Every couple of years, I include a favorite question on the take-home final I give my graduate students. It’s probably time to retire it, but before I do, I’m curious to see how my blog community might answer it.
Earth has been destroyed in World War III. You and a few thousand others—representing a cross-section of Earth’s races, cultures and religions—are the only survivors. You have escaped to an earthlike planet, and are preparing to create a government for the society you hope to establish. You want to establish a new system that will be stable and enduring, but also flexible enough to meet unforeseen challenges. You also want to avoid the errors of the Earth governments that preceded you. Your answer should include the choices you make and the reasons for those choices, including: The type/structure of government you would create; the powers it will have; the limits on those powers, and methods for ensuring that those limits are respected; how government officials and policies will be chosen; and the fundamental social and political values you intend to inculcate and protect.
Most students respond by creating a system similar to the American model, with “tweaks”–usually things like universal health care or a constitutional amendment to the effect that money doesn’t equal speech. But on occasion, I’ll get a truly creative response–sometimes radically libertarian, sometimes communitarian/socialist.
The little community that has emerged in the comment section to this blog is demonstrably thoughtful and knowledgable. I’d be very interested in your responses to this “thought experiment.”
If humanity was starting over, and you were the one who got to make the decisions, what decisions would you make? What would a just and effective government look like in your brave new world?
In Sunday’s Indianapolis Star, John Guy took critics of the proposed justice center (of whom I am one) to task. His arguments boiled down to three: a new Justice Center is badly needed; it has been studied for a long time; and critics have not offered alternatives to the proposal.
None of the critics, to the best of my knowledge, have debated the need for a new facility. And it is true that moving the jail and criminal courts has been studied (or at least discussed) since the early 1990’s, although those studies have been limited in one way or another. So that leaves us with the charge–implicit, but unmistakable–that criticisms that do not offer detailed alternative proposals should be ignored.
Let me say up front that I am very sympathetic to Guy’s impatience with nay-sayers, with knee-jerk opposition to proposals advanced by government voiced by people who have no constructive suggestions to offer. That said, however, it is equally unreasonable to dismiss very specific concerns raised by a wide variety of citizens without specifically addressing or rebutting those concerns.
My own criticisms have included the lack of transparency in the planning process, and the current back-and-forth illuminates why such transparency is important: had the City-County Council and the public been included earlier in the process, rather than being presented with a “take it or leave it” package, concerns could have been aired then and–if good answers were available–rebutted. This is particularly true of the financing mechanism, which the administration acknowledges has rarely been used in this sort of project, but it also applies to issues raised by architects, city planners and real estate brokers. If the city has hard data to support its contentions that the project as envisioned will not adversely affect a downtown market that five administrations have spent 30 plus years developing, that data should be shared.
Criminal justice experts have pointed out that systemic reforms currently being discussed in Congress (for which, amazingly enough, there is bipartisan support) would likely require changes in the size and function of parts of the planned facility. An open process would allow the city and/or the successful bidder to explain whether such policy changes could be accommodated, and if so, how.
I understand impatience (indeed, I tend to share it), but when you are spending huge sums and making decisions that will have an enormous impact on the city–decisions that we will have to live with for decades to come–getting it right is more important than getting it done quickly.
I mean, what can you say about people who are freaked out because the Department of Defense is mounting a military training exercise (with the admittedly bizarre name Operation Jade Helm)–because they think it’s all a plot to declare martial law and “take over” Texas?
Obama’s bringing in the U.N. or ISIS (depending on which loony you believe), and will round up Texans and put them in camps which are (inexplicably) located in abandoned Walmarts that are connected by underground tunnels that were somehow constructed without anyone noticing (and without, evidently, generating any large deposits of dirt to attract anyone’s attention).
And aliens have landed in Lubbock and are having sex with antelopes….
I suppose I should be over letting weird stuff that happens in Texas surprise me. After all, Texans keep electing Louis Gohmert, and the Texas legislature recently passed a bill to
“protect” churches from having to officiate at gay weddings, communicating to one and all that none of them had ever read the First Amendment, which already does that.
And it’s not even like Texas lunacy is new. I still remember Molly Ivins’ explanation of how members of the Texas “lege” had handled reports that more Texans died annually from gunshots than on state highways. They raised the speed limit.
Still.
It’s bad enough when paranoia grips ordinary Texans (I started to say “ordinary citizens,” but ordinary, sane folks evidently live elsewhere. Like Utah, for example, where the menacing Jade Helm is also taking place, and everyone’s ignoring it), but Governor Greg Abbott has called up the Texas Guard (a group of interesting folks who probably shouldn’t be armed and shouldn’t be confused with the National Guard) to ensure that Obama won’t impose martial law. Then reliable nut job Ted Cruz promised to “look into it.” Because, if there were some plot, DOD would surely share that information with Ted Cruz if he asked nicely.
The utter insanity of all this boggles the mind.
News flash, Texas! You’ve already been assimilated by the Borg…er, U.S. (though I personally would like to reconsider the decision to make you a state–I wonder if Mexico would take you back?), so we have no reason to “conquer” you. And if for some reason the Army did roll in, do you really think your ragtag Guard could stop tanks and missiles?
I’d ask what you could possibly be thinking, if I thought you could think.
On the Daily Show, Jon Stewart noted that similar military exercises seven or eight years ago had generated absolutely no reaction, saying “I wonder what’s different?”
A picture of President Obama flashed on the screen, and he said “Ah, yes.”
Today is Sunday, Mother’s Day–and graduation day for IUPUI and SPEA, where I teach. When the speaker originally scheduled to speak to our SPEA graduates had a conflict, I was asked to pinch-hit: here’s what I will tell the class of 2015.
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I know some of you are disappointed that Chief Hite is unable to be here, and instead, here you are getting yet another lecture from a SPEA professor. But—as I’m sure the Chief would tell you—the nature of public service is that you serve the public: when duty calls, convenient or not, you answer.
That reality—the nature of public service, of stewardship—is what has triggered the few observations that I’d like to share with you today.
You know, I often say that I would turn this country over to my students in a heartbeat. People in my age cohort too often criticize younger generations, because you occupy a world we have trouble understanding, a world that makes a lot of us uncomfortable. But those criticisms are misplaced—they are a product of discomfort with the inevitable, which is change.
My experience with your generation, and especially with SPEA students, gives me a lot of hope for the future, because I see in you a concern for the common good that has been absent from far too many people in my own generation.
Many of you are criminal justice majors who will work in various capacities to protect the citizens of your communities and keep the streets of our cities safe. Others of you plan to enter organizations in the nonprofit sector, working with others to “mend the gaps,” to address the unmet needs of society. Still others of you have ignored the constant drumbeat of rhetoric denigrating government and public service and will go to work in our much maligned but irreplaceable public sector as managers and policymakers.
Your preparation for these roles has revolved around a central question: how do we work together to construct a just society? That question has lots of “subparts”: How do we mediate the tensions between the rights and prerogatives of individuals, on the one hand, and the common good, on the other? Who gets to decide what the common good is? Can government institutions ensure justice and maintain social order without doing unnecessary damage to individual rights? How? And how do the roles you plan to fill advance the common good?
In your classes, you have come to understand essential elements of what John Locke called a “Social Contract,” a reciprocal relationship between the institutions of society—predominately government—and its citizens. Social contract theory holds that the many benefits we share as members of a polity carry with them obligations for informed civic participation. I have no doubt that each of you will fulfill those expectations and discharge those obligations—I just hope you will encourage others to become involved in America’s ongoing experiment with self-governance as well.
Finally, I hope you have gained an appreciation for the importance of the physical and social infrastructure upon which everything else ultimately rests.
These days, too many Americans seem oblivious to the immense importance of that infrastructure, the multitude of systems and institutions—both physical and social— that our cities, states and nation need in order to function, let alone flourish. We take for granted that we can walk safely on most of our streets and sidewalks, that our garbage gets picked up, the streetlights come on at dusk, that firefighters rush to the scene when there is a fire—We take for granted that someone is watching our air quality and preventing industry from dumping waste and polluting our waterways—that someone “downtown” somewhere is ensuring that the buildings we enter meet safety standards and the zoning regulations that protect our property values are upheld. As I have often told my classes, I’m grateful that I can go to the local Kroger or Marsh and buy a chicken without having to personally test it for e coli. So I’m grateful for the FDA, and especially grateful that I rarely have to think about its existence.
I think we’re all grateful that our toilets flush.
I know that all of that sounds boring and mundane and unromantic—but when those largely invisible, taken-for-granted networks of support don’t work—or when they have been corrupted or co-opted so that they only work for some groups and individuals—the whole society fails to function as it should. We Americans like to applaud entrepreneurs and others who provide the goods and services we purchase in the marketplace, and they deserve that applause, but we need to remind ourselves that those marketplaces can’t function without the physical and social infrastructure that you have been trained to provide and facilitate and supplement.
The American motto is e pluribus unum—out of the many, one. Those of you in this room today are preparing to engage in perhaps the most critical task implied by that motto: creating the means by which the many unite into the one.
Many of you in this room who have been my students have been nothing short of inspirational. I know that you leave SPEA with the smarts and the skills and the heart to make a real difference in our communities. What each of you will do is more important than you may recognize right now, and I know you will do it with intelligence and integrity.
So—congratulations, best wishes….and I hope you will keep in touch with those of us on this stage. Your old professors will be rooting for you!
When I grow up (like that will ever happen!), I want to be Gail Collins.
The witty New York Times columnist has an uncanny ability to hit political nails on their pointy little heads. Most recently, she considered the emergence of Presidential candidates like Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson, both of whom are touting their total lack of political experience as a reason to vote for them.
Virtually every elected president in American history — not counting the occasional military hero — made his way to the top by getting elected to other offices first. There are a couple of exceptions who just served in the cabinet, like Herbert Hoover. We can all look forward to hearing a candidate vow to return us to the golden days of the Hoover administration.
(Here in Indianapolis, we have some recent experience with a chief executive who knew nothing about politics or the governance of a city–or even what a city ought to look like– when he was elected. His steep learning curve has cost Indianapolis in numerous ways.)
When she was in business, I doubt that Fiorina would have hired a high-level executive who had no experience relevant to the position being filled, so one wonders why she thinks her own lack of experience somehow qualifies her for the presidency. (I won’t even raise the issue of her ignominious departure from Hewlett-Packard, after controversies which suggest she wasn’t all that successful in the private sector, either.)
I’ll leave the final word to the better wordsmith. As Collins wrote
People who run for president boasting that they aren’t politicians are frequently just trying to compensate for a lack of political skill. Carson (who presumably wants to run government like an operating room) is going to appeal to the folks who think the military is plotting to take over Texas, but otherwise, his only political gift seems to be for making outrageous statements. Fiorina ran for the Senate in 2010 and was beaten by Barbara Boxer, who was thought to be a vulnerable incumbent until Fiorina got hold of her, racking up a grand total of 42 percent of the vote.
On the plus side, Fiorina’s campaign produced one of the all-time great attack videos, in which her more moderate primary opponent was depicted as a Demon Sheep, portrayed by a man crawling across the grass with what looked like a wooly rug over his back and a piece of cardboard on his face. After that it was downhill all the way.
If you’re shopping for candidates with no experience in the business they want to lead, I’d say at least go for the one with the Demon. But really, there are smarter buys.
