“PLEASE PLEASE ME”

Does the title of this posting sound familiar? It has a special place in my memory; it was the title of the first Beatles song I ever heard. My limited research indicates that the song was released in the UK in 1963 – a year before Beatlemania hit the US – and reached number one there. In the US, the song was also released but did not do very well, but I remember hearing it and liking it. A friend of mine really liked it. I invoke the title not to go down memory lane – although there is nothing wrong with that – but to point out that its message succinctly summarizes how many of us feel about government policy. Most of us just want the governmental action to please us, individually, and we care little for what the effect has on the country. Some of us, myself included, think this is unfortunate, but that is the way it is. This self-centered sentiment is behind the famous quote of Ronald Reagan's when he was running for president against President Jimmy Carter: “[a]sk yourself, are you better off now than you were four years ago?” This is a far cry from asking: “are we, as a nation, better off than we were four years ago?” This latter question is just too collectivist for some; it is just too ethereal for many.

Which leads me to think: is all this talk about patriotism on the part of so many just so much hot air? Is it more accurate, when it comes down to brass tacks, to see our fellow citizens' views as mainly concerned with “us and ours.” Okay, this might just reflect human nature and one should not get high and mighty about it. Historically, Americans have sacrificed plenty – for whatever reason – and that sacrifice has resulted in great rewards for all of us. The sacrifices of the “Greatest Generation” come easily to mind. But in practical terms, when creating public policy, one needs to be very conscious of the limits and context in which we expect a public, and that includes the American public, to be willing to sustain sacrifice in order to arrive at the common good. Heck; we even have currently a public philosophy, stated proudly and boldly, that it is a virtue to be self-centered.

Much of this blog has been dedicated to this apparent reality. I have never stated that the purpose of this blog has been to promote a belief in which people can be expected to or actually sacrifice their self interests in order to advance societal welfare. As Tocqueville pointed out, citizens should pursue their self interest, but it should be a self interest better understood. People should have an understanding that takes into account such factors as to how our social realities will in the short term or, more likely in the long term, affect how well we can live. It helps to have an active and robust ideal sense of what should be and that sense should take into account the welfare of others – both locally and nationally, if not globally. The ability to feel this way requires, if one gives credence to psychologist Lawrence Kholberg's theory on moral development, ever higher levels of maturity.

I have in the past indicated a dual mental approach to this tension between selfish tendencies and selfless needs. I have written about having a “real” perspective in which one acknowledges the need to be protective against the selfishness of others while maintaining an ideal disposition to seek out and promote a more communal reality around us. The first is an expectation; the second, when one is comfortable enough, is a hoped for – and willing to work toward – potential. Unfortunately, prevailing political perspective promotes the first and sees the second as merely sweet sentiments in which only young children can believe – such as believing in Mr. Roger's Neighborhood.

Of course, I am referring to the natural rights perspective and I want to particularly focus in this posting on that perspective's reliance on positivism as its main method in seeking the truth. In regard to this link, Philip Selznick¹ provides us with an important insight. To approach it, let me start with a question: what is the general welfare? I think this is an important question in that our constitution identifies promoting it as one of our purposes in forming a national government. So it seems that getting a handle on what that means is a fundamental civic responsibility. I will note that however you define it, the inclusion of this aim indicates that we are instructed by our founding fathers to think idealistically and not to limit our political pursuits to self interest – ill understood. But how are we to discuss this question? What language should we use? I am not asking whether we should use the English language. But each view of politics promotes a certain use of words, symbols, and phraseology – its own language. And the prevailing view, the natural rights perspective, is no exception. The language it utilizes is the language of positivism. So when we ask what general welfare is, we, without reflecting, tend to employ positivist language. When we do, we are, according to Selznick, limited. That is, that positivist language strives to be definitive and to exclusively see political and other social elements that are amenable to being measurable. “In the ethos of positivism, all the great moral ideals – love, justice, the common good – are remorselessly subjected to a nominalist solvent. No such idea has meaning, none has practical worth, save as it is reduced to some definite indicator.”² For example, Selznick provides the following progression: well-being becomes happiness which in turn becomes pleasure. The aim is to identify some associated factor that can be observed and measured – pleasure can be measured by asking people how pleasurable something is or whether it is more or less pleasurable than something else. And all of this leads to a further development in that the language of positivism blends nicely with utilitarian views of morality.

Of course, utilitarian views are grounded in self interest. Things are considered good or evil in terms of how people view those things: do they like them or not? And on that basis, morality is defined as being that state in which the most “good” for the most number is achieved. I have defended, in this blog, some elements of this line of thinking, but overall, its reliance on self interest ultimately dooms this view of morality, especially as it pertains to judging the individual actions of people. Governments, by necessity, have significantly more leeway when it comes to this type of moralizing – in the tradition of “render unto Caesar …” – but there are limits and one limit is the example government extends to citizens. So, for example, the practice of the death penalty, even if it can be proven that executing murderers does overall reduce the incidence of murder – which has not been proven – what of the example the state provides in killing some of its citizens? But I digress a bit; the issue here is that positivist language steers clear from the qualitative and that in order to reach a truer understanding of reality, in order to avoid approximations (well-being vs. pleasure) of the truth, our language has to discuss, describe, and analyze in the realm of the vague and speculative. Why? Because reality is that complex and “resists” the definitive. Perhaps when it comes to government, our mantra should not be “please, please me,” but instead be “do right by us.”

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

2Ibid., p. 51.

NEVER ENOUGH

Embarrassment reigned supreme lately when it was made known that our government, as a result of the work of the National Security Agency, spied on the private phones of our close allies' leaders. The case that has gotten the most attention was the eavesdropping on the German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cell phone. The common refrain has been that this revelation has put a serious breach in the levels of trust that have existed among the governments of many of our allies and ourselves including the personal trust among the leaders. This whole case provides an excellent opportunity to review with civics students the role and function of espionage.

Much goes into espionage including analysis of data on a massive scale. This analysis takes on the form of puzzle-solving which incorporates information from a variety of sources: sometimes information that is intentionally targeted, sometimes information gathered from unsuspected origins. One never knows for sure where that next nugget of data will appear. Not only will its source be surprising, but it can be information that on the surface seems unrelated, but when combined with other facts, becomes the key to some insight or location, or agent, or some other element that leads to lifesaving understanding. Spying is, of course, done by all governments. It is considered a necessary element of national defense. But, as we tell our kids, just because everyone does it doesn't make it right. What questions should we be asking our students when it comes to espionage? Here are a set of initial questions I think would be useful for students to consider as they inquire into the world of spying:

One, is spying essential in maintaining our security?

Two, how many resources do we dedicate to spying – at least as far as we can determine? How many resources should we dedicate to spying?

Three, should there be different rules or policies regarding spying on our adversaries as opposed to spying on our allies?

Four, in the actual act of spying, are there types of activities that should be prohibited or considered out of bounds?

Five, how should privacy issues be handled in our spying activities?

Six, what is at stake: consequences of having an aggressive spying program or the consequences of having reluctant or a non-existent spying program?

Seven, is there any such thing as too much spying? How would you measure that?

You can probably think of other questions, but I would want students to reflect on the ramifications of either conducting truly intrusive activities or activities that were shy about targeting certain or all agents, either domestic or foreign. For example, in the case of the German Chancellor, the opinion has been posed by some that if the leaders of our government wanted to know what the leader of an ally was thinking, saying, or doing, our government's agents could simply call and ask what they were going to do. But what a defender of our spying strategies might say is, first, you can never know enough about what leaders or other officials from countries – friendly or not – are thinking, saying, and doing. It is not that you don't trust them, but that what they might divulge when they believe they can be frank without worrying about repercussions could be information that would fit into a bigger picture of what is going on in the world. It could be a bit of innocent data that is the missing information needed to solve a vexing puzzle. You can never have enough information because you never know where any particular revelation might lead an investigation. At least, that is what a rationale might include in defending such espionage. Remember, the potential stakes can be another 9/11 attack.

On the other side of the debate is of course what such activities do to our rights, especially our right to privacy. I don't feel I need to add much here about privacy since I have dedicated more than one posting to the topic and will probably do so in the future. I want to instead make the case that while there are serious and legitimate concerns about our government spying on us and on foreign people, organizations, and governments, there are legitimate concerns over the dangers that are posed by those who want to do us harm. It is useful to figure out what their plans are to a degree of specificity that would allow us to take protective actions. Our students should be made aware of such dangers – both those emanating from foreign agents and those from our own government as it abuses our rights.

AN EXCEPTIONAL DECAY?

Are we Americans the beneficiaries of the healthiest form of democracy? I don't pretend to know the answer to that question, but a respected academic addressed that topic not so long ago and came to the conclusion that we are not; that is, according to her, the US's democracy is experiencing meaningful decay. She specifically calls attention to the less than ideal levels of certain vital virtues among us: courage, moderation, veracity, and social justice. In terms of each of these virtues or qualities, Shadia B. Drury¹ finds Americans, especially those who populate the upper classes, as seriously wanting.

I have written in this blog that I believe there are worrisome developments we have experienced as a nation, including some that negatively affect the quality of our democratic life. I have always hedged my bets by pointing out that the US is a nation that has a lot going for it and that such descriptions as decay or doomsday conditions are overstating the case. In Drury, we have someone who is putting things in a more dire state. For example, she flat-out accuses even the more laudatory politicians of being less than truthful in meaningful ways. For example, there was the case when President Obama, during his initial run for the White House, stated, “If you have a successful business, you haven't built it yourself.” When faced with criticism, he shied away from the comment instead of defending it as an obvious observation of the truth. When one considers all of our dependence on just the infrastructure that has been provided for us by not only our current fellow citizens – in the form of their tax dollars at work – but also as the result of generations of Americans who have added to our collective wealth, you cannot help being humbled by what little any one of us have added to the great scheme of things. Such an understanding makes clear how dependent we are on others. Yet many of us, Americans, have adopted to our collective perspective that somehow we are special and that we are so because we believe each can – and some have – been able to accomplish life ambitions singularly and independently. We have coined the term, American Exceptionalism, to describe this loaded notion.

The term gained currency initially through the work of the sociologist, Seymour Martin Lipset. He wrote:

[T]he nation's ideology can be described in five words: liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism, and laissez faire. The revolutionary ideology which became the American Creed is liberalism in its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century meanings, as distinct from conservative Toryism, statist communitarianism, mercantilism, and noblesse oblige dominant in monarchical, state-church-formed cultures.²

Some would criticize Lipset for placing these beliefs as central to the American ethos. While most of us would agree that the listed values or qualities Lipset identifies are supported by just about all Americans, they are also challenged by a set of values and qualities that promote more communal goals and aims. As a matter of fact, currently – as reflected by recent voting preferences – such adherence to laissez-faire policy, for example, has at least been questioned.

Our history since the 1930s bears out that we as a people have questioned our love for unrestricted business operations. We have in this nation brought pure capitalism under serious restraints, especially since the adoption of the New Deal, the War on Poverty, Medicare/Medicaid, and now, the Affordable Healthcare legislation. In all of these, the American public has had ample opportunity to eliminate them and with the exception of the War on Poverty effort, the others, when given time, have proven to be quite popular with the American public. Even in the case of the War on Poverty or the Great Society initiative, we still sustain meaningful elements of it such as Head Start, Volunteers in Service to America, and Job Corps. What has been proven to be the legacy of the term, American Exceptionalism, is its addition to the lexicon of conservative proponents. The use of the term has evolved to being a weapon of sorts. That is, its use suggests that policies that are less individualistic, more communal or that bring about more restrictions on the prerogatives of businesses are un-American. In short, this language reflects the lack of veracity that Drury points out.

My aim in this blog is not to promote anti laissez-faire policies, but to simply point out that the American consciousness cannot be summarily described as American Exceptionalism – at least not in the way Lipset defines it. Early in the history of this blog, I identified five different orientations Americans have shared when trying to define equality. Two of these orientations seem to me to be relevant to this topic of American Exceptionalism. The two are “equal opportunity, limited rewards” and “equal condition.” I have recently reedited my initial remarks and would like to share with you what I see these orientations to be.

• Equal Opportunity, Limited Rewards – General belief orientation which views persons who enjoy superior human assets (e. g., intelligence, physical dexterity, humor, etc.) due to their personal efforts are entitled to above normal considerations in society in the form of status, wealth, material possessions, etc. These advantages, though, are limited only to areas associated with their earned accomplishments or contributions to society. Any entitlements acquired as a result of employing these assets are time limited as a recipient must continue to demonstrate his or her worthiness. Said rewards, other than status, must be purchased and are not distributed to beneficiaries due to membership in any class or family. Monetary reward payoffs for an individual’s contribution or for his or her status must be within limits. That is, they should not unreasonably exceed the person's contribution to the welfare of the society or provide such a level of financial standing so as to secure for him or her an ongoing, established source of benefits.
• Equal Condition – General belief orientation which views persons who enjoy superior human assets (e. g., intelligence, physical dexterity, humor, etc.) due to their personal efforts are entitled to above normal considerations in society in the form of status, wealth, material possessions, etc. There are no limits to that compensation other than as a result of the vagaries of the economic or political system. In capitalist societies, that would be the market. Other than status, all entitlements are to be purchased and monetary advantages do not entitle a person to unequal advantages under the law. The orientation extends to prohibit any restrictions on monetary or other types of rewards as long as the rewards reflect labor compensations, dividends, rents, or profits. Advantages are purchased and are not the product of membership in a family or class. The labor value of any person is based on its market value.

These descriptions are based on an ideal notion of each view and do not necessarily reflect the realities surrounding their implementation. For example, under equal condition, believing that unlimited compensation will not lead to unequal treatment under the law is unrealistic. The more realistic view is to acknowledge that those who benefit by extremely high income will use their excessive financial assets to gain unequal levels of access to governmental policy makers.

Be that as it may, the point here is that the nation, as I and many commentators see it, is divided almost equally between those who harbor the one orientation and those who hold onto the other. If anything, the movement in public opinion seems to be shifting toward the equal opportunity/limited reward view. At the same time, many who share the equal condition view are becoming more ideological in their perspective. In large part, this is what is causing our current standoff in Washington. If we believe Drury, a shift toward equal condition will further our path toward decay. While at the same time, those who favor equal condition castigate their opponents as un-American and despicable (i.e., they are takers, not makers). Tighten your seat belts; this ride ain't over yet.

1Drury, S. B. (2013). The decay of American democracy, part 2. Free Inquiry, 33 (3), April/May.

2This quote can be found in Lipset, S. M. (1996). American exceptionalism: A double-edged sword. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. This particular citation, though, was copied from website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/americanexceptionalism.htm

CONFUSED

I confess; I'm confused. I know it's a reflection of my age, but I don't understand the whole hullabaloo over the Affordable Health Care website not working. I mean, if you want it, go and get it. You can do that over the phone – maybe with some delays – or you can go to a nearby center and sign up. What's the big deal?

Reflecting my age group, my wife and I avoid purchasing anything online. Here's why. Beyond the horror stories of identity theft, there's the hassle of navigating through all those “buttons” to click through endless pages of Internet stuff. Give me a person to talk to anytime. If I were in a position to sign up for one of these insurance programs, I would go wherever and whenever instead of getting into a computer nightmare. Is having to go somewhere an unreasonable obstacle? I know that when my wife and I signed up for Medicare, given our situation, we chose to go to two different places – instead of going online – to be sufficiently instructed about what we needed to know and do. No big deal. And, in terms of dealing with websites, I know of what I speak.

This past summer, my wife and I went on an extended car trip. We do that from time to time. We go to South Florida sometimes and we finally broke down and bought one of those toll booth gizmos that allows you to drive on expressways and turnpikes without having to pay a tollbooth attendant or chuck some change down the “coin catcher” – and in the process get to feel superior to all those who don't have one and are waiting in long lines. In Florida, the program is called SunPass – clever, huh? But for trips outside the Sunshine State, the thing isn't valid. Well, this past summer we went up to the Northeast. There they have a similar thing, but they call it E-ZPass. We have a lot of friends and family up there so we go there quite a bit. Despite that, we had not purchased an E-ZPass. We decided we would do so on this trip. In Florida, it's quite an easy process to get hooked up to their system. You go to a supermarket chain store and you purchase the contraption, go home, and make a phone call. You're signed up! But that's not how it works in Maryland – the first state it made sense for us to buy an E-ZPass. You start the same way; we stopped at a supermarket and purchased the little box. But then what we had to do differed in that we had to go online in order to complete the process. Well that night, after over an hour on the damn computer, I gave up. Among all the problems I encountered, there was the omission on a scroll option display of the exact model type of my car – I eventually chose the nearest option available. In disgust, I shut the computer and was determined to call in the morning. Of course, that option was silly because what I was given – via an automated system – was a list of options that didn't exactly fit our situation since we were just driving through the state. Anyway, I tried again on my computer and, maybe because I had a night's rest under my belt, I was able to get through the steps successfully, but not without any problems. I can hear you; these old guys can't do this stuff. Maybe, but we haven't departed the scene yet and whatever is out there shouldn't be beyond us.

Anyway, I digress. The point is, if you want health insurance, go and get it. We are told that with Obamacare all of us can now afford it – or nearly all of us. I beg you, go and get it. You will be helping all of us – by increasing the pool of healthy people – and you will be adding to your own peace of mind. None of us know how well our health will hold up in the future. Besides, I am tired of paying higher health costs because some of you show up at emergency rooms without the ability to pay. Those costs are shifted to the rest of us and it's simply not fair. So do your bit and sign up.

As for the website, why not just shut it down, get it fixed, extend the open enrollment period, and tell people to sign up over the phone or in person? Once the bugs are out of the computer option, then open it up. Of course, they could have just extended Medicare to everyone at the beginning when they were considering a universal health program and that would have been the optimal option. No: we had to try to placate Republicans and ape Romneycare which of course didn't work in satisfying them since they couldn't stand to win a major concession if it meant giving President Obama any credit.

DON'T MESS WITH THE GIPPER

Chris Matthews, the MSNBC political commentator, is currently the subject of a number of interviews as he is promoting his new book, Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked. The focus of the book is the relationship between President Ronald Reagan and Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill. The common knowledge of how these two leaders interacted is that even though they seemed to agree on little, they were able to work out compromises, and during their years as president and speaker quite a bit was accomplished. One of the points Mr. Matthews makes about Reagan is that Reagan was feared and that fear helped him get things done, especially in foreign relations, particularly in dealing with the Soviet Union. The event that conveyed the idea that Reagan was not to be taken advantage of was his breakup of the PATCO¹ strike in 1981. According to Matthews, this policy of Reagan's sent a message around the world in that the President not only ended the strike, but also prohibited the air controllers who refused to return to work from ever working for the federal government again. I do know that all of organized labor has suffered greatly as a result of that strike because the legitimacy of labor's aims and tactics has been seriously questioned by the American public.

What exactly is at stake in situations when a leader or some other person of power is trying to engender fear? In political terms, fear is an emotional response to a threatened use of coercive power. Coercive power occurs when one party gets another party to do something it would not ordinarily do in order to avoid a punishment – that is, being deprived of something the second party wants or needs. Usually the emotion of fear is felt as the affected party – the party whose behavior is being altered – anticipates or realizes the potential of the impending punishment. The level of fear corresponds to the perceived costs inflicted by the punishment. A “slap on the wrist” does not generate much fear, but a heavy fine or a long prison sentence or a savage beating would probably cause a great deal of fear. Punishments come in many forms. There can be physical pain, financial ruin, lost love, or frustrated ambitions – just to name a few. Sometimes the onslaught of punishment might reduce fear and cause a person to feel other emotions such as apathy or the desire for revenge. It might incite angered responses or despondency or for some, fear might increase.

It doesn't take much in life to figure out that fear is a potent emotion and a powerful weapon for those who can engender it. Matthews cites the political thinker and writer, Nicole Machiavelli, who wrote in the Prince: princes should strive to be loved and feared, but if they have to choose, they should choose being feared over being loved. Reagan was feared and loved. Whether he was feared more than loved is subject to historical interpretation, but when the chips were down, I agree that he was more feared than loved. But can a leader be feared too much? Is it one of those weapons that can be overused? Does its overuse cause negative consequences that might, in the long term, be problematic for the leader who is guilty of such an excess?

Alan Greenspan, in an interview on CNBC, stated that in terms of financial matters, fear is a much stronger emotion than greed or optimism. The former Federal Reserve chairman said you can see this in the course of a financial “bubble.” A bubble, which reflects either optimism or greed – perhaps both – grows slowly over time. The growth period can last a year or more. But once the bubble bursts – for whatever reason – the decline in asset values falls precipitously and of course this reflects fear. So, according to Greenspan, you can measure the relative strengths of these emotions as they are expressed by the behavior of investors and he estimated that fear was at least four times stronger than greed or optimism. So, one can conclude, at least in relation to these other two emotions, fear is quite strong and quite memorable.

I didn't live during the Great Depression, but people my age were brought up by people who did. A common notion among us war babies and baby boomers as we reflect about our parents is that the effect of living through the Depression was long lasting and the one theme our parents would repeat when speaking of those times was the fear that they experienced during those years, the fear of not knowing what the future held. And we also now can compare their behavior patterns concerning money – their proclivity to count every penny – to our children and their behavior patterns. We see shows such as House Hunters on HGTV where young couples look for housing and demand every new feature not in the future, but right now. If you are like me, you find yourself asking what mom or dad would think if they saw these “spoiled” people on TV.

If we can all agree that fear is a potent force, then what are the legitimate uses of it and what constitutes going over the top? Does federalist thinking have anything to add to these concerns? Let me share what I believe to be the case concerning fear. Inciting fear is not immoral per se. Surely an effort to cause mental or untold harm by inciting fear would be immoral, but as a political strategy that is used only to attain particular aims, then it would seem the effects would be limited. But even in these more limited cases, one needs to look at any deliberate use of it by certain criteria. My bias for federalist thinking suggests to me that certain considerations should be taken into account even in these more limited cases in order that its practice be moral and, in the long term, effective.

In order to be moral, a leader or person of power who tries to instill fear must be seeking a legitimate goal. That is, the goal needs to either help procure the society's survival or advance that society in attaining some aim or goal it sets for itself. This I have summarily called the value of societal welfare or, to use constitutional language, an attempt to make a more perfect union. No, this is not an argument that claims the ends justify the means because the means is not causing real harm; it is merely causing a discomfort that one cannot totally avoid in life. Fear springs from too many sources to count; it is just a condition of life. And if used legitimately, fear, whether emanating from another person's threat or from the factors of a situation, serves to motivate functional behavior on our parts. I lived in Miami, Florida in 1992 and watched the impending hurricane, Andrew, making its way toward my home. The fear I felt caused me to take prudent steps in trying to ameliorate the damage of the storm. I might have been hampered by ignorance, but not by the level of fear the news reports engendered. Fear can be a good thing.

If a strategy to engender fear is not legitimate in terms of its aims – and therefore not moral – then to be effective, the perpetrator needs to at least be able to give reasons that are accepted as legitimate by sufficient numbers of people. Reagan stressed in the PATCO case, for example, that the workers had broken their contracts and therefore he was within his legitimate power to take the actions he did. Not only does the goal need to be legitimate, but the punishment needs to be within the bounds of the reciprocity principle. That is, it can't overkill or stretch significantly beyond the harm that is being addressed by the policy. The air traffic controllers were about to cripple airline passenger service back in 1981, therefore devastating the business and personal travel plans of the American people. This action would have seriously affected millions of people and cost the economy significant amounts of money. Reagan was able to sell the idea that this was unacceptable and that it offended the principle that government could not stop providing an essential service – sort of like soldiers going on strike. Therefore, it was reasonable to fire the controllers in order to stop their ability to, in effect, extort the American people. Reagan wouldn't hear of such a thing and was able to convince the American public that his decision was, in effect, being forced on him. It is no secret that Reagan was not friendly to unions, despite the fact that he had previously been president of an actors' union, and that the unions in general were not supportive of Reagan. Ironically, PATCO was one of only two unions who had supported him in his election campaign. Whether his actions were moral or not I will leave to you to decide. What the case does demonstrate is what a leader must do and say when attempting to evoke fear in a segment of a population and at the top of that list is the ability to sell both the legitimacy of that threat and its proportionality.

Equal to the consideration of not being too harsh, those who are attempting to incite fear have to make sure that the threatened punishment is harsh enough – it surely was in the PATCO case. It has to inflict significant pain. If not, the party at which the strategy is aimed will lose respect for the leader and might encourage even more egregious behavior. In settling on the specific threat, one needs to remember that pain has a relative dimension. What is painful for one might be simply an inconvenience to another or not painful at all. Or it can be something avoided or neglected. He who decides to engender fear needs to know his/her target and other practical elements surrounding the conditions in which the threat is being extended. And, as far as observers are concerned, the threat needs to be transferable to their imagination – they have to feel, boy, I'm glad I'm not the one being threatened.

Studying cases in which fear is a factor can be very telling as to the nature of politics. For example, I think that in the recent standoff between the Tea Party Republicans and the Democrats in Congress, the Tea Party members did not instill enough fear in Democrats to be able to get their way. It wasn't that the potential punishment wasn't severe enough, but rather that it lacked believability. The target couldn't imagine the instigators were willing to share in the mutual pain a default to the debt limit would cause or that those who could stop this eventuality would not stop it. The result is that the Tea Party members have lost respect in the eyes of their opponents either in government or among many citizens.

While the fear factor did not influence enough controllers in the PATCO strike – they continued the strike and landed up losing their jobs – Reagan established his ability to inflict punishment in such a way that people believed he could and would do so in the future if the stakes were high enough. While not all of us agree that President Reagan was the best for this nation, we all must agree he was able to garner our respect.

1Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization – the labor union of the air traffic controllers

DIVISIVE FORCES

While not all political systems are federal – either from a structural point of view or from a philosophical point of view – all systems have to have a federal element in their makeup. That is, every political system has to bring together the different interests or factions that make up the polity within the geographic area under its authority. Using functionalist language, systems must satisfy a systems maintenance function. The people of a nation have to feel, to some meaningful degree, federated with their fellow citizens. If we look around the world at political systems that are finding it difficult to sustain themselves, the basic problem is that there are interests within their jurisdictions that don't want to “play ball” under the binding understandings that prevail as the systems' foundations. We might judge, in those individual cases, that those who are balking at the mode of the prevailing politics have every justification to do so, but that is not what concerns me here. In the cases in question, the politics have become disruptive and potentially dangerous for the people caught up in such disruptions. Look at the current conditions in Egypt or Syria. Can we detect an underlying condition or set of factors that account for the upheaval?

In both those cases, there are either sectarian or tribal divisions in which violent conflict reigns among groups. Now, there doesn't need to be one hundred percent agreement among the interests or factions of the populace, but there needs to be, again to some meaningful level, agreement over the basic constitutional provisions which define the “legitimate” structures and processes of the system in question. All systems must address this concern of how well the interests are dealing with their conflicts, not just in terms of who is winning and losing, but in terms of the legitimacy of their political ways of handling those conflicts.

We Americans are not immune to these concerns. This recent crisis over the shutdown and debt level reflects in some very basic ways this concern. Currently, we Americans are not being paranoid to worry over what's happening to our politics. I am not trying to overstate this; we, as a nation, have many unifying forces that help us overcome the more divisive aspects of our politics. But to the extent we reflect these less than optimal conditions, we, upon analysis, do exemplify some of the same divisive tendencies plaguing more disrupted nations. How can one describe these tendencies? Simply stated, modernization – a turning away from traditional ways and beliefs – has put enormous pressure on segments of the population that share in the traditional perspective that up until recently characterized most nations of the world.

The traditional perspective is noted for being religious, agricultural, parochial, and committed to time-honored, established institutional mores, rituals, symbols, and biases. Ever since the industrial revolution, more and more people throughout many areas of the world have given up, to varying degrees, on traditional ways of thinking and behaving. While many social forces might be contributing to this change, there exists no more meaningful one than urbanization – the movement of vast numbers of people to cities where all the traditional assumptions about life come into question and under attack. If for no other reason, the cosmopolitan nature of urban life challenges traditional beliefs, and those who are swept into this migration to cities find the new environs opposing many cherished beliefs and prejudices.

Consequently, with these social evolutions, people who have not fully accepted modern ways of thinking feel more and more under siege. They feel their whole way of life is threatened and the resulting fear can very well lead to extreme behaviors. This is especially true if we mix in religious fervor as is the case in more rural areas – although many who move to the city cling to their religious beliefs and have access to well- organized religious outlets. With its accompanying beliefs, this fervor is characterized by a particular belief in a highly judgmental higher being; one that is, we are warned, disposed to bring down upon us the harshest of punishments if we do not believe and live according to “inspired” precepts. This latter element in the traditional provides a very strong source of zeal toward protecting the traditional. In many nations, many are so motivated by this zeal that they end up expressing their anxieties by engaging in extremely divisive politics.

So this is the backdrop to many serious clashes. We can see it in our own nation to some extent. I would claim that to the degree there is any discussion of succession in our political talk, it is deeply rooted in this basic conflict between the traditional and the modern. And it is in this setting that I found most interesting a recently issued report by an advisory council to the CIA. The United States National Intelligence Council's report suggests the possibility of non-state governing entities which are based on organized efforts in areas such as finance, education, media, logistics, and health care. Fed up with the inability or unwillingness of nation-state governments to address problems and issues in areas such as those I just listed, special arrangements are being established. Organized around urban centers, these entities are derived from governmental subcontracting agreements:

A quick scan across the world reveals that where growth and innovation have been most successful, a hybrid public-private, domestic-foreign nexus lies beneath the miracle. These aren't states; they're “para-states” – or, in one common parlance “special economic zones.”¹

Probably the most noted one of these para-states is centered in Dubai. They can be found in Africa, Middle East, and Asia. They are highly numerous in China. My questions are, what will this do to the conflicts fueled by threatened, traditionally minded populations; will they exist apart from the less urban areas of nations, unaffected and coexisting or will they add to the turmoil we already see taking place? How can federated forces within these nations be encouraged and strengthened so that any such development as this apparent one will be accommodated? This is a challenge and one that can be softened with populations that are knowledgeable and sensitive to the need of citizens to feel federated with their fellow citizens – yet another challenge for civics education.

In this blog, I have presented the liberated federalism construct as a synthesis between natural rights and critical theory. From the natural rights, liberated federalism gets its concern for the individual and for respecting those rights that reflect the private domain of people's lives. From critical theory, the proposed construct gets its concern for equality. But from the social/political evolution we have experienced in the last fifty or so years, liberated federalism gets its concern for a secular based public policy. A lot of this evolution has to do with the increasing levels of urbanization we are experiencing, a development that makes parochial conception ever more unworkable in the diverse environments so many people find themselves. How we account for the segments not exposed to these new social forces – or if exposed, unwilling to accommodate – will take highly sophisticated strategies aimed at promoting federalist commitments among populations if national entities are to retain any viability in the future.

1Khana, P. (2013). The end of the nation-state? The New York Times, October 13, Sunday Review section, p. 5.

A SINFUL EPISODE

Imagine. A person comes up to you and asks you for a loan. You're in a good mood and say, okay; how much do you need? Whatever the amount, you loan the person the money and then time goes by. Enough time elapses that the debt is due and the person hasn't paid you back. You know enough about the person to know he or she can pay you back, but obviously has decided not to do so. Under such conditions, is that person behaving in an immoral way? I think so and I suppose you do too.

On our national political scene, we have just witnessed the political party, or a segment of it, that has fancied itself as the God-fearing party, do two things: one, it has led the government to a shutdown and two, it has threatened to effectively obstruct the legislation that would allow it to raise a self-imposed debt limit and, by doing so, prohibit the government from paying its debts. In other words, through their action, they decided the government need not keep its promises to pay back the loans others have extended to it.

Now, who owns that debt? A significant amount is owned by foreign entities (about 33 1/3 %), most notably the Chinese (about 7.8 %). But most of it is owned by Americans, either by government accounts – such as the Social Security trust fund – or by individuals and private institutions.¹ Perhaps you own some of that debt yourself. Do you own a US bond or US Treasury note or does your 401K have these types of investments in its portfolio? If that's the case, then you do own some of this debt. In effect, if you do, you are the lender I described above, a well-intentioned person who made a loan. You loaned the money with every expectation that you were going to be paid back, especially if the government has the where-with-all to do so. One can judge that promise as a moral commitment. And yet the party that makes a point of how religious and moral it is led the way – and there is some very convincing evidence that this whole episode was a thought-out, if not effective, plan – to either default on this debt or make us believe it would be all right to shirk from the moral obligation these loans reflect. Yet the national punditry has not picked up on this lack of morality.

Now, if I were in charge of running campaigns against these politicians who caused this disruption,– a role I have no business doing – I would, especially in the South, emphasize this immorality. I would point out that many voters probably own some of this debt and that the disruption caused some people real harm, but that wouldn't be what I would emphasize. For one thing, I would bet that the average citizen will not make a distinction between the shutdown and the threatened default. These two elements of our recent crisis will probably be melded together in the minds of voters. So I wouldn't overly harp on those who were inconvenienced or seriously affected by the shutdown. To extreme conservatives, these affected people either shouldn't be working for most of these government programs to begin with – although I found it quite interesting that selected discontinued government services were highlighted as unnecessary interruptions, such as having access to monuments – or they are seen as beneficiaries of illegitimate government handouts. But if campaign language focused on the morality issue – that is, that these officeholders' actions, in effect, broke a promise – and if challenging candidates decry the lack of honesty and integrity a default would have meant, then I think the office holders in many of these safe districts would find their skulduggery exposed in ways that would be salient to those who define themselves as true Christians.

I would also make sure I wouldn't communicate the idea that their representatives were trying to make it more difficult for the government to borrow money. This could very well have been the aim of these extreme conservative pols. But southern voters can view such actions as attempts to discourage investors from lending the money to Uncle Sam or to make interest rates so high the government will find borrowing too expensive. By doing so, these pols would be seen as forcing the government to spend less, possibly resulting in a contraction of governmental services. That is exactly what these voters want. Perhaps the more recent shutdown will convince enough voters that government services are important and provide benefits to many, from children who need medical procedures to veterans wanting to visit the World War II monument. I will be particularly interested in seeing how this whole episode will play out with voters in a state such as Utah. A usually very conservative state, it turns out the US government is the largest employer in Utah and the shutdown found a lot of people on furlough and a lot of local businesses highly affected by the shortage of tourists to the national parks within that state. But to those who have adopted an ideological commitment to scaling back government, such experiences are probably not enough to change their perspectives. Sin sells as an issue and one can make a convincing argument that the threat of default can surely be seen as sinful.

1Lauter, D. (2013). Los Angeles Times, October 16, see http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/ la-pn-national-debt-facts-20131016,0,7261833.story