Random Blogging – Page 315

Red and Blue, Ends and Means

I have posted previously about ends and means, about the fact that the American constitution is a prescription for process. The central premise of our system is a respect for individuals’ right to have different life goals, different ends–what the Greeks called telos. When citizens are expected to differ on fundamental questions of purpose and belief, what is needed is a set of rules governing their common lives, a process making peaceful and respectful coexistence possible.

The Constitution is thus a structure enabling a “live and let live” philosophy.

This emphasis on process, on means, has been widely acknowledged by political scientists. In the political theory literature, there has been a lively debate on the question whether this emphasis is sufficient to produce “thick” bonds between citizens, but that debate has rested on a shared recognition of the American approach as procedural. We are, as the saying goes, a nation of laws.

In that context, Rick Perlstein makes a point about today’s political parties that is well worth pondering.

We Americans love to cite the “political spectrum” as the best way to classify ideologies. The metaphor is incorrect: it implies symmetry. But left and right today are not opposites. They are different species. It has to do with core principles. To put it abstractly, the right always has in mind a prescriptive vision of its ideal future world—a normative vision. Unlike the left (at least since Karl Marx neglected to include an actual description of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” within the 2,500 pages of Das Kapital), conservatives have always known what the world would look like after their revolution: hearth, home, church, a businessman’s republic. The dominant strain of the American left, on the other hand, certainly since the decline of the socialist left, fetishizes fairness, openness, and diversity. (Liberals have no problem with home, hearth, and church in themselves; they just see them as one viable life-style option among many.) If the stakes for liberals are fair procedures, the stakes for conservatives are last things: either humanity trends toward Grace, or it hurtles toward Armageddon…

For liberals, generally speaking, honoring procedures—means—is the core of what being “principled” means. For conservatives, fighting for the right outcome—ends—even at the expense of procedural nicety, is what being “principled” means. ..

as the late New Right founding father Paul Weyrich once put it, “I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” Which was pretty damned brazen, considering he was co-founder of an organization called the Moral Majority.

Now, of course, for over a decade now, the brazenness is institutionalized within the very vitals of one of our two political parties. You just elect yourself a Republican attorney general, and he does his level best to squeeze as many minority voters from the roles as he can force the law to allow. And a conservative state legislature, so they can gerrymander the hell out of their state, such that, as a Texas Republican congressional aid close to Tom Delay wrote in a 2003 email, “This has a real national impact that should assure that Republicans keep the House no matter the national mood.” Or you lose the popular vote in the 2000 presidential election but win in the electoral college—then declare a mandate to privatize Social Security, like George Bush did.

Which only makes sense, if you’re trying to save civilization from hurtling toward Armageddon. That’s how conservatives think. To quote one Christian right leader, “We ought to see clearly that the end does justify the means…If the method I am using to accomplishes the goal I am aiming at, it is for that reason a good method.

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Words and Meanings

I regularly use this space to take right-wingers to task, but those on the Left deserve similar treatment when they engage in similar behaviors.

Ever since reports that Obama’s budget included a “chained CPI” for Social Security, liberals have been screaming about proposed “cuts” to Social Security. My inbox has been flooded with pleas to sign this or that petition, to call my Senators and Congressional Representatives, and generally to make it known that these “cuts” cannot be justified.

As I understand it, what the President has proposed is changing the metric currently used to calculate Social Security cost of living raises. The CPI index being used has been criticized as an inaccurate indicator, resulting in larger raises than are needed to keep up with a rising cost of living. This change in the yardstick for calculating those raises will result in lower Social Security “bumps” or increases going forward.

That is not a “cut”–at least, not in my vocabulary. It is a recalculation that will result in smaller increases in the future–lower expectations for growth.

Now, I am not an economist, and I don’t play one on TV. I have no independent ability to evaluate arguments about the relative merits of the indexes involved, although several people whose judgment and expertise I respect appear to agree that the current index is inaccurate. If they and the President are wrong, then critics have a perfect right to object to the proposed change on that basis. But advocates of the status quo do themselves no favor by mischaracterizing the proposal and mounting a hysterical assault.

When NRA supporters refuse to consider background checks because that is “really” the first step toward a registry that will then be used in an effort to confiscate all the guns, we rightly accuse them of irrational behavior. When progressives respond to a suggestion to change the way we calculate benefits by characterizing it as a hard-hearted assault on old people and the first step in dismantling the social safety net, we engage in similarly overwrought behavior–and risk being dismissed for the same reason.

Argue for or against the use of the new metric, but leave the hyperbole at home.

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Missing Souter

I remember when the first President Bush nominated David Souter to the Supreme Court. I listened to the televised session when he appeared before Congress (I think it was CSPAN–it was certainly past my bedtime), fearful after the disappointment that was Clarence Thomas, and I was impressed by the erudition of his responses. I wasn’t disappointed by his subsequent jurisprudence; agree or not (and usually I did agree), his opinions were always reasoned, nuanced and respectful of both the litigants and the Constitutional process.

I was sorry to see him step down from the Court. During the recent coverage of oral arguments, I was struck by the mediocrity of Alito and irritated by Scalia’s usual grandstanding, and really regretted Souter’s absence.

Yesterday, I had a chance to see him in person. I was attending a small conference on civic education at Harvard, co-sponsored by the Law School and former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s iCivics, and Souter was one of the panelists–along with Lawrence Tribe, Justice O’Connor, and Kenneth Starr. (Talk about your heavy hitters!)

Justice O’Connor said very little, but Souter was eloquent. In a day devoted to necessary technical issues–how do we improve civic education, what are the barriers we face, what is the necessary content of an education that will encourage informed, active citizenship–he cut to the chase: America has a tension between the rights of the individual and the common good. That’s a healthy tension. But we must guard against times when we go too far in either direction. When, as now, we place excessive importance on individualism, and neglect the common good, we run the danger of forgetting what it means to be an American, a part of a polity. We forget who “we” are when we focus too narrowly on the “me.”

And “we” are constituted by our commitment to our Constitution. When our citizens are ignorant of American history, American values and our constitutional commitments, we lose our identity.

His actual remarks were far, far more eloquent than my rendition of them. Listening to him, I could only think how much the current Court lost when he stepped down.

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Intriguing Factoid

Whenever I attend an academic conference, I learn a lot, although what I learn is not necessarily the subject-matter of the conference itself, or the papers that are presented. Often, it’s the “happenstance” nuggets and accidental insights that are most interesting.

I have now unpacked from the recent conference in Detroit, and “debriefed” by sorting through the papers and notes and handouts that accumulate during such meetings, and was reminded of an observation made during one presentation–a research finding that was intriguing, to say the least. The study found a positive correlation between writing proficiency and “engaged and knowledgable citizenship.”

The research was alluded to in passing, and no explanation was offered. I suppose the easy answer might be that people who are bright and well-educated are more likely to write well and more likely to be engaged, informed citizens. But that seems too facile. I know people with degrees from prestigious institutions who can’t write clearly, and I know others with those same credentials who somehow missed elementary civics and government.

Of course, I didn’t see the research and didn’t get a citation, so it may well be that the study was flawed. But if it wasn’t, how might we explain this correlation? What would be the connection between the ability to write with clarity and grace, and the possession of above-average civic knowledge? Why would these two particular skills/understandings be correlated?

Any ideas?

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Me versus Us

NPR aired a brief report yesterday on recent research into “framing,” the manner in which Americans make policy arguments. According to the researcher, Americans are less likely to respond to appeals to the common good or the public interest than we are to appeals to individual rights and benefits. Our Constitutional emphasis on individual rights, in this analysis, has led to a culture in which policies are evaluated through a highly individualized prism–what we might call a “what’s in it for me” approach.

If this research is correct, Americans have confused a healthy distrust of majoritarianism with an unhealthy disdain for the common good. Those aren’t the same thing. A distrust of the preferences of popular majorities–the “passions of the mob”–is built into our national DNA, and we are right to guard against violations of individual rights that can result. But that is different from civic behavior that elevates personal preferences and immediate gratification over consideration of the good of the community.

The discussion of mass transit is an example. Those who are opposed to a tax for transit are not arguing that transit would be bad for the community–an argument I disagree with, but a legitimate basis for opposition. They are arguing that they don’t want to pay for it, because they don’t believe it will benefit them personally. (Actually, as I pointed out, we all benefit in numerous ways–tangible and intangible–when we live in a community with a better quality of life, but that’s a different argument.)

The researcher on NPR recommended that policy arguments be framed to appeal to the individual–this is what is in it for you!–rather than with appeals to the common good. Perhaps that advice is strategically sound.

But what does it say about us as citizens?

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