Monthly Archives: February 2006

religion and politics in the Muslim world and the USA

A colleague returned several months ago from a distinguished meeting of intellectuals from Europe, America, and the Middle East. He reported that the Islamic participants had confused us with France. That is, they thought that the United States was a highly secular, formerly Christian country with low tolerance for faith. Presumably, they drew generalizations about the “West” on the basis of what they know about the European countries that had once colonized them and that now absorb many of their emigrants.

In reality, Americans’ opinions about religion and politics sometimes lie closer to those in the Islamic world than to those of Western Europeans. Above, I show data from the World Values Survey (1999-2003). The “Muslim country average” is an unweighted mean of Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, and (for the belief in God question only) Saudi Arabia. I show an average of France, Germany, and the Netherlands as representative of Western Europe.

Since Denmark is in the news, I’ll mention these results: 68.9% of Danes believe in God (compare 100% in Pakistan and Egypt, and 96% in the US), 3.7% of Danes think that a politician who doesn’t believe in God is unfit for office (compare 94.9% in Pakistan); and 5.6% of Danes think that it would be good for more religious people to hold public office (compare 91.2% of Egyptians).

can the Internet democratize institutions?

Yesterday, I heard a talk about whether the Internet can help to democratize institutions such as the World Bank and WTO. Proposals for that purpose include posting internal deliberations online, allowing people to file comments by email, or even allowing anyone to edit draft documents on websites (“wikis”). The main response is that the Internet is just a tool; it doesn’t change the basic structure of governance. For instance, there are already lots of interesting and wide-ranging discussions within offices and departments of the World Bank. Outsiders could be enabled to participate in those discussions through online tools. But if real decisions are still made rather opaquely by a few individuals, then the online discussion will just mislead outsiders into believing that they have influence. The Internet itself does not change the incentives to share power.

I agree that the Internet cannot itself change the governance of institutions. However, to a degree, the Internet is changing the institutions that count. Two important examples:

  • Standards have powerful impact on our lives. They are what allow all our computers to interconnect. They can be constructed in such a way as to favor, disfavor, block, conceal, reveal, or otherwise influence all of our online transactions. But standards are not written by the institutions that were considered by political theorists 50 years ago: not by legislatures, courts, diplomats, or regulatory agencies. Sometimes, a person (e.g., Tim Berners-Lee) just writes standards and they proliferate. Perhaps they can be changed by means of political pressure, but not in traditional ways. For instance, no law or government could simply change the standards for email or the Web, which are thoroughly dispersed
  • Ten years ago, what a daily newspaper should do was an important question. Today, it is a less important issue, because newspapers have lost overall market share and clout to various kinds of websites, including blogs. Their market share could drop to zero.
  • [PS: My current grad student Tony Fleming has created a great specialized blog on the competition to be the next UN Secretary General. Tony provides detailed information and news as well as an opportunity to propose questions for the leading candidates. That’s a nice use of blog technology to press a major international body to be more transparent.]

    Robert George on civic education

    Thanks to Brett Marston for directing me to Robert P. George’s essay, “What Colleges Forget to Teach.” This a thoughtful comment by a major conservative scholar. In essence, George objects to the balance of political ideas and materials that college students experience as undergraduates and before they arrive on campus. They should, he thinks, understand the importance of limiting the powers of the federal government, of restraining judges, and of empowering the states. They should understand the lasting virtues as well as the vices of the American constitutional order.

    I agree with all this and find it useful–especially George’s conclusion that “the reform and renewal of civic education in our nation is a noble cause. We must make it an urgent priority.” My agreements with George are more important than my disagreements. However …

    1. I’m not convinced that the balance of ideas that students experience is so far from what George would prefer. Generally, when either liberals or conservatives decry the content of social studies classes, they do so innocent of any statistical evidence about what is actually taught and discussed in schools. There are anecdotes about egregious teaching that can incense people across the spectrum from Howard Zinn to Robert George himself, but no one knows how common these stories are. In 2004, we asked a national sample of young Americans to recall two major themes from their social studies classes:

  • 29.8% recalled “great American heroes and virtues of the political system”
  • 38.6% recalled “The Constitution or U.S. system of government and how it works”
  • 7.8% recalled “racism and other forms of injustice”
  • 14.8% recalled “wars and military battles”
  • 5.2% recalled “problems facing the country today”
  • These results should make George happy (and lefties unhappy), although I admit that George might not like some of the details of what students learn. For instance, it’s possible that they are exposed to a liberal interpretation of the Constitution rather than the views of the Federalist Society–but who knows?

    Second, what students are taught is only part of the issue. There’s also the question of how they are taught. Do they sit in large lecture halls being informed about the Constitution (from a radical, liberal, or conservative perspective)? Do they debate constitutional principles in small groups, moderated by a well-informed teacher? Do they conduct ambitious projects of research, service, or advocacy that involve constitutional principles? I’m not wedded to any one approach, but I suspect that the way we teach has much more impact than what values we try to convey in lectures.

    3. George is no doubt sincerely committed to civility and to an open-ended, ideologically diverse discussion of principles. He is perhaps right that his own perspective is undervalued in the academy. But the difficult part is not agreeing on civility or diversity as abstract principles–the hard part is making concrete judgments. For instance, George describes the situation in academia as “dire” and provides some illustrative “horror stories,” such as Princeton’s decision to give a “distinguished chair in bioethics to a fellow who insists that eating animals is morally wrong, but that killing newborn human infants can be a perfectly moral choice.” That fellow is, of course, Peter Singer. His view is a coherent application of utilitarianism, which is a 200-year-old position with roots in ancient thought and much influence on modern conservatism. I’m no utilitarian, but I don’t see how a university can regret attracting one of the most original and influential philosophers of the current era.

    what do parents want?

    We human beings are not born free. We are born as completely dependent, totally naive little creatures that are easily influenced and controlled by adults, especially parents. If you want a society dedicated to freedom, then you have to ask whether parents are raising their kids to value liberty. If not, then you face a conundrum: you may have to force people to raise free children. Indeed, this is a common rationale for public schools, which are supposed to expose kids to a broad array of values from which they can choose. If you favor a basket of values that includes compassion, patriotism, and tolerance as well as freedom, then you must certainly worry about whether parents teach these values.

    I am therefore highly curious about what parents want for their kids. The pie chart below shows the “qualities” that parents (defined as individuals who had ever had kids) said that they valued most in children. They were surveyed between 1973-1983. I haven’t found more recent data, although it may exist.

    Some observations: Honesty dominates, far outstripping considerateness and getting along with others. Only three percent chose the intellectual virtues of curiosity and studiousness. (I wonder whether that number has increased since 1983, as we move deeper into the high-tech era.) Obedience to parents is not the top choice of many people. However, more than half of respondents chose obedience as one of their top three virtues.

    [NB: I aggregated a decade’s worth of data to make the sample size as large as possible, but there are no important changes in the answers over that period.]

    into the fray

    Somewhat contrary to my usual practice, I hereby opine (without expertise or evidence) on two hot topics:

    1. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has attracted much criticism–and has apologized–for saying, “This city will be a majority African-American city. It’s the way God wants it to be. You can’t have it no other way. It wouldn’t be New Orleans.” Nagin has been called racist for setting a racial target in that way. It would certainly be out of bounds for someone to suggest (for instance) that Denver must stay 80.6% white. However, lots of people want to preserve or recreate the traditional culture of New Orleans. That culture is inextricably linked to race. I realize that the city was never monoracial. In fact, the traditional culture of New Orleans will be lost if working-class white Cajuns or rich whites from the Garden District choose not to return. It’s a subtle question whether the city needs an African American majority to restore its culture. But New Orleans was 67% Black before Katrina, so anything below 50% would be a big drop–and a big cultural change.

    “Culture” is a more comfortable concept than race, but the two cannot be separated. If you hope to preserve or restore the characteristic culture of New Orleans, you have to bring back the Black population.

    2. Danish cartoons satirizing (or did they simply depict?) Mohammed have ignited riots in at least half a dozen countries. In cases like this, it seems important to separate the questions that could be asked:

  • Should the Danish Government ban the publication of these cartoons or punish the responsible newspaper, the Jyllands-Posten? No: that would violate freedom of the press.
  • Should the Jyllands-Posten have published the cartoons? No: they aren’t funny, they don’t have news value, and their only purpose appears to have been to demonstrate that the press is free in Denmark. That’s a bad editorial decision, to put it mildly.
  • Should newspapers in several other European countries republish the cartoons to establish their own freedom? No: duplicating a bad editorial decision is an even worse one.
  • In response, should people attack the Danish, Norwegian, Austrian, and US embassies or consulates in multiple countries? No: that’s violent. It’s also a basically impotent form of rage that mainly demonstrates the vulnerability of the rioters.