Mandatory public philosophy courses in high school?
The Washington Post’s “Answer Sheet” local schools blog has an interesting post on a Maryland school teacher who disciplined a student for not standing and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. The teacher had her escorted by school police officers to the Assistant Principal’s office who demanded the girl apologize for “defiance.” Of course, nobody can require others to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The school district’s own code specifies as such: “You cannot be required to say a pledge, sing an anthem, or take part in patriotic exercises. No one will be permitted to intentionally embarrass you if you choose not to participate.” But the teacher and assistant principle, like, apparently, most Americans, do not clearly understand the rights guaranteed under the First Amendment.
A 2009 poll by the First Amendment Center found that only 55% of Americans could identify free speech as a freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment. Now a portion of the remaining 45% of the country might know that free speech is guaranteed by the Constitution, but not know that the First Amendment does so. But it raises an interesting question: should our schools teach more civics? Or, on the other hand, is there something problematic with aggressively promoting a set of ideals during an individual’s most formative years. Instead of American civics, should we encourage our children to think critically and creatively about government, politics and philosophy? Maybe a “public philosophy” course required in high schools? 
-Marc
Bloodless war?
In the Christian Science Monitor, Richard Scott discusses a greater role for non-lethal weapons in future war fighting. The morality of physically controlling and coercing people without killing them is different than the one where people die. What does a theory of just non-lethal war look like?
-Jake
Where are the Liberals?
The Atlantic is featuring three theories on why liberals haven’t been more effective under the Obama Administration, particularly given Democrats’ control of all three branches.
First up is Kevin Baker of Harper’s, who argues that liberals simply have no backbone, practicing what can only be called “learned helplessness.” Baker believes that while liberalism shows some life among our citizenry, the government / leadership class has all but forgotten its relevance. The “center-right” conventional wisdom has solidified and the mere utterance of “the L word” spells political disaster.
Second is the Center for American Progress’s Matt Yglesias, who claims that liberals fail to negotiate effectively. You can’t get the other side to budge unless they think you’ll walk away (I learned this mattress shopping), and since liberals obviously really want health reform, etc, opponents have no incentive to give any ground. If they want a deal, they should find issues that centrists care deeply about and which liberals are merely willing to along.
And third, blogger Chris Bowers suggests that liberals are too much of an easy win for Obama. He knows they’ll support him as the least-bad option no matter what, so they have no bargaining chips.
My sense is that Bowers and Baker are mostly right. And their points are connected: because liberals know they’re down and out in contemporary American politics, they’ll take whatever the Democrats give them. Why hold out for distant ideals when it could jeopardize the little gains they’ve made through a moderate Democratic majority?
‘Tis better to receive than to support
Time and time again, vociferous opponents of state-run health care end up ironically voicing support for the very policies they oppose. Saturday, Sarah Palin told a Canadian crowd in Calgary that her family “used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada. And I think now, isn’t that ironic.” Well, yes, it is.
And Sue Lowden, running against Harry Reid this year in Nevada, is running ads saying both that Reid’s plan would “weaken Medicare” and that “government-run health care is wrong.”
All politics / partisanship aside, what gives? Seems to me the psychological phenomenon at play here stems from cognitive dissonance theory: events or arguments that clearly disconfirm or contradict our strongly-held beliefs are unlikely to change those beliefs. Instead, we end up awkwardly ignoring these blatant contradictions or treating the dissonant factors as separate; Medicare, in our minds, is an established American tradition but a public option would be socialist, even tyrannical paternalism.
F. Scott Fitzgerald said that the mark of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas at the same time while retaining the ability to function… What, then, do we make of those who would gladly receive government benefits while calling for their elimination?
-Colin
Cheney against sanctity of the home!
Julian Sanchez has an additional reason to condemn the deplorable effort by the far right to blame lawyers who defended Guantanamo inmates for…something.
The central, celebrated cases that have established the boundaries of our most cherished civil liberties often involve bad people who are….Few other people have an incentive to bear the burden of fighting all the way to the Supreme Court. If you can get acquitted on the merits, it’s not worth a protracted battle over the procedural fine points.
It’s not only that defending those accused of deplorable crimes is the right thing to do, it’s also the reason we can enjoy a number of important freedoms at all.
-John
Involuntary risk
Morality in a recessionary world
It used to be that the American retirement system relied on a so-called three-legged stool of assets: Social Security, a pension, and private savings. Changes in our economy over the last 50 or so years have cut away at two of the legs.
Our personal savings rate dropped to the low single digits for much of the 00s and most Americans don’t have access to a good pension (much less a career-track job). That’s why so many of those forty and older are suddenly scared to death about their retirement. With the precipitous decline in markets, few have truly adequate savings to bridge the gap between their 401k (if they have one) and Social Security.
Corporations have struggled, too. Those that invested their pension funds bullishly now have billions in liabilities they can hardly afford to cover. That’s why so many are reinvesting more conservatively. State and local governments, however, are doing just the opposite:
But states and other bodies of government are seeking higher returns for their pension funds, to make up for ground lost in the last couple of years and to pay all the benefits promised to present and future retirees. Higher returns come with more risk.
“In effect, they’re going to Las Vegas,” said Frederick E. Rowe, a Dallas investor and the former chairman of the Texas Pension Review Board, which oversees public plans in that state. “Double up to catch up.”
State and local governments employ about 14.8 million people. These employees tend to belong to strong unions that often negotiate for health and retirement benefits comparatively better to those found in the private sector (when they are offered at all).
But a good pension contribution plan isn’t much help when the bottom falls out. Because employees can’t control the investment portfolio, state and local workers are forced to take on an inordinate amount of risk–one that we now recognize can be crippling.
What’s the solution? Giving employees some measure of control over the pension mix seems like a coordination disaster, and there is no guarantee that a majority vote would prevail in favor of a more conservative mix.
That said, giving workers a choice about what risks they incur lessens the apparent moral harm when stock market swoons wipe them out. But many have argued that the current recession shows exactly why we need to give individuals less, not more, choice over how they save for retirement. It’s too easy to underestimate far-off risks, even when so much is at stake.
A more sensible approach would be to enact more stringent regulations about retirement investment–both for public and private funds.
It seems like we’re relearning the lessons that led to the creation of Social Security during the New Deal. It’s not good to be poor when you’re old, and it’s worth forcing people to insulate themselves from that risk. Liberty reaches its its limits when the capacity for informed choice is similarly limited.
-Sam
Hate speech and the Constitution
If he contributes nothing else to society, the infamous Fred Phelps has at least forced us to further examine the notion of free speech. At what point does offensive expression become punishable under the law?
Phelps is the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church, which has gained notoriety over the past decade as a result of its practice of protesting military funerals with signs that read “Thank God for IEDs,” “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” and of course “God Hates Fags.” The group believes that our losses in the War on Terror (along with the suffering from Hurricane Katrina and from the economic recession) are part of God’s punishment for our tolerating homosexuality.
The Supreme Court will now hear Snyder v. Phelps, in which the family of a deceased Marine has sued for damages after Phelps et al showed up en force at their son’s funeral. Most Americans would universally and absolutely condemn the church’s actions. But should they be illegal? If the Court sides against Phelps, would that not open the door to further litigation and regulation of “unsavory” speech?
Truly, one of the law’s most difficult conundrums.
-Colin
Femarxism
The state of the women’s liberation movement is poor, according to British Marxists writing in The Guardian and counterfire.org.
-Jake
The zen master and the failure of “morality as outcome”
Can you judge the morality of an outcome when consequences are endless?
Since the Academy Awards just wrapped up, it seems appropriate to begin with a movie.
This weekend I finally got around to watching Charlie Wilson’s War, an excellent biographical film by Aaron Sorkin about the congressman who from 1979 to 1989 organized covert CIA support for the Afghan mujahadeen in their fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
In one of the final scenes of the movie, at a party celebrating the Soviet withdraw from Afghanistan, Charlie Wilson pulls his closest ally at the CIA, Gust Avrakotos, aside to congratulate him. But Gust is in no mood. He tells Charlie the following story:
“There’s a little boy and on his 14th birthday he gets a horse and everybody in the village says, “how wonderful, the boy got a horse” And the Zen master says, “we’ll see.” Two years later, the boy falls off the horse, breaks his leg, and everyone in the village says, “How terrible.” And the Zen master says, “We’ll see.” Then, a war breaks out and all the young men have to go off and fight except the boy can’t cause his legs all messed up. and everybody in the village says, “How wonderful.’”
At which point Charlie interjects: “And the Zen master says, “We’ll see.” Read more
Reciprocal obligations in Europe
Some in Europe have long criticized the United States for failing to have a sense of communal obligation. Personal responsibility has been an important slogan here, rather than broad-based social welfare programs. But the limits of this European sensibility are now being tested by Greece’s economic problems.
How will it all turn out?
-Sam
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