Category Archives: Random Blogging

Join the (Civic) Deficit Hawks

Several days ago, I referenced the first issue of The Journal of Civic Literacy. 

The introductory essay by former Supreme Court Justice David Souter really laid out the reason for both the Journal and the Center for Civic Literacy. Souter shared his concern that– without an understanding of the fundamentals–constitutional values will make no sense to people, because they have no context for them, no framework within which to understand them. And after listing the numerous influences that divide and polarize Americans, he wrote:

 “These are conditions, historical and contemporary, that drive us apart and tend to disunite us. What have we got pulling on the other side? By and large, what we have pulling on the other side is an adherence to an American Constitutional system… The American Constitution is not simply a blueprint for structure, though it is that. It is not merely a Bill of Rights, though it is that, too. It is in essence, a value system… We need to teach that we have a value system, and the one common value system that we can claim to have in the United States is the constitutional value system: a value system that identifies the legitimate objects of power, the importance ofdistributing power, and the need to limit power by a shared and enforceable conception of human worth.

That value system is the counterpoise to the divisive tendencies that are so strong today, and civic ignorance is its enemy. It is beyond me how anyone can assume that our system of constitutional values is going to survive in the current divisive atmosphere while being unknown to the majority of the people of the United States. It is only in the common acceptance of that value system that at the end of the day, nomatter what we are fighting about, no matter what the vote is in Congress or the State House or the townmeeting, we will still understand that something holds us together.”

That danger–that Americans will increasingly fracture into interest groups and contending constituencies, that we will increasingly lose the “unum” in the maelstrom of our “pluribus”– will be the focus of the Center for Civic Literacy’s upcoming National Conference on August 22-24 in downtown Indianapolis. The (somewhat ungainly) title of the conference is “Connecting the Dots: The Impact of Civic Literacy Gaps on Democracy, the Economy and Society, and Charting a Path Forward.”

We want to move the conversation about how to address our civic deficit away from a single-minded focus on classroom and curriculum—important as those are—to a consideration of the multiple other ways in which public ignorance of basic history, government, economics and science are impeding America’s ability to achieve even our most widely-held political, economic and social goals.

We also hope to go beyond the usual hand-wringing, and consider our options for improving the situation.

The program will open with a welcome from former Indiana Supreme Court Justice Ted Boehm, who chairs the Center’s National Advisory Committee, and will feature presentations from such nationally-known figures as Ted McConnell, Executive Director of the Civic Mission of the Schools Campaign, David Schultz, election law expert and Professor at Hamline University, Dallas Dishman, Executive Director of the Geffen Foundation, and Kim McLauren, Director of the Brennan Constitutional Literacy Foundation, among many others. (Even yours truly.)

Attendance at last year’s conference was limited to members of our National Advisory Committee. This year, we have opened it to members of the general public who may be interested, although space considerations limit the number of people we can accommodate. (Registration information is here.)

I hope at least some of you who follow this blog will deliberate with us, and join the ranks of the civic deficit hawks. We need all the help we can get.

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I Actually Agree with Mike Pence about Something

And no, as you might imagine, the subject of that agreement is most definitely not same-sex marriage.

I’m referring to a recent story in The Indianapolis Star reporting that Governor Pence will confer the Sachem Award on P.E. MacAllister.

According to the report, “The award is given once annually to a Hoosier who demonstrates wisdom, judgment and grace, and whose character shows the importance of providing a moral example. The name comes from the Algonquin term given to leaders who exhibit those qualities.”

I have known–and treasured the friendship of–P.E. MacAllister for well over 35 years, and I can think of few Indianapolis citizens more deserving of an award recognizing wisdom, judgment and grace. Governor Pence quite properly praised P.E.’s impact on the life of the city–an impact far more extensive than many people recognize. P.E. has been a patron of the arts, a valued counselor to elected officials (including, despite his strong Republican bona fides, Democratic elected officials) and a longtime and effective advocate for good government and the value of public service.

Once, when I complimented him on his support of some civic enterprise, he responded with a biblical phrase–something along the lines of “From those to whom much has been given, much is expected.” That phrase, and much of his quiet, extensive and modest philanthropy, reflects a deep and nuanced scholarship that extends well beyond the bible. He is one of the most intellectually curious people I know, with interests in everything from history to anthropology to constitutionalism and civil liberties. The phrase “a gentleman and a scholar” is apt.

Indianapolis and Indiana have been very fortunate to have a citizen like P.E. MacAllister. I would be remiss if I failed to congratulate Mike Pence for recognizing that fact. (Of course, as the saying goes, even a blind squirrel finds a nut every so often….)

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Faith-Based Realities

A comment to yesterday’s blog on “fact rejection” referenced a similar meditation by Paul Krugman. Krugman, as one might expect, focused upon the phenomenon in the context of economic dogma versus performance.

You might wonder why monetary theory gets treated like evolution or climate change. Isn’t the question of how to manage the money supply a technical issue, not a matter of theological doctrine?

Can anything reverse this descent into dogma? A few conservative intellectuals have been trying to persuade their movement to embrace monetary activism, but they’re ever more marginalized. And that’s just what Mr. Nyhan’s article would lead us to expect. When faith — including faith-based economics — meets evidence, evidence doesn’t stand a chance.

Seven years ago, I wrote a book titled God and Country: America in Red and Blue (still available through Amazon if anyone is interested), in which I explored–among other things–the effect of America’s early Calvinism on present-day social welfare and poverty policies.

My research confirmed that several of our ostensibly secular policy preferences have decidedly religious roots. From poverty to foreign policy to the environment, religious world views are far more potent than most of us realize.

Our everyday experiences with “reality rejection” tend to reinforce the prevalence of the phenomenon.  At least mine do.

Several years ago, I was the guest on a call-in radio program in Charleston, South Carolina, and the discussion turned to what was then a hot issue: posting the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. A caller who favored doing so “quoted” James Madison to the effect that the Bill of Rights could only be entrusted to people who lived by the Ten Commandments. The quote had been previously circulated by an extremist organization and thoroughly discredited; Madison had not only never said anything of the sort, but the sentiment was contrary to everything he did say.

I politely informed the caller that his information was incorrect, and referred him to a Madison scholar for verification, whereupon he yelled “Well, I think it’s true!” and hung up.

Those of us who try to live in the “reality-based community” have our jobs cut out for us.

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Rejecting Those Pesky Facts

My favorite thing to do on Sundays is to sit at the kitchen counter drinking multiple cups of coffee while I read the Sunday papers. The Indianapolis Star takes less and less time, as it contains less and less news, but I can count on spending considerable time browsing the various sections of the New York Times. (As a result, I probably know more about New York’s government than I do about the operation of government in Indianapolis, but our lack of local journalism is a subject for another day.)

Yesterday’s Times carried two reinforcing items about the intersection of ideology and fact.  Brendon Nyhan, an assistant professor of government at Dartmouth, noted what has become a growing body of (distressing) research: when faced with facts  that conflict with their deeply-held beliefs, people simply reject the facts. It isn’t that they don’t know, it’s that they refuse to know. 

“Factual and scientific evidence is often ineffective at reducing misperceptions, and can even backfire on issues like weapons of mass destruction, health care reform and vaccines. With science, as with politics, identity often trumps the facts.”

Nyhan notes that this state of affairs provides an incentive for opinion leaders to spread misinformation, because once people’s cultural and political views get tangled up with their understanding of the facts, it’s really hard to undo the damage.

As if to reinforce the disconnect between what science and research confirm and what partisans choose to believe, Elizabeth Rosenthal reported on a recent study by the Commonwealth Fund comparing average “wait times”–the time it takes to get in to see a doctor–in ten countries.

It is an article of faith among opponents of “socialized medicine” (by which is meant any government health-insurance program) that national systems always produce longer wait times.

The study found that current wait times in the U.S. were slightly better than in Canada and Norway, but much worse than in other countries with national health systems, like the Netherlands and Great Britain. Interestingly, the study also found that wait times for patients in the U.S. and the other countries surveyed were different for different kinds of medical care–we Americans tend to wait for the kinds of appointments that “are not good sources of revenue for hospitals and doctors.” In other countries, people wait longer for expensive elective procedures; in America, we “get lucrative procedures rapidly, even when there is no urgent medical need.”

We wait longer, however, for basic care–checking out those chest pains, or adjusting that diabetes medication. Partly as a result, Americans use  (expensive) emergency rooms more frequently than people in other countries.

The article suggests that the ACA may well lengthen wait times, unless we can adjust our perverse incentives–after all, we are bringing millions of new patients into a system that is already not working very efficiently. If wait times do increase, however, you can safely bet that the villain will be “socialized medicine,” full stop and facts be damned.

Facts tend to be complicated, and we Americans are impatient with complexity. Besides, we already know what we believe. Don’t confuse us with those pesky facts.

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MayDay

MayDay is a cry for help–an internationally-recognized distress symbol.

It’s also the name of a new–and very different– crowdsourced SuperPac to end all SuperPacs, intended to get money out of politics. MayDay is the brainchild of Lawrence Lessig. Most of us know of Lessig through Creative Commons, and his work to keep information free, but he has also had a longstanding concern about political corruption and the influence of money in politics. Here’s his bio:

Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School, director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, and founder of Rootstrikers, a network of activists leading the fight against government corruption. He has authored numerous books, including Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Our Congress — and a Plan to Stop It, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Free Culture, and Remix.

Lessig serves on the Board of Creative Commons, AXA Research Fund and iCommons.org, and on the Advisory Boards of the Sunlight Foundation and the Better Future Project. He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Association, and has received numerous awards, including the Free Software Foundation’s Freedom Award, Fastcase 50 Award and being named one of Scientific American’s Top 50 Visionaries.

Lessig holds a BA in economics and a BS in management from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in philosophy from Cambridge, and a JD from Yale. Prior to rejoining the Harvard faculty, Lessig was a professor at Stanford Law School, where he founded the school’s Center for Internet and Society, and at the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court.

This is not a lightweight, nor someone interested in gaining political celebrity. (He’s also not someone who can be labeled and dismissed as just another Leftist academic; he would hardly have clerked for Posner and Scalia if he were.) You can find  his video explanation of what MayDay is trying to do–the Plan to Get our Democracy Back–here, along with several other videos.  Early this month, MayDay passed the $5 million dollar mark and ceased fundraising for this cycle.

Will this plan work? Who knows? Lessig is the founder, and probably the best-known of the MayDay group, but several of the other participants listed on the website are equally impressive. I noted Trevor Potter–previously head of the FEC (not to mention the Colbert Report’s satirical SuperPac series)–and a number of younger entrepreneurs adept in social media.

I sent a few bucks. Couldn’t hurt.

I can’t remember a time when yelling “MayDay” seemed more appropriate…

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