On Chris Matthews' weekly news show on NBC this evening, Richard Stengel of Time magazine pointed to the similarities in style between Ronald Reagan, ever the sunny optimist and political "evangelist" for America's favored position as a beacon of light as the "shining city on the hill," and Obama's "Winning the Future" State of the Union address Tuesday night. It's an intriguing comparison, especially given the parallels in political time between early 1983 after Republicans took a shellacking in the 1982 midterms and 2011 after Democrats suffered the same fate in November. The economy was in tough shape then as now, and Reagan had been forced by the failure of his tax-cut enactment of 1981 to produce expected federal revenues to agree to the biggest "tax increase" -- mostly in non-income tax fees so as to keep his reputation alive as a tax cutter -- in history until then. In part, this "move to the center" on Reagan's part was dictated by the Fed's policy, under the direction of then-Chair Paul Voelcker, of tight money--which was pursued to curb inflation--was directly at odds with the stimulus effects of fiscal policy. In part, it was pure politics: a result of the substantial losses Republican candidates for the House and Senate incurred.
Obama's so-called "move to the center" -- signalled initially by his concession to Republican demands that the Bush tax cuts on the high end incomes be extended -- is arguably anchored in similar circumstances now. The new and substantial Republican majority in the House is certainly a strong political presence. The precarious state of the economic recovery and the painful persistence of "structural" -- as opposed to cyclical -- unemployment is loud music on the policy side. The real point, however, is the political appeal of the president's upbeat SOTU in current circumstances and whether this can accurately be characterized as an echo of Reagan. That Obama's speech was popular is undeniable: polls had it rated positively by majorities ranging from 84% to 91%, virtually unprecedented approval levels in recent history. And given the actual state of the union -- bulging deficits, crumbling infrastructure, partisan rancor, unrelenting unemployment, poor performances by our youth on standardized math and science tests, lurking suspicion about the role of investment bankers in instigating the financial meltdown, talk spurred by a presidentially-appointed deficit commission of the need to scale back entitlement spending -- the President's call to "seize this generation's Sputnik moment" and act as the country that we are: The home of big dreams, big ideas, and big accomplishments -- this, well, it had a ring of Reagan's undaunted optimism, if not outright denial, reverberating throughout. The bright and sunny tone was made all the brighter for listeners who took in the rebuttals of Republican Paul Ryan and Tea-Party spokesperson Michelle Bachmann. Both cast the state of the union as perilous and its future as dark unless drastic measures are undertaken in the near future.
The Obama speech made no mention of the poor, despite the fact that we now have record numbers of households falling beneath the federal poverty threshold. And despite calling for government reform, it contained no reference to campaign finance in the wake of the Citizens United case. Granted, the President did promise that seed money from the federal government would go to converting to a post-petroleum energy policy by curtailing the subsidies to big oil and transferring them to efforts to innovate in green technologies. But the corporate subsidies benefitting the big oil companies are embedded in the mountains of loopholes carved out by corporate lobbyists in the tax code. In all, it was a strange speech: delivered with a kind of upbeat, can-do spirit that would appeal to the true believers in American exceptionalism. But isn't our current sorry state of the union in no small measure a consequence of American ignorance and arrogance regarding our exceptionalism? We can't be like the European socialists. Nor can we embrace a non-profit healthcare system despite the fact that all other OECD countries do with better healthcare at half the price as a percentage of GDP. In brief, isn't the whole notion of "American exceptionalism" at least partly to blame for our ills? Why is that? Or maybe it's not the case after all. What say those of you who've considered this too?
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Is Egypt Going the Route of Tunisia?
Welcome back to Obamadogs to Mr. Erickson, whose comment was duly noted on the worries of even law schools like U of M in keeping students around for ratings reasons may be a factor in the diminished emphasis on intellectual investments by students, as measured by student study hours per week, in the present as opposed to the past. Welcome also to Chris Liebig, aka Abhay's law school professor, who has commented in response to issues raised by Joe Muldoon and others regarding the goals of formal schooling. Prof. Liebig is concerned, reasonably, about the emphasis in Iowa City schools on championing "odedient" -- quite, compliant, passive -- behaviors in the elementary classroom in which his own children are students. This is an issue none of us has addressed directly, even though the Radicals from Lindblom's account would not be suprised that such norms operate in public schools regarded among Iowa's -- and hence the nation's -- finest. Most of our critical observations have been aimed at college and/or high school; but the primacy principle reminds us that what is learned earliest, even if it's to keep quiet and back away from raising questions, is learned best. I guess I'd presumed that elementary classrooms had become much more active and project- or inquiry-based than in the old days when I was a student. At least that seemed to be the case for our three daughters.
Before speaking to the title in this post, I feel compelled to mention a little-emphasized finding from the brouhaha-inciting study claiming to show that college's first two years are wasted on 45% of today's students. The finding in question -- or the truth-claim in question -- is that these hideous numbers are not nearly so severe for undergrads at traditional liberal arts colleges taking traditional arts and science classes where lots of tough reading and lots of analytical writing are required. In the big research universities, according to the report's authors, a silent bargain has been struck between professors whose principal efforts are in furthering their research and writing agendas and students who won't complain if they're not asked to do much--at least as first and second-year students. But this too is a claim subject to challenge, as indeed are much of the truth claims from the "Academically Adrift" study, based as they are on a single performance measure (the CLA). Remember Popperism: testability, falsifiability, tentativity, yada, yada.
As for this post's title, what are the odds that Mubarek's government will survive the growing expressions of mass protest? When you have 87 million people, half of whom fall short of the UN poverty theshhold of 2 bucks a day and 30% of whom are illiterate, in a country only a couple doors down from Tunisia, the odds-makers would not likely share the optimism of the authors of The Civic Culture. For starters, I'd put the odds of a change of government at even money.
Before speaking to the title in this post, I feel compelled to mention a little-emphasized finding from the brouhaha-inciting study claiming to show that college's first two years are wasted on 45% of today's students. The finding in question -- or the truth-claim in question -- is that these hideous numbers are not nearly so severe for undergrads at traditional liberal arts colleges taking traditional arts and science classes where lots of tough reading and lots of analytical writing are required. In the big research universities, according to the report's authors, a silent bargain has been struck between professors whose principal efforts are in furthering their research and writing agendas and students who won't complain if they're not asked to do much--at least as first and second-year students. But this too is a claim subject to challenge, as indeed are much of the truth claims from the "Academically Adrift" study, based as they are on a single performance measure (the CLA). Remember Popperism: testability, falsifiability, tentativity, yada, yada.
As for this post's title, what are the odds that Mubarek's government will survive the growing expressions of mass protest? When you have 87 million people, half of whom fall short of the UN poverty theshhold of 2 bucks a day and 30% of whom are illiterate, in a country only a couple doors down from Tunisia, the odds-makers would not likely share the optimism of the authors of The Civic Culture. For starters, I'd put the odds of a change of government at even money.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
College Life Today, cont'd.
From the aforementioned "Room for Debate" blog in yesterday's NY Times comes this factoid from Prof. Phillip Babcock of UC-Santa Barbara.
"Full-time college students in the 1960s studied 24 hours per week, on average, whereas their counterparts today study 14 hours per week. The 10-hour decline is visible for students from all demographic groups and of all cognitive abilities, in every major and at every type of college. . . .
. . . Most of us in higher education believe that the skills that are truly worth acquiring involve hard work. Put simply, thinking requires effort.
If colleges no longer require this kind of effort, how could students hope to acquire these skills and how could colleges hope to instill them?"
Prof. Babcock's piece in the exchange is appropriately entitled, "An F for Effort."
Thoughts?
"Full-time college students in the 1960s studied 24 hours per week, on average, whereas their counterparts today study 14 hours per week. The 10-hour decline is visible for students from all demographic groups and of all cognitive abilities, in every major and at every type of college. . . .
. . . Most of us in higher education believe that the skills that are truly worth acquiring involve hard work. Put simply, thinking requires effort.
If colleges no longer require this kind of effort, how could students hope to acquire these skills and how could colleges hope to instill them?"
Prof. Babcock's piece in the exchange is appropriately entitled, "An F for Effort."
Thoughts?
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Does College Make You Smarter?
Check today's "Room for Debate" blog on the New York Times online. It's based on the above question, and has half-a-dozen contributors who focus on the why behind the evidence of paltry progress learning-wise for first and second-year college students. As such, it traverses much of the ground that recent posts on Obamadogs have covered.
Monday, January 24, 2011
The State of the Union
Tomorrow night we will use part of our scarce class time to listen to President Obama's State of the Union address. There is no shortage of commentary on what the president might or should say, but apparently -- if Paul Krugman is right, and he usually is -- the theme of "competitiveness" will be prominently featured. Normally, this is a theme that one encounters in the SOTU addresses of Republican presidents, and this is not lost on Mr. Krugman. As such, it doesn't mean that Obama's not-so-subtle move to the center is actually crossing the partisan divide and ditching Democratic policy tools in his efforts to reconnect with the Business Community. But it's a bothersome ploy, even if it's just a public relations tactic, to Krugman. I'd recommend your reading of this argument at the following link as it lays out clearly why this is an irksome choice on the president's part in the mind of the nobel laureate economist from Princeton:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/opinion/24krugman.html?_r=1&hp
Otherwise, what would you recommend that the president say if you were a member of his speech-writing shop?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/opinion/24krugman.html?_r=1&hp
Otherwise, what would you recommend that the president say if you were a member of his speech-writing shop?
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Mr. Engeset's "Challenge"
We have an interesting seed for a significant thread in the comment supplied by Mr. Engeset yesterday -- following on the earlier comments by Messers. Corbin, Muldoon, and Nadipuram. From my reading, the discussion seems to feature two paths familiar to students of attribution theory from social psych: the "external" attributionists, i.e., those who see individual behavior as primarily determined by situations, are represented by Mr. Nadipuram and, to a more nuanced degree, by Mr. Muldoon. Mr. Corbin and Mr. Engeset, by my reading of their comments, seem to share the "dispositional" path in attribution theory: the behavior of an individual, or in this case a generation, can be best ascribed to "internal" factors of those behaving. In this instance, the dispositional attributions to GenYers with respect to public life and engagement with it vs. detachment from it are, if nothing else, direct and pablum-free. Overly compressed to some degree, GenY is removed from political life by "choice" -- for the lazy, less-demanding option rather than the tougher choice. In fairness, neither Mr. Engeset nor Mr. Corbin are blaming their generation entirely without taking into account the considerations noted and explicated by Mr. Muldoon, namely a pre-collegiate (and collegiate) educational system that is standardized-test-based and indifferent, at best, to the idea of multiple intelligence or the value of creativity, individually or socially.
My questions about these disparate assessments are twofold. First, what do others on Obamadogs among GenY think? Are you and your peers defined by your music and your choice of "distractions"? Are you "lazy"? Or are you victims of a so-called "educational system" that is fundamentally what one would expect if the Radical View of American democracy is correct: a system of control aimed at producing unquestioning cogs for the Corporate State, not independently-minded, articulate citizens whose search for genuine solutions to vexing problems takes them, comfortably, out of the box?
Second, if this line of attributional thought is correct -- i.e., if GenY is fundamentally a bunch of couch potatoes in public life -- what does such a diagnosis mean for our collective endeavor in designing via democratic deliberation a culminating capstone experience that is satisfactory to the quality-conscious and productive in generating the elusive qualities -- analytical reasoning, critical thinking, clear and purposive writing -- that research has recently found to be a very short supply among today's college students?
My questions about these disparate assessments are twofold. First, what do others on Obamadogs among GenY think? Are you and your peers defined by your music and your choice of "distractions"? Are you "lazy"? Or are you victims of a so-called "educational system" that is fundamentally what one would expect if the Radical View of American democracy is correct: a system of control aimed at producing unquestioning cogs for the Corporate State, not independently-minded, articulate citizens whose search for genuine solutions to vexing problems takes them, comfortably, out of the box?
Second, if this line of attributional thought is correct -- i.e., if GenY is fundamentally a bunch of couch potatoes in public life -- what does such a diagnosis mean for our collective endeavor in designing via democratic deliberation a culminating capstone experience that is satisfactory to the quality-conscious and productive in generating the elusive qualities -- analytical reasoning, critical thinking, clear and purposive writing -- that research has recently found to be a very short supply among today's college students?
Friday, January 21, 2011
Ricci and The So-called "Tragedy . . ."
Since the White House failed to check with us to clear the date, they mistakenly designated the State of the Union address for 8 pm CST Tuesday night, halfway through our previously-arranged class time. This poses a problem: On the one hand, we don't want to miss President Obama's remarks in the golden opportunity he's been afforded by political time to finally establish a "narrative" that will legitimate well-designed and sorely-needed efforts by the federal government to step up its intervention in the mythical free market to use fiscal tools to hasten the recovery, accelerate job creation, and stave off the collapse of revenue-starved state and local governments with badly-needed infrastructure projects as well as plain-old revenue sharing over the objections of Tea Party-type deficit hawks in the Republican party.
On the other hand, we don't want to slide further behind in the communal read and dissection of the Ricci volume. Recall that as a partial concession to this worry, Tuesday is to be devoted to chapters 3-5 rather than 3-6. For those who are just receiving their copies of Ricci, it will mean chapters 1-5, a tall order for a volume of such density as this. However, deferring any further the time allocated to the "mandated" portion of the capstone is simply not acceptable. The prospect of carving out a collectively negotiated, from scratch capstone experience, replete with appropriate rigor in readings and (inquiry-based) writing in fewer than the two-month window that is available is dim indeed.
Accordingly, I propose that we use this medium to facilitate the effective attention to course obligations in the time and space we have available. Specifically, that means using Obamadogs as the forum for class-related conversations it is intended to be: a way of communicating between class members between classes so as to relieve the pressures created by a once-weekly formal class meeting. Therefore, anyone with a question -- which should be everyone in the class -- about Ricci's argument(s) should feel free to post it on the blog. Also, since we did not have volunteers to serve as "discussion guides" for chapters 4 and 5, perhaps four class members yet to do so, would step forward via this blog: two to guide the 4th chapter and two the fifth chapter discussions. Since we have eleven members and six have stepped forward already for chapters 1-3, that leaves five members from whom these four roles are to be filled: Messers Lusamba, Woodin, and Fonck; and Misses Dohlman and Brown. Volunteers can do so individually or in pairs, either in this forum or via email to me. I will ensure that there are no duplications.
Finally, we have yet to see overt demonstrations of interest in directing the post-Ricci focus in one direction or another. If specific volumes are not proposed, perhaps topics or problems can be identified. One way or another, we need to begin the deliberative process that is required for a genuinely democratic and educational experience of this magnitude (i.e., where ALL voices are heard and no one is permitted to "opt out" of a decisionmaking role).
We have thus far heard from only Trevor and Isaiah in this forum; that leaves nine of eleven so far choosing to sit on the sidelines.
DT
On the other hand, we don't want to slide further behind in the communal read and dissection of the Ricci volume. Recall that as a partial concession to this worry, Tuesday is to be devoted to chapters 3-5 rather than 3-6. For those who are just receiving their copies of Ricci, it will mean chapters 1-5, a tall order for a volume of such density as this. However, deferring any further the time allocated to the "mandated" portion of the capstone is simply not acceptable. The prospect of carving out a collectively negotiated, from scratch capstone experience, replete with appropriate rigor in readings and (inquiry-based) writing in fewer than the two-month window that is available is dim indeed.
Accordingly, I propose that we use this medium to facilitate the effective attention to course obligations in the time and space we have available. Specifically, that means using Obamadogs as the forum for class-related conversations it is intended to be: a way of communicating between class members between classes so as to relieve the pressures created by a once-weekly formal class meeting. Therefore, anyone with a question -- which should be everyone in the class -- about Ricci's argument(s) should feel free to post it on the blog. Also, since we did not have volunteers to serve as "discussion guides" for chapters 4 and 5, perhaps four class members yet to do so, would step forward via this blog: two to guide the 4th chapter and two the fifth chapter discussions. Since we have eleven members and six have stepped forward already for chapters 1-3, that leaves five members from whom these four roles are to be filled: Messers Lusamba, Woodin, and Fonck; and Misses Dohlman and Brown. Volunteers can do so individually or in pairs, either in this forum or via email to me. I will ensure that there are no duplications.
Finally, we have yet to see overt demonstrations of interest in directing the post-Ricci focus in one direction or another. If specific volumes are not proposed, perhaps topics or problems can be identified. One way or another, we need to begin the deliberative process that is required for a genuinely democratic and educational experience of this magnitude (i.e., where ALL voices are heard and no one is permitted to "opt out" of a decisionmaking role).
We have thus far heard from only Trevor and Isaiah in this forum; that leaves nine of eleven so far choosing to sit on the sidelines.
DT
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Yet Another State of Mind
Not to worry, this is not another reference to Lindblom's essay. In a class discussion this morning with students taking ID309 Probs of War & Peace, we revisited the study mentioned Tuesday showing that 45% of college students make no measurable progress in analytic reasoning, critical thinking, or written communication during their first two years of college and the percentage declines only to 36% for four-year students. Interestingly, after class one of the students shared an insight based on the reading that had nothing to do with the College Learning Assessment research, but yet did--in a way. The reading was on WWII, particularly the non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin, signed in August, 1939, only to be broken in the Spring of 1941 by the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa. That the invasion had to be postponed five weeks due to circumstances beyond Hitler's control meant that the German troops were defeated before they reached Moscow by the Russian winter, an intervention by Mother Nature that probably spelled the difference between victory and defeat for the Third Reich in the larger war. The question we were addressing concerned the popular support Hitler enjoyed by the German people. They were not idiots, yet they empowered and followed a mad man in perpetrating unprecedented evil upon humanity in pursuit of an insane ideal of global dominion.
The author's suggestion was borrowed from Erik Erickson, who saw Hitler as the internalized version of the rebellious male child in the prototypically authoritarian German family dominated by a stern and emotionally-challenged patriarch: submissive to those in authority, hostile and dismissive to those without power. Hitler offered an object of identification that gave the German youth, especially the males, a way of escaping the guilt-ridden pattern of complying with the domineering father figure while feeling self-loathing for doing so. By identifying with Hitler and his over-the-top challenge to existing patterns of authority, German boys could feel a sense of power and "autonomy" by, in effect, relegating their conscience and thus their guilt to the Fuhrer. The student after class wanted to share his appreciation of the Milgram experiments on obedience, which showed -- before they were canceled by the APA as constituting a violation of ethical research guidelines -- that German subjects were more apt to go all the way in obeying commands from an authority figure to administer severe punishment (high voltage shocks) to other subjects who failed to perform a memory task adequately.
This prompted my recollection of a discussion of the Milgram experiments as demonstrating the difference between the effects of two states of mind: the first, the so-called state of "autonomy," the other referred to as the state of "agency." In the latter, officers in the death camps served as examples: "I was just following orders. The decision to villify and execute Jews was not mine, but the Fuhrer's." The former state, autonomy, is one in which we recognize that our choices are no one's but ours: we refuse to follow orders just because a person in a position of authority issues them. We consider, on our own, the consequences of our choices and their ethical grounds. We are captains of our own ship, masters of our own fate. Americans are rightly proud of the emphasis given to this state of mind in our culture. But here, finally, is my question: Does our educational system now -- particularly our system of higher education -- serve to suffocate this state of mind? Are students so accustomed to "following orders" that they find themselves mindlessly going through the motions rather than actively asserting that part of their character that we know of as the "autonomous" state of mind? If so, could this be an enemy of this class, or the opportunity this class provides for defining the content of the major portion of the capstone? How do we find out? And what actions are in order if the enemy diagnosis is on point?
The author's suggestion was borrowed from Erik Erickson, who saw Hitler as the internalized version of the rebellious male child in the prototypically authoritarian German family dominated by a stern and emotionally-challenged patriarch: submissive to those in authority, hostile and dismissive to those without power. Hitler offered an object of identification that gave the German youth, especially the males, a way of escaping the guilt-ridden pattern of complying with the domineering father figure while feeling self-loathing for doing so. By identifying with Hitler and his over-the-top challenge to existing patterns of authority, German boys could feel a sense of power and "autonomy" by, in effect, relegating their conscience and thus their guilt to the Fuhrer. The student after class wanted to share his appreciation of the Milgram experiments on obedience, which showed -- before they were canceled by the APA as constituting a violation of ethical research guidelines -- that German subjects were more apt to go all the way in obeying commands from an authority figure to administer severe punishment (high voltage shocks) to other subjects who failed to perform a memory task adequately.
This prompted my recollection of a discussion of the Milgram experiments as demonstrating the difference between the effects of two states of mind: the first, the so-called state of "autonomy," the other referred to as the state of "agency." In the latter, officers in the death camps served as examples: "I was just following orders. The decision to villify and execute Jews was not mine, but the Fuhrer's." The former state, autonomy, is one in which we recognize that our choices are no one's but ours: we refuse to follow orders just because a person in a position of authority issues them. We consider, on our own, the consequences of our choices and their ethical grounds. We are captains of our own ship, masters of our own fate. Americans are rightly proud of the emphasis given to this state of mind in our culture. But here, finally, is my question: Does our educational system now -- particularly our system of higher education -- serve to suffocate this state of mind? Are students so accustomed to "following orders" that they find themselves mindlessly going through the motions rather than actively asserting that part of their character that we know of as the "autonomous" state of mind? If so, could this be an enemy of this class, or the opportunity this class provides for defining the content of the major portion of the capstone? How do we find out? And what actions are in order if the enemy diagnosis is on point?
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
The Aversion to Public Life and its Controversies
Our discussion tonight about the large and growing portion of the younger generation's aversion to public life, particularly when the prospect of conflicting viewpoint beckons, is a huge unsolved mystery to me. So is the notion, so clearly expressed by several seminar members, that remaining "insulated" from contact via news sources from public life requires no special effort by young people today; indeed, it's easy -- apparently given the wide range of gadgets (XBOX, Facebook, cells, etc.) that provide alterative sources of attraction or distraction. Also disturbing is the virtual disappearance of diads composed of individuals holding differing political views, as in the day when Don Canfield and I would look forward to mixing it up and learning from one another over coffee before he moved on to St. Olaf and the political environment changed. I talk about the value of learning from those who see the world differently; Wartburg promotes the idea of diversity in part for its educational benefits: we might have our opinions validated by others who think like us, but John Stuart Mill had a good point when argued that individuals who'd not had their opinions challenged by those with differing views could not be said to truly know what they actually believed or why. I can't be sure, but I'm inclined to suspect that in this group of a dozen people, counting me, there is a reasonably wide range of attitudes present. The common denominator, presumably, is an untypically strong interest in public affairs; beyond that, I suspect, we adhere to different political-economic-international worldviews. Hopefully future class sessions will provide ample opportunites for probing and exploiting these differences, as sources for learnings and/or sources of inquiry projects later this term. And, speaking of later this term, it's not too early to float a trial balloon for a topic or book for our post-Ricci sessions.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
A Tale of Two Moralities?
Paul Krugman's Friday column, from which the title of this post is taken, spoke to President Obama's call for a more civilized discourse in his well-received remarks at the memorial for the victims of the Tucson shootings Wednesday evening. Krugman's column can be found at:
the New York Times online under the Opinion section for Friday, Jan 14th. The gist of Professor Krugman's remarks was to take issue with those who, like Morris Fiorina in his widely read volume Culture War?, argue that the popular view that we are a nation deeply divided and that the sharp partisan polarization is a reflection of those deep difference is, on close scrutiny, wrong-headed. Instead, says Fiorina, we are a "closely divided, not deeply divided" nation: the differences between red and blue states are such that we will have closely contested elections into the near future, but the partisan differences between members of the "political class" do not extend deeply into the population. Data supporting this skeptical view of the political divide and its depth are taken from surveys on issues running the gamut from guns, gays, and abortion to a host of other policy issues. As it happens, there are no aggregate differences in the opinions of voters from red and blue states on these matters. Consequently, the "culture war" argument that Krugman and others embrace is a mythical product of a public-affairs media that pays many of its "commentators" to rip apart partisan opponents.
For Krugman, the polarized political rhetoric has far deeper roots. After all, Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck would not pull in big salaries without harvesting large audiences that allow their shows' sponsors to sell advertisements at a premium. In the Krugman analysis, the deepest root for the climate of polarization is the recent history of the Republican Party. Prior to the Reagan Presidency, Republicans accepted the realities of the "mixed economy" that produced in the wake of the New Deal and Great Society an American version of the welfare state. Though quite different than the welfare states of Western Europe, it provided a safety net and entitlement programs that were funded, without major attacks on their legitimacy, by a tax system that was progressive in principle and practice. Now, says Krugman, a Republican Party has arisen that challenges the legitimacy of the welfare state on moral grounds, claiming in effect that it is based on theft: those who are winners in the capitalist game are expected to pay for the welfare benefits of those who are losers. Hence the ugliness of the so-called health care reform debate of last year where Republicans unanimously opposed a reform measure that, less than twenty years earlier, they embraced when Bill Clinton's effort at reform crashed.
Beneath the surface manifestation of the new Republican Party is an altogether different kind of morality than the one that persisted through Democratic and Republican Administrations alike following FDR and going through the 1970s. According to Krugman, this morality is essentially one of "I've gone mine and I deserve it; it's immoral to punish me for my hard-won success by taxing me more heavily than the lazy, the losers, the irresponsible and subsidizing their very slothfulness in the process." Needless to say, this is a deeply-felt belief--witness the inability of Obama to budge Republican leaders on allowing the "Bush tax cuts" to elapse on the upper 2% of incomes in the US. For Krugman, the depth of this belief is such that anyone who sees things differently -- e.g., our life chances in terms of income are affected more than by ability and effort alone -- are not only wrong, they are immoral. Hence the prospects of civil conversation, let alone policy compromise, are nil--notwithstanding the elegance of Obama's call to reconciliation so as to honor young Christina-Taylor Green's pride in her democracy, avidly expressed before her life was taken by a madman in Tucson.
For 460-ites, I draw attention to this issue -- along with the aforementioned question, Why do Democrats compromise when Republicans won't? -- as a personal puzzle that I seek your wisdom on -- if not answers, suggestions for how one would push the envelope research-wise to provide evidence on these matters. In short, how can we possibly pursue such questions in the yet to be defined portion of this semester's class?
the New York Times online under the Opinion section for Friday, Jan 14th. The gist of Professor Krugman's remarks was to take issue with those who, like Morris Fiorina in his widely read volume Culture War?, argue that the popular view that we are a nation deeply divided and that the sharp partisan polarization is a reflection of those deep difference is, on close scrutiny, wrong-headed. Instead, says Fiorina, we are a "closely divided, not deeply divided" nation: the differences between red and blue states are such that we will have closely contested elections into the near future, but the partisan differences between members of the "political class" do not extend deeply into the population. Data supporting this skeptical view of the political divide and its depth are taken from surveys on issues running the gamut from guns, gays, and abortion to a host of other policy issues. As it happens, there are no aggregate differences in the opinions of voters from red and blue states on these matters. Consequently, the "culture war" argument that Krugman and others embrace is a mythical product of a public-affairs media that pays many of its "commentators" to rip apart partisan opponents.
For Krugman, the polarized political rhetoric has far deeper roots. After all, Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck would not pull in big salaries without harvesting large audiences that allow their shows' sponsors to sell advertisements at a premium. In the Krugman analysis, the deepest root for the climate of polarization is the recent history of the Republican Party. Prior to the Reagan Presidency, Republicans accepted the realities of the "mixed economy" that produced in the wake of the New Deal and Great Society an American version of the welfare state. Though quite different than the welfare states of Western Europe, it provided a safety net and entitlement programs that were funded, without major attacks on their legitimacy, by a tax system that was progressive in principle and practice. Now, says Krugman, a Republican Party has arisen that challenges the legitimacy of the welfare state on moral grounds, claiming in effect that it is based on theft: those who are winners in the capitalist game are expected to pay for the welfare benefits of those who are losers. Hence the ugliness of the so-called health care reform debate of last year where Republicans unanimously opposed a reform measure that, less than twenty years earlier, they embraced when Bill Clinton's effort at reform crashed.
Beneath the surface manifestation of the new Republican Party is an altogether different kind of morality than the one that persisted through Democratic and Republican Administrations alike following FDR and going through the 1970s. According to Krugman, this morality is essentially one of "I've gone mine and I deserve it; it's immoral to punish me for my hard-won success by taxing me more heavily than the lazy, the losers, the irresponsible and subsidizing their very slothfulness in the process." Needless to say, this is a deeply-felt belief--witness the inability of Obama to budge Republican leaders on allowing the "Bush tax cuts" to elapse on the upper 2% of incomes in the US. For Krugman, the depth of this belief is such that anyone who sees things differently -- e.g., our life chances in terms of income are affected more than by ability and effort alone -- are not only wrong, they are immoral. Hence the prospects of civil conversation, let alone policy compromise, are nil--notwithstanding the elegance of Obama's call to reconciliation so as to honor young Christina-Taylor Green's pride in her democracy, avidly expressed before her life was taken by a madman in Tucson.
For 460-ites, I draw attention to this issue -- along with the aforementioned question, Why do Democrats compromise when Republicans won't? -- as a personal puzzle that I seek your wisdom on -- if not answers, suggestions for how one would push the envelope research-wise to provide evidence on these matters. In short, how can we possibly pursue such questions in the yet to be defined portion of this semester's class?
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Lindblom-inspired speculation
Here's a thought-in-progress: Suppose that the vitriol and anger that almost all agree is a big part -- in the view of most, too big a part -- of our political discourse of late is the semi-conscious consequence of a dim sense that the Radical View Lindblom speaks of is sensed by many of our citizens. I'm wondering if, at some fuzzy level, a large fraction of our population suspects that our system is no longer the proud republic it once was, the shining city on the hill that Reagan spoke of, and that the "powers that be" -- be they banks or members of Congress, or special interests (other than the gun lobby) -- do "govern" in a way that mimicks the brutush yet subtle processes of repression that the Radical View pointed to some thirty years ago.
I will confess that my initial -- and still dominant -- view of the Tea Party is that its populism and sense of indignation are misdirected in as much as they are targeted on Obama and the Democrats now, though many would add George W. Bush's brand of borrow-and-spend fiscal policy as alien as well. The problem, in my mind, with such thinking is that it is tone-deaf on the workings of crony capitalism -- i.e., unregulated, untaxed, unproductive wealth creation that occurs at the expense of genuine free enterprise where liberty is preserved and enhanced and economic wellbeing is maximized. That kind of free-market fundamentalism is far from the realities of Wall St and the big banks today. Concentrated corporate power is as big a threat --if not bigger -- to individual liberty and equal opportunity than so-called Big Government. To be sure, government has grown in a Big Brother kind of way over the past decade, but the growth has been in Homeland Security and Defense, areas that conservatives generally have few problems with. Corporate political power is no longer as invisible as it once was before the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United. US corporations are said now to control between two and four trillion dollars in cash, waiting to see where investment opportunities will present themselves -- in our out of the country -- in the aftermath of the financial meltdown in 2008. Were they to invest in US-based businesses, the stock market would rebound and, provided that the financial system began to loan money to small business again, it's possible that economic growth would exceed 3% over the next year, making a reduction in the unemployment rate a real possibility before the 2012 election. Now, the Tea Party has been silent on the threats to liberty posed by this concentration of wealth; indeed, they were largely opposed to letting the Bush tax cuts expire on the superrich.
What is the view of others on this basic question? Is it possible that the Radical View -- stripped out its Marxist origins -- is one that intuitively appeals to the many voices that have gravitated toward the Tea Party? If so, how should the two major parties respond to this? I'm wondering what others make of the views that many have of our politics these days? Is it fair to surmise that they don't buy the benign, common benefit society conception of the Conventional View?
Does that mean they have a dim suspicion that the Radicals are right?
Finally, having watched the Tucson Memorial tonight, I'm wondering what the view is of President Obama's remarks. He had a tough challenge, and by most accounts, his speech struck the right tone. Thoughts?
I will confess that my initial -- and still dominant -- view of the Tea Party is that its populism and sense of indignation are misdirected in as much as they are targeted on Obama and the Democrats now, though many would add George W. Bush's brand of borrow-and-spend fiscal policy as alien as well. The problem, in my mind, with such thinking is that it is tone-deaf on the workings of crony capitalism -- i.e., unregulated, untaxed, unproductive wealth creation that occurs at the expense of genuine free enterprise where liberty is preserved and enhanced and economic wellbeing is maximized. That kind of free-market fundamentalism is far from the realities of Wall St and the big banks today. Concentrated corporate power is as big a threat --if not bigger -- to individual liberty and equal opportunity than so-called Big Government. To be sure, government has grown in a Big Brother kind of way over the past decade, but the growth has been in Homeland Security and Defense, areas that conservatives generally have few problems with. Corporate political power is no longer as invisible as it once was before the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United. US corporations are said now to control between two and four trillion dollars in cash, waiting to see where investment opportunities will present themselves -- in our out of the country -- in the aftermath of the financial meltdown in 2008. Were they to invest in US-based businesses, the stock market would rebound and, provided that the financial system began to loan money to small business again, it's possible that economic growth would exceed 3% over the next year, making a reduction in the unemployment rate a real possibility before the 2012 election. Now, the Tea Party has been silent on the threats to liberty posed by this concentration of wealth; indeed, they were largely opposed to letting the Bush tax cuts expire on the superrich.
What is the view of others on this basic question? Is it possible that the Radical View -- stripped out its Marxist origins -- is one that intuitively appeals to the many voices that have gravitated toward the Tea Party? If so, how should the two major parties respond to this? I'm wondering what others make of the views that many have of our politics these days? Is it fair to surmise that they don't buy the benign, common benefit society conception of the Conventional View?
Does that mean they have a dim suspicion that the Radicals are right?
Finally, having watched the Tucson Memorial tonight, I'm wondering what the view is of President Obama's remarks. He had a tough challenge, and by most accounts, his speech struck the right tone. Thoughts?
The Tucson Shootings
A reminder that tonight, 7:00 pm cst, the memorial service for the victims of the shootings in Tucson this past weekend will take place. I would encourage you to tune in and to pay particular attention to President Obama's remarks. Many observers have noted the similarities in "political time" between the situation now and the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh in 1995. Clinton was credited at the time of setting the right tone in calling attention to the pervasive and powerfully destructive effects of heated anti-government rhetoric and hostility. President Obama faces a similar opportunity, but in some ways his task is more challenging than was Clinton's. Why? Because now, unlike 1995, "hate speech" is arguably much more integrated into the mainstream partisan political discourse of the time. Those on the right -- particularly Sarah Palin and Tea Party candidates -- have been using language to refer to the President and Democrats that is "borderline" for some time now. Sharron Angle, the Tea Party Senate candidate in Nevada, talked of "Second Amendment remedies" in the event that she and her followers didn't get their way at the Ballot Box. Sarah Palin's infamous, "don't retreat, just reload," coupled with the crosshairs targeting those Democrats she actively campaigned against in 2010 (including Gabrielle Giffords) is pointed invective, despite the difficulty of drawing a clear line of causation from such speech to the evil acts of Jared Loughner. Rush Limbaugh, predictably, has accused Democrats of using the tragedy to score political points, in the process "blaming everybody and everything except Loughner." In this environment, the President and his speech-writers face a challenging task.
DT
DT
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