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
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
What does corruption require?
The consensus among those in Washington seems to be “quite a bit.” In their much talked about decision in Citizens United, the conservative Supreme Court majority held that money spent independently of campaigns toward political advertising is not corrupting, regardless of amount. (Interestingly, Anthony Kennedy ruled the opposite way in another opinion he wrote, in Caperton v. Massey Coal. That case applied to money spent in judicial elections, however).
Last week, the House ethics committee cleared 7 members accused of contributor kickbacks:
Simply because a member sponsors an earmark for an entity that also happens to be a campaign contributor does not, on these two facts alone, support a claim that a member’s actions are being influenced by campaign contributions.
It’s not surprising that a panel of politicians found this permissible, as the practice of rewarding campaign contributors is quite common to all in Congress. This is like having a hedge fund regulate itself. But it’s frustrating for this reason: One would have to be incredibly naive to believe that there isn’t some sort of relationship between bankrolling a campaign and getting benefits in return (what other reason to corporate PACs and trade associations have for throwing large sums at elected officials?), but it’s also difficult, given the kind of standard we’re setting, to prove corruption in these cases.
In other words, we all know this is “pay to play,” but we simply can’t prove it to anyone’s satisfaction unless we have Blagojevich-like phone calls of the members promising rewards. On the other hand, should we automatically disqualify campaign donors from receiving federal contracts? If not, I suppose the House panel couldn’t have ruled any other way.
- Colin
The (im)possibility of secular judgment
Stanley Fish (whose articles consistently elicit a response from me) has an interesting piece up on two troublesome distinctions in liberal thought: the distinction between religious and secular reasons and the distinction between public and private reasons. As is often the case, the article is really a supportive book review in disguise - this time of law professor Steven Smith’s “The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse.”
“Classical Liberals,” according to Fish, have long argued that when it comes to political debate, religious or value-laden arguments are inadmissible, since they operate on assumptions that are not universally shared or provable. Instead, they argue, we should rely squarely on “secular reason” to do the job of here-and-now policy-making.
But according to Smith / Fish, “secular reason” can’t actually solve ANY of our political problems. At least not without “smuggling in” some of that which it despises - metaphysical assumptions, values, and comprehensive doctrines. Science and reason can’t tell us what to do with data; we must choose how to use the tools of reason, what to aim them at, how to interpret information, and which facts really matter. Reason alone can’t do all of that picking, choosing, and ranking - we need some kind of substantive value system to do that.
Brooks’s nostalgia for aristocracy
A month ago, David Brooks drew fire for a column about Haiti that many readers found offensive. His broad generalizations about Haiti’s supposedly irresponsible and entitled culture prompted accusations of racism.
Brooks’ most recent column is likely to add charges of “classism” to the list. He suggests an interesting frame from which to view our current crises of trust in our most important political, economic, and cultural institutions - the transition, over the last half-century or so, from aristocracy to meritocracy.
As we’ve made our institutions more meritocratic, their public standing has plummeted. We’ve increased the diversity and talent level of people at the top of society, yet trust in elites has never been lower. It’s not even clear that society is better led.
Hmm… That’s a pretty wide sweep, but interesting. But why would this be? Brooks offers up a few suggestions, which I’ll try to summarize in one sentence: Yesteryear’s elites had broader skill sets, lived locally, got along better, took the long view, and were more private; Today’s elites are too technically specialized, geographically centralized, partisan, short-sighted, and transparent.
There’s a lot that could be said here, since he’s put a lot on the table. But let me offer one thought. If it’s indeed true that things seemed so much simpler back then, it’s probably because things were much simpler back then. The core point here, which Brooks seems to be aware of, is that it’s obviously easier to share power among a homogeneous few than it is to conduct business democratically in a large, racially-, culturally-, and ideologically-diverse populace. If the subtext of Brooks’ Haiti piece was “Why can’t these poor, foreign black people behave like middle class American white people?”, then the subtext here is “Wouldn’t we have a lot less drama if America looked like Leave it to Beaver again?”
There are some points worth seriously considering in his piece-by-piece analysis of where today’s elites go wrong (especially by over-specializing and shooting only for short-term wins / political points), but the general thrust here is no more profound than George W. Bush’s jovial suggestion that “If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.”
Simplicity and trust are often inversely proportional to democracy and equality. Freedom ain’t free, right?
-Colin
Reason and faith in higher education
How should universities teach religion, if at all? It’s a touchy subject - one that even the mighty Harvard has struggled to wrap its collective head around. That’s the subject of an interesting recent Newsweek piece by Lisa Miller.
Miller tells the story of a general curriculum conflict at Harvard between those who want to integrate faith and spirituality into course requirements (via a mandatory module called “Reason and Faith”) and those who would rather keep religion out of the classroom. The author sides with the former group, suggesting that “[t]o dismiss the importance of the study of faith—especially now—out of academic narrow-mindedness is less than unhelpful. It’s unreasonable.”
Steven Pinker, the well-known evolutionary psychologist, led the charge against the “Reason and Faith” module, arguing that the university’s mission is not to give a platform to all popular claims, but to pursue knowledge through rational inquiry. Teaching the importance of faith - at least as part of a mandatory curriculum requirement - would be anathema to that mission. Read more
What the Framers intended
After watching this humorous video on the diversity of opinion among members of the same religion, I got to thinking about how such a phenomenon applies more broadly to philosophy.
It’s true that in a medium like religious faith, it’s near impossible to tell who’s interpreting the moral, political, and historical claims of a particular tradition correctly. God tends, suspiciously, to agree with all of our personal opinions.
The same can be said for America’s Framers. Our nation is home to a wide variety of political philosophies, and I’d bet you would be hard-pressed to find many that don’t claim the Framers as tacit supporters. There’s a conservative Christian movement in Texas right now that aims to alter school curriculum and textbooks in order to teach children the true intent of the Founding Fathers - to create a strong, Christian nation that would carry out Jesus’s mandate on Earth. Meanwhile, Christopher Hitchens insists that the Founders were Enlightenment Deists, committed only to a vague, secularized spirituality and interested in avoiding the interference of religion with politics, science, and ethics.
The “American Tradition,” like its religious counterparts, is as contested as it is loved.
-Colin
Landlines, cell phones, and polls
Why my opinion has never mattered…
Here’s something nobody ever talks about, but nevertheless seems like it should be very important: Public opinion polls are almost all done by calling landlines. Do you own a landline? I don’t. In fact, I’d be hard pressed to name a friend in my generation who has one.
The demographic implications are pretty obvious - landline polls are likely to skew heavily toward older populations. Comparative studies show that landlines also favor females and whites. (So just replace the word “Americans” in poll results with “Elderly white women” and you’ll get a better picture)
This is a tough issue to get around, and understandably, polling companies have been quick to downplay its significance. Pew says that mobile-only and landline-only polls produce “virtually identical” results. But the same study they used to draw that conclusion provided the numbers that demonstrated the demographic gap described above. Mobile- and landline-based populations will likely converge on some issues, but certainly not all. Politically, it would seem to follow that polls err to the right.
In my view, the increasing scarcity of landlines poses a major obstacle to an already unreliable service; pollsters already have to worry about people without any phones, people who don’t answer phones, and people who aren’t sincere or who don’t understand the questions. Now, with some estimates suggesting that half of adults 30 years old and younger use only cell phones, we can be fairly certain that our voices just aren’t being represented.
It’s unlikely that polls will go away, however. I can’t imagine what the media and anyone with an agenda would do without them (and their infinite, and rather convenient, layers of interpretation).
On the bright side, polls are no more misleading than other mainstay methods of generalizing the “general will” (hat tip to Rousseau), such as, say, voting. The voting demographic is as small and unrepresentative as any, yet we don’t exactly stop political commentators mid-sentence and protest, “Well, technically, New Yorkers didn’t elect Senator Schumer, a relatively small number of voters in New York elected him.”
In other words, whether we’re talking about polls, elections, workers, readers, or viewers, we’re likely to be generalizing the views of a smaller subset onto a much larger population. We’re often reminded after references to the beloved “town hall” government of our Forefathers that civic participation was actually quite limited. Things may not have changed as much as we might like.
UPDATE - I’ve received some rebukes and note here that Gallup, for its part, claims that it’s known about this for years and is continually fixing the issue and including cell phones in their polls. This may be true, but if it wasn’t still a problem, they wouldn’t be calling for so much research on the topic. Someone call me and poll me so I can get over my skepticism.
-Colin
Fish on the First, Continued
Stanley Fish followed up on his original explanation of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC with an examination of three contentious First Amendment questions: Does money equal speech? Should corporations share our rights as citizens? And, where’s the line between (free) speech and (punishable) action?
Fish does little to provide answers to a frustratingly confused public. The bewildering ridiculousness of First Amendment jurisprudence is at once infuriating and beautiful, apparently…
[I]t’s an act of prestidigitation, a magical sleight of hand, a game whose rules are continually changing, a discourse that can reach any conclusion at all including one you would have thought impossible. It hasn’t got a principled leg to stand on, and yet it keeps moving forward and producing real world consequences. In short, it is an absolutely marvelous achievement, something to be admired as a wonder even when you are distressed by the content of what it has just produced.
-Colin
-
Follow us on Twitter
