Monthly Archives: May 2004

intellectual roots of liberalism (continued)

Yesterday, I responded to a comment by Jacob T. Levy. He has since posted more (including a response to me)–and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. For a month now, influential bloggers have been discussing why liberals don’t seem to prize and utilize their own intellectual tradition as much modern conservatives do. The whole conversation was started in a critical vein by Jonah Golberg.

I think that what we call “liberalism” is not a coherent ideology. It is rather an effort to balance a set of conflicting principles. It combines majority rule, protection for individual rights against the state, a minimum level of welfare to be guaranteed by the government, pluralism and an independent civil society, individual choice, disciplined organizations (such as unions), prosperity (created by allowing the market to allocate investments), some redistribution via taxation, environmental protection, neutrality about the good life, and state sponsorship of scholarship, natural assets, and high culture. Does this combination amount to “intellectually flabby, feeling-based pragmatism”? Or is it defensible?

I think liberalism is highly defensible–indeed, preferable to any purer alternative. It’s the result of more than a century of problem-solving and “experiential learning” by a democratic people. We Americans decided that censorship is a problem, so we invented a solution: the modern First Amendment. We viewed poverty and early death as problems, so we invented Social Security and Medicaid. There’s been a constant cycle of identifying problems, proposing solutions, experimenting in the real world, and debating the results.

Libertarians want to set limits on this debate, perhaps even amend or reinterpret the Constitution to forbid popular state action. Marxists view public debate as badly distorted by inequality. They also see it as unnecessary, because their theory tells them what we need to do. In deliberate contrast to laissez-faire conservatives and Marxists, my heroes in the Progressive Era defined themselves as experimental democrats.

Pragmatism is not an adequate political theory. We can’t just do “what works” without having either (a) criteria for good outcomes, or (b) procedures for deciding what we value. If we opt for procedures, then they must reflect some principles or values other than pragmatism itself. Progressives like Jane Addams, John Dewey, Louis Brandeis, and Robert M. La Follette combined pragmatism with a strong commitment to political equality and freedom of debate.

Even if pragmatism isn’t adequate, it still teaches a very important lesson. As Dewey wrote:

There is no more an inherent sanctity in a church, trade-union, business corporation, or family institution than there is in the state. Their value is … to be measured by their consequences. The consequences vary with concrete conditions; hence at one time and place a large measure of state activity may be indicated and at another time a policy of quiescence and laissez-faire. … There is no antecedent universal proposition which can be laid down because of which the functions of a state should be limited or should be expanded. Their scope is something to be critically and experimentally determined. … The person who holds the doctrine of `individualism’ or `collectivism’ has his program determined for him in advance. It is not with him a matter of finding out the particular thing which needs to be done and the best way, under the circumstances, of doing it.

I think this kind of pragmatism is fundamental to the Progressive Era and the New Deal–what we call “liberalism.” If “liberals” are highly pragmatic, then it is no wonder that they rarely cite great theoretical works in making their arguments. Thus I disagree in part with Jacob Levy. He explains that conservatives and libertarians were forced to refine their theories because they were “shut out of power” for a half century, while the center-left could put its energy “into actually doing stuff in government or on the courts.” I think that “doing stuff” is the essence of what we Americans called “liberalism” during the 20th century. Progressives and New Dealers were pragmatic experimentalists even in periods (such as the twenties) when they were shut out of power. Meanwhile, the American center-right has been consistently concerned with political theory, because what we call “conservatism” is heavily influenced by classical liberalism, which is a coherent (if unrealistic) political theory.

(By the way, our terminology is a nightmare. Today’s conservatives are actually classical liberals, and modern liberals make Burkean conservative arguments in favor of preserving the welfare state.)

In a blog posting and an article in The American Prospect, Mark Schmitt (“the Decembrist”) lists some thinkers whom liberals should read today: Herbert Croly, John Dewey, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., John Kenneth Galbraith, and Daniel Bell. [Revision, 4/28: I don’t think that Mark means this list to be a canon of the greatest liberal thinkers, nor is it a syllabus that liberals ought to work through; Mark simply offers a few examples to demonstrate that there are major historical thinkers on the center-left who continue to provoke constructive thinking. With that in mind, let me discuss his examples briefly …]

I’ve cited Dewey here. He’s a frustrating writer–vague just want you want him to be precise–but he epitomizes the spirit of experimentation and learning that is central to Progressive politics. Croly was influential mainly for arguing that America needed a strong federal government and a concomitant sense of national community. I don’t see Croly’s nationalism as essentially leftist; there have been Progressive proponents of localism as well as conservative centralizers (such as John Ashcroft). Therefore, as important as he was historically, I wouldn’t cite Croly as a great Progressive or expect today’s left to learn much from him. Schlesinger, Galbraith, and Bell are all concrete thinkers rather than abstract philosophers–a virtue, in my opinion.

Finally, Rawls has come up a lot in this conversation, starting here. Here’s my take. By the time Rawls wrote his Theory of Justice, liberals had engaged in 70 years of debate about the proper role of the state power in a modern economy. They had developed a miscellaneous set of institutions that were sometimes in fruitful conflict, ranging from an activist Supreme Court to an alphabet soup of regulatory agencies to the AFL-CIO. Rawls was like a rapporteur who observed the results of this long conversation and said, “This is what you mean, in essence.” His contribution was important, but it could never replace the history of experimentation and adjustment that had created a liberal society in the first place.

Finally, I’d like to say that my own complaint about modern progressivism is not its weak basis in political theory, but rather its flagging commitment to pragmatic experimentation. Such institutions as public schools and labor unions are starting to have “inherent sanctity” for liberals, which betrays the spirit of 20th century Progressivism.

liberalism’s great texts

Although I don’t usually blog on weekends, I can’t resist responding to Jacob Levy’s comments about why liberals don’t seem to understand–or care about–the intellectual tradition of their own movement.

I see modern liberalism as an eclectic mix of institutions and principles: an expansive First Amendment; cultural pluralism; public education; labor unions; welfare entitlements; a strong private sector; environmental protection; campaign finance reform; and more. After the fact, John Rawls managed to make all the ingredients of the modern liberal state appear to flow from a few fundamental principles. His effort was valiant and skillful, but it came too late to influence actual liberal institutions, which were already in decline. (As usual, the Owl of Minerva flew at dusk). Besides, Rawls did not identify the psychological and cultural roots of the institutions that he defended. Liberalism didn’t spring from abstract principles, but rather from experimentation, experience, accommodation, and compromise.

Libertarians constantly return to an impressive canon of major theorists, because libertarianism is the application of a few simple theoretical concepts to reality. Likewise with Marxists. Even Christian conservatives have modern theorists who help them to interpret their biblical sources. Modern liberalism is fundamentally different. It is pragmatic and eclectic rather than theoretical, and I think that is its great strength.

Moreover, liberals do have classic texts to which they constantly return for guidance and inspiration. These aren’t theoretical treatises, but rather chapters in the history of experimentation from Reconstruction through the Progressive Era and the New Deal to the Great Society. The “primary sources” of liberalism are speeches by leaders like FDR, JFK, and MLK Jr.; the biographies and autobiographies of Jane Addams, Robert M. La Follette, Eleanor Roosevelt, Fiorello LaGuardia, Ralph Bunche, Hubert Humphrey, and many more; and major judicial opinions. The “secondary sources” are histories of the Progressive Era, the New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement, and other efforts to push back Darwinian capitalism, Marxism, and ordinary bigotry. The importance of these “secondary sources,” by the way, means that historians, rather than political theorists, are often the most influential liberal authors.

why you should read the newspaper

We’re told that the President of the United States doesn’t read beyond the front page because he detects a hostile ideological bias in most reporting. He says:

My antennae are finely attuned …. I can figure out what so-called ‘news’ pieces are going to be full of opinion, as opposed to news. So I’m keenly aware of what’s in the papers, kind of the issue du jour. But I’m also aware of the facts. …. It can be a frustrating experience to pay attention to somebody’s false opinion or somebody’s characterization, which simply isn’t true.

Meanwhile, I have known many colleagues who think that all reporting and commentary in the “corporate” press is false and deliberately misleading. These leftists would be just as happy as Instapundit to see the word “lies” spray-painted across the New York Times.

I’m a consistent critic of the major newspapers myself–and TV news is beneath contempt. But I don’t see how you can be a responsible observer of the world unless you use the raw material that the mainstream press provides. Sometimes the quality of coverage is poor. But to reject it all is to walk in that “absolute night when all cows are black.” If you despise the most detailed sources of information, then you can make no distinctions except on the basis of your original prejudices.

Besides, sometimes we distrust the news because it’s uncomfortable stuff. Conservatives don’t like to read about incompetent Republican presidents or about the prevalence of poverty and racism. Liberals don’t like to read about the real failures of government and the real costs and limits of regulation. Centrists don’t like to read that there are legitimate arguments between right and left. Yet real progress comes from facing these difficult facts.

I’m increasingly worried about a kind of criticism that I suspect George Bush employs, along with many other Americans. Chris Betram puts it well: readers look for “symptomatic silences” and “accuse people of indifference or lack of balance for failing to mention some event or incident.”

It’s easy to play this game. You make up your own mind about what’s important (based on reading some news source) and then assess other publications–including editorial columns and blogs–to see whether they accord an appropriate amount of space to each story. I guess that’s an acceptable way to criticize newspapers that claim to report “all the news that’s fit to print” (or the equivalent). However, it should never be an excuse for failing to read the news. Even if a newspaper devotes the wrong amount of space to each item because of a systematic ideological bias, we can still get lots of information from reading it. To assume that other people will be miseducated because editors emphasize the wrong stories is to hold our fellow citizens in rather low regard.

For my own part, I can’t figure out how to assess charges of left-wing or right-wing bias in the press. There’s too much diversity in the coverage, and the political spectrum is too poorly defined today. [Follow up: see Jay Rosen’s latest post on the same subject.] I do detect a disturbing set of professional biases in favor of ….

  • conflict rather than consensus
  • deficits rather than assets
  • political strategy rather than policy
  • motives of political actors rather than quality of decisions
  • campaigns rather than government
  • federal government rather than states
  • government rather than civil society
  • the US rather than the rest of the world

    • These are problems, but they don’t excuse us from reading the news.

    the Nuremberg defense

    I have long supported the Nuremberg Doctrine: soldiers are individually responsible for war crimes, and following orders is no excuse. Nor is it an excuse to say that an action seemed acceptable and triggered no feelings of bad conscience. War often suppresses our conscience or turns it upside down, causing us to view mercy as a tempting form of weakness that we are obliged to avoid. Nevertheless, when we carry guns, operate prisons, or give orders, it is our responsibility to make sure that our conscience is working right. As Hannah Arendt observes, “politics is not like the nursery.” A person with a gun is not a child who knows that he is good if only he is obedient. One can follow orders without meaning to violate a law, and still be culpable.

    However, I now see a complication. In the military, you are legally required to disobey illegal orders, but you are equally obligated to obey every legal command. A mistake in either direction can send you to a court martial. In civilian life, we have much more margin for error. If someone, even my boss, tells me to do something, I can say, “I don’t know if that’s legal (or moral), so I won’t do it.” Or I can make an arbitrary excuse to get out of doing something that I fear may be wrong. The worst that can happen to me if I avoid making a yes-or-no decision is losing my job. Because we have this leeway, we should be held fully accountable for participating in any illegal acts, even if we don’t understand the law or realize that we’re doing something wrong. It’s our responsibility to do the right thing, and if we’re not sure, we can duck the issue.

    But soldiers are in a much tougher position. They must obey or disobey–immediately. It may be genuinely difficult to see that a grievous wrong is illegal under the hellish circumstances of war. Both historical evidence and experiments in social pyschology show that most people will do the wrong thing in hellish contexts. They will kill and maim other human beings out of duty, even though they don’t want to harm anyone. If most people will act this way, then I must assume that I would, too. And if I have no leeway, no opportunity to get myself out of the situation, then I am especially likely to make the wrong choice.

    Thus it seems to me the rule ought to be: Don’t obey patently illegal orders. Indeed, this appears to be the legal standard. It is then a hard question whether the despicable acts committed at Abu Ghraib were obviously illegal. If the accused soldiers were free-lancing–deciding on their own to humiliate and abuse prisoners, and hiding their actions from their superiors–then they are guilty. If they were following orders, even vague ones, then I am open to a verdict of “not guilty,” as long as their commanders are held accountable.

    charter schools and democracy

    I’m enthusiastic about charter schools, but not for the standard reasons. A charter school is a public institution that operates independently, free from most of the usual bureaucratic tangles, with a direct “charter” from some higher authority such as the city or state. Charter schools are supposed to improve outcomes for the kids they enroll, by providing alternative approaches precisely tailored to their students. They are also supposed to improve the performance of public education generally, by incubating new models and by increasing parental choice (hence, competition).

    Charters don’t seem to work particularly well for these purposes–no better than standard schools. (See, just for example, this RAND report, in .pdf.) It’s too early to say for sure, but charter schools certainly don’t look like a magic formula for higher test scores or graduation rates.

    On the other hand, they do no harm, at least on average. And they have a huge advantage that’s distinct from student educational outcomes. As a society, we need more opportunities to propose solutions to public problems, band together voluntarily, and then work directly to implement our ideas. This is “public work”–one of the most satisfying aspects of citizenship, and a great American tradition. In general, opportunities for public work have shrunk over the last century because of increasing professionalism, standardization and bureaucracy, and a diminished role for the public sector as a whole. Social work and education used to be great fields for public work, but they are now exclusively the domains of credentialed specialists who are often unable to innovate.

    This is where charter schools come in. Someone has a new idea, persuades a few friends to join her as teachers, and together they create a new institution. At any rate, that’s the story of the charters that I know personally: Cesar Chavez in Washington and the East Bay Conservation Corps in Oakland. Typically, a charter school can’t get off the ground without supportive parents, so the odds are relatively good that parents will play active roles in its governance. Flexibility, creativity, and parental participation don’t guarantee better educational results, as the RAND study shows. But they are intrinsically valuable goods–much more important, in my book, than a few extra points on the SAT.

    Some ideas for charter schools are good; others are lousy. And some of the best ideas aren’t well executed. The average results for charters appear to be about the same as the mean for other public schools, but I suspect this masks a lot of variation–a wide range from best to worst. That range is a consequence of democracy. The worst charters can be shut down, but the damage they do is the price we must pay for creativity in the public sector. I think that price is well worth paying.