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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An Interesting Observation

I attended a small political gathering yesterday, and during the “mixing and mingling” had a conversation with a member of the Indiana House. We were discussing the legislature’s refusal to allow Indianapolis to hold a referendum on public transportation, and she noted that the same people who don’t believe Indianapolis residents can be trusted with that vote are among the most vocal proponents of “letting the people decide”  whether Indiana should constitutionalize its ban on same-sex marriage.

Evidently, we aren’t capable of deciding whether to pay for better bus service, and it would be dangerous to put such a serious matter to a vote; however, we are perfectly capable of deciding whether other citizens should be denied equal access to a fundamental human right.

Tell me again–how did we elect these people?

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“Good Enough”

Morton Marcus once identified the major barrier to progress in our state as the widespread belief that mediocre is “good enough.”  He was right. It may be that our persistent disinclination to aim high is linked to a contempt for “elitism,” or it may be that we’ve decided that we aren’t willing to expend the effort needed to escape second-rate status.

Whatever the reason, the results of our lack of civic ambition can be seen everywhere: our neglected parks, our under-resourced public schools, the pathetic bus system that passes for our version of public transportation.

What I remember most about my tenure in the Hudnut Administration, back in the late 1970s, is the effort to change that attitude. Mayor Hudnut was determined to make Indianapolis “no mean City”–and that meant paying attention to the built environment’s design and maintenance, among other things. Back then, streets in the Mile Square were swept daily, and the “Clean City Committee” encouraged attention to other aspects of civic tidiness. The improvements to Monument Circle were made during Hudnut’s tenure, as were numerous other brick-and-mortar projects intended to strengthen the city’s core and improve the physical environment we share.

Design matters, and during the Hudnut Administration there was recognition of that fact. Today, the creation of urban amenities depends almost entirely on the generosity of philanthropists. The Cultural Trail is a good example.

It has been over thirty years since the improvements to Monument Circle, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that those improvements are a bit tired. It is time for some refurbishing–some attention to a public space that has been recognized as one of the best such amenities in the country. So the recent announcement by the Ballard Administration that such a refurbishing would be undertaken was welcome–until the details emerged.

The City intends to hire engineers to oversee the project. Not architects.

A decision to hand over the redesign of one of the most important civic spaces in Indianapolis to people whose focus and training are on traffic flow and structural integrity is more than disappointing. It is yet another signal that Indianapolis has reverted to the “good enough” mindset that characterizes so much of Indiana.

Apparently, the Ballard Administration thinks Monument Circle is just a traffic roundabout that periodically needs repaving.

That’s good enough, right?

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REALLY??

Okay–further proof that Americans inhabit dramatically different realities.

Last week, a video surfaced showing the Rutger’s basketball coach shoving, hitting and otherwise abusing his players. The physical abuse was accompanied by verbal attacks, and it was all caught on tape. Predictably, there was an uproar. The coach was fired and the athletic director resigned under pressure. Commentary in the wake of the episode raised questions about college athletics, the pressure to win, the focus on the bottom line, and the effect of these on the purported character-and-sportsmanship-building purpose of athletic participation. Shades of Bobby Knight.

Predictable.

What was not predictable–at least, not in the reality I inhabit–was the conservative commentariat’s rush to defend the coach’s behavior.

Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin and others described the coach’s firing as another example of political correctness, presumably because the epithets caught on tape were anti-gay slurs. In their view, the whole incident was evidence of America’s loss of backbone, expressed in the “coddling” of young people. We’ve gone soft. Whatever happened to “spare the rod and spoil the child”? Hannity offered the information that he’d been disciplined with a belt as a child and that he’d grown up all right. (As Jon Stewart pointed out, Hannity’s “all-rightness” is a debatable proposition….)

In what reality is the abhorrent behavior displayed on that video an acceptable expression of discipline? Perhaps a more pertinent question is, in what twisted reality is the coach’s dismissal a political statement?

What we saw on that video was an undisciplined bully, someone whose lack of self-control and contempt for the young people for whom he was responsible marked him as anything but a role model. Civilized people do not reward or defend such behavior.

If condemning boorishness and brutality has become a partisan political statement, things are even worse than I thought.

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