Monthly Archives: February 2017

Brecht, To Future Generations

Bertolt Brecht, An die Nachgeborenen (1939), in my translation from the very simple and direct German.

I

Truly I live in dark times!
A sincere word is folly. A smooth forehead
Indicates insensitivity. If you’re laughing,
You haven’t heard
The bad news yet.

What are these times, when
A conversation about trees is almost a crime
Because it implies silence about so many misdeeds,
When, if you’re calmly crossing the street,
It means your friends can’t reach you
Who are in need?

It’s true: I earn a living.
But believe me, that’s just a coincidence. Nothing
of what I do entitles me to eat my fill.
It’s a coincidence that I am spared. (If my luck stops, I’m lost.)

They tell me: eat and drink! Be glad that you did!
But how can I eat and drink if
What I eat is snatched from the hungry,
My glass of water from someone dying of thirst?
And yet I eat and drink.

I would like to be wise.
The old books say what wisdom is:
To shun the strife of the world and spend the short time
You’ve got without fear.
Do without violence.
Return good for evil.
Not fulfilling desires but forgetting
Counts as wisdom.
I can’t do any of that:
Truly I live in dark times!

II

I came to the cities in a time of disorder.
When famine ruled.
I came among the people in a time of turmoil
And I rebelled with them.
So the time passed
That was given me on earth.

I ate my food between slaughters.
Murder lay over my sleep.
I loved carelessly
And I looked upon nature with impatience.
So the time passed
That was given me on earth.

In my time, roads led into the swamp.
Speech betrayed me to the slaughterer.
I could do very little. But without me,
Rulers would have sat more securely, or so I hoped.
So the time passed
That was given me on earth.

Energies were low. The goal
Was far in the distance,
Clearly visible, though for me
Hard to reach.
So the time passed
That was given me on earth.

III

You who you will emerge from the flood
In which we have sunk,
Think
When you speak of our weaknesses
And of the dark time
That you have escaped.

For we went, changing countries more often than shoes,
In class warsdesperate
When there was only injustice and no outrage.

This we knew:
Even hatred of humiliation
Distorts the features.
Even anger against injustice
Makes the voice hoarse. Oh, we
Who wanted to prepare the ground for friendliness
Could not ourselves be kind.

But you, when
one can help another,
Think of us
Forgivingly.

(Originally posted in 2014.)

trends in egalitarianism

Here are some graphs that show Americans’ changing views of equality. You can click them to expand them. In each case, I’ve graphed the opinion of the whole population, of people who identify as working class (a measure more of self-image than objective resources), of younger people, and of one pivotal generation, the Boomers, as they’ve moved through time. Each point represents at least 100 respondents, usually many more.

Some observations:

Most Americans believe in equal opportunity. Not nearly as many believe that we should worry about equality or that a lack of opportunity is a big problem. (The former question asks whether “We should care less about equality,” and I show the percentage who disagree.) One interpretation is that Americans believe in equality of opportunity but not in equal outcomes, and many perceive that opportunities are pretty equal.

Differences by class, age, and generation are not striking. Younger people have been somewhat more likely to think that we should worry about equality, but they’ve actually been a bit less likely to see unequal life chances as a big problem. Boomers have tracked the national mean during this period, as have working-class people.

The consensus in favor of equality of opportunity fell off substantially during the Obama years. That is not entirely an effect of partisanship, since even in 2012, 83.5% of Republicans favored equality of opportunity, just five points below Democrats.

The other equality measures rose during the Reagan and Bush I administrations, fell under Clinton, rose during Bush II, and fell under Obama. Any of these explanations might hold: people react negatively to the perceived priorities of incumbent politicians; or Americans view equality as taken care of under Democrats and unaddressed under Republicans; or Democrats win elections when the economy is bad, and that’s when Americans grow concerned about equality.

Finally, I really don’t see a secular trend here–i.e., a trend that would reflect long-term changes in the economy or the demographics of the country.  Two of the measures stand roughly where they did in 1984, and the shifts appear to be short-term reactions to presidential administrations or the business cycle. There’s possibly a long-term trend in the general belief that “society” should ensure everyone equal opportunity. One could perceive a decline in that measure since 1992, although if 2016 or 2018 registers a rise, that decline will look illusory.

See also: the most educated Americans are liberal but not egalitarianthe most educated Americans are liberal but not egalitarian (2); a new chapter on generational trends in US politics; and how public opinion on social spending has changed: a generational approach.

the question of sacrifice in politics

Elizabeth Eckford attempting to enter Little Rock School on 4th September, 1957

(Atlanta, en route to Starkville, MS) Sacrifice can be a political act; often politics requires it. Sacrifice would be unnecessary in an ideal society and pointless in a completely static one; but in an unjust society that is subject to change, it is both necessary and powerful. Social movements are fueled by sacrifice. However, sacrifice also presents risks that we must learn to contain.

I’ll consider two cases in this post. Gandhi pledged in 1932 to starve himself to death over an issue related to untouchability. Black parents sent their children to segregated Little Rock schools in 1957 in the face of mob violence. These were acts of sacrifice in the sense that people voluntarily risked something of great value to achieve a political end.

The Gandhi example is fraught. He originally swore to starve in order to prevent Dalits from receiving separate representatives in an all-India legislature. The most charitable interpretation of this rather perplexing stance is nationalist: he wanted everyone to vote simply as an Indian. The great Dalit leader Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar insisted on separate representation for the so-called Untouchables to prevent them from being dominated by caste Hindus. When he visited the literally starving Gandhi in prison, they negotiated a compromise involving a temporary set-aside of seats for Dalilt. Ambedkar wanted that provision to last for ten years “to stabilise opinion” Gandhi countered:

Five years or my life. Tell your followers that is what Gandhi says and plead my case before them, and if they do not accept this from you surely they do not deserve to be called your followers. My life is in your pocket. I may be a despicable creature, but when the truth speaks through me I am invincible. You have a perfect right to demand cent percent security by statutory safeguards, but from my fiery bed, I beg of you not to insist upon that right. I am here today to ask for a reprieve for my caste Hindu brethren.

Gandhi used a threat to end his own life (and thereby produce an enormous emotional upheaval in the subcontinent) in order to limit a provision intended to help the least advantaged Indians. Soon, the Mahatma converted his fast into an attack on the very principle of Untouchability, but he still used a threat to sacrifice himself to defeat Ambedkar, who was never persuaded on the merits yet found Gandhi politically “invincible.”

The Little Rock school desegregation campaign is far more attractive, yet Hannah Arendt famously disapproved of it. Partly, that was because she interpreted US racial conflict from the perspective of a formerly assimilated German Jew who had concluded that Jews would never be accepted in Europe; thus she leaned toward separatism rather than integration. She also misunderstood race and racism in the US. But most importantly, her republican political ideals caused her to overlook the value of sacrifice.

In a republic, citizens are both rulers and ruled (to use Aristotle’s definition). They make joint, binding decisions about life-and-death matters after airing their differences in public fora. Sometimes, a citizen must pay a high price—for instance, being drafted and then killed in a battle for the republic. But that is not a “sacrifice” in the sense of an individual, voluntary act. It’s the outcome of a joint decision made through law.

A core republican idea is “non-domination.” No citizen may just tell any other citizen what to do. Citizens are governed by general laws that must be defended with general arguments. Therefore, the paradigmatic examples of sacrifice for Christians—God telling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac; God sacrificing His only-begotten son for love of the world—are not models for republican politics.

People are either citizens of a given republic or not. Arendt strongly opposed statelessness because it made refugees into citizens of nowhere. She thought that children and adolescents were not citizens because they couldn’t rule. In “Reflections on Little Rock,” she describes schooling as preparation for “future citizenship.” Because children are not current but future citizens, to ask them to act politically is to expect them to be ruled without ruling.

However, the most startling part of the whole business was the Federal decision to start integration in, of all places, the public schools. It certainly did not require too much imagination to see that this was to burden children, black and white, with the working out of a problem which adults for generations have confessed themselves unable to solve. I think no one will find it easy to forget the photograph reproduced in newspapers and magazines throughout the country, showing a Negro girl, accompanied by a white friend of her father, walking away from school, persecuted and followed into bodily proximity by a jeering and grimacing mob of youngsters. The girl, obviously was asked to be a hero–that is, something neither her absent father nor the equally absent representatives of the NAACP felt called upon to be. It will be hard for the white youngsters, or at least those among them who outgrow their present brutality, to live down this photograph which exposes so mercilessly their juvenile delinquency. The picture looked to me like a fantastic caricature of progressive education which, by abolishing the authority of adults, implicitly denies their responsibility for the world into which they have borne their children and refuses the duty of guiding them into it. Have we now come to the point where it is the children who are being asked to change or improve the world?” And do we intend to have our political battles fought out in the schoolyards?

Arendt didn’t use the word “sacrifice” in this passage because it was not yet part of her vocabulary. Ralph Ellison took her to task on that point in an interview with Robert Penn Warren:

That’s right – you’re forgetting sacrifice, and the idea of sacrifice is very deeply inbred in Negroes. This is the thing – my mother always said I don’t know what’s going to happen to us if you young Negroes don’t do so-and-so-and-so. The command went out and it still goes out. You’re supposed to be somebody, and it’s in relationship to the group. This is part of the American Negro experience, and this also means that the idea of sacrifice is always right there. This is where Hannah Arendt is way off in left base in her reflections on Little Rock. She has no conception of what goes on in the parents who send their kids through these lines. The kid is supposed to be able to go through the line – he’s a Negro, and he’s supposed to have mastered those tensions, and if he gets hurt then this is one more sacrifice.

To her credit, Arendt wrote to Ellison, “It is precisely the ideal of sacrifice that I didn’t understand.”

Danielle Allen, in Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education, rightly makes the dispute between Arendt and Ellison a central issue for democratic theory. Allen argues that sacrifice is a characteristic political act, because even belonging to a community requires giving things up, and changing it usually carries a higher price. Although formally we all sacrifice by belonging to a community, the actual level of sacrifice always differs very unfairly. Unequal sacrifice is thus a fundamental reality; it calls for specific responses, such as acknowledgement and recompense.

I agree; political theory must address and encompass sacrifice. Acts of sacrifice also have specific cultural and religious resonances, different in each tradition, and these are resources for the world’s oppressed people. The trouble is that sacrifice is also coercive and can overwhelm deliberation. As with many aspects of politics, what we need is balance.

the changing norms for Supreme Court nominations

This graph shows the proportion of each president’s Supreme Court nominations who were confirmed as opposed to rejected, withdrawn, or postponed. I draw attention to the rocky record of the antebellum presidents, the very high confirmation percentage between 1900 and 1967, and the mixed story since then.

It’s often said that Robert Bork was the first nominee of modern times rejected on ideological grounds, not because of a scandal. Conservatives (rightly or wrongly) view that episode as the moment when a norm was broken, since 20th century presidents had been allowed to name candidates who met basic qualifications. Liberals now feel equally strongly about Merrick Garland, the first modern nominee not to receive a vote at all, even though he was clearly a moderate. If Democrats filibuster Neil Gorsuch and Republicans end the filibuster, that will be seen as a new stage. The new implicit rule will be: presidents can name Supreme Court nominees when a majority of the Senate chooses to concur, but otherwise the seat stays vacant. In general, we will expect vacancies to be filled when the Senate and White House belong to the same party, but otherwise to remain empty unless the two sides happen to be able to work out a win/win deal.

This trend could be taken as an example of the decline of norms and comity in Washington. I believe in the general truth of that story. However, I would interpret the changing norms for confirmation in a different way. From 1900 until around 1970, both national parties had conservative and liberal wings. Conservative Southern Democrats stood to the right of Republicans on social issues. Some Northern Republican Senators were genuine liberals. This meant that most presidents could assemble majority coalitions on important votes–not only nominations, but also landmark bills and budgets–regardless of which party controlled the majority. A Democrat would use party loyalty and intraparty horsetrading to line up most of his own caucus, adding liberal Republicans to reach a majority. A Republican would do just the reverse to win. As a result, the norm was not only that presidents got their way with Supreme Court nominations (absent scandals) but also that they drove national policy.

Once the parties polarized into left and right, that situation no longer applied. Since then, presidents have really only been able to govern domestically when their party has controlled Congress, although they have increasingly resorted to unilateral executive actions at other times. The only moments of effective governance, as envisioned by the Constitution, have occurred in 1980-82, 1992-4, 2003-6, and 2009-11. The rest of the time has seen stalemate or executive unilateralism.

For Supreme Court nominations, only the Senate matters. Since 1980, 11 justices have been confirmed while the Senate and presidency have been aligned, three (Kennedy, Souter, and Thomas) slipped through despite a hostile Senate, one (Miers) was withdrawn despite unified party control, and two (Bork and Garland) were blocked.

Going forward, I think it’s pretty much inevitable that presidents will get their Supreme Court nominees through when they have majorities in the Senate, and otherwise, they will be blocked. Merrick Garland deserved a vote but would have been defeated under this new norm. Trump gets Gorsuch and can fill other vacancies until he loses the Senate or his own reelection. Democrats should use the filibuster now, so that Republicans have to end it and the underlying rules are clarified. If Democrats win the Senate and White House in 2020, they should use majority votes to appoint strong liberals to the court.

I am not saying the new normal is acceptable, but I fail to see an alternative, and we might as well understand the stakes.

Data from the Senate. See also: is our constitutional order doomed?are we seeing the fatal flaw of a presidential constitution?, and two perspectives on our political paralysis.