Which Things Should America Apologize For?

I recently wrote about my puzzlement at what those attending the "Restoring Honor" rally thought had dishonored America. In response, "Whit" cited President Obama's "apology tour." The so-called apology tour is a good example of my puzzlement about what it is that Glenn Beck and followers are afraid of.

Human Events magazine, no friend of President Obama's, listed what they thought were the top ten "apologies" made by the president. The president said that the United States has, at times, acted unilaterally and arrogantly in relation to Europe and Latin America. This seems to me obviously true. This does not constitute apologizing to thugs, as Whit contended. Likewise, his offer to "communicate with the Muslim world" is a good thing, and allowing that we have not been perfect is also obviously true.

All of the apologies listed by Human Events sound to me true and helpful in establishing just and sensible relations with the rest of the world.

What I do think hurt America's honor were torture, imprisonment without charge or counsel, and unilateral force without even attempting to work with our allies. The Bush administration took the huge good will that the United States had around the world after 9/11, and turned it into shame by these practices.

And then, incomprehensibly, President Bush could not think of a single mistake his administration had made.

Every person and every government makes mistakes. Acting arrogantly destroys just relations with others, even our allies. Trying to talk to opponents is a necessary foundation for reducing conflict and for any chance of helping them improve. Admitting your mistakes, even admitting that you are capable of mistakes, is moral, true, and just common sense.

Privilege is a Knowledge Problem

Some people have privilege. This obviously hurts those who do not have that privilege.

Privilege also hurts the privileged. The greatest privilege is not knowing that you are privileged, so that you don't notice or think about your (our) comparative unearned advantage. Privilege can make the privilege incurious. This produces a kind of parochialism.

When I teach college students about their degrees of relative privilege, the most privileged sometimes feel angry, but most of them feel guilty. And don't know what to do next. Many consciousness-raising approaches to teaching about privilege stop there. Some are even glad to provoke feelings of guilt.

I think a better approach to teaching about privilege is to treat it as a knowledge problem. Curiosity cures unacknowledged privilege. Being curious about people who are not like you is the best path to living justly with others, and serving others as our privilege makes us able.

Glenn Beck's Puzzling Civil Religion Rally

Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial yesterday was a civil religion rally. It was a pageant of American patriotism and generic Christianity, treating the two as identical. The heart of the event was an awards show for a few people Beck liked, with a fund-raiser for a military charity added on. Beck's own speech, coming about two hours into the rally, yearned for new heroes, new George Washingtons, to step forward and do ... something.

The great puzzle of "Restoring Honor" came from trying to figure out what Beck and his audience thought was threatening America's honor. A careful listener would hear several references to "wallowing in the scars" of American history, one section against those who "spread fear," and a single reference to leaving our children with large debts. Beck had to deny that he was spreading fear - by his account, he was just telling the truth about a threat that loomed like the iceberg before the Titanic.

But what iceberg Beck thinks he sees is a mystery.

I thought that there might be an unspoken subtext that everyone present knew but thought it too politically incorrect to say. One of my Facebook respondents thought that what drove the rally was a nativist fear of them, led by an alien brown president. I do not think that is what drove this rally. The crowd was, indeed, almost completely white, but the performers very pointedly were not. Beck made much of the fact that the date and place for his rally were the same as for Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, which was genuinely cheered by the crowd.

Another correspondent suggested what I think is a more plausible explanation: archetypes of Good versus Evil, of heroes and villains, that makes fantasy books, graphic novels, movies, and video games so popular. Beck's sermons were celebrations of America's goodness and heroes coupled with a call for ordinary people in his audience to be heroes today. He not only did not specify what the heroes should fight against, he repeatedly rejected "wallowing in the scars" - that is, thinking and talking about what had been wrong with America - as the very source of evil.

There was nothing wrong with what was said and celebrated at the "Restoring Honor" rally. The content was so vague, though, that I don't think many would turn out for a repeat performance.

Bob Sexton, Knowledge Class Leader

Bob Sexton, the Executive Director of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, died yesterday. Mrs. G. has worked with and for the Prichard Committee since we arrived in Kentucky 20 years ago. Bob was a fixed star in our firmament.

The "knowledge class" is the class that makes its living from the control of knowledge necessary to run the social system. The term has fallen out of favor, but the class still exists and does vital work for society. As a professor I am classic representative of the type. But as a teacher I am also one step removed from running the institutions directly.

Bob Sexton was a general of the knowledge class. He tried to see the biggest picture of the knowledge needed to run the social system. He helped found or run a whole infrastructure to train, keep, and mobilize smart people for the good of the Commonwealth: the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington; the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center; the New Opportunity School for Women; Kentucky's Governor's Scholars Program; the Kentucky Center for Public Issues.

The Prichard Committee is Bob Sexton's main legacy. It was born of a one-off blue ribbon commission that the Kentucky legislature created to make a report about improving higher education. They concluded that the best way to improve higher education in Kentucky was to improve lower education. And then the commission refused to die. Under Ed Prichard, from whom the Committee later took its name, and Bob Sexton, the Prichard Committee created a grass-roots movement to push for education reform. Behind the scenes, Bob worked with political leaders to pass the Kentucky Education Reform Act, the country's leading root-and-branch education reform initiative.

A few years ago my senior seminar focused on the knowledge class. We took a field trip to meet with Bob Sexton to talk about building a "creative class" in Kentucky, far from the natural settings for such a class.

Bob Sexton saw the big picture of how and why to build education for all classes. In doing so he exemplified the highest duty and deepest achievement of the knowledge class in service to society as a whole.

Capon Springs and Farms

... is a wonderful place for a family reunion and vacation.

See you in a week!

Giddens - How We Remake the Social Structure Daily

Anthony Giddens is an almost impenetrably abstract social theorist. But he is really smart, so my theory class will slog through his The Constitution of Society.

A running problem in social theory is that from the macro perspective, society seems to reproduce its main social structures. Yet from the micro perspective, we seem free to choose how we act.

Giddens offers the interesting idea that it is in the ritual interactions of day-to-day life that we reproduce the social structure.

White Privilege is Not the Same as Racism

Today at Centre we are using Beverley Tatum's "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" in a discussion of white privilege. This is a useful book, especially for this point.

Tatum offers a definition of racism based on social structures: a system of advantage based on race. She contrasts this with a definition of racism based on individual prejudices.

Tatum then goes on to say that only whites can be racist. While people of every group may have individual prejudices about different races, only white people in this country reap a systematic advantage from their race.

I think there is one thing right, and two things wrong with Tatum's definition of racism.

What is right is that the structural advantage - the privilege - that some people receive because of their race is a real fact about society, which empowers some people and limits others regardless of their individual qualities. The main kind of racial privilege in our society is white privilege. That makes it an important topic for sociology to teach, and for a college to constantly think about.

The first thing that is wrong with Tatum's definition of racism, though, is that it is simply not true that white people are the only group to enjoy a structural advantage in America based on race. American society is complex, and racial judgments figure in to all kinds of group opportunities, including the entire complex of affirmative action. White privilege is the main racial privilege in American society today, but it is not the only one.

The second thing that is wrong with Tatum's definition of racism is that a structural advantage is not an "ism." A structural advantage is a fact, an objective privilege. Racism would be an ideology justifying that fact. To take a closely related distinction that I have worked on a great deal, diversity is a fact; pluralism is an ideology justifying that fact.

White privilege is a real structural fact. The greatest privilege of the privileged is not realizing that they (we) are privileged; the advantage is just a fact. The point of exercises like the one we are doing at Centre College today is to make everyone aware of the fact of white privilege so that we can justly evaluate, in this case, potential students at the college. But acknowledging the fact of structural advantage does not entail justifying it, does not require us to say that whites deserve our privilege.

Do We Need Ds?

Mt. Olive school district in New Jersey has abolished the grade of D. At first I thought this was an instance of grade inflation, or self-esteem inflation. As I read their reasons, though, I am not sure what to think.

The district thought some students were calculating what they needed to just scrape by, and doing the minimum. This is undoubtedly true. The school figured that if they raised the minimum, those kids would raise their level of work, too. This is also probably true.

I learned some years ago a scale of what grades mean that I have found helpful.
A = Demonstrates excellence
B = Demonstrates competence
C = Suggests competence [this is the heart of the system]
D = Suggests incompetence
E, F, U = Demonstrates incompetence

In my classes, the difference between a D and a C is almost always a matter of working harder, not of having sufficient brainpower. When I spell out how I interpret a C vs. a D, this often gets the slackers to work a bit harder.

Still, I am sure that if the next step below "suggests competence" was "demonstrates incompetence," those same students would work harder still.

Do perhaps we do not need the D.

I would welcome your thoughts.

Well-Planned: Summoned as Male: Female?

David Brooks has an interesting column comparing the "well-planned life" with the "summoned life." In the former, people figure out what their priorities are and adjust their plans to reach those priorities. In the latter, people make large commitments without a life plan, then adapt to what each new context requires.

Brooks' point is that the well-planned life is very American, whereas the summoned life is more common in other nations.

It seems to me clear that the well-planned life is a more characteristically male way of thinking about life, whereas the summoned life is more characteristically female.

Brooks concludes "they are both probably useful for a person trying to live a well-considered life." It is hard for me to see how he envisions one person living by both standards, but I can sort of discern it. It is easier for me to see how a family might give full justice to the wisdom of both views, especially if the married couple at the core of the family embrace each in a complementary way.

Ground Zero Mosque - Yes

I think having a mosque near Ground Zero is as normal and American as having any of the churches, synagogues, or other places of worship that are already there.

To have a Muslim center that is explicitly aimed at promoting peace and understanding between Muslims and others is a particularly good thing.

I don't really think any of this really needs saying. Alas, it does. So, as a Christian and a patriot, yes, please, build a dialogue-oriented mosque near the former World Trade Center site.

Marceaux

On a silly Saturday, I just can't beat "Basil Marceaux dot com." He is the comic relief winner of this summer's political season.

Of all the amazing things he offers voters, this is the one that I keep chewing on:


VOTE FOR ME AND IF I WIN I WILL IMMUNE YOU FROM ALL STATE CRIMES FOR THE REST OF YOU LIFE!

Sandel 10: Obligations of Solidarity are Only Trumped By Higher Obligations of Solidarity

My Theory Camp has been wrestling with Michael Sandel's Democracy's Discontent and Justice. Here is the best new idea I have had from reading these books:

If I have obligations of solidarity within an institution, I can choose to leave the institution, but only to serve a higher obligation.

Under a liberal theory, I can unchoose a practice if I simply no longer wish to do it. Since all the ends I pursue are ones I have chosen, there is no higher standard or obligation than my choosing it. However there are some institutions that require their members to have obligations of solidarity to one another if they are to function. Choosing that kind of institution means that I have also chosen to be obliged to remain in solidarity with the others in the institution because it does harm to those others if I simply quit.

In practice, we might leave the choice up to individuals to decide if the other obligation was, indeed, higher. In that case, from the outside, liberal quitting and solidarity quitting might look the same. However, from the inside, my motive, and my calculation, would be quite different. I would need to be able to justify to myself that I was leaving one obligation for a higher one. It would not be sufficient to quit an obligatory solidarity just because I feel like it, or because I don’t feel what I used to, or because it doesn’t meet my needs any more.

Allowing people to choose to solidary institutions for a higher obligation would let us reconcile the obligation with the reality of freedom.

Sandel 9: Marriage as an Obligation of Solidarity

The crucial idea that Michael Sandel works toward at the end of Justice is that we have obligations that extend beyond the ends we have chosen: we have obligations of solidarity. Communitarians, like Sandel, argue that we have obligations to our several communities because we are members of them, shaped by them, sharing their lives.

His most powerful case, I think, is our obligations of patriotism. We have a strong obligation to our country. I can imagine circumstances in which someone would have to renounce that obligation to serve another, higher obligation. But the cases in which people actually do renounce their citizenship on principle are extraordinarily rare.

I think marriage is a solidarity that we choose. When we choose it, though, it creates an obligation of solidarity that is like our obligation to our country. It is a deep, enduring obligation. It can, in principle, be cast off, but only for the rarest and most compelling of reasons.

Sandel 8: Fear is the Basis of the Neutral State

Michael Sandel, in Justice, contrasts Aristotle's view that the end of politics is to form good citizens, with the modern idea that the state should be neutral about which ends citizens choose to seek.

In Democracy's Discontent, Sandel showed that when American democracy was established, the state was more Aristotelian than neutral. In fact, the ancient philosophers thought democracy would be a terrible form of government, because most people could not be formed into decent enough citizens to use their democratic powers rightly. The founders of the American republic knew that, and deliberately created institutions to form Americans into worthy democratic citizens. The idea that the state should not try to form citizens, but just provide a neutral framework for their self-seeking, is a recent idea. The jury is still out on whether it can work.

I have been trying to imagine who benefits from the idea of the neutral state. The arguments for it usually rely on the fears of minorities that they will forced to conform to the majority's ends.

I think fear is an impossible basis for a stable society. If American democracy is to endure, it has to renew trust that the state, along with the other institutions of society, can rightly help form citizens toward a common understanding of the good.

Sandel 7: Was the Social Contract Ever Meant to be Taken Literally?

In Michael Sandel's Justice, he gives a wonderfully clear account of Kant's and Rawls' social philosophy. In placing Kant's views of the social order Sandel reviews the whole tradition of social contract theories. Sandel then shows how Rawls ingeniously solves the problem of the historical implausibility of an actual social contract by turning the whole metaphor into a thought experiment. We do not have to believe that there ever was an actual social contract, Rawls argues - we can imagine ourselves in an "original position" as generic human beings without particular qualities to see what kind of social contract we would make in such circumstances.

I was surprised at how much space Sandel gave to the argument about whether there was an historical social contract, and if so whether a contract made by our social predecessors could really bind us. This book grows out of his long and rich experience teaching about justice to Harvard undergraduates. Do those smart kids really think that Hobbes, or Rousseau, or Mill thought that society was born in an actual gathering in the woods?

I assume from the fact that Sandel takes the time to explain how the idea of a social contract works without entailing an historical contract-making that this is an important issue to his students. My best guess is that what they are concerned about is not the historicity of the event. Rather, they believe that if they or their predecessors did not consent to society, then they are not bound by it. No agreement, no contract.

Sandel 6: Libertarianism is About Allodialism

My Theory Camp worked through Michael Sandel's Democracy's Discontent last week. This week we are reading his Justice.

Sandel's chapter on libertarianism is entitled "Do we own ourselves?" I have long thought that libertarians have a very restricted and peculiar idea of liberty. Sandel helps me see that what is really wrong is with their conception of the self. Libertarianism is a distinctively modern idea of the self because it is based on a distinctively modern idea of property.

Pre-modern property was based on shared ownership, rather than a sole right to do anything to your property. This is the difference between feudal property - the basic idea behind feudalism - and modern allodial property. Allodialism is the idea that if you own something, you own all the rights to it and can do anything you want to your property, including destroy it.

We can kind of accept the allodial idea when we are talking about replaceable objects. Allodialism gets to be iffy when we apply it to unique objects, like art or land. Allodialism shows itself to be a completely inadequate idea of what property is when we apply it to non-objects - slaves, babies, and ourselves. The core problem with libertarian ethics is that it makes people reduce their notion of their self to that of an object that they own, with no meaning or destiny of its own.

More on Denominations

Last Sunday I wrote about how denominationalism and civil religion are complements.

My friend Barry Ensign-George asked, quite reasonably, for some elaboration. He particularly wanted some explication of my claim that denominationalism "really can only be fully embraced by people who do not think the differences between denominations matter." Fair enough.

My focus was on religion as a basis of social integration. This is why I contended that civil religion is the necessary complement of denominationalism. To be a denomination is, of necessity, to be part of a larger whole, and to accept the equal legitimacy of the other parts. This is most clearly so when talking about different denominations of the same religion, as with the Presbyterian Church and the Catholic Church. We have also extended this idea to include the equal legitimacy of different religions, as among Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist religious institutions.

To accept that other denominations are legitimate religious institutions does not mean that we think all denominations teach the same thing, or that the differences are not significant to some extent. But to be a denominationalist - to be a citizen in a denominational society - is to accept that the differences among the denominations are less important than their common embrace of the concept or doctrine of denominationalism. Denominations are tolerant; they tolerate other denominations. Religious institutions that do not accept the principle of denominationalism put themselves at odds with the whole culture. If they act upon that rejection against other religious institutions in a physical way by, say, burning heretics or blowing up infidels, they put themselves outside the civil order religiously.

The main argument I was making in the previous post is that a mere belief in denominationalism is not enough of a religious faith to hold a society together. Therefore, civil societies also need some kind of positive cult (in the Durkheimian sense) - some active beliefs and rituals shared with other citizens as citizens. This is where the civil religion comes in, and why it is necessary.

Presbyterians, such as Barry and myself, can be good Presbyterians and good citizens because we accept denominationalism. We can hold that the Presbyterian understanding of the faith is correct - as long as we also accept the legitimacy of other denominations in our society.

Sound Historical Reasoning about Marco Polo

My sister, in an exchange with my inventive nephew, who is eight:

Da Neice asked why the call and response game was called "Marco Polo." I
was about to answer ("I don't know,") when Da Nephew jumped in.

"It's because when they were exploring North America -- "

"China!" I said.

"I mean, Africa -- "

"China!!" I said.

"They had an Indian guide -- "

"Seriously, you're thinking of Lewis and Clark!" I said.

"They would get separated and Polo would yell 'Marco' and Marco would
yell 'Polo,' and then they could find each other," he finished
confidently.

"You make me crazy," I said.

Sandel 5: We Need Enchanted Political Life

Michael Sandel concludes Democracy's Discontent with the claim that “A politics that brackets morality and religion too completely soon generates its own disenchantment.” If public life has no higher purpose, we lose heart in it. It becomes a tool for corruption.

Conservatives have tried to fight this disenchantment by promoting individual virtue. This would have a social effect in two ways: we would all benefit if there were no corrupt individuals, and the project of promoting virtues is shared. The problem of today's theory of government is that the state is trying to be neutral about citizen's ideas of what makes for virtuous individuals.

Liberals have tried to fight this disenchantment by fighting the economic inequalities that stand in the way of solidarity among all citizens. Making people less unequal is clearly a social project, but it is negative, in the sense that it is removing an obstacle to solidarity without providing a common goal to be solidary about.

The early American republic did have enchanted - that is, purpose-driven - public life. We had the project of creating a democratic society out of people who had been trained to be subjects rather than citizens. That was a great project. But it has largely run its course in the world. Most states, even the most brutal tyrannies, at least pretend to be democratic.

Sandel says that when we got too diverse to ignore our different moral and religious values, we switched the goal of public life to trying to create a voluntary state that was neutral about all other goals. Sandel is right that this is not a goal big enough and positive enough to enchant our public life.

Sandel 4: Common Consumption is a Lame National Identity

Michael Sandel, in Democracy's Discontent, says that the Progressives, faced with the problem of creating common identity in an America that had become too massive for civic participation, proposed to focus on Americans as consumers.

While I am grateful for federal laws ensuring clean food, I don't think making a national identity out of our common consumption is enough. In Theory Camp this morning we talked about how common it is for young people to wear brand names on the outside of their clothes as a way of making a common identity. But consumption, even very common consumption, is too thin to make a national identity. Brand loyalty just does not replace democratic participation.