The Fiscal Cliff and the Ethic of Responsibility

In their book, Ethical Realism:  A Vision for America's Role in the World, Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman describe the tenets of a leadership philosophy that guided U.S. international policy through the Cold War years.  In the process, they give us lessons to guide--and to evaluate the effectiveness of--our leaders as the U.S. deals with the longstanding crisis over the federal budget.

They note that leadership in an ethical realist spirit "requires leaders with a combination of open minds, profound moral convictions, and strong nerves.  Moral convictions along, not combined with open minds, lead to fanatical rigidity.  Open minds without a moral foundation can lead to cynical and shortsighted opportunism.  And even a combination of an open mind and a moral foundation will not be enough if the leader concerned does not have the moral courage to make clear and tough decisions" (pp. 57-58).   This is powerful guidance for today's political leaders.

Lieven and Hulsman go on to describe several factors that embody the tenets of ethical realism.  One that seems to be especially important to our current economic policy debate is an " . . . ethic of responsibility as opposed to the ethic of conviction; or between a morality of results and a morality of intentions" (p. 77).   They add that, "having good intentions is not remotely adequate.  One must weigh the likely consequences and, perhaps most important, judge what actions are truly necessary to achieve essential goals" (ibid.).

Herein lies the problem facing us today.   Over the past decade or so, voters and moneyed interest groups have squeezed out of elected office the traditional centrists--the moderate Republicans and Democrats--who once guided American policy.  In its place are ideologues.  They exist in both parties but are especially visible in the ranks of "Tea Party" Republicans and political opportunists who pander to the likes of Grover Norquist and corporate funders rather than represent the interests of their constituents.

Clearly, what we need in the days to come is for our elected representatives in Congress and the President to live out the "ethic of responsibility."  We need open minds who can focus on solving problems rather than being ideologically correct.  The solution to the fiscal cliff lies in a middle path approach that looks both at taxes and cost reductions.  There is plenty of room to find middle path solutions.

Some possibilities:

1.  Taxes:  It is clear that we need to protect lower tax rates for those Americans who need them in order to maintain a decent quality of life.  It is also clear that wealthy Americans can easily absorb a return to Clinton-era tax rates.  The question is simply:  Do we set the cutoff at $250K, $400K, or $1M or somewhere in between.  We need to set a revenue goal and then set the cutoff at a place where we can achieve the goal.

2.  Entitlements:   We need to remind ourselves that Social Security was not designed as an IRA individuals, but as a safety net.  We can reduce the cost of Social Security and related services by (1) imposing a means test, so that one's ability to receive Social Security benefits is tied to how much the individual makes through pensions and other sources, (2) for those who have other sources of income, extending the age at which these citizens can receive full benefit, and (3) increasing the cut-off point for contributions to Social Security.

Like Social Security, Medicare eligibility should include a means test.  Beyond that, however, the primary way to control cost is to eliminate fraud and mis-use of Medicare-funded services by hospitals.

3.  Debt Reduction:   The other major area for debt reduction should be the Defense Department.  It is time for us to reduce the American military presence in Europe and Asia.  At the same time as we reduce force to a smaller standing army, we could re-instate the draft as a "year of service" for high school leavers, requiring that all high school leavers (graduates and drop-outs combined) participate in a year of public service, working state and federal services, during which they would also receive some basic military training in case they were needed to defend the country. 

Beyond that, all federal agencies and projects should be asked to take a small reduction in budget or to justify their continued level of funding in terms of impact on the health and welfare of our citizens.

Let's set a goal and then look for the proper mix of revenue and savings to get us to the goal, not allowing any one thing to be held sacrosanct.  This will require, as Lieven and Hulsman noted, a true commitment to ethical realism:  moral convictions, open minds, and courage.

Opinion versus News

A few days ago, I did a posting on the problems with the 24-hour news channels, especially their reliance on using “spin doctors” to present both extremes on an issue rather than sticking to the facts.  Yesterday, I came across this verse from Lao Tzu in the Tao te Ching (translated by Ursula LeGuin):

                        Opinion is the barren flower of the Way,

                        the beginning of ignorance.

This captures my concern very nicely.  By focusing on the two extreme opinions of every question, we do nothing to truly enlighten people.   We only reinforce the differences, nurturing ignorance rather than helping to find the middle path to understanding and, eventually, solving a problem.

What we need from our 24-hour news channels is a commitment to presenting the facts and true analysis rather than simply presenting opinions.  The latter helps to fill the time, but doesn’t enlighten.

Bill Moyers Interview with Michael Copps about Media and Democracy

Below is a transcript of an interview between Bill Moyers and former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps.  Copps talks about the downside of "big media"  for journalism.  He notes, for instance:

"So the new media, for all the good things it has done — and it has done a lot of cool things, with the instant pictures and instant stories and the Arab Spring and all that stuff, but it hasn’t replaced what we’ve lost in traditional media, from the standpoint of serious and sustained investigative accountability, hold-the-powerful-accountable journalism. Until we address both parts of that equation, we will not have a media system that is worthy of the government."

We need to worry about the impact of big corporate control of the media on our ability to get truly objective journalism that, as Copps said, makes the powerful accountable for their actions.  

 Here is the interview:
Former FCC Commissioner: Big Media Dumbs Down Democracy | Q&A | BillMoyers.com

The Problem with 24-Hour News

Our country has become increasingly polarized over the past decade.  While there are many reasons why this may be the case, one reason has not much been discussed and needs to be examined:  the impact of 24-hour news channels.

Before CNN, FoxNews, and MSNBC, we got our news in highly condensed doses.  A half-hour a night, plus an hour of interviews on Sunday mornings.  By necessity—as well as professional standards—the news tended to be factual:  What happened, to whom, when, why.   Today, however, with the need to fill time on 24-hour news channels, the facts tend to be presented not as an end in itself, but as an introduction to an “expert” opinion roundtable or, even worse, a game of tag between two opposing points of view (often a professional Democratic strategist versus a professional Republican strategist).  It helps fill the time between commercials.  However, the viewer goes away not better informed about the core issues, but instead better informed about the radical positions being taken around the issue.  The result:  we have lost the centrist perspective in our understanding of how to approach major problems.

It has become so routine in the 24-hour news channels that they no longer make a distinction between the presentation of “news” and “discussion” or “commentary.”  And, rarely is there a true “analysis” conducted by objective and knowledgeable experts who are not already committed to a political viewpoint.  It is time for consumers of news to hold news programs to their own standards. 

The Society for Professional Journalists has published standards (http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp)  that are a good starting point.  Beyond that, I would argue that networks need to clearly distinguish between journalism and commentary.  Neither Chris Matthews nor Rush Limbaugh function as journalists on their regular programs, for instance.  They are “commentators” and their programs should be clearly marked as such, given that they are broadcast on what are otherwise promoted as “news” channels.  In turn, those programs that are meant to be journalistic “news” programs should avoid point-counterpoint discussions of issues by professional partisans.  Instead, they should, when needed, bring in objective professionals who can clarify the facts, rather than share opinions.  

The result would be that we see fewer politicians and other professionals politicos on the air voicing their partisan positions EXCEPT when the public is alerted that the program is one about opinion rather than a news program.

Perhaps then, the general public can be better informed about the decisions that their elected representatives are (or are not) making on their behalf.

Richard Alley and James Kasting: Global Warming

The following editorial by Richard Alley and James Kasting makes a solid case that we need to begin planning NOW in order to avoid the extreme changes that will otherwise come about due to global warming.   They use the analogy of planning for retirement:  it can be disastrous if we start too late. 

The printed version in the Centre Daily Times included a graph that illustrates how average world temperaturs have increased dramatically since the 1980s.  I recall the summer of 1988, when global warming became apparent for the first time to most of the public.   For my generation, 1980 is not very far away, but it is a generation ago.  We've lost a full generation in planning to avoid global warming.  This fall, hurricane Sandy demonstrated what global warming can mean to our highly populated coastal cities.  We are losing time and, while we dally, the energy industry is pushing us toward fracking to get more fossil fuel rather than investing in green energy.

One implication is that we can no longer let short-term profit-seeking interests dominate policy discussions about what is becoming a public safety issue.  Let's get the oil companies out of the policy room and demand that our elected officials do their job with our interests--not private interests--in mind. 

We have already lost a generation.  Let's be sure our grandchildren do not look back on us with dismay over our selfishness.
 
We must move toward a cleaner environment | Opinion | CentreDaily.com

David Remnick: Obama and Global Warming : The New Yorker

This column by David Remnick in The New Yorker should be required reading.  It is also a reminder that we cannot afford to be lulled by the superficiality of today's 24-hour news cycle.  We need to take the time to think more deeply about what are, in fact, the issues that should drive our national policies and our passions in the coming weeks and months.  

David Remnick: Obama and Global Warming : The New Yorker

Arlen Specter: Remembering a Thoughtful Centrist

This editorial appeared originally in the Philadelphia Inquirer.  It suggests that the best thing we can do to remember Specter is to vote.  I would add that, in the process, we should take care to avoid extremists and vote in people who can be trusted to focus on solving problems rather than standing behind radical ideologies.  We need big ideas, but we also need to work together as a community.

Over the past decade, the Republican party became so beholden to extremists--whether it be the Tea Party or billionaires with a personal agenda--that Specter could no longer find a place in that party.  We need to encourage both parties to run candidates who have good ideas, but who can work in the middle and not pander to extremists.  That--in addition to voting--would be the best way to honor Specter.

Editorial | Arlen Specter: Farewell to a fighter | Opinion | CentreDaily.com

Deliberate Democracy

Focus on Research | Citizens at state and local levels show real success in deliberating issues | Living | CentreDaily.com

Today, as we mourn the death of Senator Arlen Specter, one of the last true centrists in the U.S. Congress, I was very pleased to see this article about the use of citizen panels to deliberate on major policy issues in Oregon.  The idea that we can make better public policy decisions when we deliberate over the issues instead of simply hearing testimony before acting on ideology, is a lesson to all of us, at every level of public life.   We should demand of our leaders a "deliberate democracy" instead of a polarized debate. 

Grandpa in Chicago

I am working on an “Education and Society” blog posting about the birth of progressive education in Chicago in the 1890s.  It reminded me of a story my grandfather used to tell on himself.

            Grandpa was born in 1883.  His father, who had been born in Prussia, died in 1899.  Grandpa had hoped to attend a seminary in Erie, but, with his father’s death, that goal had been abandoned.  Charlie, the older of the two sons, stayed home with his mother, Lizzie.

            They lived on Strawbridge Avenue in Hickory Township (now Hermitage, Pa.), where his parents had owned about 8 acres of land.  One day, Lizzie sent Charlie to the grocery story to buy some pork chops.  On his way to the store, he encountered a friend who was driving a wagon filled with his personal belongings.

            “Where are you headed?” Charlie asked his friend.

            “Chicago,” the friend, forever nameless in Grandpa’s story, answered. “Want to come along?”

            “Sure,” said Grandpa, and hopped on board and went to Chicago.

            He stayed there for two years, working among the immigrants who dominated the workforce in those days.  When he returned, Grandpa recounted, he stopped at the grocery store and picked up those pork chops before heading home. 

            I think about that story when I read or write about John Dewey and Jane Addams in Chicago, about Hull House or the Pullman Strike.  I wonder if Grandpa ever found himself in Halstead Street—home to many German immigrants—or at Hull House itself.

           Grandpa never talked about Chicago itself, only about going and returning. I suspect Chicago was a brief period of excitement in a life that was otherwise tormented by alcoholism and disappointment.  It is part of my memory of him (he died in 1960) and one that has been renewed as I study the great things that were happening in Chicago around the same time as his visit.   It is nice to have another connection with him.

Antique Music

Karen and I dropped in at a big antiques mall near Milroy, Pa., the other day.  Two stories of great old stuff.  I bought three LPs for less than $5, including the Eagles Greatest Hits.  Back in the 1990s, this was the best selling LP of all time.  I am playing it as I write this.  It is good music. 

I also bought two Christmas albums.  One by Kate Smith ("Christmas Eve in My Home Town" is an old favorite) and Eddie Arnold (my Mom loved his music and he has a really solid style).  We have an incredible library of old Christmas albums that we bought at yard sales and antique stores, plus a few that we've carried with us through the years.  These will be good additions.  Christmas is a time for memories.  I remember, for instance, that my mother gave me my very first LP for Christmas:  Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are a'Changing."

Instructions for Life from the Dalai Lama

Below are the “Instructions for Life” by the Dalai Lama—“20 Ways to Get Good Karma.”  They are worth keeping posted on your bulletin board or inside your medicine cabinet or on your refrigerator.  I especially like the last two.

1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three R’s:
   -  Respect for self,
   -  Respect for others and
   -  Responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great relationship.
7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and
    think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
19. If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.
20. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

"Where are the Others?"

I just finished reading Along the Way, an excellent father/son memoir by Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez. Toward the end, Sheen writes:

"There's an old saying: If you arrive at the Kingdom alone you must answer just one question: 'Where are the others?' We are made so that we must travel alone, yet we cannot do so without community. No one can live our lives for us or carry our inner burdens, yet we can come to know ourselves only through our compassion for others." 

This, it seems to me, is what is missing from the public debate over health care, gun control, and some other issues today.   Our nation has polarized over political ideology.  And, for the most part, that ideology itself is not well-articulated or well-communicated.  Instead, people latch on to pieces of it:  freedom of markets, corporations as independent operators in society,  the right to keep and bear arms, etc.  Missing is a discussion of fundamental moral issues: 

What defines the U.S. as a "community?" 

As citizens, what are our responsibilities to others who share our community?

The big public policy issues are, in the final analysis, not questions of cost or freedom of markets, but of responsibility.  What is our responsibility to others?   Government--and the taxes that support it--are the vehicle by which we help each other in order to sustain our community.   If we believe the Christian adage, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," how should we use our government?  And, as a community, what should we expect of corporations that thrive on the work of individuals in our community?

A Globalization Moment

Several years ago, I was in New York City for a board meeting of the International Council for Distance Education.  After the session, several of us decided to have dinner together.  We were four—from Germany, India, Norway, and myself from the U.S.

            We set out to find a good restaurant, deciding that we could easily find good food within walking distance of our Manhattan hotel.  We came to the door of a well-known Italian restaurant and were about to enter when our Indian colleague stopped.  “I’ve never understood Italian food,” he told us.  “I don’t think I am ready for this.”

            We stood on the sidewalk and discussed where to eat.  Eventually, we all agreed on Chinese food.  We had passed a Chinese restaurant on the way and so backtracked to it.  It was late, and the restaurant had on a few tables with customers.  Our waiter, apparently, was born in China and, if his grasp of English was any indication, had arrived fairly recently.   We struggled to identify what was in the different menu items.  Finally, my Norwegian colleague found something he liked.

            “Bueno!” 

            He had a habit of exclaiming in Spanish like that. 

            Our waiter’s eyes lit up.  “Quiere esto?”  he asked.  It turned out that, in the New York neighborhood where he lived, Spanish was more common than English.  It was his American language.

            After that, we had no problem.  We ordered the rest of our Chinese dinner in English, confirming the details in Spanish.  It was a great evening.  Smiles all around, including the waiter, who was much relieved.

            It was a globalization moment—a little example of how our new world works.  We are all in this together.  All of us equals in a world, all of us trying to find a language that will help us become part of the new community in which we find ourselves.  There is no room for xenophobia in this world:  we are all strangers here.

Reading Memoirs

I have become a big fan of memoirs.  Not biographies, but books where interesting individuals explore major events in their own lives.

            It began with One Hundred Names for Love, Diane Ackerman’s memoir of life with her husband, novelist Paul West, after he suffered a stroke that affected his ability to communicate.   This was a very personal memoir for me.  I took several courses from Paul when he taught at Penn State.  More than that, I thought of him as a mentor and role model at a time when I hoped to become a writer myself.  I don’t know Diane, but we very likely were both students at Penn State during the late sixties and early seventies.   She is a wonderful writer in her own right, the author of The Natural History of the Senses,among other books.  She had been researching a book about the brain when Paul suffered his stroke.  As a result, her memoir starts with the science of what he suffered and expands to explore how their relationship evolved as he recovered and, ultimately, how he himself experienced the stroke and its aftermath.   The powerful aspect of this memoir, though, is her description of their daily life together, both before and after the stroke. 

            I then read Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, which starts with the sudden death of her husband, the novelist John Gregory Dunne, and her life over the next twelve months.   I knew little about Didion at the time.  I discovered that she was an inspiration for a generation of women and that she and her husband had been an important screenwriting team.  From her narrative, I learned that she was also a “tough customer.”  As she describes it, when her husband died, she went to the hospital, not knowing whether he was alive or dead.  When the attending physician came in, she overheard the EMT tell him, “It’s okay.  She’s a tough customer.”   For a while, she takes that as an ironic nickname.   Reading Magical Thinking was a bit like moving into a new neighborhood and getting to know a wonderful, but complex neighbor. 

            I had just finished Magical Thinkingwhen Karen and I took a vacation to Maine.  We stopped by the public library in Kennebunkport, where I was delighted to find a copy of John Gregory Dunne’s last novel.   Interesting how reading can become a family affair.  Didion completed a second memoir—about the death of her daughter—before she died earlier this year.  I have yet to read that one, but I will.

            I knew almost nothing about Patti Smith, the punk rock poet, until I picked up Just Kids, her memoir about her early days in New York and her relationship with the photographer Robert Maplethorpe.   She is just about my age.   She ran away to New York from New Jersey in the 1960s and recounts her life there during the flowering of the American counter culture.  I was amazed to read about a peer’s experiences, so different from my own, but with many of the same cultural contexts as background.  I immediately went out and bought Horses, her breakthrough album.

            This week, I started another memoir—Along the Way, a father-son memoir by Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez.  Again, I was confronted by two people who experienced some of the same events that I did—the death of Robert Kennedy, for instance—but from two very different perspectives:  one, a man a few years older than me; the other, his son, much younger than me.   I could identify with both as they talked about their experiences in the 1960s—Martin getting starting his career and his family in a time of cultural revolution, Emilio experiencing a nomadic childhood in a strong family.  I am still reading this one, but it promises to be very revealing of the dynamics between two creative people in a demanding profession.

            What I like about all of these books is the way these first-person accounts are like sitting down and catching up with an old friend.  In the end, I feel a personal connection with the authors.  It is a fantastic literary experience.

Planting Roses

This morning, I planted three rose bushes--three double knockout reds--behind our new house in State College.  I've been looking forward to this for some time, but was excited to actually get planting, even if it was the hottest day of the summer (so far).  I always like to have roses in my yard.  When I was a boy, growing up in my grandparents home, I was surrounded by roses.  My grandmother's mother's name was Rose.  My mother's name was Rose, and Grandma and Grandpa had huge rose bushes lining the long drive up to the house--red, pink and white roses with huge blooms.  Two other bushes, at right angles to the others, defined our front lawn.  At the corners were lilacs (my aunt's name was Lillian).

Roses remind me of what was good about my childhood.  They help me stay in contact with Grandma (whose love of these particular flowers extended even to her talcum powder, which was named "Lilacs and Roses") and Grandpa (who did the hard work of planting and very occasional trimming) and, of course, my mother and aunt (whose names always conjure up the image of "the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley"). 

They help make our house home.

Deadly black lung surges back in coal country - Open Channel

The article contained in the link below is a truly sad reminder of why we need regulation--and enforcement--to protect workers.  Coal companies are not going to protect their workers unless they are regulated.  In this case, regulations were made to control the cause of black lung disease in mines, but the regulations have not been adequately enforced.  Coal companies care only about money.  Government needs to care about people.  That means not only putting regulations on the books, but enforcing them.  We've seen enough examples recently in the financial area to demonstrate that enforcement cannot be limited to fines--corporations have come to see federal fines as simply a  cost of doing business, no different than the bribes they pay overseas.  Enforcement must require that the individuals who break the law pay personally, in some cases by doing time.  Creating environments that harm workers--and even kill them eventually--should be seen as a serious crime.  Shame on these companies, and shame on the individual investors who profit from their awful treatment of workers.

Deadly black lung surges back in coal country - Open Channel

Ben Franklin's Lesson

I am reading Walter Isaacson’s biography, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life.  In it, there is this paragraph that I find to be very important for Americans today:

Tocqueville came to the conclusion that there was an inherent struggle in America between two opposing impulses: the spirit of rugged individualism versus the conflicting spirit of community and association building.  Franklin would have disagreed.  A fundamental aspect of Franklin’s life, and of the American society he helped to create, was that individualism and communitarianism, so seemingly contradictory, were interwoven.  The frontier attracted barn-raising pioneers who were ruggedly individualistic as well as fiercely supportive of their community.  Franklin was the epitome of this admixture of self-reliance and civic involvement, and what he exemplified became part of the American character (p. 103).

            It strikes me that what Tocqueville called “inherent struggle” is the yin and yang of American society.   The opposites are, in fact, just as Franklin saw them:  two aspects that, taken singly, are in opposition but that, taken together, define the American character.  Throughout our history, it has been this kind of civic individualism that has allowed Americans to solve problems and to innovate to create a better society.  It is what allowed us to be not just a nation of immigrants, but a nation of immigrants who created a unique culture.

            Today, in our politics and in our culture more generally, we are ignoring the unity that these apparent opposites allow us.  We are focused on the yin and the yang—the sun and the shadow—rather than on the mountain they define.  We need a Franklin to remind us that, as he wrote, “The good men may do separately is small compared with what they may do collectively.”

Reference:  Isaacson, Walter.  Benjamin Franklin: An American Life.  New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003.

Reminders

My Aunt Lillian, when she died a fewyears back, left behind her high school year books, from 1939 when she was in the sixth grade, through 1945, when she graduated. Today, I thumbed through them, looking for Aunt Lillian and other relatives. I found several Elliott cousins--Alice, Bill, and Jim—who grew up across the street from us but are allgone now, and also saw a lot of familiar names from my youth, some of whom areprobably the parents of my school mates. But perhaps the greatest surprise was to see the number of faculty members fromthose days—well before I was born—who were also my teachers in the 1960s.  Looking back, it was not that long atime between 1945 and 1966—well within a teaching career. Nevertheless, I was surprised to see those familiar, although much younger faces:

Rethinking "Community"

I was both shocked and dismayed last Thursday morning over coffee to read a letter to the editor of our local paper that began, “In the event that Barack Hussein Obama is re-elected to the presidency of the United States of America, all members of the military, all members of all the police services, and members of emergency services providers, will have to evaluate and decide if they are going to obey the dictates of the president and his cadre of ‘czars,’ or they will honor the Constitution of the United States.”

            The shock was that someone would go so far as to urge members of our military to consider what is, at the bottom line, something that looks very much like treason—that U.S. soldiers should disobey their commander in chief—and, even more, that a newspaper would publish it.   Free speech is the price of democracy, and in this case I felt some “sticker shock.”

            More deeply felt, though was dismay over what the letter suggests about the loss of community in the U.S.   We’ve seen this in so many ways over the past few years, but this letter illustrates just how profoundly separated from the mainstream some of our citizens feel. 

            It is easy to chalk some of this up to racism.  Clearly, there is a segment of the U.S. population who cannot identify with an African-American being President and who, as a result, see themselves as no longer needing to be loyal to a government led by a President who is not “us.”  This is downplayed in the media, but it is obvious when you listen to what people say.   There is also an element of xenophobia—fear of the stranger—at work.  For the past decade, many in the U.S. have marginalized all Moslems for what some Moslems did on 9/11/01.  Note that the letter emphasized President Obama’s middle name, which is also the name of the dictator that we deposed in our misguided war against Iraq.  The ongoing nonsense about the President’s birth certificate is an example of how this has been used to create suspicion that he is not one of “us,” but instead an exotic “other.”  The right wing in our country has used this as a tool to further radicalize those who already felt disenfranchised by the economy, loss of social standing as workers, etc.

            But I believe that these two factors are symptoms of a broader and, ultimately, more widespread concern.   William Irwin Thompson wrote about the idea that, as society expands, so does our cultural identity.  Early cultures celebrated the clan or tribe as the point of identity.  As farming took root and towns developed, the family identity became “private,” and citizenship in a town became the “public identity.”  Eventually, one’s identity with one’s hometown became private as nationality became the public identity.  We see this in the evolution of how immigrant families identify themselves over the first few generations.  The first generation brings to their new home the language and customs of the old country.  The second generation begins to make much of that private, as they take on the identity of the new country in which they were born.  By the third generation, the old culture is a heritage celebrated at family events and holidays.

            Today, we are at a point where our public identities are being challenged by globalization.  Traditional definitions of communities as groups of mutually dependent people in a defined geographic area are fading.  The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, even the ephemera of our lives—our toys, our greeting cards, etc.—are not made locally by our neighbors.  Instead, they are produced all over the world by people most of us never see and to whom most of us have no sense of social obligation.   But, we have not yet begun to see ourselves as “citizens of the world” or members of a “global community.”  As a result, many of us—having been raised to expect to be part of a traditional community that takes pride in the “Made in the USA” label—feel vaguely disenfranchised.  Being an American seems not to mean what it used to mean, but we don’t know what else to be.

            Then along come the politicians and the robber barons who finance them, who sense they can gain an advantage by playing off the unease that people are feeling.  The result can be seen in headlines throughout the political season as politicians pander to the unease, turning fear into anger and, they hope, action that will benefit their political or corporate interests.  In this environment, we cease to be a community at a much deeper level.

            I have been reading Citizen, Louise Knight’s biography of Jane Addams, the great social reformer of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.   Looking back on the Pullman strike of the 1890s, she noted that one’s ethics are contextual and that, when major changes happen in society, a new ethic may arise.   In the context of the Industrial Revolution—and the massive immigration and urbanization that accompanied it—that meant moving beyond the old class-based ethic of philanthropy as looking down on others to a new ethic of mutual engagement among social equals.   

            Today, the Information Revolution is causing a disruption that is similar equal in scope, if not greater, to the Industrial Revolution.  Instead of immigration and urbanization, this new revolution is causing globalization and, as Fareed Zakaria noted in his book, The Post-American World, not the decline of America, but the “rise of the rest.”   We can no longer see the rest of the world as strangers:  we are too interdependent on numerous fronts.

            What we need to do, in order to mend our increasingly shattered sense of community, is to embrace what is best about our culture and celebrate it and, at the same time, get to know our neighbors.  The long-term solution lies in our educational system.  When I was in high school in the 1960s, seniors took a course called “Problems of Democracy.”  It was designed to help us understand the complexities of the American vision in practice before we went out and joined the adult world.  We need a fresh take on that to prepare people to live as citizens and be productive workers in our new, global community. 

            Meanwhile, I hope that, by the end of this political season, we will be able to find ways to mend relationships and find common purpose as members of a shared community.  That, it seems to me, is the job of our elected representatives—and those who want to be elected—and our media, which has been awfully silent on the issues that underpin the headlines these days.

Responding to Extremists

This report--which details the growth in "militias" and other anti-government groups, should be seen as a warning sign to every reasonable American and a signal to politicians to stop pandering to people on the fringes and start working together to build a new, strong middle ground in American politics.  

Report: Number of U.S. anti-government groups rises for third year - Local News - Monterey, CA - msnbc.com