in the study of civics and government. In terms of my postings which evaluated federation theory to date, you can check the postings of June 29, July 13 and 30, August 10 and 20, and September 3 and 14, all in 2012. Each of these postings looks at federation theory by taking one of the seven criteria Meehan offers and applying it to the content the construct would have an educator incorporate in the study of civics and government. In addition to the seven Meehan concerns, I indicated that two criteria should be added: the abstract level of the construct's content and its motivational quality. This posting utilizes these added concerns to conclude my evaluative review of federation theory.

I believe these two concerns, while separate, are highly related. Their meanings are fairly straightforward. Abstract level refers to how much the construct's information or images contain elements of reality which constitute the phenomena it describes or explains. Any representation, by necessity, has to strip elements of reality from it. For example, if I asked you how your day was, you would not be able to convey every little bit of reality that made up your day. If you had gone to the movies during the day you would very likely not tell me the color of your seat or whether it was cushy or not. The more you leave out, the more abstract the information is. Scientific research is known for its abstraction as a scientist tries to distill the causal factors that account for some occurrence or condition.²

Motivational quality simply refers to the potential a body of information has in soliciting interest on the part of an observer or consumer. Of course, the motivational quality of any material varies among the people who are exposed to it. What's interesting to me might be downright boring to you. But there are certain general aspects about motivation that we can abstract that help us explain why some presentations tend to be more motivating than others. Such characteristics as relevance, understandability, entertainment, curiosity, challenge, and the like are some of those aspects. These are generally seen as qualities that enhance the motivational quality of information or other symbolic presentations.

The connection between abstraction and motivation zeroes in on the quality of understandability. It is hard to see any presentation or activity being motivational unless it is at least understandable to the learner or consumer of the content to some minimal degree. Whether the presentation or activity meets this minimal degree reflects on the sophistication of the person consuming the information. Sophistication in a given area, in turn, reflects the level of abstraction the consumer can handle in dealing with the content in question.

There have been two particular theorists whose ideas help us see this relation between sophistication and abstraction and which I want to highlight. They both understood that the abstract level of information is dependent on the media in which the information is presented. Some modes of presentation, by their very nature, contain more or less of the reality contained in the situations or conditions described or explained. Before identifying these pioneers, let me make the central point of this posting: in order for presentation media or instructional activity to be motivating, the presentation of the content must employ an instructional effort that suitably matches the sophistication level of the student vis-a-vis the content being taught. This is done by employing appropriate levels of abstraction or lack of abstraction in the media employed. Some media, simply due to the nature of the media, will contain more or less elements of the reality being addressed. The general trend is that the less sophistication the student has, the less abstract the media needs to be. Conversely, the more sophisticated the student is, in relation to specific content, the more abstract the media can be. While for the lesser sophisticated students, in order to be successful, lower abstraction media can be considered necessary, for higher sophisticated students, higher abstraction media can be considered preferable because such instruction takes less time to implement and is likely to maintain the interest of such students. Low abstraction material can easily turn out to be boring for the more knowledgeable student.

The other factors affecting media choices are availability of material options, time availability, and technological options. Material options are affected by financial resources of the purchasers of the materials and the access to material markets. Time availability refers to the amount of time the instructor can dedicate to any lesson or set of lessons. As indicated, in general, instruction that is less abstract takes more time to use – if for no other reason due to the amount of reality it contains – and the more abstract material takes less time assuming the student is sophisticated enough to understand and appreciate its educational value. Technological options refers to the media hardware and software the instructor or instructional institution can secure and the instructional staff can proficiently use.

The two theorists referred to above are Jerome S. Bruner³ and Edgar Dale.⁴ Both of these educational academics provided relevant insights to this topic in the 1960s. Bruner provides a model for the different modes by which information can be communicated and at what minimal ages a person can understand the information presented by the different media modes. Generally, as observed by studying subjects at different age levels, Bruner discovered that the following trend exists: the youngest (least sophisticated) subjects understood information in the enactive mode of representation (children 0 to 1 year of age depend on this mode). This mode refers to an activity of direct experience. For example, teaching a baby to shake a rattle is done by an action activity in which the rattle is placed in the baby's hand and the teacher grasps that hand and shakes it. This can be described as action learning. For students more sophisticated but still lacking in higher levels of sophistication, a more abstract mode can be employed. Bruner calls this intermediate level of abstraction iconic modes of representation (applicable to teaching young children from 1 to 6 years of age). This teaching uses media that present images of what is to be learned. “How to” demonstrations or pictures are examples of this mode. Cooking shows on TV use this mode to teach viewers how to cook particular dishes. Last, for the most sophisticated students, the most abstract mode of representation can be used and is what Bruner calls symbolic (applicable to teaching students 7 years of age and above). These instructional media rely on language. By depending on language, these informational materials can have the highest degree of applicability to varying aspects of reality – it's the most generalizable information (lesser abstract media modes need to convey more specific content). Language media open the student to concepts which categorize elements of reality. For example, the concept, transportation, refers to a wide variety of phenomena which can be grouped so as to convey meaningful information, as in the sentence, “costs affect the mode of transportation people use.”

The work of Dale addresses the same concern between abstraction and modes of representation. Instead of devising more general modes of representation, Dale identifies specific media types and activities that instructors can choose. Dale arranges them hierarchically by listing them within a triangle, from bottom to top, in an ascending order of abstraction within the triangle – the visual depiction of his model is called Dale's Cone of Experience. Let me superimpose Bruner's modes on Dale's listing of media types:

MOST ABSTRACT – SYMBOLIC

Written text as in a book

Spoken word as in a lecture

INTERMEDIATE ABSTRACTION – ICONIC

Still pictures as in a picture portfolio

Moving pictures as in a film

Exhibition as in a collection of artifacts

Demonstration as in a person showing a student how to cook a given dish

LEAST ABSTRACTION – ENACTIVE

Hands-on participation as in a workshop in which student makes an object (e. g., a birdhouse)

Role-playing as in a learner pretends to be a person in some social situation (e. g., as family members when father or mother comes home to announce he/she has lost his/her job)

Simulation as in playing a game based on a model of some reality (e. g., playing the game Monopoly)

Direct purposeful experience as in internship in which student takes on real life responsibilities in a given job

Applying all these ideas regarding sophistication, abstraction, and motivation to evaluating federation theory, the question becomes: How well does the construct allow instructors, curriculum developers, and media developers to match the sophistication of secondary students to civics or government material being taught? Here I will simply state that federation theory does not primarily rely, as most classroom instruction does, on either structural descriptions of complex bureaucratic institutions – branches of government, political parties, interest groups, and the like – or behavioral analysis of political variables – such as the correlation between demographic dimensions and particular individuals securing leadership positions in government. Instead, a curriculum guided by federation theory relies on instruction that focuses on more dynamic aspects of civics and government. It would guide instruction to, for example, describe contextualized political and governing accounts, elicit students to empathize with political actors dealing with interpersonal human challenges, and/or has students recreate the inter-dynamics of groups in varying degrees of federated associational arrangements. By doing so, this approach lends itself to a more humane and less abstract treatment of governance and politics. While federation theory relies on more historical analysis – and by doing so presents less abstract content – and lends itself to relying on cognitive psychology, it can, nonetheless, be geared to be more abstract media. For example, it does not, out of hand, dismiss behavioral studies, but can rely on them when it is applicable and prudent.

In short, the judgment is that this perspective allows for very high degrees of flexibility on the part of instructors, curriculum developers, and media developers to gauge the material and experiences in which students are asked to take part. I believe federation theory comes closest to following Bruner's advice: when presenting new content, the overall strategy should be to follow the progression from enactive to iconic to symbolic. All other things being equal, in order to be effective, the less sophisticated student needs less abstract content and, therefore, less abstract media mode in his or her instruction. Conversely, for the more sophisticated student, given the content being taught, the more abstract the media mode of instruction can and often should be.

As for the other elements of motivation, what sounds more motivating? Are dry abstract descriptions of unfamiliar material more motivating than materials that depict the interactive activities of human encounters? These depictions would be contained in stories of collective entities such as families, work places, back room negotiating sessions, war fronts (ones that don't glorify wars but get at the real life sacrifices war demands), political campaigns, and so on. These are the types of content settings that federation theory encourages instructors to use and their students to study. I believe, to say the least, that federation theory holds its own in terms of motivation and is best when it comes to matching the sophistication of students and the abstraction levels of the media and content used.

1Meehan, E. J. (1969). Explanations in social science: A system paradigm. Homewood, IL: The Dorsey Press.

2This could be, for example, information relating to what causes water to freeze. A scientist observes water in a variety of environmental conditions and might eventually abstract the varying temperatures in which water is found and detect a pattern between lower temperatures and the freezing of water. The abstracted bits of information would be the falling temperature of the water's environment, the changing temperature of the water, and the degree to which the water hardens into ice.

3See http://www.simplypsychology.org/bruner.html . Less I'm misleading, Bruner was not arguing that younger students had to mature to learn complicated material. He was of the mind that any content could be taught to any student regardless of his/her sophistication. The issue was how the material was presented. And one of the factors determining success was the nature of the media used to present the information.

4See http://www.etsu.edu/uged/etsu1000/documents/Dales_Cone_of_Experience.pdf .

THE NEUTRAL CORNER

The good or the right; how should we choose? The good refers to what we consider a better or best condition, result, or trend. The right refers to our ability to do as we wish as when I claim I have the right to say what I want. At times, actually often, these two seemingly desired qualities of life are at odds. And this tension is at the heart of something I have referred to in this blog: the drift in our history from a federalist perspective and its communal bias to a natural rights perspective and its promotion of individual preferences. Like most evolutions, the history of this development can be traced through real life stories.

It's a long history with many twists and turns. Let me give you the briefest of looks into this evolving story – a morsel. Its duration extends from the 1870s to 1905 and beyond. Central to this story is the role of the courts. But an event that sets the stage for this history happens shortly before this span of time. It is the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Fourteenth Amendment is one of the post Civil War amendments whose aim was to solidify the human rights gained as the result of fighting the war. The relevant portion of the amendment can be found in its very first section:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

In short, former slaves are not to be treated, before the law, any differently from any other citizen. But the thing is, and you might have noticed, there is no mention of former slaves in the amendment.

So what exactly does this seemingly straightforward text mean? Here is where the debate between the good and the right comes to bear.

As a way of placing you in this story, let us say you own a business and one of the things you produce other than the product you bring to market is unwanted pollution. The pollution negatively affects the area around your business. The local community, through the auspices of the local government, passes legislation that bans your business from operating in its present location. The marketable items your business produces are useful items and there is nothing unusual about them. Producing them is not seen as illegitimate and working for such a business is considered a legitimate profession. The only problem is that the process by which the item is produced causes pollution affecting your neighbors. The good, as defined by the community, is getting rid of the pollution. The right is defined by your right to engage in a legitimate business and the related property rights you have in running that business.

Essentially, these are the facts of a series of court cases collectively known as the Slaughter-House cases of the 1870s. In this legal battle, the City of New Orleans passed laws that would handle the pollution caused by the activities of the slaughterhouse businesses in the Crescent City. The city set up a slaughterhouse center in a strategic location that would address the pollution problem. The new problem was that not all those who wished to pursue butchering could situate themselves in the center. In effect, their right to engage in a legitimate business or profession was stymied or prohibited. They sued and cited the Fourteenth Amendment to claim the city ordinances were unconstitutional because they discriminated against them by denying them, among other rights, their due process rights.

The cases reached the Supreme Court. In its decision, Justice Samuel Freeman Miller interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment in very limited terms and denied the claims of the plaintiffs. The court held that the law that set up the slaughterhouse center was constitutional and the City of New Orleans was legally exercising its police powers. That is, in this case the Court held that the good – controlling pollution – was more important than the right. By implication, the decision identifies a local governmental entity as the arbiter of what the good was and that function was held to be a legal trump to any claim by the aggrieved butchers to pursue a legitimate profession. The Court rendered a split 5 to 4 decision and one of the dissenters was Justice Stephen Field. He should be considered a patron saint of those who champion the right over the good.

Justice Field argued in this case and in a slew of subsequent cases in which the battle between the good and the right continued, that individuals have constitutional rights to basically act, within reason, in ways that they deem best and government, usually local government, has no constitutional power to hinder such behavior. He claimed that these rights constituted his/her substantive due process rights and were protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Dying in 1899, he didn't live to see his arguments hold sway and eventually become the accepted way we now interpret the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1905, the Supreme Court did one of its most abrupt about faces by rendering a decision in Lochner v. New York. In that case, the Court finally upheld Field's position on the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Lochner Case overturned a New York law that limited the number of hours women could work in bakeries. The good in this case was seen as protecting women who were in effect forced to work long hours by considering the practice unhealthy to female workers. The right was defined as the right of a worker and employer to engage in contract agreements by which working hours were determined. The case sided with employers and, by doing so, adopted the language of the Fourteenth Amendment, defining the right to enter contracts as a substantive due process right. The decision ushered in what is known as the Lochner era in which the courts routinely sided with business interests, claiming a lot of what they did was simply exercising their rights. Historically, we consider the Lochner era as a time when businesses were given a free hand to exploit workers and a time when true competition was intrinsically damaged.

Eventually, the Lochner era was brought to an end. During the New Deal and as a result of the Roosevelt administration's challenges to the laissez-faire policy the courts were following, the courts began to reintroduce the constitutionality of the police powers of both the states and the federal government. As a reminder, the police powers are those powers of government that provide for the betterment of citizens through protection, health, education, and morals. These powers have been constitutionally reserved to the states and not the federal government. Since the New Deal, through the initiation of federal action, the good has also been promoted by federal progressive laws and programs. These have been authorized by distilling relevant power from the stated constitutional aim to promote the general welfare and from the mostly liberal interpretations of the commerce clause of Article I.

But the effects of Field's thoughts have not been totally forgotten. During the 1960s, the ghost of Field reared its legal head and was applied to new realms of rights. With such cases as Gedion v. Wainwright, Griswold v. Connecticut, Miranda v. Arizona, and Brown v. Board of Education, the courts took the basic idea of extending the rights found in the Bill of Rights in order to counter the enactment of state policies that, as the courts judged, were offensive to those rights. This is basically the same legal argument that was presented in the Lochner case but extended to the other rights protected by the Bill of Rights. In effect, the courts judged that state determinations of what was good violated either the substantive or procedural due process rights of individuals or their equal protection rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. It might be difficult for us today to see, for example, the good in any laws that would deprive a defendant of legal counsel, but that is what was considered to be the good before the Gedion v. Wainwright decision. While these decisions blocked local jurisdictions from their role of determining the good – even if that view of the good does not abide by our current view of the good – the overall effect is to define the role of government as neutral to what is the good is. This is not the original federalist view of government's role in reflecting the community it represents.

How does this materialize? Look at the case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. As with the Warren Court cases, the petitioners challenged a governmental policy by citing a Bill of Rights' right, freedom of speech, to undo the government's attempt to control the level of financial contributions to political campaigns and to, in turn, the influence such contributions have on policy decision-making. These aims are seen as good. As in Lochner, the Warren Court decisions, and the arguments of Justice Field, the Citizen United decision incorporates a Bill of Rights' right against either state or federal law. In this case, the Supreme Court argued that the right of free speech is more important than the goodness associated with policy decisions that do not favor the wealthy who can afford huge campaign contributions. The neutral procedural republic is advanced by such decisions.¹ The right takes prominence over the good.

This story is not over. Our courts will continue to handle very real situations that affect many and they will be making decisions trying to decide between what collectives attempt to do to advance their view of the good and the rights of individuals that will be prohibited or limited by those very enactments. If the courts decide to side with the good, on what basis will it determine the good to be? Majority rule? Or a moral philosophic tradition, such as federalism, Christianity, Marxism? My position is there is no such thing as a truly neutral position. By Field's view, neutrality is really a market view by default. With everyone hanging on to extreme views of individual rights, the collective is deprived of the ability to develop a moral direction. Neutrality creates a vacuum of ideas and values. This is filled by majority whims and short term preferences. Sounds too much like the USA in 2012.

1See Sandel, M. J. (1996). Democracy's discontent: America in search of a public philosophy. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

LESSON: PEOPLE ARE CATCHIN' ON

Picking up on my theme of the last two postings, I will continue reviewing the lessons I gleaned from the last election. With this posting, I will share my most important lesson. The lesson reflects a topic I have addressed in previous postings: the growing inequality among Americans. This is a fundamentally federalist concern. While the average voter might not be able to verbalize this so articulately – then again, maybe he or she could – there seems to be, and I believe this election demonstrates, a growing awareness that the system is becoming categorically unfair.

I have in the past cited, on various occasions, statistics on the income and wealth distribution in this country. Those numbers reveal a system that is channeling more and more values to fewer and fewer people. A lot of this has been hidden by the promulgation of myths that are aimed to legitimize these distributions. The myths take on two forms. The first is that those who benefit are worthy of those benefits due to the contributions they provide the society. The second is that transfer payments of any kind are “payoffs” to takers in exchange for their votes. The news outlets are reporting that Mitt Romney is explaining his defeat by pointing out that the President “bought” certain constituents' votes by giving them “gifts.” Both of these myths are duplicitous and have the effect of dividing us as citizens.

The first myth is particularly insidious. Don't get me wrong. Those in the upper class are often talented and hard working, but is the top one percent worthy of seventeen percent of the national income (it was eight percent in 1979)?¹ This might be true if this result was the product of fair competition or free markets. I will question this assumption shortly, but before doing so I want to state that even with fair competition or free markets, I contend that increasing inequality just creates and strengthens social forces that are detrimental to all of us. This notion deserves a thought-out explanation, but let me just illustrate this warning by pointing to conditions in nations where high levels of inequality prevail. Just look south of the border to nations that have high degrees of inequality and where drug wars, rampant crime, and kidnappings are as common as the stifling poverty. Gee, is there a connection? But my point here is that the benefits that the rich are enjoying are not the product of free markets; they are more and more the product of “seeking rents.”²

Nobel prize winning economist, Joseph E. Stiglitz, in his latest book, The Price of Inequality,³ explains how the well paid executives of large corporations have used their influence to undermine competition; by doing so, they have, to increasing levels, garnered huge compensations. The overall approach is known as seeking rents. Stiglitz explains the term as a description of business activities that seek compensation higher than would be derived from a truly competitive market. His book outlines a variety of strategies that result in such compensation. Let me give you the most obvious example. By eliminating competition, a corporation can sell its products at higher prices. Most of our major products are in markets that are either out and out monopolies or highly oligarchic (few competitors). And they are able to maintain these conditions through favorable governmental actions. The excuse used is that contracted markets allow for higher economies of scale. This occurs when businesses can produce goods or services at cheaper costs per unit by being able to acquire larger quantities of resources in larger bulk. But this has nothing to do with pricing calculations that businesses would have to make if there were many competitors. Without competition, these corporations are able to charge higher prices than a free market would allow. These prices lead to higher revenues and profits and executive pay.⁴ This is only one way to seek rents. It is a way that demonstrates how the rich are getting over-sized salaries that they do not earn. I will be reviewing in future postings the several ways the rich seek rents and how government either creates these ways or supports them. So please don't give me any self righteous claims of unjustified or unearned “gifts” to groups of voters who don't belong to the one percent.

The second myth is that the gifts are simply catering to the interests of the recipients. If transfer payments, in whatever form they take, were simply that, we should be outraged. But any review of these payments can and is justified for the social benefits they provide. Again, this posting will only address this topic in its most general sense. In its most general terms, we only have to remember a purpose for creating our national government: “to … promote the general Welfare …” . What does the general welfare refer to? It's up to interpretation but would you argue with me if I suggest that it includes a healthy, an educated, a protected, a working/earning population? Do you disagree? Assuming you don't, government benefits or, better stated, investments need to be justified on these grounds. Whether a particular benefit/investment does or doesn't add to the general welfare is subject to debate.

Hence, that's why we have elections. And we just had one. Let's move on and understand that a lesson from this one is that the average American is catching on to the games privilege play.

1See New York Times website: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/us/politics/top-earners-doubled-share-of-nations-income-cbo-says.html . The 17 % of national income statistic refers to the top 1 %'s share in 2007.

2For an interesting description of how this term evolved, see Stiglitz's book cited in the next note.

3Stiglitz, J. E. (2012). The price of inequality: How today's divided society endangers our future. New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company.

4I have only given the most sketchiest of explanation of this type of rent seeking. I will in the future attempt to review this strategy more completely.