EQUALITY BEFORE THE COURT

There are times when our government gets close and personal with us. I cannot think of any time when this is more true than when our government drafts us into military service or when the government, either at the federal or state level, charges us with a crime. Now-a-days we have put the draft into hiatus and most of us are never charged with a crime. I remember when as a young man, I was in a car accident and was charged with causing it. I was directed to go to court and I remember the document stating the State of Florida vs. Robert Gutierrez. The actual charge was driving too fast for the conditions. I remember my emotional discomfort when I saw in black and white that I was pitted against the State of Florida. I think that hurt more than the $25 fine – and that was despite the fact I was a poor college student at the time and was facing expensive costs caused by the damage. As bad as it is to be charged, how much worse is it when a person can't afford legal representation? This wasn't an issue in my case, but for serious accusations it is an issue of significant consequence. It is our constitutional right to have representation by a licensed lawyer. So, as the familiar refrain states, if you can't afford one, one will be appointed for you.

Who assigns an indigent defendant a lawyer? A judge does. Problem solved? Not really. Take the case of George Stinney from the 1940s (a story much in the news these days); he was a fourteen year old boy who was charged, tried, and executed for the murder of two white girls – Stinney was an African American youngster. His incarceration lasted 81 days, there was no physical evidence of his guilt, the trial lasted two hours, and there was no appeal filed by his court-appointed lawyer. The only “evidence” there was was the fact that Stinney was seen with the two girls on the day of the murders and that he had “confessed.” There was no written account or a recording of the confession. There was only the testimony of the police officers stating the young boy confessed to the crimes. While this is an extreme case from a highly segregated South, it is not unique. How unjust the criminal procedure can be has been amply portrayed in our popular media. We hear of a sufficient number of convictions that have been overturned by DNA testing. My understanding is that nationally there are over 4,000 such cases to date. How many of those were cases initially defended by court-appointed lawyers, I don't know. But the point here is that the system is flawed enough and that we need to address this area of concern. If we are serious about our claims of honoring equality – we have stamps on which the word is boldly printed – then we need to do what we can to minimize the chances of an injustice occurring within our legal system. We need to keep very clear in our minds what an injustice of this type means to those victimized. It means, in terms of a faulty verdict, that a person is condemned for a crime he or she did not commit and that that means a person is doomed to years of imprisonment or even an undeserved execution – a horrible consequence to consider. Yet we seem to tolerate an unacceptable level of probability that such a result happens and happens all too often. So if something – some change in policy – can minimize this probability, we are constitutionally obliged to pursue it.

Under this light, I found that there is an experiment being conducted in Texas that deserves mention. There, in Comal County, it has been determined that court-appointed lawyers are a source of serious systemic injustices.

“The fundamental problem is that [court-appointed] lawyers in this country are oftentimes beholden to judges for appointments,” said Norman Lefstein [a Texas official] … “The allegiance of the lawyer is not principally to client, where it ought to be.”

The other problem is that clients have no meaningful control over this important professional relationship. It is hard to trust a lawyer you have not chosen and generally cannot fire.¹

These Texas officials addressed these concerns by developing a conservative approach to the problem. That is, they have begun issuing vouchers to defendants so that they can purchase legal representation of their own choosing. The idea for this policy originally was presented in a law-reviewed article. The authors of this article are Stephen Schulhofer and David Friedman. I believe that the proposal appealed to conservative policy makers because of its reliance on a market solution. It has been criticized by respectable experts – for example, Judge Richard A. Posner, a federal appeal judge, fears that defendants could paralyze a local legal system if they all begin to demand the same lawyer or a select few number of lawyers. I personally don't see this as a possibility since a lawyer can beg off a case if he or she is overloaded with existing clients. A Comal official claims that implementation of the policy can be regulated in such ways that the main concerns can be addressed. One official stated that this will not be a purely free market. It will be monitored and regulated. It is believed by the officials who are implementing the policy that there will be practical limitations so that the system will continue to function under reasonable conditions.

I will not claim I know enough to pass judgment on this option, but I believe that consideration for it is justified. My main message here is that this is an ideal “federalist” issue and has the makings of a powerful civics lesson. It focuses on a condition that, as it is now experienced around the country, puts in question any claim that our justice system is run by the principle of equality. In addition, here is a proposed policy option that, at least in terms of its stated rationale, is meant to level the legal playing field. If it works, it will put substance into the promise of the fifty year old Supreme Court decision, Gideon v. Wainwright, which ruled that every poor defendant is entitled to legal representation. Whether giving these defendants the ability to choose their attorneys will rectify the systemic problems such defendants face, only time will tell.

In any event, for civics instructors this issue is a promising one, one that directly relates to our national goal of instituting meaningful equality, one that is suitable to analyzing actual and proposed solutions, and one that reflects real, active concerns with ample local examples. It has the promise of engaging students on a meaningful national problem.

1Liptak, A. (2013). Need-blind justice. The New York Times, January 5, Sunday Review section, p. 4. The facts related in this posting regarding this Texas experiment are contained in this source.

A TRANSACTIONAL AIM

If you are new to this blog, let me point out that a recurring claim I have been making in previous postings is that in the past fifty to sixty years, civics courses around the country have been guided by a prevalent view of government. That mental construct I have entitled the natural rights construct. In essence, this view sees government as the ultimate protector of our individual rights. As a philosophic statement, the construct is a moral view. It holds, as a moral imperative, that government should be established and maintained in order that each of us is able to determine the life we want to lead; we are to be unfettered to do what we wish as long as we do not interfere with others' rights to do likewise.

Government is needed under this view, but only to protect this basic moral claim. “Government that governs least, governs best” is a standard adage associated with the natural rights view of governing. Yes, there might be some offhand allowance for the importance of community or an encouragement for people to participate in community affairs – after all, a person might determine that such activities add to his or her personal happiness – but the focus is on the individual and his or her rights. Surely, under the natural rights view, there must not be any laws dictating any such involvement; it is only suggested as the “thing” good citizens do.

With a focus on describing and explaining a “rights-protecting” institution, the study of government is centered on teaching the structure, processes, and functions of government and governance with a more or less mechanistic perspective. Why? Several reasons, but prominent is the following: among our rights is the right to compete for favorable governmental decisions and benefits. But one must remember that the benefits can be of only a certain type and amount. After all, the goal, under this view, is for the least governance. But – and here is the irony – in this day and age, even minimal aims call for extensive government and governance. To protect our rights, for example, a government must sustain an adequate military. This simple determination, though, calls for enormous outlays of funds so that the government can buy the necessary weapons and other related goods and services – expenditures of hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Who will get that business? We all have the right to compete. While most of us will not compete to manufacture the newest tank, we might want to compete for other outlays in serving our military or other governmental operation. In order to be able to compete, to be able to exercise this right, we need to know stuff.

Well, our civics instruction is meant to teach you that knowledge, in terms of governmental structure, functions, and processes, at least at an introductory level. That is the type of knowledge a government or civics course will contain and try to impart to its students. As evidence for this overall view, let me share with you a list of intended outcomes of an American Government course from a document that was issued by the Dade County Public Schools¹ system in the mid 1980s.

After successfully completing this course, the student will be able to

1. Contrast the structure and function of government at all levels in American political life.
2. Analyze the basic principles of political organization embodied in the Constitution.
3. Contrast the processes by which power is passed on within all levels of the three branches of government.
4. Analyze the effectiveness of influences on governmental decision making by the support and dissent of individuals and interest groups using the criteria of actual changes initiated or completed.
5. Trace the relationship between majority rule and individual rights as it is reflected in our legal and governmental system and as it evolved through differing interpretations of the Constitution.
6. Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of our federal system of government to deal with those domestic and foreign problems facing our nation today.
7. Show relationships between American political traditions and the American way of life (social, economic, and religious ideals).
8. Demonstrate the importance of participating in community, service, civic importance, and involvement in political activities.
9. Utilize appropriate vocabulary, geographical, reference/study, critical thinking, and decision-making skills.

I know that when I, as a government teacher, reviewed these stated curricular aims, I interpreted them, collectively, as a fairly neutral stand about any governmental or political ambition, either by government or government officials. And yet I do not interpret our Constitution in that light. What we have here is a justification for transactional politics – “I do something for you, if you do something for me.” Instead, I believe our Constitution is a compact among all of us in which we promise to work toward our common welfare.

Our Preamble to the Constitution is more than just a goal statement for establishing a government as an arena for competing interests. This blog has been dedicated to making and explaining a mental construct that promotes a more proactive approach toward striving for the commonwealth of the nation that is based on republican principles and democratic processes. Under this other, federalist, view, civics instruction would present content that encourages, not dictates, a shift away from transactional politics to a view of a shared partnership, one in which we all sense a more palatable common fate.

1The name of this school district has since changed; it is now known as the Miami-Dade Public Schools. This school district is among the five largest in the nation.

“HEAD OUT ON THE HIGHWAY”

Like most creative endeavors, an idea for a civics lesson comes from many sources. There is an advertisement running in my local TV market – I'm sure it is running nationally – that I believe contains a strong civic message. The car manufacturer, Subaru, is the responsible party.

The ad starts with a fairly close-up shot of a young woman struggling with some physical chore. It turns out that she is changing a tire on a car (of course, a Subaru). As the ad progresses, she struggles with loosening the bolts (finally, resorting to some foot action – better leverage); she struggles with removing the tire; she struggles with picking up the replacement tire and then lining it up. The shooting splices the action into short segments of the chore. As she finally finishes, which one assumes took a very long time, this fairly tall man emerges from behind the car. You hear a male voice-over saying that he wanted her to know she could do it and the shot then shifts to another close up of the young lady's face, smiling and portraying a sense of pride. The next scene is of the tallish man putting his arm around the young lady's shoulder. From this perspective, it becomes clear the young lady is a very young teenager. This is the first time you see her standing up and you realize the tire height is almost half her height. Here, in a few scenes, is a good summation of what this blog has tried to establish – the federalist vision of equality.

No product represents our sense of individualism more than the automobile. While Steppenenwolf's classic rock song, Born to Be Wild, is probably about motorcycles, the song can serve as a natural rights anthem and, for most of us, the automobile promises the song's image of freedom. It, the car, allows one to be able to travel where one wants to go in order to do what one wants to do. Our folklore is full of images of the young and the not so young traveling around our open spaces capturing this image of independence. And yet, even here, there are duties to fulfill and necessities to satisfy. This young girl, as a personification of liberty, needs to have workable tires on that conveyer of freedom. She will not necessarily have, at all times, access to a service station or helpful person – a male – to fix a flat tire. Even if she belongs to AAA – how institutional – she might find herself in some remote place without her cell phone or in a place where she does not have a strong enough signal to use that cell. As the male voice in the ad tells us, he wants her to be as safe as possible; therefore, she needs to know how and be physically able to change a tire. Flats are common enough that the inability to fix one does offer a meaningful enough danger.

And yet who is it that is providing the instruction? It's someone who cares enough to provide it: Dad. So, even when the image is one of independence, of individualism, there is the appropriate institutional figure, the family member, who is providing the instruction for the young lady to be able to exercise her freedom in a reasonably safe manner. The ad doesn't show the interaction between father and daughter that led to this instructional session. I think we are led to believe that a bit of even coercion might have led to the two of them being out there so the daughter could accomplish this purely instructional task; the first tire didn't seem flat or seem it had a puncture. I'm not positive, but I am fairly sure the car was not presently hers to use and, therefore, changing the tire did not benefit her in any immediate way. If the young teen is symbolic of a typical teenager, then the lesson probably did not have the importance to her that it did her father. Yet she fulfilled her obligation to follow her father's directive.

I don't have a daughter. I have a lovely daughter-in-law. I have wondered about how good a dad I would have been to a daughter. I have often felt strongly that what I would have tried to accomplish would include instilling a strong sense of independence and self-reliance. Sports – even team sports – is a good teacher of such values. Perhaps naively, I would have highly encouraged her to participate in sports as I did my son. In any event, a scene like the one depicted in the ad would have definitely been part of my parenting strategy. Nothing promotes women's lib more, other than sane public policy, than to promote among young girls a strong sense of self-worth and self-confidence in order for them to aim high and to attain the skills necessary to succeed in our competitive economy.

To me, obviously, there is a lot in this ad – maybe more than its producers intended. But I believe the ad is a fine way to introduce a federalist conception of the balance between communal and individualistic interests. Symbolically, the ad presents a fine depiction of the relative legitimacy of both types of interests and how they both can function in a productive interaction. It suggests a model for such interactions that a civics class can formulate and then apply to many politically challenging situations.

HOPEFUL TREND

I'm a city boy. I presently live in a town with fewer than two hundred thousand inhabitants, but before moving here, other than my college years, I lived in cities of over 200,000. I was born in New York City and lived there for the first ten years of my life. My folks moved me to Miami, but I made frequent trips to New York since many of the years after that move, one or both of my parents needed to move back and so I would visit quite a bit. Of course, Miami grew enormously through the years. It's a significantly different city today than the town I first moved to in the late fifties. There are great things about living in a big city and there are challenges. I currently choose not to live in Miami because of those challenges but, as was the case with New York, I do cherish my frequent trips down there. I will continue to make them. But the question remains, why not live there? It happens that many are deciding to do just that; that is, to live in big cities. Big cities have their restaurants, their entertainment (especially the theater in New York), their museums, their architecture, their people-watching. But there is also the traffic, the disagreeable interactions with hurried and gruff people, and the indifference one encounters all too often.

The media has been reporting that a lot of young people are choosing to live in cities as opposed to the suburbs. Perhaps the attraction is the more cosmopolitan lifestyle that movies and TV shows glamorize. One supposes they are seeking their vision of happiness. Among certain scholars – social researchers – the focus has been directed to that elusive dependent variable we call happiness. In a recently published book, the journalist, Charles Montgomery, reports on the work of these academics. Leading the way have been behavioral economists. Since many of them have a background in psychology, these researchers have delved into studying everyday decisions. I will admit that I haven't read Montgomery's book, Happy City, but according to a New York Times' review,¹ the book points out that most people are not very good at making decisions that result in maximizing their well-being. I would argue that people set out to make decisions that do maximize their well-being, but they get sidetracked by influences that in retrospect lead to irrational choices. The review offers this example: a young couple, upon seeing a beautiful four/two or two and a half house in the suburbs with the big yard in the pleasant neighborhood, fall in love with an image of the ideal American family lifestyle the house promises them. They lose sight that the house can be a one or two hour drive from work – which means the round trip is twice that, or put another way, leaving the house before daylight and coming home exhausted and frustrated with the long commute. “Montgomery cites studies reporting that the farther people have to commute, the less happy they are, not just with the driving but with the quality of their lives altogether.”

The purpose of the book is not only to sell shorter commutes, but also to report on studies that have identified those elements that could be designed into city environments to increase levels of happiness; for example, and I do relate to this, the presence of greenery interspersed throughout urban areas. I was gratified the review made a point of stating that they were not recommending more Central Parks – a la New York – but smaller patches that do not take a special trip to a faraway place in order to see and visit. These would be patches that one would encounter in normal movement within all parts of the city. I know that when I lived in New York, a real ballgame on a real diamond called for a walk of what I would now consider about three miles. Hence, stick ball, stoop ball, and a host of games on the street in front of my apartment building were our mode of play. Safe? No way, but despite the occasional broken window, it was a great way to spend a summer day.

The book also features the importance of casual friendships that neighborhoods offer. In a city block, in the course of just normally walking around, the activity lends itself to making these kinds of encounters – the same people over and over again, day in and day out. While you wouldn't go on vacations or have dinners with these people, they were the cast of characters that made up the backdrop of one's life. They made you feel like you belong to something; that was, you belong to a viable neighborhood. They also reported to your parents when you were up to no good. Now I know a lot of what I am describing is my personal recollections of what I experienced in those years I lived in New York. But with the type of study Montgomery is reporting, perhaps city planners can pick up on these types of features and begin to include those physical elements that would create these types of communal qualities. Work of psychologists and social psychologists indicate that we absorb the emotional metaphors that our experiences suggest.² Apparently, it is just this type of planning we are seeing in many, if not most, of our cities today. This is a counter-development to what was fashionable at the end of the last century. Those designs were characterized by blank walls in downtown areas. Ironically, that trend countered the more people-friendly environs of an earlier time: today, more so, “public spaces, built for conviviality and conversation, [serve as] an antidote to the empty, windswept plazas that became staples of life in the center of New York and other major cities in the 1960s and 1970s.”³ Happily, the more communal options are being put in place in many of our urban areas.

For civics teachers, there is no more a civic issue than this: what will our local environments be like? It is surely a federalist issue. This area of concern offers us an issue where the average citizen can have meaningful input. This is a local concern and therefore one that, while attracting the concern of vested interests – just considering the value of urban real estate – a participating electorate can put direct pressure on city officials to do the communal thing. It seems that currently, on this front, the communal forces are winning across the land.

1Ehrenhalt, A. (2014). Greener pastures. The New York Times, Book Review section, January 5, p. 25.

2Schnall, S. (2013). A sense of cleanliness. In J. Brockman (Ed.) Thinking: The new science of decision-making, problem solving, and prediction, (pp. 215-224).

3Op cit., Ehrenhalt, p. 5.

FEDERATED “WAR ZONE”

Let me play teacher. For homework, you are to Google “Promise Zones.” You will find an entry: President Obama's announcement of establishing five “Promise Zones” in which the federal government is organizing local people and groups to provide assistance to low income people in five different localities around the country. You are to view the President's presentation. The purpose is to hear about a program that I would argue is based on federal ideals and principles. Why do I say this? Because the Promise Zones get local business people, government people, and non-profit people to develop and implement a plan to meet the comprehensive needs of a low income population. These parties, in effect, federate with each other to accomplish ambitious goals. They want to help these people turn their lives around – that is, people who find themselves in poverty or near poverty. The federal government provides initial funding which can be substantial and organizing services to get the thing going. At least that's my understanding of how it works.

In the last posting, I mentioned that in our national political world, we have undue influence by large corporations. I also mentioned that these corporations are overly populated by self-centered actors who are advancing only their personal ambitions. Of course, this does not refer to all those who work and even lead these corporations. There are those who view their involvement in corporate activities as an associational effort; that is, they define their roles as ones in which they are federated to their fellow workers to accomplish corporate goals and they, in turn, see their corporate roles as ones in which they see themselves as partners with their colleagues. Yes, they compete for advancement within the corporate structure, but they do not do so in such a way as to hinder the health of the corporation. In addition, they perform their duties and support those corporate policies that bolster the communities in which their businesses function. Business personnel who engage in such efforts, like the one the President announced, reflect a federalist approach to corporate action. Unfortunately, my view of corporate activity today does not reflect many examples of this type of approach.

The President's announcement was given on the day after the fiftieth anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson's State of the Union message in which the late president announced his initiative, the War on Poverty. While quite a few programs we associate with LBJ's initiative are still with us, we can't say that we, as a nation, have been fully engaged in this “war” during the last fifty years. Yes, we have cut the rate of poverty by more than half, but quite a few historical developments since 1964 have sidestepped our efforts to eradicate poverty. There was the Vietnam War and its costs, the administrations of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and those of the two Bushes which, to varying degrees, were hostile to the War on Poverty programs. All of these historical developments have put major obstacles in the way of our poverty fighting agenda.

With his announcement, and the President put it in this context, the Obama administration is picking up the mantle, at least in terms of goals, of the War on Poverty. One item that President Obama included in his remarks was that the Promise Zones would be subject to demanding reviews and evaluations. They, the efforts, have to work in order to survive. The old adage of “if only one child is helped, the effort is well worth it,” does not cut it. Many more than one child has to be helped. The President provided the Harlem Children's Zone as the model for his additional, proposed zones. It serves as an example of what the federal government considers a worthwhile investment. The following is an excerpt from an Atlantic Monthly article regarding the Harlem project:

The Zone, … first began as a one-block pilot program in the 1990s … . Now [in 2012] spread over 90 blocks in Harlem, it takes an intensive and comprehensive approach to child development. At its most basic, the idea is to support children in the neighborhood from the minute they're born until they leave for college. That means parenting classes, intensive kindergartens, high-quality schools called Promise Academies with robust after-school programs, even help with college applications.

In Harlem, it's been a wild success. In 2009, all third graders at the HCZ's Promise Academy tested at or above their grade level in math, outperforming their peers in the city and throughout the state. Over 84 percent of Promise Academy II students at or above grade level in city-mandated English tests, topped the average test scores among all other black students in New York City. And in 2008, 93 percent of Promise Academy High ninth graders passed the statewide Algebra Regents exam.¹

While there has been some concern over how well the Harlem program has been evaluated, the program's costs, by most accounts, have been well worth the investment.

From this short description, we can get a sense of how comprehensive this type of efforts needs to be. It obviously needs the input of many parties – many confederates – some from business, some from government, and some from non-profit organizations. They need to give the effort their skills, time, and, yes, money. And this call for involvement and coordination includes a strong leader. Those were, in the Harlem case, integral elements in their success. And the level of commitment needs to be broad and deep. There needs to be among the participants a compact, an agreement which has an almost sacred quality. Without that, I would surmise, success will be elusive at best. Those involved must feel that failure is not an option.

President Obama's initial plan upon taking office was to pursue these types of programs. Unfortunately, the immediate effects of the severe recession which has plagued the years of the Obama Administration have demanded that the federal government aim its efforts toward providing direct assistance – straight money outlays to a population facing the economic deprivations related to the recession.² Perhaps due to an improving economy, the President's announcement on January 9 indicates he is now ready to pursue this Promise Zone approach. He named five zones for funding. Let's see if these federal arrangements actually develop and achieve the hoped for levels of success.

 

1Erickson, A. (2012). Why hasn't the Harlem Children's Zone been replicated even without Obama's help? The Atlantic Cities, August 16. See http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2012/08/why-hasnt-harlem-childrens-zone-been-replicated-even-without-obamas-help/2968/ .

2Ibid.

WHAT'S YOUR SQUARE?

Perhaps in reading this blog, you might detect a certain political, partisan bent. Believe it or not, that is not the intent. As the introduction of this blog indicates, main goals of the blog are to present, explain, and promote a certain construct. This is a construct that can serve as a guide in the choice of content in our nation's civics classrooms. That construct I have entitled the liberated federalist construct. In terms of that construct's standards of good governance, the main problem today, the condition that hinders our ability to put in place the most prudent public policy, is our adherence to extreme individualism. I am not claiming it's individualism, but extreme individualism. This state of affairs is fed by our adoption of another construct as our main guide to not only civics content, but also to our general view of governance and social relations. That construct is the natural rights construct. If you can accept these general premises, it follows that a blog dedicated to these goals and believing views of our current conditions as I have just described them would dedicate a great deal of space to presenting them and argue for changes that shift our policies from extremely individualistic ones to those that are more collective in nature. Again, it is not extreme collectivism, but a collective posture that resembles that which earlier generations of Americans believed to be best.

“You can't go home, again” is a refrain you might be thinking. And, in its truest sense, that might be true. In any event, I have made a distinction between what I have named traditional federalism and liberated federalism. As the names indicate, the traditional form of this construct, the one that prevailed earlier in our history, is probably the one that is no longer attainable and not advisable to adopt. But I do believe a more “liberal” version of the construct is both attainable and advisable. In order to approach a more federalist view, though, be it traditional or liberated, one needs to overcome those forces that have entrenched our more individualistic posture. That is the overarching power structure that exists in the nation. And here is where a perceivable partisan bias might come through in my postings. I judge the prevailing politics of the nation to be overly influenced – is the term controlled? – by the corporate entities that reign over our economic system. Between the money, property, income, wealth, and lobbying access, the corporatist faction has a near stranglehold over our public decision-making. Consequently, when I prepare to post, I am usually thinking of some resulting abuse or other and my thoughts lead to reporting and opining over a more collective response. While corporations are collectives, they are run by highly charged individuals who view economics as a compilation of individual decisions and actions. The typical corporation is not an association of federated cohorts, but organizations of individual operatives all seeking their personal interests and benefits. Collectivist responses to prevailing conditions probably sound and have the feel of progressive argument. Yet that is not accurate.

So, to clear the air a bit, may I suggest the following conception. Let us say that in terms of this blog, one might be served by viewing our politics not merely as one that can be analyzed by the continuum from progressive to conservative, but also by another continuum, one from collectivism to individualism. And one should keep in mind that, in terms of American politics, the relevant expanse of that second continuum is relatively limited, although as of late, our politics has included factions espousing a more extreme individualism, as in libertarianism. Let us attempt to give this backdrop a more visual description.

If, on a sheet of paper, one were to juxtapose the two continua as perpendicular axises with the collective-individual axis running up and down and the progressive-conservative axis running left to right (how appropriate), then four quadrants are formed. The top left quadrant, the progressive/collective quadrant, would have a list of policy areas favored by those who are both progressive and collective in their orientation. This might include welfare – programs such as the Great Society – national health programs (especially one that is a single-payer type), and housing for the indigent. In the top right quadrant, the conservative/collective quadrant, policies promoting neighborhoods, religion (especially congregational religion), family, and the like might be found there. In the lower left quadrant, the progressive/individualist quadrant, one finds policies that would include civil rights, free speech, and decriminalizing drug use. And the last quadrant, the lower right one, would contain conservative/individualist policies: gun ownership rights, entrepreneurial rights, free trade, and anti-labor union policies. I feel this grid of four quadrants would be a useful tool for teachers to help students view not only how issues are seen and judged, but also help in determining how political alliances are or are potentially formed by the adherents of the different quadrants.

What is also interesting is to consider how dissonance is generated by politically active people over such issues as recognizing the rights of gay and lesbian couples to get married. Where does such an issue fall? Usually that issue falls in the progressive/individualist quadrant, but I have heard language that would shift the perception of the issue to the more conservative/collective quadrant. Different questions can be entertained by the use of the grid. For example, how does the electorate, in terms of numbers, fall? Is there a shift in the general electorate among the quadrants? How do the demographics affect how people will populate the grid in the future? On and on.

But to get to my original concern: if this blog has an apparent progressive bent, it is due primarily to how I see the most fundamental problems of today's political landscape. Again, I see that challenge from the strength of corporate entities to be the most influential and fundamental detriment to our good governance. Their interests reflect the positions of the conservative/individualist quadrant. In most direct opposition would be the positions reflected by the progressive/collectivist quadrant. That's just the way it is.

POTENTIAL SHIFT

Since last I wrote this blog, the political punditry is all aglitter with the fact that former president, Bill Clinton, administered the oath of office to the incoming mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio. What could it all mean? With Hillary Clinton sitting just a few feet away, does all this mean that the Clintons are moving to the left since the new mayor ran on a platform of progressive promises? Is this just another sign that Hillary will run for president and is this the Clintons' way of shoring up the Democratic base support? Who knows, and at this point of the presidential cycle, who should really care that much? What I found more interesting were President Clinton's remarks in introducing the new mayor. He spoke of the collective nature of New York society – you can consider that the American society – and that we cannot ignore what all that means in terms of governmental policy.

Clinton's presidency was noted for its push back from extreme liberal politics.¹ His administration was no enemy of Wall Street and its interests. But what we have to remember were the times when Clinton ran for office, back in 1992. At that time, one can say the nation was still – I would call – staggering out of the eighties, an apogee of natural rights thinking. That was the age of Ronald Reagan, a president who projected an image of extreme individualism, anti-government sentiment, and pro-business policy. The reality was not so extreme, but the language was right there, and I do mean “right.” Here comes an attractive and vibrantly young Democrat who spoke of a compromise, not of big government, but of “the end of the era of big government.” Again, we are talking language, not substance. Big government continued – perhaps the pace of growth slowed – with the basic structure of the New Deal arrangement surviving quite well. Yes, there was to be the Gingrich Revolution of 1994 that was to preserve and advance the Reagan agenda. But ultimately, that was stymied by the closing down of the government and, in the end, the “revolution” made little difference. It gave the Democrats the talking point about how they administered the last balanced budget. But I digress.

My point here is that our politics cannot stray too far from a finely limited range between being overly individualistic to being overly collective. Our individualism is baked into our cultural makeup (of course, an individualism that was defined within a federalist philosophic context) and the realities of modern life – its industrial, post industrial, and corporatism – that espouses the notion that individuals can make it on their own ludicrous. This tension makes up, at least, ninety percent of our politics and it is unavoidable. Hence, this condition makes the question of whether Clinton is moving to the left somewhat marginal. Yes, it might help determine who gets elected and, consequently, it will make a difference in what specific policies are advanced, but the overall makeup of our politics, our political parties, and the like will remain pretty much the same.

Why? Because in the philosophic battle between natural rights advocates – read conservatives – and those who favor a marginally more proactive collective approach to governing – read, in common parlance, liberals – disagree on a very limited notion. That is, to what extent should government operate within the following concern: should government take on a set of values, a claim for the good, or should government take a neutral position on values and instead make a claim for the right (as in the rights of people)? Those who favor the latter believe that each of us should be left to our own devices to determine what should be the good. This is the basis of individualism in our politics. Society is too diverse, according to this position, for any one source of values. Therefore, government is best established and run if it stays out of the business of determining and promoting a “good” life. Whereas our “leftist” political language states that that position is all right for the most part, but there are limited areas in which the issues are too important, too central to survival, to simply let independent forces determine what transpires. These limited areas can be summed up as issues of security, safety, health, and education. Especially important are those situations in which the private sector – here the reference is the markets – fall short in providing essential goods and services. Of course, the shortfall in health services is the fundamental justification for the Affordable Care Act. In those areas, not only does the government have the authority to address the good, but an obligation. The same goes for nutrition, housing, defense of the nation, police and fire protection, and education. Most of these, under our federalist make up, have been the obligation of local governmental entities, but when the local government either won't or can't meet the needs, then we have the central government meeting or helping to meet these needs.

A true believer on either side of this divide will not be convinced by whatever I write here. But for those who question why we fight over what oftentimes seems so obvious and so practical to fix or even address, here is something about which to think. While one side says it is for individual decisions concerning the good, that in itself is a statement about the good. That side is saying: it is good to have people decide what they believe the good to be. And they admit that this is the one domain in which they concede that the collective is taking a value position. But what happens when we commit ourselves to just that value and reject any other collective claim for the good? We did that during the Industrial Revolution – big time – and we did it during the Reagan era – not so big time. Results: we have upsurges in poverty, the skewing of income and wealth to the upper class; some claim we have exploitation of the working segments of the population, vast deficiencies in education among the poor, increased incidents of discrimination, and the general decline of large segments of the population. De Blasio claimed that the current mal-distribution of income in New York City is threatening to unravel the whole social fabric of the city (probably a bit of hyperbole, but reflecting some elements of truth). We are still feeling the effects of the Reagan era and those are the consequences of policies that advanced the politics of extreme individualism.

The new mayor has a lot to do, but the one area I hope he does succeed in is running the city in a practical manner, because all of his efforts to promote equality will be for naught if the basic city services are not provided for in a reasonably efficient matter. For the sake of shifting the politics of New York and of the nation to a more, but not extreme, collective direction, here's wishing the new mayor all the luck in the world.

1Here I am using the term, liberal politics, as it is used in the media, not in its philosophic sense.