Pray, do tell
Get ready for an old equity debate to return to the spotlight in the wake of Obama’s State of the Union: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. From the New York Times:
The policy of drumming gay men and lesbians out of the military is based on prejudice, not performance. Gay people serve openly and effectively in the armies of Britain, Israel, Australia and Canada.
This editorial focuses on the politics and the practicalities, but has the moral element of this debate been as definitively solved as it would seem?
-Sam
The morality of bipartisanship
Pragmatism, Legitimacy, and Fraternity
Pres. Obama promised and thus far has failed to bring bipartisanship to Washington, D.C. Today he renewed the effort by attending a gathering of House Republicans.
Few, if any leaders contest bipartisanship’s value. It is one of those “golden” concepts of American politics, which Sam–our resident political consultant–can maybe tell us more about. What values, though, does it embody or further?
1. Pragmatism
To the extent that a proposed bill has value, it’s passage is a good thing. If one party does not have sufficient votes to enact a valuable bill without the other’s support, bipartisanship enables the bill’s passage. In this case, the value of bipartisanship is extrinsic or consequentialist, depending on the value of the law it enables, rather than inherent to the concept itself. It prevents legislative gridlock. One concern is that it requires watering down legislation to ensure it passes. But passing a decent law is better than not passing a supposedly perfect law. Bipartisanship gets the job done.
2. Legitimacy
Did the President go too far?
During his State of the Union address on Wednesday night, President Obama called out the Supreme Court for its ruling last week on Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission: “With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that, I believe, will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections.”
As the Washington Post describes, “The justices, in the front and second rows of the House chamber, sat motionless and expressionless. Except for Alito. “Not true, not true,” he appeared to say (other lip readers think he said, “That’s not true”) as he shook his head and furrowed his brow.”
Both the President’s statement and Justice Alito’s response have gotten much reaction. So did the President overstep his bounds? Was it a protocol breach of separation of powers? Or was it Justice Alito’s “you lie” moment?
-Marc
Can government ban fast food?
After writing this week about the perfectionism-neutrality debate, I came across an interesting and related article in the Washington Post on a lawmaker that wants to prohibit Prince George’s from issuing new licenses to fast food restaurants in areas with high disease rates. Not surprisingly, opponents argue that what people eat is a matter of personal choice. But supporters claim that there are clear connections between poverty and fast food eating and between fast food and obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. The article cites a state study that found nearly 40% of Prince George’s county children under 11 were overweight and that most came from lower-income families. Indeed, one third of children in Prince George’s eat three or more fast food meals a week.
So, should government get involved in determining what food options are available? And if so, is it possible to make the case on a neutral basis?
How should we pick judges?
The fight over judicial elections
On Tuesday, I attended a conference put on by the Aspen Institute and Georgetown Law on the topic of judicial selection. In light of two recent Supreme Court cases, Caperton v. Massey Coal (in which the court held that judges should recuse themselves from cases involving donors to their campaigns) and Citizens United v. FEC (in which the court ruled that corporations and unions may spend without restraint to influence elections), debate has been heating up about the effect of elections on the judiciary.
There were a number of interesting questions raised at the conference, which featured a wide range of authorities on the subject, including several state supreme court justices, politicians, legal scholars, and the keynote speaker, Sandra Day O’Connor.
The broad question is, of course, whether we should subject judges to popular election in the first place. It was pointed out that the public tends to hold two strong but contradictory views on the subject: First, that judges are often corrupted by political and financial forces; and second, that popular elections are necessary to hold them accountable. But these elections, so it was suggested, are the problem, not the solution.
Survey data permanently settles philosophical question
In news from the emerging field of happiness research, a recent study shows a strong correlation between material goods and objective factors (like high levels of sunlight in a given geography) and subjective ratings of happiness. (The link is to a methodological objection to the study itself, which as a purely qualitative public philosopher I’m not qualified to adjudicate).
I should say that I always find it odd when studies of this nature begin with “philosophers have debated since ancient times…”, as if the interesting philosophical debate revolves around positive survey data rather than normative judgments of what happiness should mean.
But come on, even Seneca would have bowed to materialism if he had seen the new iPad, right??
-John
In my day…
One doesn’t necessarily expect the deepest analysis from Tom Freidman; his gift is for explaining sprawling issues to large audiences via anecdote, and he does so quite well. Even so, readers must expect more than yesterday’s op-ed:
Sometimes you wonder: Are we home alone? Obviously, the political and financial elites to whom we give authority often act on the basis of personal interests. But we still have a long way to go to get out of the mess we are in, and if our elites do not behave with a greater sense of the common good we could find our economy doing a double dip with a back flip.
Of course this is all true, but it’s also banal. It only gets worse, as Friedman bemoans the behavior of investment banks as “utterly selfish.” How else would Friedman expect banks to behave? Private institutions exist to make money while playing, generally, within certain agreed-upon boundaries; it’s the role of the government to set those boundaries.
Of course, it’s the inability of government to deal with large, long-term problems that is the difficulty. Friedman seems to believe, however, that the real problem is that the politicians we have are somehow “not adult,” that if we elected good salt-of-the-earth Senators none of these problems would have arisen.
I suppose there’s no way to disprove that counter-factual. However, it’s bizarre that Friedman completely discounts the role of institutions in shaping our political culture. One doesn’t have to look far for theories, some of the best being the role of the filibuster, 24 hour news cycle, etc etc etc. While nominally the “character” of our elected official is in our hands, it seems more relevant to focus on reforming institutions rather than making “in my day Senators and bankers knew how to sacrifice” kind of arguments.
-John
What is the value of professional credentialism?
Ben Casnocha has a worthwhile reflection on credentialism. Referencing an older Jim Fallows article, the puzzle is this:
Would the very best people working in the profession today obtain the highest possible scores on the license test? In the case of air traffic controllers and therapists, the answer is no. I bet the answer is no for lawyers, businesspeople, and real estate agents, too.
I think truest argument for lengthy credentialing processes (in an age where the actual information is freely available) is that the process artificially limits entrants into certain professions. I feel like the common wisdom is that this guild-like process is bad, but I’m not so sure. If standards were decreased, fields like law, academia, and others might well collapse under a flood of entrants. Credentialism may not be perfect or justifiable from a skills-building perspective, but the relevant question may be whether we’re better off if a given profession is arbitrarily gated or if it ceased to exist at all.
-John
The power of “independents”
In American politics, our partisan divides are rivaled only by our insistence on a mythological, common “American-ness,” constituted by appeals to the Founders/Framers (capital “F” mandatory), to freedom/liberty, and to our rugged, independent nature. Even though the vast majority of Americans identify with one of the two major political parties, most of us like to think of ourselves as “independent,” as it gives us an air of objectivity, astute skepticism, and non-ideological rationality.
But as political scientist John Sides angrily reminds the propagators of the “Great American Independent” myth (Fareed Zakaria and Matt Bai in this case), it just isn’t the case that independents are the driving force in American politics. Most studies show that most so-called independents aren’t actually independent, and those who are account for less than 10% of the electorate.
The interesting philosophical questions here surround (1) the attractiveness of the “independent” label to American voters themselves, and (2) the attractiveness of the “independent” meme in the coverage of politics by the media. Not surprisingly, both trends reinforce the other; popular commentators aren’t just reacting to citizens’ professed ideologies – they’re helping to form them by continually playing up the refreshing, non-biased role of the reasonable moderate.
-Colin
Mort la revolution?
David Brooks discusses that oldest of topics: how to temper the competing appetites of the people and the elites. Our country, he says, has entered a populist moment:
These two attitudes – populism and elitism – seem different, but they’re really mirror images of one another. They both assume a country fundamentally divided. They both describe politics as a class struggle between the enlightened and the corrupt, the pure and the betrayers.
Both attitudes will always be with us, but these days populism is in vogue.
But populism, he says, “nearly always fails” because it can’t move from vehement criticism of the rich to concrete steps that can effect positive change. And anyway, he says:
In fact, this country was built by anti-populists. It was built by people like Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln who rejected the idea that the national economy is fundamentally divided along class lines. They rejected the zero-sum mentality that is at the heart of populism, the belief that economics is a struggle over finite spoils. Instead, they believed in a united national economy – one interlocking system of labor, trade and investment.
[. . .]
In their view, government’s role was not to side with one faction or to wage class war. It was to rouse the energy and industry of people at all levels. It was to enhance competition and make it fair — to make sure that no group, high or low, is able to erect barriers that would deprive Americans of an open field and a fair chance. Theirs was a philosophy that celebrated development, mobility and work, wherever those things might be generated.
This is ascribing an awful lot – in awfully contemporary terms – to Hamilton and Lincoln. But you decide whether Brooks is right.
-Sam
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