I have a group of friends with whom I get together once a month to discuss topics of general interest. Modeling our conversations on those carried on by Samuel Johnson and his circle -- without the Great Cham to rule over our discourse -- we call ourselves the Johnson Society. Conversation is usually vigorous. Only one of the others in the group can lay claim to being a "scholar" of the academic sort, though all are thoughtful, scholarly citizens and excellent conversationalists. Each member of the group is able to consider a topic from many angles, to state positions and support them with arguments, to deliberate, and reach conclusions that are not merely louder or more entrenched versions of the position from which he or she started.
Last week the discussion focused on, among other things, democracy and freedom. I was unable to attend the gathering, but have received reports about the nature of the conversation. I was disappointed at not being able to be there, for it seems to me that it is exactly this sort of discourse, on these sorts of topics, that citizens should engage in much more frequently than they do in the United States. Indeed, the Founders hoped that American citizens would be just this sort of people: thoughtful, reasonable, engaged citizens, who speak, deliberate, and act in public. In their minds citizens are people who do not simply shout their untutored, unexamined views across a gulf at one another. Citizens are not people who listen only to those with whom they already agree; rather, they are willing to take the risk of free and open discussion with others coming from many different places, the risk that their initial prejudices, structured by their own personal situations and backgrounds, might change through interaction with others.
In any event, had I been in the conversation, I would have suggested that we too often make some mistakes about the character of democracy and freedom. American politicians and the American people, for example, call our nation a democracy -- and that is a mistake. It is a commonplace, or should be, that the United States is not a democracy but a republic, that it was never intended to be a democracy for good reasons. The Founders shared the classical view (one that has persisted through the history of political theory) that democracy is not a good system of government. Famously, Plato and Aristotle listed democracy as one of the bad types of constitution, primarily because in their minds democracy meant rule by the poor in their own interest rather than for the common good. The American Founders recognized other weaknesses of democracy, including its impracticality in any state larger than a small town. Most importantly, they (especially James Madison) worried that unadulterated, unlimited democracy inevitably led to tyranny of the majority -- an idea picked up by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic and influential study, Democracy in America.
So democracy is not the proper term for the sort of constitution we have in the United States. No nation is a democracy in the strict sense, though many aspire to some form of popular sovereignty, as we do. But for complicated historical reasons, "democracy" has become one of those honorific terms that bring up within us a feeling of goodness -- and the usage of the term to suggest goodness has spread around the globe. Today's freedom fighters and rebels, most notably in the Middle East and North Africa, call for democracy, and their efforts and struggles should not be denigrated. But it is likely that they do not really want democracy so much as some combination of a free market economy, a variety of individual freedoms, the end of absolutist and tyrannical rule, and the development of some popular influence over governmental decision making.
What we have in the United States is a constitutional republic, and one we must struggle to keep, for we do not live in times conducive to constitutional republics except in the most formalistic sense. Benjamin Franklin, when asked on the streets of Philadelphia after the constitutional convention, "What have you given us, Mr. Franklin?," famously remarked: "A republic if you can keep it." A prescient and wise remark. As Franklin saw, citizens need to be keepers of the constitutional republic, a far more complicated matter than merely casting a vote now and then or taking an interest in public affairs from the comfort of an armchair. Most Americans are not citizens in this deeper way; instead, they are subjects of a government that happens to be elected (and by a minority of them, though the problem is the same in nations where the majority of population votes).
Consequently, I think we are mistaken to call most of our fellow subjects "citizens," for that term implies a more active and vigorous role in self-government than most Americans take. Most Americans today will tell you that a citizen is someone who is recognized as such by the United States government: those who are born or naturalized in the United States. But such a usage reflects the same flattening of the moral universe that leads us to call those who get in harm's way heroes even when they are only mindlessly following orders: we have lost any deeper sense of what these terms might mean, and so we strip them of their critical bite and apply them liberally to anyone who carries a passport or wears a uniform.
Speaking of the British, who in the 18th century were often praised (by Montesquieu, for instance) for their free government compared to the absolutist states on the continent, Jean-Jacques Rousseau said that they are only free when they vote and then they make such bad use of their freedom that they deserve to lose it. If citizens are only voters, then they are only choosers of their rulers -- not people engaged in the politics of self-government. Rousseau had a point, as he so often did (though he frequently took those points in unjustifiable directions). Americans simply choose their tyrants every few years, though our tyrants have learned that demagoguery is the key to success rather than bread and circuses or brute force. We are not very free politically, despite the right to vote (which so many choose not to exercise anyway) -- and despite how good it makes us feel to say we are free.
Freedom is far, far more than the right to make choices about peanut butter and toothpaste. It is even far more than the right to say or choose whatever life partner you want -- though these are much more central the freedom of consumer choice. Freedom must include the fact of, not just the reputation for, self-government -- and that requires a citizenry that is knowledgeable, skillful, and interested in taking an active role in the public square. We do very little in the United States to encourage that sort of citizenry and that sort of freedom. Indeed, we find the sort of critical, engaged citizens essential to real politics in a constitutional republic scary. It seems to me that the rise of a certain sort of politician, and a certain sort of political commentator, indicates the rejection of real, thoughtful, deliberative, active citizenship. Instead, we substitute (and celebrate) jingoism, xenophobia, ideology, and stupidity. We are witnessing the rise of demagoguery and the pointed, intentional rejection of the kind of thought necessary for constitution keeping (let alone constitution making). Instead of citizens, we seek fellow-travelers. Instead of thought, we value emotion-laden rhetoric unadulterated by consideration of facts or ideas. Instead of leading citizens, we follow those who mirror our prejudices and ideologies, who tell us what we want to hear and refuse to challenge us to transcend our baser instincts. We gladly rush headlong for our chains (to quote the highly quotable Rousseau again). To call this freedom is absurd, for it strikes me as preparation for continued servitude, no matter how many kinds of breakfast cereal stock our shelves.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Sunday, March 13, 2011
The Challenge to Civic Education
It has been a month since I last contributed to this forum. In that time I have had the great pleasure and honor of joining a group of German and American scholars -- political theorists, political scientists, constitutional scholars, civic educators -- at the annual German-American Civic Education Conference, this year held in Bloomington, Indiana. As always, the conference enlightened and provoked.
I have written many times -- in this blog and elsewhere -- about the importance of civic education. Constitutional democracy, such as we have in the United States, such as they have in Germany -- requires a citizenry not only emotionally tied to the nation (the mistaken idea of citizenship too often held by Americans and, particularly, by pseudo-conservative writers and politicians) but one that understands, accepts, and values a body of principles that both underlie the nation and reflect the characteristics of constitutionalism itself. This body of principles is not static (another mistake made by many) but ever-developing, in precisely the way any live tradition develops through a confrontation of the tradition as handed down and the ongoing deliberation and debate of thoughtful citizens. [Lest I be misunderstood, this does not mean that we in the United States have a "living constitution" in the sense so often pilloried by jurists and (again) pseudo-conservatives.] Constitutional democracy, to thrive, must continually reproduce citizens -- and citizens must not simply be subjects, passively accepting what has been imposed upon them, but active participants in the thinking, speaking, deliberating, and acting in public that characterizes the political realm. These are complicated ideas, and require much more elucidation than can be given here. The main point is that constitutional democracy requires a conscious and active citizenry if it is to persist, if it is not to turn into tyranny and despotism (or, in modern guise, the caretaker administrative state). That is true in Germany as it is in the United States -- indeed, it is a fundamental truth about constitutional democracy no matter where it is established.
My German colleagues are as concerned about this need as are my American colleagues. In both nations, the vast majority of citizens know little about their political system, frequently express negative views about their system and those who take active roles in it, and seem willing to permit political leaders to exercise vast powers that contradict the fundamental principles upon which their constitutional systems rest. In both countries, schools are failing to carry out their fundamental task in a constitutional democracy -- to create educated and thoughtful citizens rather than to reproduce a labor force for post-capitalist economic orders. And so in both countries the need for sound civic education is critical.
In the United States civic education is in danger. The danger comes from those who believe that education should focus on English, math, and science to the detriment of social studies. It comes from a society-wide denigration of politics and a resulting lack of interest in learning about politics -- a lack of interest that means that remarkably few social studies teachers know much about our constitutional system. It comes from members of Congress who see education funding as discretionary, easily and quickly slashed in times of economic stress. It comes from a simplistic anti-earmark fervor that may sacrifice sound civic education programs with proven success to the gods of crass political ideology. It comes from presidential administrations in both parties who target their educational policies on fostering national productive capabilities rather than citizenship (in large part because they do not have a thought-out conception of citizenship, or see its value). It comes from the whole tone of public discussion: one that worries that teachers are overpaid without asking what they do and what they should be doing; one that values economic growth even if it means reduced civic knowledge and involvement; one that believes that education should focus on preparing the student for economic roles rather than political roles; one that denigrates politics because it accepts the reduction of the political to the play of politicians.
The sorry state of the American politics bespeaks the sorry state of our civic education, and from the papers presented at the Bloomington conference it appears as if more and more the state of German politics is coming to resemble that in the United States. If either of us are to thrive as a nation -- not only economically but as a constitutional people -- we must find the will and the ways to invigorate an education designed to produce a citizenry who are (as my friend Will Harris says) "constitution keepers" and "constitution makers." We must imagine and implement an education for a citizenry that will play an active and central part in governing themselves through real deliberation and decision, rather than one buffeted about by the whims of the day and the demagoguery of politicians bent on gaining or keeping power. In both Germany and the United States, excellent curricula for education of constitutional citizens exist and educators continue to hone those curricula and develop new ones. What is lacking, at least in the US, is a critical mass of citizens who will insist on the implementation of these curricula -- let alone politicians who will do so. We find ourselves caught up in a spiral in which our failure to educate citizens has produced a lack of citizens who see a value in educating citizens. The challenge we face in both nations is finding a way out of this spiral before our constitutional democracies begin to circle the drain.
I have written many times -- in this blog and elsewhere -- about the importance of civic education. Constitutional democracy, such as we have in the United States, such as they have in Germany -- requires a citizenry not only emotionally tied to the nation (the mistaken idea of citizenship too often held by Americans and, particularly, by pseudo-conservative writers and politicians) but one that understands, accepts, and values a body of principles that both underlie the nation and reflect the characteristics of constitutionalism itself. This body of principles is not static (another mistake made by many) but ever-developing, in precisely the way any live tradition develops through a confrontation of the tradition as handed down and the ongoing deliberation and debate of thoughtful citizens. [Lest I be misunderstood, this does not mean that we in the United States have a "living constitution" in the sense so often pilloried by jurists and (again) pseudo-conservatives.] Constitutional democracy, to thrive, must continually reproduce citizens -- and citizens must not simply be subjects, passively accepting what has been imposed upon them, but active participants in the thinking, speaking, deliberating, and acting in public that characterizes the political realm. These are complicated ideas, and require much more elucidation than can be given here. The main point is that constitutional democracy requires a conscious and active citizenry if it is to persist, if it is not to turn into tyranny and despotism (or, in modern guise, the caretaker administrative state). That is true in Germany as it is in the United States -- indeed, it is a fundamental truth about constitutional democracy no matter where it is established.
My German colleagues are as concerned about this need as are my American colleagues. In both nations, the vast majority of citizens know little about their political system, frequently express negative views about their system and those who take active roles in it, and seem willing to permit political leaders to exercise vast powers that contradict the fundamental principles upon which their constitutional systems rest. In both countries, schools are failing to carry out their fundamental task in a constitutional democracy -- to create educated and thoughtful citizens rather than to reproduce a labor force for post-capitalist economic orders. And so in both countries the need for sound civic education is critical.
In the United States civic education is in danger. The danger comes from those who believe that education should focus on English, math, and science to the detriment of social studies. It comes from a society-wide denigration of politics and a resulting lack of interest in learning about politics -- a lack of interest that means that remarkably few social studies teachers know much about our constitutional system. It comes from members of Congress who see education funding as discretionary, easily and quickly slashed in times of economic stress. It comes from a simplistic anti-earmark fervor that may sacrifice sound civic education programs with proven success to the gods of crass political ideology. It comes from presidential administrations in both parties who target their educational policies on fostering national productive capabilities rather than citizenship (in large part because they do not have a thought-out conception of citizenship, or see its value). It comes from the whole tone of public discussion: one that worries that teachers are overpaid without asking what they do and what they should be doing; one that values economic growth even if it means reduced civic knowledge and involvement; one that believes that education should focus on preparing the student for economic roles rather than political roles; one that denigrates politics because it accepts the reduction of the political to the play of politicians.
The sorry state of the American politics bespeaks the sorry state of our civic education, and from the papers presented at the Bloomington conference it appears as if more and more the state of German politics is coming to resemble that in the United States. If either of us are to thrive as a nation -- not only economically but as a constitutional people -- we must find the will and the ways to invigorate an education designed to produce a citizenry who are (as my friend Will Harris says) "constitution keepers" and "constitution makers." We must imagine and implement an education for a citizenry that will play an active and central part in governing themselves through real deliberation and decision, rather than one buffeted about by the whims of the day and the demagoguery of politicians bent on gaining or keeping power. In both Germany and the United States, excellent curricula for education of constitutional citizens exist and educators continue to hone those curricula and develop new ones. What is lacking, at least in the US, is a critical mass of citizens who will insist on the implementation of these curricula -- let alone politicians who will do so. We find ourselves caught up in a spiral in which our failure to educate citizens has produced a lack of citizens who see a value in educating citizens. The challenge we face in both nations is finding a way out of this spiral before our constitutional democracies begin to circle the drain.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Egypt and the State of Nature
News comes today that the Egyptian military, left in charge by the departure of President Hosni Mubarak, has dissolved parliament and suspended the constitution. The move has been applauded by the protesters -- a diverse group to be sure -- who toppled Mubarek. International reaction is likely to be ambivalent for military control of a nation is rarely, if ever, a good thing. The good news is that Egypt's military has so far not given any indication that it wants to establish a military dictatorship and its public pronouncements today have indicated a desire to draft a new, more democratic constitution and hold elections within six months.
The Egyptian people now confront that moment in the history of a nation when they must replace an old, no-longer-effective political order with something new. This is not exactly what the great modern political theorist Thomas Hobbes described as the state of nature: a time during which there is no common power to put the people of a territory in awe. When such a situation exists, according to Hobbes, people do whatever it takes to preserve themselves and cannot be faulted for whatever they do; their choices can only be evaluated as more or less well calculated to achieve self-preservation. As a result, during this time people live in a state of war, indeed a "war of all against all." "In such a condition," Hobbes tells us, "there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently, no culture of the earth, no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
This is not -- yet -- the condition of Egypt. While the economy has slowed due to the unrest that preceded the downfall of Mubarak, it has not collapsed. While there were demonstrations, the level of overall unrest was relatively low and major clashes between demonstrators and the military did not occur. Indeed, perhaps the most remarkable thing about the demonstrations was the relative order and peacefulness with which they occurred and with which the government responded. Life for many in Egypt continues to be poor, brutish, and short, in part due to the policies of the Mubarak regime. But it seems clear that there is a "common power" capable of keeping people in awe -- the military -- and, as a result, the war of all against all has not materialized. Political order has not disappeared, though its nature will surely change.
The situation, therefore, reflects the time described by John Locke and Thomas Jefferson as the moment of revolution: when one government is cast out and replaced by a new one without returning the society as a whole to a state of complete disorder. Locke's description bore a strong resemblance to the so-called Glorious Revolution in England, when James II was sent packing and William and Mary were called to the throne by Parliament, establishing parliamentary sovereignty once for all. Jefferson's, of course, was meant to capture the moment of the American Revolution, when the colonists cut their ties with the king and set up their own new nation with its own independent government.
We can hope that developments in Egypt will go the way of William and Mary's England or the post-revolutionary United States. But we should be aware of the Hobbesian warning: revolutions bring disorder, and disorder can get out of hand, rendering a once "common power" perilous. When that occurs, there are two directions in which a nation and its people can go. Those who hold power can find themselves incapable of enforcing order, whether through lack of physical strength or lack of will, and as a result the state of nature returns. Afghanistan, for example, seems to be ever teetering on the edge of chaos; it is a nation in which the ability of any power to extend its reach to all of the country bespeaks a "failed state," which is to say a situation strongly resembling the Hobbesian state of nature. A even more powerful example is offered by Somalia, where no power is able to enforce its will on the nation and where life is truly solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short -- Somalia is the Hobbesian state of nature.
At this point, however, it does not look like Egypt will go the way of Afghanistan and Somalia. Order appears to be too deeply embedded in Egyptian society, and frankly the military appears too powerful. Today, as the military tried to persuade the last demonstrators to leave Tahrir Square, people set to work tidying up, scrubbing grafitti off statues, repainting curbs, removing litter. This reveals a deep sense of order in Egypt and suggests that the state of nature is far, far away.
But should events not move forward smoothly and consistently with the wishes of the protesters who felled Mubarak, disorder may re-emerge. If it does, there is a strong chance that the holders of power will redouble their efforts to enforce order, becoming less tolerant of dissent and much more willing to use whatever force is necessary to preserve peace.We can applaud the democratic rhetoric of those who filled Tahrir Square and the restraint so far shown by the military. We can applaud the idea of creating a commission to draft a new constitution and the promise of truly free and fair elections in the near future. But we must be mindful of the lessons of Hobbes and history: few revolutions have actually resulted in stable, long-lasting democracy.
The American case remains more an exception than the rule, surely due to the principles and actions of a truly special generation of political leaders. More typical, unfortunately, is the experience of France after 1789 where, as Hannah Arendt has argued, "constitution followed upon constitution while those in power were unable to enforce any of the revolutionary laws and decrees," resulting in "one monotonous record illustrating again and again what should have been obvious from the beginning, namely that the so-called will of a multitude (if this is to be more than a legal fiction) is ever-changing by definition, and that a structure built on it as its foundation is built on quicksand." More typical, as well, is France after 1848, when Alexis de Tocqueville, the great observer of democracy in America, participated in drafting a new constitution that soon gave way to the autocratic rule of Napoleon III. More typical, unfortunately, is the short story of the Weimar Republic in Germany, a democracy that collapsed due to a combination of factors, among which were a devastated economy and a lack of democratic political culture to help weather the inevitable storms of the first years of republican government.
If history has taught us anything it is that democratic rhetoric in revolution does not necessarily (or often) translate into stable democratic practice. Talk of democracy too often is used by those who seek power. In the wise words of Federalist No. 1, "a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants."
This is not to say that Egypt cannot succeed at crafting a new model for a democratic republic. It is only to suggest that we should temper our enthusiasm and not be bamboozled by the rhetoric of democracy and constitution. It is to suggest that neither the departure of Mubarak nor the formation of a constitutional commission necessarily means that democracy is coming to Egypt; nor does it mean that Egypt can avoid what the classical political philosophers always sought to emphasize -- the tendency of democracy to degenerate into class war, chaos, and ultimately tyranny. Perhaps our best hope is that Egypt (or any other nation in the region -- Yemen, for instance) avoids the fall into the sort of civil war that Hobbes saw as the essence of the state of nature.
The Egyptian people now confront that moment in the history of a nation when they must replace an old, no-longer-effective political order with something new. This is not exactly what the great modern political theorist Thomas Hobbes described as the state of nature: a time during which there is no common power to put the people of a territory in awe. When such a situation exists, according to Hobbes, people do whatever it takes to preserve themselves and cannot be faulted for whatever they do; their choices can only be evaluated as more or less well calculated to achieve self-preservation. As a result, during this time people live in a state of war, indeed a "war of all against all." "In such a condition," Hobbes tells us, "there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently, no culture of the earth, no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
This is not -- yet -- the condition of Egypt. While the economy has slowed due to the unrest that preceded the downfall of Mubarak, it has not collapsed. While there were demonstrations, the level of overall unrest was relatively low and major clashes between demonstrators and the military did not occur. Indeed, perhaps the most remarkable thing about the demonstrations was the relative order and peacefulness with which they occurred and with which the government responded. Life for many in Egypt continues to be poor, brutish, and short, in part due to the policies of the Mubarak regime. But it seems clear that there is a "common power" capable of keeping people in awe -- the military -- and, as a result, the war of all against all has not materialized. Political order has not disappeared, though its nature will surely change.
The situation, therefore, reflects the time described by John Locke and Thomas Jefferson as the moment of revolution: when one government is cast out and replaced by a new one without returning the society as a whole to a state of complete disorder. Locke's description bore a strong resemblance to the so-called Glorious Revolution in England, when James II was sent packing and William and Mary were called to the throne by Parliament, establishing parliamentary sovereignty once for all. Jefferson's, of course, was meant to capture the moment of the American Revolution, when the colonists cut their ties with the king and set up their own new nation with its own independent government.
We can hope that developments in Egypt will go the way of William and Mary's England or the post-revolutionary United States. But we should be aware of the Hobbesian warning: revolutions bring disorder, and disorder can get out of hand, rendering a once "common power" perilous. When that occurs, there are two directions in which a nation and its people can go. Those who hold power can find themselves incapable of enforcing order, whether through lack of physical strength or lack of will, and as a result the state of nature returns. Afghanistan, for example, seems to be ever teetering on the edge of chaos; it is a nation in which the ability of any power to extend its reach to all of the country bespeaks a "failed state," which is to say a situation strongly resembling the Hobbesian state of nature. A even more powerful example is offered by Somalia, where no power is able to enforce its will on the nation and where life is truly solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short -- Somalia is the Hobbesian state of nature.
At this point, however, it does not look like Egypt will go the way of Afghanistan and Somalia. Order appears to be too deeply embedded in Egyptian society, and frankly the military appears too powerful. Today, as the military tried to persuade the last demonstrators to leave Tahrir Square, people set to work tidying up, scrubbing grafitti off statues, repainting curbs, removing litter. This reveals a deep sense of order in Egypt and suggests that the state of nature is far, far away.
But should events not move forward smoothly and consistently with the wishes of the protesters who felled Mubarak, disorder may re-emerge. If it does, there is a strong chance that the holders of power will redouble their efforts to enforce order, becoming less tolerant of dissent and much more willing to use whatever force is necessary to preserve peace.We can applaud the democratic rhetoric of those who filled Tahrir Square and the restraint so far shown by the military. We can applaud the idea of creating a commission to draft a new constitution and the promise of truly free and fair elections in the near future. But we must be mindful of the lessons of Hobbes and history: few revolutions have actually resulted in stable, long-lasting democracy.
The American case remains more an exception than the rule, surely due to the principles and actions of a truly special generation of political leaders. More typical, unfortunately, is the experience of France after 1789 where, as Hannah Arendt has argued, "constitution followed upon constitution while those in power were unable to enforce any of the revolutionary laws and decrees," resulting in "one monotonous record illustrating again and again what should have been obvious from the beginning, namely that the so-called will of a multitude (if this is to be more than a legal fiction) is ever-changing by definition, and that a structure built on it as its foundation is built on quicksand." More typical, as well, is France after 1848, when Alexis de Tocqueville, the great observer of democracy in America, participated in drafting a new constitution that soon gave way to the autocratic rule of Napoleon III. More typical, unfortunately, is the short story of the Weimar Republic in Germany, a democracy that collapsed due to a combination of factors, among which were a devastated economy and a lack of democratic political culture to help weather the inevitable storms of the first years of republican government.
If history has taught us anything it is that democratic rhetoric in revolution does not necessarily (or often) translate into stable democratic practice. Talk of democracy too often is used by those who seek power. In the wise words of Federalist No. 1, "a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants."
This is not to say that Egypt cannot succeed at crafting a new model for a democratic republic. It is only to suggest that we should temper our enthusiasm and not be bamboozled by the rhetoric of democracy and constitution. It is to suggest that neither the departure of Mubarak nor the formation of a constitutional commission necessarily means that democracy is coming to Egypt; nor does it mean that Egypt can avoid what the classical political philosophers always sought to emphasize -- the tendency of democracy to degenerate into class war, chaos, and ultimately tyranny. Perhaps our best hope is that Egypt (or any other nation in the region -- Yemen, for instance) avoids the fall into the sort of civil war that Hobbes saw as the essence of the state of nature.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Dirty Hands
The problem of "dirty hands" is a central paradox lying at the heart of politics, and of other "public" practices such as law, business, the military, and law enforcement. The problem emerges when one is confronted with a situation in which achieving a particular goal requires the violation of commonly accepted moral principles or rules. In Sartre's play of that name, the Communist leader Hoerderer says: "I have dirty hands right up to the elbows. I've plunged them in filth and blood. Do you think you can govern innocently?" Hoerderer, of course, wants to end class society, and he insists that in order to do so it is necessary to do things that the morally squeamish would find offensive and wrong. So be it. Camus' "just assassins," too, have dirty hands: they kill in order to achieve justice. As Robespierre noted during the French Revolution: if you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs.
The problem of dirty hands has been addressed by numerous ethical and political theorists, including a key contemporary treatment by Michael Walzer (whose analysis has influenced many, including me). But its classic version is in the works of Niccolo Machiavelli. Machiavelli famously sought to teach princes -- or political leaders in republics -- the value of learning how not to be good. His argument was that princes must sometimes act in ways that violate traditional or widely accepted moral principles if they want to be successful. Success, in the world of the Machiavellian prince, meant increased power and the glory that comes with it; in the world of a republic, it meant persistence and growth (in resources, in influence, in power) over time. In order to achieve success, it is necessary to be prepared to act in ways that are widely considered immoral: to be cruel, to lie, to break promises, to be stingy, to act aggressively, and so forth.
To do otherwise, in the world as it really is (Machiavelli insisted that he was a "realist"), makes it likely that others will take advantage of you. If you are unfailingly forgiving to those who have opposed you, they will continue to conspire against you, ultimately working your downfall. If you always tell the truth, you become prey to those who would exploit certain bits of information and to those who would lie to you. If you keep all your promises, even when the reasons for making them have disappeared, you harm your state, your nation, and undermine your own power. If you are too liberal with your (or your state's) riches, you will be plagued by never-ending requests for more, always more, until you have impoverished yourself, your government, your country. If you insist on always pursuing peace, if you give up the right to attack before being attacked, you risk the destruction of your nation, its subjection to outside powers, and the accompanying loss of liberty; maintaining liberty, in short, requires a willingness to take the offensive.
To be successful, the prince -- and, I repeat, Machiavelli's argument seems to apply just as well to all leaders who have political success in view -- must sometimes kill his opponents, lie to his enemies and even (if occasion demands it) to his friends (for friendship has no value independent of political success in this vision), deny benefits to those who need or even deserve them, violate treaties and other agreements as needed, wage war, and so on.
None of this means, I should note, that Machiavelli was, as Leo Strauss claimed he was, a "teacher of evil" -- at least not in a simple sense. Machiavelli does not praise evil; he does not say it is good. Machiavelli's language makes clear that he accepted standards of good, probably the traditional, Christian standards of his day. That's why the prince must learn how not to be good. There are rules that specify what is good, and the prince (if he is to be successful) must learn how and when to violate those rules. Of course, Machiavelli is clear that political leaders should not always violate the rules; but they must be willing to do so for purposes of self- or national aggrandizement. The rules and principles of morality, however, do not disappear. When he attacks a political opponent or a neighboring state, when he lies or breaks a treaty, the prince is not doing what is good; violating the rules is wrong, and the consequences (success) do not make it right. Quite the contrary -- when he violates the moral rules, the prince does what is not good. That is the nature of the job: it requires he (or she) who would do well, who would maintain and extend personal or national power, who would keep his (or her) place at the top of the political structure of nation or region or world, to transgress (sometimes) the proscriptions of ordinary morality.
It is important to realize that this does not mean the prince is subject to a higher morality that justifies violations of the standard moral rules. Machiavelli is not a utilitarian who seeks to dodge the deep problem here by arguing that what the prince does in violation of the moral rules is really good when placed in the scale of utility. The utilitarian insists there is nothing that is good or bad in itself: good and bad can only be determined once one has evaluated the consequences of an action for all those affected by it. This dissolves the problem of dirty hands by denying that the political actor's hands are dirty (assuming that all relevant consequences were carefully considered and entered properly into the calculation). Utilitarianism denies that something can be both bad and the right thing to do. The right thing to do at the time is simply good; it cannot be bad on a utilitarian analysis. (I set aside for now what is called "rule utilitarianism.") Thus, the utilitarian would say that torturing a prisoner who has information about a pending terrorist attack is good, not just permissible though unfortunate or sad. The torturer does not have dirty hands at all; she has not plunged them in filth and blood. She has done the right thing. She is morally good; she may even be a moral hero. The utilitarian would say that we should ignore our moral scruples about torture because nothing, not even torture, is bad in itself apart from its consequences.
There is a host of good reasons to reject utilitarianism that I won't go into here. Suffice it to say, that as Michael Walzer argues, utilitarianism is inconsistent with our moral take on things. Yes, we claim to reason on the basis of consequences, but when we do so we rarely (if ever) truly considerable the consequences of all available alternatives to everyone affected by our action, as utilitarian theory requires. Rather, we act as egoists: we think only of the consequences, often only the short-term consequences, to ourselves and our friends. So, on the one hand, despite our wish to sound utilitarian, we don't really decide things that way. On the other hand, we ultimately are not comfortable with thoroughgoing utilitarianism. How many of us really believe it is morally good to torture an innocent person (say the pre-teen child of a terrorist) in order to achieve our goal (information from the terrorist himself)? And yet utilitarianism sees no significant difference between torturing the innocent and the guilty so long as both will lead to the desired consequences. If it will work, torturing the child is the morally right thing to do. The trouble is most of us don't think that way.
The real tragic bite of the problem of dirty hands cannot be wished away by conceiving of a higher morality that dissolves the dilemma. Max Weber famously argued in "Politics as a Vocation" that the politician cannot live according the Sermon on the Mount (or according to any other "good book") because the job of the politician is to do what it takes to achieve the good for his nation (or his governing coalition, or his party). And that means that the politician, particularly when he takes up the sword and does violence to others, "does bad in order to do good." He may suffer internally as a result, but as a servant of his community he does what is necessary even when that means turning away from morality.
Machiavelli, Weber, and Walzer make us see something important about public roles. They ask us to think about whether we would want a person in these roles -- say, as president of the country, or as our defense counsel -- who always strictly adhered to commonly accepted morality. Or would we prefer someone who is willing to do what is not good if the circumstances demand it? They ask us to consider whether politics -- and public life in general -- is a place where traditional moral rules do not always apply, whether these are vocations where good people will inevitably fail and only those willing to set morality aside will succeed. If so, does that mean we should not evaluate candidates for these positions on the basis of morality but on the basis of some other standard? If so, what is that standard? And, perhaps most importantly, these theorists compel us to think about how we can hold in check the willingness to do bad into order to achieve the good. If our public figures -- politicians, business leaders, lawyers, and so on -- must be people willing to set aside high-minded moralism for the sake of the end built into the nature of their role, how can we ensure that they do not become mere tyrants, despots intent on doing bad things for the sake of evil, people who cast all standards except "success" aside no matter what that might mean?
These are tough questions, and ones that we would prefer not to think about. We are too used to falling back upon absolute standards, principles, rules. But in the muck and filth of the public world, absolute standards seem not to apply. And we have been made too comfortable by the nature of our public life, from which much corruption and violence (though not all, to be sure) has been eradicated. We do not live in a third world nation; we do not have millions of people on the Mall demanding a change of government; our democracy is stable and longstanding. But we are sometimes forced to think about dirty hands -- when presidents condone torture or invasion, when lawyers insist on the privilege to deceive, when business leaders tell us the bottom line requires them to leave millions jobless while a handful reap great profits. Let us hope we develop the resources to think about how to call these people to account in a way that doesn't imagine that their vocations can be carried out with purity of heart and soul.
The problem of dirty hands has been addressed by numerous ethical and political theorists, including a key contemporary treatment by Michael Walzer (whose analysis has influenced many, including me). But its classic version is in the works of Niccolo Machiavelli. Machiavelli famously sought to teach princes -- or political leaders in republics -- the value of learning how not to be good. His argument was that princes must sometimes act in ways that violate traditional or widely accepted moral principles if they want to be successful. Success, in the world of the Machiavellian prince, meant increased power and the glory that comes with it; in the world of a republic, it meant persistence and growth (in resources, in influence, in power) over time. In order to achieve success, it is necessary to be prepared to act in ways that are widely considered immoral: to be cruel, to lie, to break promises, to be stingy, to act aggressively, and so forth.
To do otherwise, in the world as it really is (Machiavelli insisted that he was a "realist"), makes it likely that others will take advantage of you. If you are unfailingly forgiving to those who have opposed you, they will continue to conspire against you, ultimately working your downfall. If you always tell the truth, you become prey to those who would exploit certain bits of information and to those who would lie to you. If you keep all your promises, even when the reasons for making them have disappeared, you harm your state, your nation, and undermine your own power. If you are too liberal with your (or your state's) riches, you will be plagued by never-ending requests for more, always more, until you have impoverished yourself, your government, your country. If you insist on always pursuing peace, if you give up the right to attack before being attacked, you risk the destruction of your nation, its subjection to outside powers, and the accompanying loss of liberty; maintaining liberty, in short, requires a willingness to take the offensive.
To be successful, the prince -- and, I repeat, Machiavelli's argument seems to apply just as well to all leaders who have political success in view -- must sometimes kill his opponents, lie to his enemies and even (if occasion demands it) to his friends (for friendship has no value independent of political success in this vision), deny benefits to those who need or even deserve them, violate treaties and other agreements as needed, wage war, and so on.
None of this means, I should note, that Machiavelli was, as Leo Strauss claimed he was, a "teacher of evil" -- at least not in a simple sense. Machiavelli does not praise evil; he does not say it is good. Machiavelli's language makes clear that he accepted standards of good, probably the traditional, Christian standards of his day. That's why the prince must learn how not to be good. There are rules that specify what is good, and the prince (if he is to be successful) must learn how and when to violate those rules. Of course, Machiavelli is clear that political leaders should not always violate the rules; but they must be willing to do so for purposes of self- or national aggrandizement. The rules and principles of morality, however, do not disappear. When he attacks a political opponent or a neighboring state, when he lies or breaks a treaty, the prince is not doing what is good; violating the rules is wrong, and the consequences (success) do not make it right. Quite the contrary -- when he violates the moral rules, the prince does what is not good. That is the nature of the job: it requires he (or she) who would do well, who would maintain and extend personal or national power, who would keep his (or her) place at the top of the political structure of nation or region or world, to transgress (sometimes) the proscriptions of ordinary morality.
It is important to realize that this does not mean the prince is subject to a higher morality that justifies violations of the standard moral rules. Machiavelli is not a utilitarian who seeks to dodge the deep problem here by arguing that what the prince does in violation of the moral rules is really good when placed in the scale of utility. The utilitarian insists there is nothing that is good or bad in itself: good and bad can only be determined once one has evaluated the consequences of an action for all those affected by it. This dissolves the problem of dirty hands by denying that the political actor's hands are dirty (assuming that all relevant consequences were carefully considered and entered properly into the calculation). Utilitarianism denies that something can be both bad and the right thing to do. The right thing to do at the time is simply good; it cannot be bad on a utilitarian analysis. (I set aside for now what is called "rule utilitarianism.") Thus, the utilitarian would say that torturing a prisoner who has information about a pending terrorist attack is good, not just permissible though unfortunate or sad. The torturer does not have dirty hands at all; she has not plunged them in filth and blood. She has done the right thing. She is morally good; she may even be a moral hero. The utilitarian would say that we should ignore our moral scruples about torture because nothing, not even torture, is bad in itself apart from its consequences.
There is a host of good reasons to reject utilitarianism that I won't go into here. Suffice it to say, that as Michael Walzer argues, utilitarianism is inconsistent with our moral take on things. Yes, we claim to reason on the basis of consequences, but when we do so we rarely (if ever) truly considerable the consequences of all available alternatives to everyone affected by our action, as utilitarian theory requires. Rather, we act as egoists: we think only of the consequences, often only the short-term consequences, to ourselves and our friends. So, on the one hand, despite our wish to sound utilitarian, we don't really decide things that way. On the other hand, we ultimately are not comfortable with thoroughgoing utilitarianism. How many of us really believe it is morally good to torture an innocent person (say the pre-teen child of a terrorist) in order to achieve our goal (information from the terrorist himself)? And yet utilitarianism sees no significant difference between torturing the innocent and the guilty so long as both will lead to the desired consequences. If it will work, torturing the child is the morally right thing to do. The trouble is most of us don't think that way.
The real tragic bite of the problem of dirty hands cannot be wished away by conceiving of a higher morality that dissolves the dilemma. Max Weber famously argued in "Politics as a Vocation" that the politician cannot live according the Sermon on the Mount (or according to any other "good book") because the job of the politician is to do what it takes to achieve the good for his nation (or his governing coalition, or his party). And that means that the politician, particularly when he takes up the sword and does violence to others, "does bad in order to do good." He may suffer internally as a result, but as a servant of his community he does what is necessary even when that means turning away from morality.
Machiavelli, Weber, and Walzer make us see something important about public roles. They ask us to think about whether we would want a person in these roles -- say, as president of the country, or as our defense counsel -- who always strictly adhered to commonly accepted morality. Or would we prefer someone who is willing to do what is not good if the circumstances demand it? They ask us to consider whether politics -- and public life in general -- is a place where traditional moral rules do not always apply, whether these are vocations where good people will inevitably fail and only those willing to set morality aside will succeed. If so, does that mean we should not evaluate candidates for these positions on the basis of morality but on the basis of some other standard? If so, what is that standard? And, perhaps most importantly, these theorists compel us to think about how we can hold in check the willingness to do bad into order to achieve the good. If our public figures -- politicians, business leaders, lawyers, and so on -- must be people willing to set aside high-minded moralism for the sake of the end built into the nature of their role, how can we ensure that they do not become mere tyrants, despots intent on doing bad things for the sake of evil, people who cast all standards except "success" aside no matter what that might mean?
These are tough questions, and ones that we would prefer not to think about. We are too used to falling back upon absolute standards, principles, rules. But in the muck and filth of the public world, absolute standards seem not to apply. And we have been made too comfortable by the nature of our public life, from which much corruption and violence (though not all, to be sure) has been eradicated. We do not live in a third world nation; we do not have millions of people on the Mall demanding a change of government; our democracy is stable and longstanding. But we are sometimes forced to think about dirty hands -- when presidents condone torture or invasion, when lawyers insist on the privilege to deceive, when business leaders tell us the bottom line requires them to leave millions jobless while a handful reap great profits. Let us hope we develop the resources to think about how to call these people to account in a way that doesn't imagine that their vocations can be carried out with purity of heart and soul.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
State of the Union
Tonight President Obama will deliver the State of the Union address before Congress. It will be followed, as always, by responses from the opposing party (two this year, evidently, since Michelle Bachman has tossed her Tea Party hat into the ring of replies). It will also be followed by millions of words of reportage and analysis in the media, in the blogs, and around the water cooler. The unfortunate thing is that none of these -- the address, the responses, the commentaries -- will really assess the state of the union today.
The bulk of the verbiage surrounding the president's address will be focused on various policy considerations: health care, cutting the budget, the ongoing wars. These are important topics and should be the focus of a major policy speech. And it makes all the sense in the world for the opposing party to make its own statement on these policy issues. But note that I refer to these topics as appropriate in a "policy speech." Over the years, the State of the Union address has become just that -- a speech in which the president outlines his preferred policies and tries to sell them to the viewers. I am not an expert on the history of the address, so I do not know when what the Framers described as "Information on the State of the Union" morphed into the advocacy of "Measures he shall judge necessary and expedient" -- probably very early in our history. For quite some time now the State of the Union has been much less about the condition of the country and much, much more about the administration's policy agenda. Worse, it has turned into a free opportunity for the president to play host to "guests," usually seated next to the president's wife, who reflect the priorities of the administration. The guests are not just invited to attend; they have a function -- they are used to make a point. They are props for the president's dramatic performance, shuttled forth to lend policy a human touch in an effort to sway not by the power of reasoning but by the strength of the tugs on the heart strings.
So what we will see tonight will be a political speech, one not out of place on the hustings, followed by two even more political speeches suitable for the editorial pages of conservative journals. The opportunity to enter into a serious conversation about the real state of the union will be lost once again.
That is too bad, for our nation is not in good shape. Only part of the problem lies with the slumbering economy, with its frighteningly high jobless rate and its foreclosure crisis. Some of the problem lies in the disastrous state of our health care system, something the ongoing battle over health care reform only serves to cover up. Some of the problem lies in the bill that will inevitably come due from all those expenses we have deferred over the years, and all those borrowings from the resources available to future generations.
The problem is much deeper. It lies in the amazingly widespread lack of knowledge about the principles upon which the nation was founded. Very few in our nation understand what prompted the creation of our nation, or its reconfiguration through the Constitution. Very few voters and an equally small percentage of politicians share a sense that government exists to foster the common good, not the good of particular groups, parties, industries, or leaders. Many people have a sense that we are subjects of government not governors -- that government is something done to us rather than something we do together. Most lack the knowledge, skills, and dispositions essential to become active participants in the debate, deliberation, and action necessary for a truly constitutional republic to thrive. Most think of a citizen as simply a voter and a patriot as simply someone who cheers for the home team, waving his flag, sporting her flag pin, decorating with flag decals, filling the air with nationalistic bluster.
Our problem lies in the twisting of our founding documents (the Declaration, the Constitution) into justifications for partisan political positions -- an activity engaged in by many on both sides of the political fence, from Supreme Court justices to talk show hosts. This style of twisting has a long tradition, to be sure, but at least some consideration should be given to the possibility that other, more fruitful and more justifiable approaches to these documents have been undermined, if not lost altogether in recent decades. And it cannot help that many of our citizens (not to mention our politicos and even many of our judges) believe that the fundamental documents of a constitutional republic should be subjected to simplistic, even silly, modes of analysis. Such a predilection cannot adequately help us wend our way through the vicissitudes of the ongoing project of governing ourselves in a constitutional manner.
Part of the problem, too, lies in the incivility of life in general, and of politics in particular. It lies in what seems to be an increasing tendency to glorify ignorance and stupidity and to belittle intelligence, education, and thoughtfulness -- in the rise of fools and the disappearance of real statesmen, in the prominence of bluster, nonsense, and nastiness and the absence of real thought and reasoned discussion, let alone deliberation. It lies in the quick reliance on self-defensiveness when suggestions are made that discourse could stand to be more civil, and the quick assertion of rights in the face of ethical critique.
Some of our problem lies in what literary scholar Rochelle Gurstein calls "the repeal of reticence," as all limits are dropped, all sense of propriety is pooh-poohed, all words and images are allowed no matter what the context -- as if liberty means nothing more than challenging boundaries so as to free us up to gratify our natural (formerly called "baser") instincts and desires. Don't get me wrong here -- there are plenty of newly minted boundaries out there, some of them silly, some of them unjust and oppressive, all of them enforced with a cultural rigor that lends credence to the concerns of Mill or Tocqueville. We are still the children of the Puritans. No matter what our political leanings, no matter what our educational level, many of us find it easy to castigate others who fail to live up to our standards of propriety -- whether they do so by being overweight, smoking, failing to exercise, or by refusing to abide any of a myriad of fundamentalisms (religious, economic, or political) by which we structure our vision of the world. Indeed, this is also part of the problem: we too quickly slide into treating fellow citizens as infidels, as beneath our concern, as not deserving of respect. We too easily reject members of our community as beyond the pale. And when we do, our overall societal lack of reticence permits us to talk about these folks as if they are enemies to be wiped out. As the crowning touch, we call this freedom.
Of course we cannot expect the president to talk about these things. We have grown unused to political leaders -- or would-be leaders -- speaking the truth about things. We expect them to paint a rosy picture, to fire us up, to pat us on the head and tell us how wonderful we are. And we expect them to tell us how destructive the views of their political opponents really are of the welfare of our nation. All this is rhetoric, of course, and rhetoric has its place in politics (as political thinkers as diverse as Aristotle and Hobbes both recognized). But let us not fool ourselves into thinking tonight's speeches will rise above the ongoing campaign that is Washington to enlighten us about the real state of the union. They will not.
The bulk of the verbiage surrounding the president's address will be focused on various policy considerations: health care, cutting the budget, the ongoing wars. These are important topics and should be the focus of a major policy speech. And it makes all the sense in the world for the opposing party to make its own statement on these policy issues. But note that I refer to these topics as appropriate in a "policy speech." Over the years, the State of the Union address has become just that -- a speech in which the president outlines his preferred policies and tries to sell them to the viewers. I am not an expert on the history of the address, so I do not know when what the Framers described as "Information on the State of the Union" morphed into the advocacy of "Measures he shall judge necessary and expedient" -- probably very early in our history. For quite some time now the State of the Union has been much less about the condition of the country and much, much more about the administration's policy agenda. Worse, it has turned into a free opportunity for the president to play host to "guests," usually seated next to the president's wife, who reflect the priorities of the administration. The guests are not just invited to attend; they have a function -- they are used to make a point. They are props for the president's dramatic performance, shuttled forth to lend policy a human touch in an effort to sway not by the power of reasoning but by the strength of the tugs on the heart strings.
So what we will see tonight will be a political speech, one not out of place on the hustings, followed by two even more political speeches suitable for the editorial pages of conservative journals. The opportunity to enter into a serious conversation about the real state of the union will be lost once again.
That is too bad, for our nation is not in good shape. Only part of the problem lies with the slumbering economy, with its frighteningly high jobless rate and its foreclosure crisis. Some of the problem lies in the disastrous state of our health care system, something the ongoing battle over health care reform only serves to cover up. Some of the problem lies in the bill that will inevitably come due from all those expenses we have deferred over the years, and all those borrowings from the resources available to future generations.
The problem is much deeper. It lies in the amazingly widespread lack of knowledge about the principles upon which the nation was founded. Very few in our nation understand what prompted the creation of our nation, or its reconfiguration through the Constitution. Very few voters and an equally small percentage of politicians share a sense that government exists to foster the common good, not the good of particular groups, parties, industries, or leaders. Many people have a sense that we are subjects of government not governors -- that government is something done to us rather than something we do together. Most lack the knowledge, skills, and dispositions essential to become active participants in the debate, deliberation, and action necessary for a truly constitutional republic to thrive. Most think of a citizen as simply a voter and a patriot as simply someone who cheers for the home team, waving his flag, sporting her flag pin, decorating with flag decals, filling the air with nationalistic bluster.
Our problem lies in the twisting of our founding documents (the Declaration, the Constitution) into justifications for partisan political positions -- an activity engaged in by many on both sides of the political fence, from Supreme Court justices to talk show hosts. This style of twisting has a long tradition, to be sure, but at least some consideration should be given to the possibility that other, more fruitful and more justifiable approaches to these documents have been undermined, if not lost altogether in recent decades. And it cannot help that many of our citizens (not to mention our politicos and even many of our judges) believe that the fundamental documents of a constitutional republic should be subjected to simplistic, even silly, modes of analysis. Such a predilection cannot adequately help us wend our way through the vicissitudes of the ongoing project of governing ourselves in a constitutional manner.
Part of the problem, too, lies in the incivility of life in general, and of politics in particular. It lies in what seems to be an increasing tendency to glorify ignorance and stupidity and to belittle intelligence, education, and thoughtfulness -- in the rise of fools and the disappearance of real statesmen, in the prominence of bluster, nonsense, and nastiness and the absence of real thought and reasoned discussion, let alone deliberation. It lies in the quick reliance on self-defensiveness when suggestions are made that discourse could stand to be more civil, and the quick assertion of rights in the face of ethical critique.
Some of our problem lies in what literary scholar Rochelle Gurstein calls "the repeal of reticence," as all limits are dropped, all sense of propriety is pooh-poohed, all words and images are allowed no matter what the context -- as if liberty means nothing more than challenging boundaries so as to free us up to gratify our natural (formerly called "baser") instincts and desires. Don't get me wrong here -- there are plenty of newly minted boundaries out there, some of them silly, some of them unjust and oppressive, all of them enforced with a cultural rigor that lends credence to the concerns of Mill or Tocqueville. We are still the children of the Puritans. No matter what our political leanings, no matter what our educational level, many of us find it easy to castigate others who fail to live up to our standards of propriety -- whether they do so by being overweight, smoking, failing to exercise, or by refusing to abide any of a myriad of fundamentalisms (religious, economic, or political) by which we structure our vision of the world. Indeed, this is also part of the problem: we too quickly slide into treating fellow citizens as infidels, as beneath our concern, as not deserving of respect. We too easily reject members of our community as beyond the pale. And when we do, our overall societal lack of reticence permits us to talk about these folks as if they are enemies to be wiped out. As the crowning touch, we call this freedom.
Of course we cannot expect the president to talk about these things. We have grown unused to political leaders -- or would-be leaders -- speaking the truth about things. We expect them to paint a rosy picture, to fire us up, to pat us on the head and tell us how wonderful we are. And we expect them to tell us how destructive the views of their political opponents really are of the welfare of our nation. All this is rhetoric, of course, and rhetoric has its place in politics (as political thinkers as diverse as Aristotle and Hobbes both recognized). But let us not fool ourselves into thinking tonight's speeches will rise above the ongoing campaign that is Washington to enlighten us about the real state of the union. They will not.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Incivility and Degeneration
Today comes news of the shooting of an Arizona congresswoman at an event for constituents in Tucson, Arizona. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is in critical condition after surgery to address the damage caused by a gunshot wound to the head. So far, six have died in the shooting, including a U.S. District Court Judge John M. Roll and a nine year-old child. The United States now takes its place with a host of Third World nations whose politicians and judges are not safe in public. It is a sad day for our constitutional democracy.
Since very little is presently known about the assailant, it would be presumptuous to say too much about what this incident reveals. I do think, however, that it suggests something about the current state of American politics. There can be little question that the increasing incivility of our politics -- revealed in threats against public officials, in the inflated and shrill rhetoric of our politicians, in the emergence in the media and on the hustings of public figures who speak the language of hate and disrespect -- contributes to the likelihood that events like today's will occur. We know that Rep. Giffords (and, for that matter, Judge Roll) have taken positions on political and legal matters that many of the loudest, most uncivil voices in our nation find not just wrong but offensive. We know that the voices of intolerance that increasingly pervade our media and, unfortunately, our political campaigns claim that people who take certain legislative positions, or interpret the law in certain ways, are not just wrong but intolerable. When the message is everywhere that certain points of view, even points of view that have long been considered within the mainstream, border on the treasonous, when the idea that some kinds of people and some kinds of ideas should be hated rather than respected, extremism in action can be expected. When the political "discussion" in some states routinely reveals a level of intolerance, prejudice, and disgust toward fellow human beings, it should not surprise us that those states become the sites of behavior we associate with uncivilized lands and not the United States. It does no good to say that the nastiness is just talk, that it is simply a matter of electoral strategy -- for if the messages are persistent enough, if they are pervasive enough, ordinary citizens begin to take them for truth rather than tactics.
The classical political philosophers argued that all political systems, including democracies, have a natural tendency to degenerate. The American Founders sought to craft a system that would resist this tendency. We should be proud that our republic has survived more than 200 years and some very deep social divides. But republics can only persist so long as all citizens, including politicians, recognize each other as fellows, as companions in the ongoing constitutional project. In other words, degeneration occurs when incivility replaces mutual respect. All of us should do all we can to halt this process. I hope it's not too late.
Since very little is presently known about the assailant, it would be presumptuous to say too much about what this incident reveals. I do think, however, that it suggests something about the current state of American politics. There can be little question that the increasing incivility of our politics -- revealed in threats against public officials, in the inflated and shrill rhetoric of our politicians, in the emergence in the media and on the hustings of public figures who speak the language of hate and disrespect -- contributes to the likelihood that events like today's will occur. We know that Rep. Giffords (and, for that matter, Judge Roll) have taken positions on political and legal matters that many of the loudest, most uncivil voices in our nation find not just wrong but offensive. We know that the voices of intolerance that increasingly pervade our media and, unfortunately, our political campaigns claim that people who take certain legislative positions, or interpret the law in certain ways, are not just wrong but intolerable. When the message is everywhere that certain points of view, even points of view that have long been considered within the mainstream, border on the treasonous, when the idea that some kinds of people and some kinds of ideas should be hated rather than respected, extremism in action can be expected. When the political "discussion" in some states routinely reveals a level of intolerance, prejudice, and disgust toward fellow human beings, it should not surprise us that those states become the sites of behavior we associate with uncivilized lands and not the United States. It does no good to say that the nastiness is just talk, that it is simply a matter of electoral strategy -- for if the messages are persistent enough, if they are pervasive enough, ordinary citizens begin to take them for truth rather than tactics.
The classical political philosophers argued that all political systems, including democracies, have a natural tendency to degenerate. The American Founders sought to craft a system that would resist this tendency. We should be proud that our republic has survived more than 200 years and some very deep social divides. But republics can only persist so long as all citizens, including politicians, recognize each other as fellows, as companions in the ongoing constitutional project. In other words, degeneration occurs when incivility replaces mutual respect. All of us should do all we can to halt this process. I hope it's not too late.
The Constitutional Cloak
This week, as the new Congress began its business, we were treated to the spectacle of members of the House of Representatives reading the text of the Constitution from the podium -- the whole text (well, almost), out loud, spurred by a desire on the part of the Tea Party and others to remind Congress of the centrality of the Constitution to American government. Of course, despite the belief of many, many Constitution-wavers across the country (and in the halls of Congress), there is no "pure" version of the founding document -- parts of it have changed, parts of it have been replaced, the whole thing has been amended twenty-seven times -- so decisions had to be made about what to read and what to leave out. And, like all things in Congress these days, those decisions were controversial.
For instance, the decision to leave out the various references to slavery in the original document prompted some members to chastise the Republican sponsors of the reading for presenting a censored version of the document that whitewashed the troubled history of the nation and the way in which the Constitution has changed and grown over the centuries to reflect changing mores and values. Of course, the amendment process that led to those changes in the original document was itself part of the original -- so in that sense the amendments are a part of the document in a way that Supreme Court decisions are not. And we should always keep in mind that the Constitution does not refer specifically to "slavery," for the Framers chose always to use some other expression or euphemism: the "three-fifths clause" speaks of "all other persons"; the "fugitive slave clause" refers to a "Person held to Service or Labour"; Article 1, Section 9, in prohibiting Congress from interfering with the "slave trade" (without calling it that) until 1808, speaks only of "such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit." The words "slave" and "slavery" do not appear until the Civil War Amendments.
From the reports I saw, about one-third of the members of the House attended the reading.That is a sad commentary on the state of things in Washington. What were those other members doing? Taking a stand against the reading of the Constitution? Why? Just because it was sponsored by the wrong folks? Did they believe this was simply "political theater" (a term I heard in one of the news reports)? It was, but that does not necessarily undermine the value of the exercise. All Americans, not least of all our elected representatives, should become vastly more familiar with the Constitution. The Constitution is central to what it means to be an American citizen -- so knowledge and understanding of the Constitution is fundamental to good citizenship in the United States. Not many have actually read the entire Constitution, and that includes, I suspect, an unfortunately high percentage of those who have taken an oath to defend it. By reading the Constitution from the floor of the House, an example is set that should be emulated rather than castigated.
We need to spend more time thinking about our Constitution and about the characteristics of constitutionalism, and so turning Constitution-reading into a partisan event is unfortunate. In fact, it may be fatal to the kind of spirit essential to successful constitutional democracy. The critics of the reading in the House have a point to the extent that some politicians seek to use the Constitution as a cloak in which to wrap a particular set of political views. The Constitution, of course, does embody certain political views, but they are not those of the Tea Party any more than they are of liberal Democrats. The Constitution reflects the view of a generation of American statesmen (and a handful of women), more than 200 years ago, that constitutional democracy was preferable to monarchy (even constitutional monarchy of the British sort). Those statesmen also believed that constitutional democracy was preferable to the sort of decentralized democracy espoused by the civic republican tradition as translated into American thinking by some of those labeled "anti-federalists." The Constitution, in other words, had nothing to do with favoring certain kinds of policies over others (say, government-run health care over insurance company-run health care). Rather, it sought to establish a moderate constitutional democracy that combined both national and state power, and it sought to establish it in the face of those who preferred the certainties of a centralized monarchy and of those who preferred to keep all power (except some national defense functions) in the hands of state governments.
The key feature of the Constitution is that it places significant limits on both the power of the people and the power of the government. It does not establish a democracy, if by that term we mean a system in which the majority rules (no matter what it wants to do), for much of the Constitution and all of the Bill of Rights is specifically aimed at stopping the people from using their government to do certain things. In fact, it was the experience of democracy during the 1780s that prompted many of the Framers to call for both a stronger national government and limits on the responsiveness of government to popular whim. Many of the Framers had come to fear state governments and they set out to build a much stronger national government -- a government removed from the people by size, distance, and a body of institutional mechanisms (including the Electoral College and the indirect election of senators) that insulated national government from the whimsical meddling of the people. The non-democratic features of the Constitution have been recognized by critics (then and now), and their complaints about it filled the newspapers and broadsheets of the day and the academic studies of today.
Constitutional democracy is preserved by a balance of forces: state vs. national, legislative vs. executive vs. judicial branches, House vs. Senate, and so forth. The Constitution was a brilliant attempt by a body of statesmen -- some wise, some narrow-minded; some nationalists, others not -- to craft a constitutional democracy, to establish a structure and a pattern that would persist through time. All of them -- a point that cannot be made strongly enough given the silly ideas associated with shallower forms of originalism -- believed that the Constitution would either change over time or fail, and it would change not just through the amendment process but also because its terms would take on new meanings as the world itself changed. (Madison made this point clearly in Federalist 37.) It was, after all, a structure designed to last in a changing world, a framework capable of adjusting to new conditions as they arose. It was not an attempt to create a Platonic ideal state that would avoid the nasty tendency of material reality to change over time. The Constitution is not scripture -- for it is not the Word of God but the flawed attempt of humans to find some little bit of stability in a political world. That means, of course, that while the Constitution lies at the heart of what it means to be an American, it is not a sacred document and should not be treated as such.
The reading of Constitution this week could have been an important step in strengthening constitutionalism. The sad thing about what actually happened was that the occasion was treated by some as a chance to don the document as a cloak for their controversial political predilections. It is also unfortunate that many in our society, including many in Congress, continue to treat the Constitution as if it were something handed down from heaven, something worthy of worship, something sacrosanct, something with some deep, original meaning that must not to be violated.
Finally, it is sad that some reject the very idea of reading the Constitution in public. For even if the reading in the House was a mere "happening" set up by those seeking to score political points, familiarity with the founding document of our constitutional democracy should be encouraged, And the reading itself could have been used to remind all citizens of the importance of the document without reducing it to a political statement. The point could have been made that the Constitution is not something to be worshiped; rather, it establishes a framework within which the people can pursue the common good. The point could have been made that the Constitution is about constitutionalism and not about Republicans and Democrats.
For instance, the decision to leave out the various references to slavery in the original document prompted some members to chastise the Republican sponsors of the reading for presenting a censored version of the document that whitewashed the troubled history of the nation and the way in which the Constitution has changed and grown over the centuries to reflect changing mores and values. Of course, the amendment process that led to those changes in the original document was itself part of the original -- so in that sense the amendments are a part of the document in a way that Supreme Court decisions are not. And we should always keep in mind that the Constitution does not refer specifically to "slavery," for the Framers chose always to use some other expression or euphemism: the "three-fifths clause" speaks of "all other persons"; the "fugitive slave clause" refers to a "Person held to Service or Labour"; Article 1, Section 9, in prohibiting Congress from interfering with the "slave trade" (without calling it that) until 1808, speaks only of "such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit." The words "slave" and "slavery" do not appear until the Civil War Amendments.
From the reports I saw, about one-third of the members of the House attended the reading.That is a sad commentary on the state of things in Washington. What were those other members doing? Taking a stand against the reading of the Constitution? Why? Just because it was sponsored by the wrong folks? Did they believe this was simply "political theater" (a term I heard in one of the news reports)? It was, but that does not necessarily undermine the value of the exercise. All Americans, not least of all our elected representatives, should become vastly more familiar with the Constitution. The Constitution is central to what it means to be an American citizen -- so knowledge and understanding of the Constitution is fundamental to good citizenship in the United States. Not many have actually read the entire Constitution, and that includes, I suspect, an unfortunately high percentage of those who have taken an oath to defend it. By reading the Constitution from the floor of the House, an example is set that should be emulated rather than castigated.
We need to spend more time thinking about our Constitution and about the characteristics of constitutionalism, and so turning Constitution-reading into a partisan event is unfortunate. In fact, it may be fatal to the kind of spirit essential to successful constitutional democracy. The critics of the reading in the House have a point to the extent that some politicians seek to use the Constitution as a cloak in which to wrap a particular set of political views. The Constitution, of course, does embody certain political views, but they are not those of the Tea Party any more than they are of liberal Democrats. The Constitution reflects the view of a generation of American statesmen (and a handful of women), more than 200 years ago, that constitutional democracy was preferable to monarchy (even constitutional monarchy of the British sort). Those statesmen also believed that constitutional democracy was preferable to the sort of decentralized democracy espoused by the civic republican tradition as translated into American thinking by some of those labeled "anti-federalists." The Constitution, in other words, had nothing to do with favoring certain kinds of policies over others (say, government-run health care over insurance company-run health care). Rather, it sought to establish a moderate constitutional democracy that combined both national and state power, and it sought to establish it in the face of those who preferred the certainties of a centralized monarchy and of those who preferred to keep all power (except some national defense functions) in the hands of state governments.
The key feature of the Constitution is that it places significant limits on both the power of the people and the power of the government. It does not establish a democracy, if by that term we mean a system in which the majority rules (no matter what it wants to do), for much of the Constitution and all of the Bill of Rights is specifically aimed at stopping the people from using their government to do certain things. In fact, it was the experience of democracy during the 1780s that prompted many of the Framers to call for both a stronger national government and limits on the responsiveness of government to popular whim. Many of the Framers had come to fear state governments and they set out to build a much stronger national government -- a government removed from the people by size, distance, and a body of institutional mechanisms (including the Electoral College and the indirect election of senators) that insulated national government from the whimsical meddling of the people. The non-democratic features of the Constitution have been recognized by critics (then and now), and their complaints about it filled the newspapers and broadsheets of the day and the academic studies of today.
Constitutional democracy is preserved by a balance of forces: state vs. national, legislative vs. executive vs. judicial branches, House vs. Senate, and so forth. The Constitution was a brilliant attempt by a body of statesmen -- some wise, some narrow-minded; some nationalists, others not -- to craft a constitutional democracy, to establish a structure and a pattern that would persist through time. All of them -- a point that cannot be made strongly enough given the silly ideas associated with shallower forms of originalism -- believed that the Constitution would either change over time or fail, and it would change not just through the amendment process but also because its terms would take on new meanings as the world itself changed. (Madison made this point clearly in Federalist 37.) It was, after all, a structure designed to last in a changing world, a framework capable of adjusting to new conditions as they arose. It was not an attempt to create a Platonic ideal state that would avoid the nasty tendency of material reality to change over time. The Constitution is not scripture -- for it is not the Word of God but the flawed attempt of humans to find some little bit of stability in a political world. That means, of course, that while the Constitution lies at the heart of what it means to be an American, it is not a sacred document and should not be treated as such.
The reading of Constitution this week could have been an important step in strengthening constitutionalism. The sad thing about what actually happened was that the occasion was treated by some as a chance to don the document as a cloak for their controversial political predilections. It is also unfortunate that many in our society, including many in Congress, continue to treat the Constitution as if it were something handed down from heaven, something worthy of worship, something sacrosanct, something with some deep, original meaning that must not to be violated.
Finally, it is sad that some reject the very idea of reading the Constitution in public. For even if the reading in the House was a mere "happening" set up by those seeking to score political points, familiarity with the founding document of our constitutional democracy should be encouraged, And the reading itself could have been used to remind all citizens of the importance of the document without reducing it to a political statement. The point could have been made that the Constitution is not something to be worshiped; rather, it establishes a framework within which the people can pursue the common good. The point could have been made that the Constitution is about constitutionalism and not about Republicans and Democrats.
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