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A Communitarian Letter # 5
In this issue: Giving thanks A Communitarian Calendar New publications Forced diversity Internet politics Reading the Patriot Act Forced democracy Where is the voice? No porn, yes violence? Challenging reads Dialogue with Professor Heyrman Feedback from A Communitarian Letter # 4
Let the healing begin I asked my students, as they were packing to go home for Thanksgiving, what effect the political polarization is going to have on their holidays? Only two expected any troubles. One explained that his parents were dyed-in-the-wool Republicans and that they would tease him mercilessly for having worked his tail off as a volunteer for the Kerry campaign in Pennsylvania. He, in turn, would resent their support of a President who made the student consider moving to Canada for the next four years, if not longer. “It was going to be a rough Thanksgiving,” he concluded. Another student said that his parents were even more liberal than he was and that the whole family was sure to spend the holiday despondent, bemoaning the fate of the nation and wondering—in the inimical words of The Daily Mirror—“[h]ow can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?” and who the hell are all the people living in those “red” states? Above all, he both resented and was more than a bit envious of the few Republican students he knew who were oozing a deep sense of satisfaction as they prepared to go home and sit down to a meal of profound and all-around thanksgiving. All the other students demurred. One scoffed at the notion that politics were that important. “This holiday season is not going to be any different from any other. We shall stuff our faces. Watch football games until we are bleary-eyed. Stupid little lights will appear all over the place, mixed with plastic Santa Clauses, as we start the shop-till-you-drop Christmas season. The malls will be as full as they were last year, and the elevators will play the same tired tunes all over again. It all will be as familiar and comfortable as a well-worn pair of shoes.” No wonder, I said to myself, she is the best student in sociology I have had in years. The responses of the rest were variations on the same theme. Two said that they did not agree with Bush’s support of the religious right’s “moral agenda” but supported his get-tough foreign policy. Others pointed out that they had known all along that the majority of the country was conservative; the election results were hardly a surprise. Above all, they emphasized that although they did not vote for the GOP, they neither hated Bush nor were personally offended by his re-election the way some of their friends were (my students in sociology include no Republicans, at least none of them confessed to such a proclivity in public). One student added that, sadly, those who really will have a bitter holiday season are those who have lost a loved one in the war or whose family members are still in Iraq or slated to be soon shipped there. I file with those students and others who expect that the holiday season will allow the healing to begin, to remind most Americans (all but the diehard liberals of which there are surprisingly few outside of Manhattan, San Francisco, San Antonio, and elite campuses) that we are one nation after all and have much to be thankful for. Most Americans will have an ample meal to sit down to (indeed with all the trimmings), a roof over their head, and the warmth of both a properly heated home and of family members assembled from near and far—even if there are going to be the inevitable squabbles that mark such relationships. Some families will avoid discussing politics altogether. Others will count it as a blessing that the elections were, by and large, fair and clean, recalling how concerned they were just a few weeks ago that the nation would face the trials of weeks of contested decisions, lawsuits, “Six Floridas,” a loss of legitimacy of the democratic process, and the possibility of becoming the world laughingstock—all of which we were spared, for which much thanksgiving is due. Indeed, the holiday season will serve well the partial reconciliation that has already begun. I say “partial” because not all Americans will be reconciled to four more years of Bush or to the idea that they will have to share the same nation with 50 million people they consider to be religious bigots. Nor will the reconciliation of those who will calm down be complete; Bush’s next moves, both foreign and domestic, are likely to feed their remaining resentment. However, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary, nobody I know is packing. Most are pondering where the Democrats should go next, rather than giving up on politics or talking about supporting some kind of Nader next time around. The very fact that for the weeks to come most Americans will be absorbed in doing the same things they having been doing for years during the Thanksgiving/Christmas season will remind them that the American society is a resilient one and that there is a full and rich life, even after an election lost to the Bushes. Reconciliation will be greatly eased by the fact that the divisions, the often-repeated claims of polarization, were greatly overblown to begin with. The notion that liberals occupy the two coasts and that the rest of nation is GOP land, or that there are states whose citizens hold to “blue” or “red” views, is a media artifact. Most “blue states” have many “red” citizens and vice versa. True, in a winner-takes-all election, it looks as if New York has no upstate or New York City—and no Staten Island; that Orange County is not in California; or that there are only Republicans in the Midwest and Mountain states. However, a closer look shows that although many states were eventually called red or blue, Bush and Kerry actually ran neck and neck in them, within a few percentage points of each other. Take Ohio, for example, that was called red with roughly 51 percent of the votes going to Bush and around 48.5 percent of them going to Kerry; or New Hampshire, hailed blue with Kerry receiving about 50 percent of the votes and Bush 49 percent. Moreover, most “red” people have some blue views and beliefs, and most “blue” people are far from fully blue. Elections, which force them to reduce all subtleties and nuances to one vote, make them look like one-dimensional creatures. As both Morris P. Fiorina (Culture War?: The Myth of a Polarized America) and Alan Wolfe (One Nation, After All) showed in their studies, people are much more complex. It turns out that there are gay conservatives, pro-life Democrats, and so on and so on. I do not seek to make light of the bitterness of the last election, fueled by, among other things, the injection of religious absolutes into politics. It is much easier to reach compromises on tax rates and expenditures for various social programs than on abortion, school prayer, and litmus tests for Supreme Court judges. However, one should not make light either of the resiliency of the American society, the legitimacy of its democratic polity, and—the healing power of holidays we all share.
A Communitarian Calendar
Lecture and Book Presentation: The John Adams Institute in the Hague December 7, 2005, 8.30 pm Amitai Etzioni will be in the Netherlands to participate in the publication of the Dutch translation of The New Golden Rule and present Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende with the first copy. A panel of MPs, including Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Femke Halsema and André Rouvoet, will offer reactions to the book. Click here for more information.
The World Political Forum Regional Seminar: From Meeting to Alliance of Civilizations Panel discussion chaired by Federico Mayor Zaragoza, former Director General of UNESCO Saturday December 10 Granada, Spain Lecture: The Implications of Neo-Communitarianism for a New World Order December 13, 2005, 6:15pm The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus Campus For more information contact Avner De-Shalit at msads@mscc.huji.ac.il SASE 2006: Constituting Globalization: Actors, Arenas and Outcomes Deadline for papers is January 15, 2005: to submit, click here The Communitarian Network will conduct a workshop on communitarian economics on June 30, just before the SASE meetings start . For more information, please visit www.communitariannetwork.org.
NEW publications “The Real Threat: An Essay on Samuel Huntington” Contemporary Sociology published a long essay reviewing various books by Samuel Huntington. Here are some key quotes from it:
“Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s National Identity, is one of a small number of volumes that look like works of social science and have the appearance of scholarship but actually appeal to, reinforce, and help to legitimize one form of prejudice or another.” “The theme that runs throughout various works of Huntington is best characterized as a theory of fear. His books typically identify a mounting threat, such as Mexican immigrants, Islamic civilization, or democratic proclivities, and then point to the need for strong national-unity building measures and mobilization of the people (including militarization) in response to the barbarians at the gate…” “The key issue then is to determine whether a nation truly faces particular threats or whether such concerns are largely drummed up if not totally manufactured…” “Nowhere is Huntington’s biasing of the data and the utterly unfounded conclusions that he draws from them more evident than in his treatment of outmarriage. Outmarriage is particularly important because there is no more intimate and consequential way by which immigrants can be integrated into a society than for them and their children to marry members of the society into which they are supposed to acculturate. Huntington claims that a major sign that Mexicans are refusing to become part of the American society is that they do not marry individuals outside of their ethnic group. Although he initially admits that, “Mexican intermarriage rates may not differ greatly from the Hispanic rates, but they are probably lower,” a few lines later he states flatly, “Mexicans marry Mexicans” (Huntington 2004: 240). For Huntington, this is simply another indication of Mexican immigrants’ inability to acculturate. I have some very reliable information to the contrary: Minerva Morales, born in Mexico City to Mexican parents, did me the honor of accepting my hand in marriage. More broadly speaking, Huntington himself cites data that show that the proportion of Hispanics who outmarry is high, as great as 33.2 percent for all third-generation Hispanic women. And it is important to note that these statistics date to 1994. Later data show, as Jacoby reports, that “Among U.S.-born Asians and Hispanics, between a third and a half marry someone of a different ethnicity. By the third generation, according to some demographers, the rates reach over 50 percent for both groups. In short, Huntington does not even come close to showing that either the integrity of the American society or its creed is under attack. There is no threat—no justification for all the countermeasures Huntington sees as forthcoming and indirectly advocates.” “Huntington’s fears are not wholly without foundation. He defines himself as a settler, not as an immigrant. Settlers, white and Protestant, are those who fashioned the “true” America and controlled it. This control indeed has and is being undermined by immigrants, yet it is not America that is losing power and creed but (as elsewhere in the world)—the settlers.” You can link to the essay here. One of the many tragedies of Hurricane Katrina has been the interruption of scholarship at many Gulf Coast colleges and universities. Please consider subscribing to Human Rights Review, a Loyola University-based journal that focuses on the moral and political interpretation and application of human rights legislation in the international community, and all related human rights issues. To subscribe, click here.
I wonder about forced diversity
Communitarians, at least this one, do not need to hold that a society must be homogeneous, that all its members must have the same ethnic origin, one set of values, etc. Societies can be, indeed many are, communities of communities. As long as loyalty to the overarching community (often the nation) trumps the loyalty to member communities on several key issues, such diversity within unity provides a very valid societal model. For more discussion see, of this, see our Diversity Within Unity Platform. However, all rules have some exceptions. In recent years various international powers have been trying to force people of difference ethnic backgrounds to live together as one nation—including people who rather kill and be killed than live with people who they detest. This is the case in Bosnia and Kosovo. Despite huge expenditures, international pressure and commitment of troops, the efforts to make these countries into community of communities is a screaming failure. One cannot be wonder if in these cases a negotiated ethnic divorce is not to be preferred? Moreover, one cannot help but wonder if perhaps three Iraqs would be better than one? Comments?
Internet : If it ain’t broke… We need supranational institutions, not under the thumb of any one government or even a group of governments, because these bodies are much more effective than those international institutions that require their leaders to continuously consult with their national governments before they can act. The effectiveness of these organizations, however, is debatable—recently, the 188 nations that are signers of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty met in New York City (after a five-year hiatus) to discuss revisions of this vital treaty. They argued for nearly two weeks about the agenda—and returned home with next to no results. ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is much more effective largely because it is a supranational body. Decisions are made on the merit of the case by a board that is not composed of national representatives and largely driven by the true needs of the Internet. The best evidence of this success is that the global Internet is working very fine indeed. Of course, it is also true that the USA, which created this global gift, has some (barely noticeable) influence on the working of the board. Now various anti-American groups are up in arms and seeking to politicize the board and thus the management of the Internet; even turning over management to one of the most bureaucratized and corrupt bodies in the world, the UN. I grant that in the best of all worlds ICANN would be more perfectly autonomous. Meanwhile, given all the difficulties we have in the management of hundreds of other international bodies, let’s leave well enough alone. For more discussion see From Empire To Community, Palgrave-Macmillan 2004
The Patriotic Act: Do you know someone who read it?
The USA Patriot Act has its flaws. For instance, the fact that National Letters (a subpoena of sorts) can be issued without judicial overview is completely uncalled for. However, I’ve found that so far that all the critics of the bill I encountered (and there are many of them) have not read the bill. If they did, they would be surprised to find, for instance, that there is no “library clause” in the bill. The ACLU, the American Library Association and several major publications have complained bitterly that the Act’s “library clause” drives fear into readers who do not wish the government to know what they are reading. Indeed, the word “library” is not to be found in the bill, any more than the world “privacy” is found in the U.S. Constitution. Furthermore, those who mock search of bookstores may wish to read a report that a bookstore served as a regular meeting ground for a group of terrorists ( Ian Johnson, Andrew Higgins and Carrick Mollenkamp, “Bookstore is a Focus of U.K. Probe” The Wall Street Journal 7/10/05 p. A12) in the U.K. Many ignore the fact that 90% of the act’s clauses are not contested by anyone. Much of what is truly troubling about post-September 11 national security—the authorization of torture, holding people as material witnesses for months on end, military tribunals, etc.—is not part of the bill. For more on this issue please read How Patriotic is the Patriot Act?: Freedom Versus Security in the Age of Terrorism.
I would rather be wrong
Post-Cold War American triumphalism , the notion that democracy is breaking out all over, that orange moments usher it in still more places, and that the US armed foster will promote it elsewhere—is horrible mistake. Democracy is a delicate plant; before it can take roots the ground must be carefully prepared, and then it must be nurtured for long periods of time, and still it will not grow readily in many parts (for more on this, see “A Self-Restrained Approach to Nation-Building by Foreign Powers” International Affairs, Vol. 80, No. 1, January 2004, pp. 1-17). I am sad to report that this warning is proving all too true, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in the Ukraine, Bosnia, Russia, several nations in Africa and in Latin America. Democracy will win out, but one undermines its chances when one makes it seem that democracy can be rushed and above all promoted from the outside.
Where is the voice?
You do not have to be a liberal, a progressive, or anything in particular to feel outrage about the fact that people who worked all their lives, paid taxes, did volunteer work, raised their children—in short, who are good, upstanding members of the community—get shafted once they retire. Why is no one crying out—no political party, no lobby—about the fact that pension funds are short some $450 billion? That health plans, promised for workers’ lifetimes, are cut back (most recently, big time, at General Motors)? That drug companies keep marketing unsafe drugs, doctor the test results to get approval, and when—after the drugs have been mass marketed—and reports of causalities start coming in, they unduly delay reporting such vital news to the FDA? Why is no one raising Cain about the new Medicare drug program, which gives small discounts on drugs whose prices have been recently increased and penalizes those who sign up later up to 24% of the costs of the plan? It’s a program where corporations are free to walk away from most any time, but not the patients.
No porn, yes violence? Our fellow communitarian Barbara Dafoe Whitehead is complaining about porn, as one should. She points out what used to be relegated to seedy peep shows and red-light districts is now mass-produced and promoted on the Internet (Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, “Online Porn: How do we keep it from our kids?” Commonweal 10/21/05, p. 6). Website operators profit from every click on a page, leaving them with little incentive to block underage visitors. The good news is that Senator Blanch Lincoln has introduced a bill calling for strict age-verification measures and a “smut tax” for online porn to pay for the costs of protecting children from it. All this is well and fine. However, our analysis shows that depictions of violence online, in movies, rap songs and videogames, are much more damaging than the effects of porn. Children do need protection, but not just from porn. For evidence, see the National Law Journal article “A Virtual Web Community” (January 19, 2004, p. 26) and Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed "Let’s Worry More About Violence, Less About Porn” (March 14, 2004).
Challenging reads
I came across several striking articles in the last weeks. I am quoting a bit from them to provide a flavor of these pieces and a link or lead for those who wish to read the whole article. I cannot stress enough that their inclusion does NOT mean I agree with them, but found them worth thinking about. 1. On blacks, white and the politics of shame in post-Katrina America “…Our open acknowledgement of our underdevelopment will clearly give whites a power of witness over us. It will mean whites can hold us accountable for overcoming inferiority as we hold them accountable for overcoming racism. They will be able to openly shame us when we are not fully at war with our underdevelopment, just as Bill Bennett was shamed for no more than giving a false impression of racism. If this prospect feels terrifying to many blacks, we have to remember that whites witness and judge us anyway, just as we have witnessed and judged their shame for so long. Mutual witness will go on no matter what balances of power we strike. It is best to be open, and allow the “other’s” witness to inspire rather than shame.” (Shelby Steele, “Witness” The Wall Street Journal, 10/26/05, p. A18)
“Above all the Democratic Party needs to overcome its own self-esteem problem. Its leaders have to show imagination and take risks, to be confident and aggressive, to proceed as if the current occupant of the White House no longer mattered—as if the Democrats fully intend to win and govern. The Democratic Party has to speak for the common good in a moral language; and it has to believe what it says, so that when the opposition’s attacks come, as they will, it can find the heart and the courage to fight back.” (George Parker, The New Yorker, 10/24/05 p. 31)
Rights and security: A Dialogue with Professor Mark Heyrman: This is Part IV and the final installment of a continued dialogue with Professor Mark Heyrman. To read Parts I, II and III click here.
I think you have misunderstood the Patriot Act. It has always been permissible for the government to get a court order to search library records if the government could show probable cause that the library had records which would implicate someone in criminal behavior, including an attempt or conspiracy to commit a criminal act in the future. The Patriot Act permits the government to get library and bookstore records without convincing a judge that there is probable cause to suspect anyone of a crime. Just as it is somewhat understandable that we would overreact to the horrible attack on Pearl Harbor by quickly moving to place Japanese-American citizens in internment camps, it is understandable that we would overreact to the attack on September 11th by quickly passing the Patriot Act. But now four years have passed without a terrorist attack in the United States. You are correct to use the phrase “crying wolf.” However, it is the government which is constantly crying wolf in order to frighten us about the supposed threat posed by terrorism.** Civil libertarians can point to the actual conduct of that government in the United States, Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan (and now the Washington Post reports that the CIA has been operating secret prisons in Eastern Europe). This is not crying wolf.
**That terrorists pose little threat to us is easily demonstrated. Hundreds of thousands of extremely poor persons, most of whom speak little English, manage to enter the United States illegally across the Mexican border each year. Once here they manage to find work (even though it is illegal to hire them) without their presence being detected by the government. So any terrorist group that wanted to enter the United States could easily do so. Once here, it would be easy for anyone to commit a terrorist act. Terrorism does not require any sophisticated technology, just one person willing to strap on explosives and mingle with a crowd. If terrorists posed a serious threat to the United States, we would see terrorist acts all of the time in every big city where crowds gather.
Feedback from A Communitarian Letter # 4 On Intelligent Design: Sociologist Arnold Simmel writes:
The Rev. John W. Tape writes: Concerning the debate between evolution and ID. I humbly offer the following solution. Just teach the debate. Teach our children why there is a debate and what it is all about. This could be done in a science class or a religion class. Just explain both sides of the issue as fairly as possible. (Granted there would be some unfairness by some teachers on both sides if the issue. But that cannot be helped.) Give the information to the students. Then give the students the opportunity to do their own thinking. This would be education at its best--giving the students the information, but not brain washing them.
On Kelo v. New London:
Ken Morris of Athens Technical College writes: With regard to Mr. Etzioni's opinion about the Supreme Court ruling in Kelo v. New London, allow me to respond with a hearty "Huh?" Thoughtful people should I believe be of two minds about this ruling. On the one hand there is much public good achieved by granting private property rights, but on the other hand these rights are themselves creations of the state and the state has every right and even the obligation to override them when the public good is enhanced by doing so. Accordingly, on this issue as so many others, I am baffled to read that there is now an official communitarian position. I also don't particularly care for Mr. Etzioni's opinion on this issue. To be sure, the idea of establishing markers to guide the resolution of conflicts between private property rights and a notion of the public good that supersedes them is a good one. However, like so many nice sounding "communitarian" proposals, this one promises a lot more than it can deliver. The markers, after all, must be one of two kinds. They can either be procedural or substantive. If procedural marker is proposed I am hard-pressed to understand how one can be established that is morally superior to that which already existed in this case, namely that of the democratically elected local government of New London acting in the manner that it believed would be best for the community. To imply that a two-thirds majority might be the preferred procedural approach is to assume that for some unarticulated reason private property rights ought to outweigh the democratically perceived public good by a margin of two to one. But here the argument implicitly moves to substantive terrain, even if the substantive marker is crudely masked as procedural reform. The question thus becomes what substantive markers--or substantive justification for procedural markers--ought to be enacted. Mr. Etzioni's opinion, like many others, appears to favor markers that forbid the use of eminent domain when the outcome will be for-profit business but to approve of it when used for non-profit public goods. I believe that this position is untenable and shortsighted. Most community convention centers, for example, would fit the criteria of public ownership, yet their justification is invariably primarily economic. In fact all manner of private businesses--hotels, restaurants, bars, caterers, concert promoters, trade-show organizers, parking deck operators, etc.--profit from them (often while public tax dollars subsidize those profits). Simply because a convention center is publicly owned does not make it a public building. Moreover, what if (as is often the case) a convention center turns out not to be an economic asset to the community and a private developer offers to purchase it? Does the proposed marker forbid a community from selling it? And if a community may sell it how long must it own it first? Twenty years? Twenty days? In short--and I believe this argument applies to roads, train stations, and more or less everything else that is occasionally constructed after a process of eminent domain--a marker based on a distinction between public and private strikes me as pretty nebulous. Moreover, unless one happens to live in a deep blue state, I believe it is important to recognize that popular support for private property rights is rarely anchored in the kind of reflection about the public good that John Locke for example provided for it, but is rather unreflectively championed as a sacred right--sometimes one anchored in the New Testament itself. Since this is not in my view a notion of rights that thoughtful communitarians would want to see strengthened or affirmed, it seems to me that the wiser communitarian position is the opposite of the one recommended by Mr. Etzioni. Only after popular American support for private property rights is nestled within a broader notion of the public good they serve will I be persuaded that profitable discussions about preserving these rights can begin. Accordingly, I lean in favor of the Court's ruling and consider my position to be a communitarian one too.
Johns Hopkins University Political Science professor Joel B. Grossman writes: Just a friendly note to point out that you vastly exaggerate the majority's ruling in the Kelo case. It didn't expand eminent domain, but merely applied to a new set of circumstances the venerable precedent that a "public purpose" might constitute the "public use" called for in the Fifth Amendment. As you then subsequently, and accurately, point out, the decision leaves states and municipalities free to impose limitations on the use of eminent domain, by state law or state constitution. Thus the decision, rather than strengthening the doctrine of eminent domain, may have provoked so much opposition that, in practice, the "public purpose" rationale will have little effect. I must take issue with your description of Kelo as a "vastly expanded ...concept of eminent domain." Despite much rhetorical hand-wringing, Kelo changed nothing. __________________________________________________________________ We welcome your thoughts and feedback to comnet@gwu.edu.
Sincerely, Amitai Etzioni
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