ECONOMIC SEGREGATION

I am currently, in this blog, revisiting the issue of how and to what extent civics education is falling short of what we should expect from that portion of our schools’ curricula.  The purpose is to update information I reported years ago when this blog was new.  Times change and the problems identified in 2010 might be different today.  One such problem has to do with economic conditions and, as I wrote back then, this might seem like a stretch to you –the relationship between the economy and civics education – but I don’t think so.

When considering economic conditions, I find it helpful to recall a concept that might initially sound unrelated to the hard numbers associated with economic activity.  That concept is social capital.  I was introduced to this idea by reading Robert D. Putnam.[1]  His definition of the concept – a bit paraphrased – is:  a societal quality characterized as having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation; it speaks to communal bonds and cooperative interactions.  Summarily, this concept refers to a citizenry that has adopted a meaningful degree of selflessness.  I have written about the republican spirit that spurred our founding governing principles and its inclusion of such selflessness, and yet what we are experiencing today is a social environment in which we see increasing levels of selfishness and narcissism.[2]

Economically, we have had increasing levels of income and wealth disparity and this trend has been growing since I initially wrote about it in this blog.  A more recent academic work is Putnam’s just published book, Our Kids:  The American Dream in Crisis.[3]  Due to the economic trends which had their origins in the 1970s, but increased in their pace of development during the 1980s, what we as a citizenry have accomplished is an ever increasing level of economic segregation even within racial and ethnic groups.  The overall trend has been population shifts toward either upper income or lower income resulting in a depopulation of the middle.  This has led to a high degree of economic and social segregation between these economic classes.  Consequently, we are not only lacking in social capital, but also are creating the social dynamics that will make it almost impossible to sustain any social infrastructure that would support it.

Therefore, we can expect in the coming years and decades less public-spirited citizenry, less equality in terms of both economic factors – such as opportunity – and political factors, and less trust and cooperation.  We will most likely experience weakening communal bonds and increased animosity between economic segments of the economy.  Reflective of this economic backdrop, our politics will likely become even more bizarre and antagonistic.  I will not be surprised if this antagonism takes on a more organized form.  With social media as a resource, one can imagine an organized and militant response by disadvantaged groups.  My point back then and still today is that we are reaping what we sowed.  And most telling is what Putnam points out: that most Americans are only semi-conscious of these developments.  They are simply not being instructed as to these socioeconomic developments.  They know that things are not as good as they used to be, but they have little understanding of what is actually taking place. 

To illustrate his points, Putnam writes of two kids who live miles apart, one a product of an advantaged family, the other of a disadvantaged situation – I can’t even use the term “family” to describe his home life.  Despite their proximity to each other, there is little to no chance they will ever have any contact with each other.  This is desperately different from the social world Putnam grew up in back in the 1950s.  In that earlier world, his high school had kids from differing social and economic classes.  The level of interaction among the different segments of the student body was healthy and often.  This is not so true today and the level of such interaction is becoming more and more infrequent.  For one thing, poorer kids are stuck in dysfunctional schools while richer kids are more apt to attend private schools.  The “indivisibility” of our nation is becoming a memory.  We need to address this development and our economic metrics need to account for the cost factors caused by our neglect of such segregation.

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[1] Putnam, R. D.  (1995).  Bowling alone:  America's declining social capital.  Journal of Democracy, January, pp. 65-78.

[2] Also see Twenge, J. M. & Campbell, W. K. (2009). The narcissism epidemic: Living in the age of entitlement. New York, NY: Free Press.

[3] Putnam, R. D.  (2015).  Our kids:  The American dream in crisis.  New York, NY:  Simon and Schuster.

STILL BOWLING SOLO

It has been a few years since I started this blog.  Early on, I felt it necessary to outline the shortcomings of civics education in American schools.  This was done in order to provide you, the reader, some sense of what was motivating this blog.  Through the years, it has been my perceptions of the ongoing conditions within this field that have guided what I wrote.  It has occurred to me that since conditions never remain static, it would be a responsible step to revisit these observations and see if the literature of more recent vintage indicates a change.  Perhaps the conditions I reported in 2010 have been addressed and are not as virulent as they were back then.  I would hasten to say that if that were the case, it would have been reported extensively by the news.  I would state that one condition has been reported upon and that reporting has indicated that the condition has improved – more on this in a future posting.

In order to give you this update, I am dedicating the next few postings to this effort.  I will remind you of the specific deleterious conditions I reported back then and then give more current research concerning each condition.  But this particular posting will give an overview of how well civics education is doing and I will rely on a report by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) just published in 2015.  Below, I quote a segment of the Executive Summary of the report and then comment on it. 

Here is the Summary’s main overall finding:

For more than 250 years, Americans have shared a vision of a democracy in which all citizens understand, appreciate, and engage actively in civic and political life.  In recent decades, however, increasing numbers of Americans have disengaged from civic and political institutions such as voluntary associations, religious congregations, community-based organizations, and political and electoral activities such as voting and being informed about public issues.  Young people reflect these trends:  they are less likely to vote and are less interested in political discussion and public issues than either their older counterparts or young people of past decades.  As a result, many young Americans may not be prepared to participate fully in our democracy now and when they become adults.[1]

This summary statement could not mirror more closely my overall judgement of civics education when I addressed it back in 2010.

Back then, I made a point of sharing with you the description of citizen involvement and its evolvement from the earliest times of our republic.  I used a lengthy account by the writer Alexis de Tocqueville.  His is a vivid telling of how Americans readily partook in animated and engaged discussion over the issues of that day.  Foremost were discussions over local civic projects and developments.  The firsthand report was written in the 1830s.  While I questioned how accurate the account was, I presented it as at least a reasonable depiction if not a truthful vision of how Americans were involved.  I also presented it as an ideal which I felt our civics instruction should use to guide our efforts in promoting good citizenship.  It is gratifying to see that the NCSL shares this commitment.  Not so gratifying is the organization’s agreement that since those early days, we have not been so effective in maintaining this level of engagement. 

The time dimension referred to in the citation coincides with mine in that the Summary mentions how in the last several decades there has been a meaningful downturn in levels of engagement not only in terms of politics and government, but also in the more civil pursuits such as working with community-based organizations.  One of my main points in my early writings was to date our turn to a natural rights perspective as a dominant view in the years just following World War II.  That more current view emphasizes a more individualistic social stance in which main concerns are over self-defined goals and aims.  This transition from a more community based populous to a more self-centered one did not happen overnight, but was the product of several trends starting almost as soon as the ink on the Constitution of 1787 was dry.  However, the big transfer from a traditional federalist view, the view that dominated to that point, to the natural rights view has happened since 1945.

Again, my efforts in the upcoming postings will be to give you an update on the conditions facing civics education.  From this first entry, we can already tell that things have not gotten much better and perhaps even worse.

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[1] National Conference of State Legislatures (2015).  The civic mission of schools.  Executive Summary.  Dever, CO:  National Conference of State Legislatures.  Retrieved from http://www.ncsl.org/legislators-staff/legislators/trust-for-representative-democracy/the-civic-mission-of-schools-executive-summary.aspx , a website.

A SOUTHERN THING

At one point in this blog, several years ago, I shared with you the work of Daniel J. Elazar.[1]  Specifically, I pointed out his conceptualization of three political subcultures in the American nation and how they had their origins all the way back to the nation’s colonial days.  The three political subcultures have been the moralistic, the individualistic, and the traditional.  To further refresh your memory, let me add that the three started on the Atlantic coast and stretched in more or less parallel layers of states all the way to the Pacific.  While this pattern has not been perfect – for example, the traditional was truncated in its expansion to the former Confederate states – there still exists a fairly discernable cultural distinction among the three.  More recent research, that of Robert D. Putnam,[2] reports that the pattern is still observable.  I want to further consider the prevalence of one of these subcultures, the traditional political subculture.  As I mentioned above, this is a subculture dominant in the good old South.

Economically, the significance of this subculture is its disposition concerning the role and social designation of labor.  To put this in context, this subculture is characterized by the following:

1.  Belief that the elite class (originally plantation owners and their families) should have dominant political power.  This power position should be secured by establishing a caste system in which political, economic, and social status is primarily determined by conditions of birth.  The subculture, a pre-industrial view, supports and maintains a strict social and political hierarchy.  Under their paternalistic control, elites can accomplish good things.

2.  Goodness is defined, circularly, as anything that perpetuates this hierarchical distribution of power.

3.  Most politics is derived from personal relationships.  Political parties are of little value and primarily function to recruit individuals for positions in government that elites do not want to hold.

4.  Leadership is seen as a custodial function.  As custodians, elites will initiate change only when they perceive they must due to pressures emanating from outside the system.

Obviously, these characteristics have had to accommodate the changes that befell the South, especially since the Civil War.  One might ask:  how much has the South changed?  Since the Civil War, the development of industrialization has probably had one of the most extensive effects on southern culture, though the prevalence of industrial spread has been limited.  We hear in the news that foreign and domestic car manufacturers are opening production facilities in southern states.  But the automobile industry was not the first looking to the South to build and operate production facilities.

Sven Beckert[3] gives us an account of how the South, already famous for growing the raw material of the cotton industry, began to actually produce finished cotton products.  This process began in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century and was a consequence of the unionization of northern workers, particularly in Massachusetts.  This development was the US’s version of a worldwide phenomenon:  the transfer of the cotton industry to what Berkert calls the global South.  Other areas so affected were Egypt, India, China, and Japan.  In our South, the following description is offered:

As a result of the peculiar settlement between the expropriated slave owners and industrial capitalism after the Civil War, the United States had a global South within its own territory.  And the United States also had its own class of global capitalists who had, just like their Indian counterparts, accumulated wealth in the trade of raw cotton, ready to move some of it into manufacturing enterprises.  The exceptional combination of extensive territory and limited political, economic, and social integration between North and South was the envy of European capitalists – and the first harbinger of the global fate of European cotton manufactures as well.

… Lax labor laws, low taxes, low wages, and the absence of trade unions made the South alluring to cotton manufacturers, a region of the United States, according to an industry publication, “where the labor agitator is not such a power, and where the manufacturers are not constantly harassed by new and nagging restrictions.”  As a result, the period from 1922 to 1933 saw the closing of some ninety-three Massachusetts cotton mills; in the six years after 1922 alone … .[4]

This all happened after the long labor battles had finally accrued to northern workers living wages, child labor laws, and safer working conditions.

Still today, labor unions in the South are weak.  Probably very influential in this state of affairs are laws that limit the ability of unions to make meaningful inroads.  Eleven of the twenty-six states that have “right to work” laws are former Confederate states.  While recently, some “progressive” states, such as Wisconsin, have adopted “right to work” laws, it is hard to underestimate the effect of traditional views of politics having a meaningful influence on how southerners see labor and labor’s social and economic role in southern society.

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[1] Elazar, D. J. (1966). American federalism: A view from the states. New York, NY: Thomas Y. Crowell.

[2] Putnam, Robert D.  (2000).  Bowling alone:  The collapse and revival of American community.  New York:  Simon & Schuster.

[3] Beckert, S.  (2014).  Empire of cotton:  A global history.  New York, NY:  Alfred A. Knopf.

[4] Ibid., citation on pp. 393-394.

THE ECONOMIC FACE OF IT

In a post financial crisis book, one dedicated to explaining what caused the resulting recession, William K. Tabb makes an interesting observation.  His use of the concept, social structure of accumulation (SSA), places the importance of a prevailing mental construct at the center of determining how an economy functions:

The social structure accumulation (SSA) framework suggests that periods of growth require a coherent set of mutually reinforcing institutions favorable to capable accumulation.  These involve the creation of relatively lasting accommodations between contesting social forces, including stable understandings between capital and labor, the United States and the rest of the world, capital and the state, capitalists and other capitalists, and citizens and their government.  Institutional stability provides conditions under which the behavior of others, the meaning of events, and the likely outcome of actions can be predicted over the relevant planning horizon with enough confidence to provide consistent expectations, and so encourage investment and promote growth.[1]

In short, economic actors, according to Tabb, need to be sufficiently on the same page in both thought and action.  This can be viewed as reflecting a sufficiently unified mental economic image among these actors.  Short of that, economies suffer from drift and progress is stymied.

There has been a series of SSAs throughout the history of the US.  Tabb’s analysis is focused on what he terms the neoliberal SSA.  It is based on a general acceptance of a libertarian view of government’s legitimate role as being highly limited in the economy.  Historically, it replaced the Keynesian SSA that dominated our economic views from the 1930s through World War II and into the 1960s.  That view legitimized a very strong role for government and led to such policies as Social Security, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and a whole array of regulatory agencies to oversee the economy.  As the 1970s came and went with their inflation and malaise associated with the post-Watergate years and the administration of Jimmy Carter, that SSA fell into disfavor.  Then there was the articulation of Ronald Reagan along with his presidency.  Through the thrust of his policies, we have had the neoliberal view guiding our economic activities up until the financial debacle of 2008.  That span of years saw a high degree of deregulation.  Whether the Great Recession has been enough to dislodge it, is still an open question, but I think the upsurge of both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders reflects a higher sense of anger and anxiety among the American people – our collective discontent.  Those are the very emotions that lead to a change in beliefs and actions.

This duo of Trump and Sanders is interesting because each would pull our economic sensibilities in two opposite directions.  Trump would go further down the neoliberal direction while Sanders would push us toward policy with a strong governmental role in our economy.  Tabb describes that when an SSA falls into disfavor, there is a period of indecision and the economy at best just moves along aimlessly.  This seems to describe the economy since the outbreak of our economic woes in 2008.  But before we pass judgment on the demise of the neoliberal SSA, we should have a better understanding of how it eased the way to our current dysfunctional state.

To my mind, the neoliberal SSA is a natural outgrowth of the dominance of the natural rights construct which I have argued in this blog has guided our general views of governance and politics.  Its growth and strength predated the rise of the neoliberal view but served to pave the way for such economic thinking.  The overall effect has been to create the following economic conditions:

·        Large levels of deregulation led to financial strategies heavily dependent on leveraged schemes

·        Such schemes offered large profits to those who, like hedge fund managers, participated

·        Due to these and other restructuring flows of capital toward either financial activities or investments in foreign production facilities, there has been a significant shift of income and wealth to the upper classes, particularly toward the top 1%

·        Today, the lower classes are worse off than they were at the beginning of the twenty-first century

·        This, in turn, has put many lower class members into very precarious conditions particularly in terms of financial insecurity and a lack of sufficient health care

·        The number of people in the middle class has significantly diminished (and not toward the upper classes)

·        The designation of America as the land of opportunity has come seriously into question

·        And all of this is heightened in the US because, of all the advanced nations, our nation is the least disposed to help or assist in addressing the harshness that exists among those in the lower classes.[2]

Needless to say, especially to those who read this blog regularly, my wish is that the natural rights construct comes under question and loses its dominance over our political thinking toward what I prefer, a liberated federalist view.  I believe if that would happen, we would drift toward a newer SSA.  Further, that newer SSA would, in economic terms, lead to collaborations both nationally and globally in which all stakeholders would be respected and their interests would mutually advance in reasonable ways.  This newer view would not pit all against all, but would, while respecting individuals and their initiatives, seek common interests.  We hear among industrial leaders a language shift indicating such a change.  Whether this is merely public relations marketing at work or a more substantive mental posture, the upcoming years will tell.  Here’s hoping it is substantive.

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[1] Tabb, W. K.  (2012).  The restructuring of capitalism in our time.  New York, NY:  Columbia University Press.  Citation on p. 25.

[2] Stiglitz, J. E.  (2012).  The price of inequality.  New York, NY:  W. W. Norton and Company.

TWELVE BETTING MEN

There are some movies that I am glad I have seen, but if they pop up on TV, for example, on Turner Classic Movies, my initial reaction is to change the channel, because they are depressing or they just don’t meet my mood at that moment.  The thing is, though, that since I’m rather lazy, I don’t grab the remote quickly enough and, within a few lines, I’m hooked and I watch the rest of the movie.  One such film is 12 Angry Men[1] and the other night I viewed most of the film one more time.  I really like this film; I believe it should be “a must watch” for any person summoned to serve on a felony case jury.  For those who have not seen this film, the story concerns a murder case in which everyone on the jury has decided to find the defendant guilty, except for one juror.  This one “not guilty” juror begins questioning the evidence to the discomfort and even anger of the other jurors.  Slowly but surely he, and eventually other jurors, change minds so that by the end, the verdict is not guilty.  The conversations in the jury room generate reasonable doubt, for after all, to find the accused guilty, all the jurors have to be convinced as to guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.  But what does “beyond a reasonable doubt mean?”

This is not such an easy concept for civics’ students to understand.  First, a student needs to understand that an accused does not, by this standard, have to prove his/her innocence.  Yet, despite this legal refrain, in real courtrooms often the accused who doesn’t prove he/she is innocent is convicted.  On today’s Terry Gross’ National Public Radio show, Fresh Air, her guest was a lawyer who defends people on death row.  Bryan Stevenson told of one case in which the individual was defended by very competent lawyers who presented a very viable argument as to the defendant’s innocence – or at least a case that more than adequately engendered reasonable doubt.  Yet, in Mr. Stevenson’s words, the jury was too disposed toward finding the defendant guilty.  Eventually, after the conviction, evidence was assembled that proved the man innocent.  After years behind bars awaiting execution, he was released.  Unfortunately, this is not a singular case; we, from time to time, hear of such cases and see that those falsely accused are released from prison after years of their lives having been sacrificed.  He also told us of how the experiences had lasting detrimental effects on these people’s lives.

I will not get into the usual array of definitions for “beyond a reasonable doubt.”  You can readily find these on the web.  What I want, instead, is to offer a mental exercise students can do.  A teacher could show students the film, 12 Angry Men, with a predetermined plan to stop the film in spots that are conducive to this exercise.  The students hear the evidence as presented in the plot.  The teacher stops and asks, by a show of hands, which students think the defendant is guilty, and how many think he is not guilty.  Early on, the teacher makes the point that no one “knows” whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty; you can only believe one way or the other.  So the question is:  how do you believe in this case?  But then I would add another dimension.  At each stop, I would have the students imagine that before them is an all-knowing being who actually knows the truth.  They can further imagine that whatever their vote is – guilty or not guilty – they are to consider how much they are willing to bet that they are right.  Since before them is someone who knows, we can be told whether a students’ beliefs are correct.  Are they willing to bet $10, $100, $10,000?  Of course, the meaningfulness of the bet is dependent on one’s wealth.  So let the teacher say, in our exercise, the student is to adopt the role of a median wealth type person.  For that person, $10,000 is meaningful.  Teacher asks:  Are you so sure of your belief that you are willing to bet $10,000?  If you are right, you at least keep your $10,000; if you are wrong, you lose your $10,000.  How sure are you?  As the film progresses and, I’m sure, votes will change as happens to the characters, the teacher can remind the students how they voted earlier and perhaps how poorer they might have been if they had voted guilty during the first few stops.

When one thinks of how jurors can find defendants guilty or not guilty, it is useful to consider that jurors, other than the investment in time the case is taking, have nothing to lose in their deliberations.  We assume that they will take on this responsibility as a civic obligation and do a good job.  One of the characters in the movie is upset because he is missing a ball game by spending all this extra time to reconsider the evidence.  He is even willing to change his vote just to get the whole thing over.  I am led to believe that by and large jurors accept their duty responsibly.  I certainly hope so.

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[1] This is a 1957 film starring Henry Fonda with a stellar cast.  The original version was a dramatic production written and produced for television.  The original script was written by Reginald Rose.  The film was directed by Sidney Lumet.

A HUNCH IS IT’S GOING TO BE SOMETHING

A few postings ago, I reported that our conscious mind can handle about forty bits of information while our subconscious can handle, according to one estimate, eleven million.  I found that hard to believe, but then I started thinking:  what about our subconscious taking in all the information from our body, for example?  We are not conscious of that until one of those bits of information indicates a problem.  That’s not to say that even our subconscious can detect all our bodily information; we hear of cases in which, without them knowing, a person is carrying a disease for significant amount of time till the condition is really bad.  But I have also heard of cases where, while the illness is not detected per se, a person has a “feeling” that something is wrong.  Of course, hypochondriacs have this feeling a lot, but they are mistaken. 

I bring up the subconscious because I believe a great deal of what polls are picking up now as to who is leading in the respective contests within the two major parties’ races for the White House is just initial takes on the candidates – not a lot of reflection has taken place.  Pollsters are hearing gut reactions to what voters have heard and how they see and feel about how the state of things generally is.  They are supposed to be angry, the media tells them they should be, and so, whoever comes across most genuinely angry, that’s the guy or gal the voter will tell a pollster he/she is likely to support come election day.  Donald Trump’s appeal, I think, has a lot to do with his language and tone, not his substance.  This is not new.  Review early favorites in the past and see that many did not make it even past the first few months of the campaign season, and did not last past a primary election or two.  By the way, the first two real selection process dates are January 1, 2016, for the beginning of the Iowa caucus process, and February 9 for the New Hampshire primary – four and five months away, respectively.  While that’s around the corner in those states, for most of the rest of us, we have many months to go.  Summer is in full bloom, although some areas’ schools have already begun.  The point is, a lot is tugging on the conscious minds of many Americans and interest and thinking as to whom to vote for are still in the future.

Within this context, I found a study Malcolm Gladwell reports in his book, Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking, interesting.  Let me tell you about it my own way:  Suppose I put you in a room with four decks of cards in front of you – the cards are face down.  There are two red decks and two blue decks.  You are to pick up a card at a time, from whatever deck you wish, and see what it is and, depending on what you pick up, you either win money or you lose money (I assume the money you lose was from an initial amount you were given or from money you had already won).  The amounts can be significant or not.  The trick to a winning strategy is to pick from the blue decks which results, in any given pick, to a modest amount of winnings if you win or a minimal amount of loss if you lose.  “Red” cards do pay off bigger amounts, but they also penalize you heavily.  The question in the experiment was:  how fast can you detect the formula to maximize your winnings?  Most figured it out by the eightieth card, although the subjects reported having a hunch by the fiftieth card; interesting finding, but that was not the most telling part.  The subjects were also hooked up to sensors in the palms of their hands to pick up any increase in sweating, a sign of anxiety.  Those sensors usually picked up problems with the “red” choice after only ten picks, a subconscious reaction.  Wow.

I would have been interested to find out if the subjects could see the cards on a computer monitor where the experimenters could change the likelihood of winning and losing picks at any time during the experiment.  Experimenters could then see if subconscious reactions would have been affected according to changes in the programmed schedule of winning and losing; maybe the experimenters did this, but Gladwell doesn’t report it.

In any event, in terms of the early phases of this election season and taking into account how much information the subconscious detects, it is interesting to ask:  what all is happening in people’s minds as they hear and see what the candidates initially have to say?   One of my concerns is that hunches are often correct.  Our subconscious’ ability to take in the information and determine some phenomena correctly is uncanny.  But usually that’s on the part of people who deal with the particular type of phenomena over large amounts of time.  Even they, though, cannot tell you why their hunches are what they are.  Gladwell tells of a tennis coach who could predict by the way a player tossed a ball up for a serve whether the serve was going to be a good one or not, even when the coach could not tell you what was wrong with the toss.  The coach’s predictions were highly accurate.  Most voters vote infrequently and they pay little or no attention to the political process other than during that time immediately prior to voting day.  In low turnout elections – and primaries tend to be that kind of election – two types of people show up:  ideologues and angry people.  Perhaps with a high profile figure like Trump, the numbers will be higher come primary day, attracting less informed people.  If so, how will that affect the process, especially on the Republican side?  It promises to be an interesting election season – hold on!

CUBA, SI O NO

This new development with Cuba has led me to consider some thoughts about moral thinking.  Those who are opposing the establishment of diplomatic relations with the island nation cite the human rights abuses the Castro government has been guilty of for so many years.  These have included, according to our government, the killing of dissidents, the intolerance of dissent, the expropriation of private property, the jailing of those who have acted against the regime, and the list goes on.  Whether the extent of these abuses is as draconian as those opposing the Castro government would have us believe is open for debate.  I am sure that a great deal of it is true.  The opponents of recognizing the Cuban government couch their opposition in moral terms – good enough. 

Those who have argued in favor of reestablishing relations seem to base their position on several factors, not the least being that relations were suspended back in January, 1961, fifty-four years ago.  A lot has happened in those years.  We have established relations with other “sinful” regimes; China and Vietnam come to mind.  And yet the policy toward Cuba has remained and has included a strict embargo against trading with that communist nation.  The goal, ostensibly, has been to cause enough pain and weakness in Cuba so that the Castro brothers would be forced to change their policies or be overthrown.  It has not worked.  Even the opponents of the new policy argue that that regime is as oppressive as ever.  So the Obama administration says:  let’s try a new way; let’s establish relations; trade with them and try to influence them into making the desired changes.  That’s their argument.  So I ask:  is it immoral to deal with such a regime?  For conservatives, this is quite a difficult question.

Earlier in this blog, I reviewed the difference between thinking about moral questions from a categorical approach versus a utilitarian approach.  To quickly review that difference:  categorical approaches see moral positions as fairly uncompromising.  Acts are either moral or immoral by the mere fact that they abide by a moral value or they transgress a moral value.  In order to determine the morality of a value, a question is asked of it:  what would happen if everyone behaved in accordance with the value; could a society sustain such behavior?  For example, what if you valued lying?  If everyone lied, there would be no trust and a society would not be sustainable.  Therefore, lying is immoral and any value that supported it would be immoral.  On the other hand, truth telling, as a value or a behavior, does not threaten a society and, therefore, is moral.  Once this type of review is made of any value and its resulting behavior, one can determine which values and behaviors are moral.

Utilitarian reasoning is quite different.  With this approach, the question is one in which a person calculates how many people find a behavior and its corresponding value useful.  That is, does the behavior accrue some result which a person wants?  A moral choice is one that provides more usefulness than what’s otherwise available.  For example, if choice X satisfies 51% of the population and choice Y satisfies 49%, then choice X is the moral choice.  Each person is free to determine what constitutes usefulness or satisfaction for him or herself.  As can be seen, this approach is significantly different from the categorical approach.

Now let’s apply this to Cuba.  I believe the Cuban situation provides us with an interesting dilemma.  Categorically, a believer in democratic values would tend to see any relations with a dictatorial regime as immoral.  The policies of the Castro government have been immoral by the standards democrats hold.  Now, of course, this becomes a bit complex; one needs to justify democratic values, but that’s not my aim in this posting.  Let us just accept the morality of democratic values.  Conservatives, those who might oppose opening relations with Cuba, might take the posture, and many do, that this change in US policy is immoral.  But a central problem with categorical thinking is its tendency to not compromise.  There are times, though, when moral values come into conflict.  While conservatives might hold uncompromising democratic values, they also might very well value profits.  After all, profits provide the necessary motivation for us to engage in entrepreneurial activities.  Without those activities, democratic societies cannot function, since they count on individuals to freely decide to engage in economic activities.  By doing so, they create the goods and services people need and want and also the employment that provides the wages used to buy those goods and services.  The only other option is to abandon democratic values and structures and force people to engage in economic activity – the very type of policy many conservatives accuse the Castro government of enforcing.

With opening relations with China and Vietnam, we opened markets.  Conservatives of the more libertarian persuasion might see such actions as providing more usefulness than a categorical posture that would disallow such relations.  With more markets, business activity increases and more people will benefit and that goes for people in all of the countries involved.  Conservatives who rely on a more utilitarian moral view will tend to favor opening relations and would probably extend such reasoning to Cuban relations.  As I said above, this turn in Cuban relations provide us with an interesting dilemma for many, but especially for conservatives.