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Communitarian Letter #3
Contents Hurricane Katrina Guns: A Communitarian Take New endorsements for DWU New Communitarian articles out William Safire on the entomology of Intelligent Design Communitarian Calendar New book by Jonathan Marks The EU political class has lost touch Roberts, abortion, and how to make conflicts Millennium bug Rights and Securities Dialogue with Professor Mark Heyrman ID: The Discussion Continues
Thoughts on Hurricane Katrina The Next Crisis As the nation is focusing on the last leadership crisis, we are drifting into another one. Nobody seems inclined to make the strategic decision as to whether New Orleans should be rebuilt more or less as it was, the grounds be lifted, or is turned into a small island, or if some other approach is to be followed. I am not arguing for a master plan, which would take months to develop and engender endless conflicts. What is needed is a framing decision that can be formulated within 21 days by a group of city planners, engineers, and social scientists, to be voted on by Congress. It would guide federal spending, the Corps of Engineers, and much else. Standing in the way is oddly the last leadership failure. As everyone is now keen to show that they are helping, billions are thrown at the problem and nobody is willing to say, wait a minute, a strategic decision must first be made. I am not referring to relief to Katrina refugees, but to lending contracts and making grants to rebuild the devastated areas. Also, the same ideological bugaboo that bedeviled the response to Katrina is raising its ugly head. The notion that such a decision should be made by local and state authorities is standing in the way of what must be done as well as the notion that the private sector is best left to its own devices. The challenge is so great that the federal government must be involved. Its funds are involved. And it is the only one that can bring the various players together, to buy into the framing decision without which New Orleans is going to be rebuilt as vulnerably as it was, if not more so. The no credit game Scores and scores of items have appeared in the press about who is to blame for the Katrina catastrophe—as there ought to be. Much less has been dedicated to those who did issue timely warnings and rung the alarm about the state of the levees, only to be ignored. Giving them due credit, awards and promotions is not merely fair, but essential to encourage others to do their best to warn and acts against the next calamity. The United States has been criticized world wide for its disgraceful performance during and following Katrina. However this criticism should be aimed largely at the US government. The American civil society preformed as well as ever and better. No other society (with the exception of Israel) has so many volunteers rushing to help, opening their homes and communities to the refugees and donating all that there is to give. The government dares not ask to tax people but people have taxed themselves. If Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress do not want to raise taxes but wish to keep the deficit within some bounds, they can dedicate the $286.4 billion transportation bill passed this July to the reconstruction of New Orleans and other stricken areas. Also in Katrina-related news: A senior White House told The New York Times: “Can you imagine how it would have been perceived if a president of the United States of one party had pre-emptively taken from the female governor of another party the command and control of her forces, unless the security situation made it completely clear that she was unable to effectively execute her command authority and that lawlessness was the inevitable result?” There is room for politics and even image-building, but to worry about how things are going to look when faced with a disaster of the magnitude of Katrina is obscene.
Guns: A communitarian take We have not heard much from the National Rifle Association recently. No wonder. It and its allies have long argued that the way to prevent looting and crime waves is to arm the citizenry. The NRA even helped pass laws that allow citizens in some jurisdictions to carry concealed guns. Now we find out that these weapons have been used to shoot at helicopters out to rescue people, at firefighters and police trying to prevent looting in New Orleans. One of the first things the overburdened and much beleaguered authorities had to do was collect arms from civilians. The communitarian position paper on arms has long shown that the Constitution calls for these to be available to well regulated militias, not individuals. For more on this topic, please read The Case for Domestic Disarmament New Endorsements for Diversity Within Unity New endorsers of the Diversity Within Unity platform include Jim Bolger, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, William C. Potter, Director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies and two former Ambassadors of Japan, Mitsuhei Murata and Nagao Hyodo. Over 375 heads of state, academics and policymakers have endorsed the platform: please consider joining us by clicking here
What it takes to be a public intellectual—and what it doesn’t For a discussion starter see “Bookmarks for public sociologists” in The British Journal of Sociology, most recent issue. For a strong criticism of Samuel Huntington work, especially his book Who We Are: The Challenges to America’s National Identity, viewed through the perspective of his earlier work on West Point, see the September issue of Contemporary Sociology, online soon. Score one for the “Millennium Bug” My mother just celebrated her 100 birthday. Few weeks earlier she fell and was taken to the ER for some stitches. The ER doctor opened the curtain to her cubicle and stormed out, came back and looked puzzled and left. The third time she asked “Where is the infant?” Turns out that the ER computer could not tell 2005 from 1905, her birth date, as it was programmed to give only the last digits: born ’05….
Communitarian Calendar
“How Societies Reach New Shared Moral Understandings” The National Institute of Health Masur Auditorium, Bldg. 10, Bethesda, MD Wednesday, September 21 3:00 PM For more information, contact Hilda Madine at (301) 594 – 5595 For directions, click here
New book: Is Rousseau a closet communitarian? In Jonathan Marks’ new book “Perfection and Disharmony in the Thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau” you will find a new interpretation of the philosopher's thought and its place in the contemporary debate between liberals and communitarians. Against prevailing views, Marks argues that Rousseau's thought revolves around the natural perfection of a naturally disharmonious being. At the foundation of Rousseau's thought he finds a natural theology that takes account of and seeks to harmonize conflicting ends. The Rousseau who emerges from this interpretation is a radical critic of liberalism who is nonetheless more cautious about protecting individual freedom that his communitarian successors. Marks elaborates on the challenge that Rousseau poses to liberals and communitarians alike by setting up a dialogue between him and Charles Taylor.
The EU political class has lost touch In a previous discussion of the developments in the EU [link], I suggested that the political classes in European have lost touch with their people. The elites cannot convince the people of the merit of the policies nor that the elite beliefs ought to be followed. Now along comes the Austrian chancellor, adding insult to injury. He called for France and the Netherlands to vote again and again on the EU constitution until they get it right. Such arrogance undermines both community -building and democratic governance. Roberts, abortion, and how to make conflicts The notion that the American people are either pro-choice or pro life, and “polarized” is largely a creation of the ways questions are sometimes phrased when polls are conducted. Take the recent one conducted by Newsweek in preparation of the Roberts hearings. When given only two choices, 51% defined themselves as pro choice and 42% as pro-life. However when given 3 choices, 13% chose always legal, 16% always illegal, and—67% sometimes legal. (Newsweek August 8 2005). Indeed much other data show that on this issue, as on many others, the American people are much more centrists, and the differences among them are subtle and nuanced, than some polls make them seem.
Rights and security: A Dialogue with Professor Mark Heyrman: This is Part III of a continued dialogue with Professor Mark Heyrman. To read Parts I and II click here Professor Heyrman’s comments are in regular type; my response follows each of his points in italics.
AE: I wonder why you think this is commonplace. Anyhow, if you going to dismiss a constitutional standard so readily, you help delegitimize the constitution and should expect others to dismiss other parts of it. Above all, if reasonableness is unacceptable, one would expect you to offer an alternative criterion for what we are entitled to do to protect ourselves. Consider the precise example we have been discussing--the use of video surveillance cameras. Without asking anyone's permission, thousands of private entities simply began using these devices for public surveillance of the spaces inside and outside of buildings. Sometimes these cameras are easy to spot and sometimes they are hidden. But hidden or not, no one asked us whether we approved of their deployment. Now because these cameras have become ubiquitous, the government can accurately state that no one expects to be free from video surveillance in a public place. Of course, the hyper-presence of video cameras in London reminds us of Orwell. In 1984 the government could fairly state that no one could have a reasonable expectation of privacy in her/his own home since video surveillance had been installed in every home and everyone knew this. I am puzzled by all this. “Without asking anyone?” The law either allows surveillance cameras or it does not. To bring in Orwell is to push one of those emotional bottoms, which has no basis in fact here. What is Orwellian in London today? Are people brain washed by a central authority? Lost their free expression and free will? Or is the worst-case scenario that they are able to identify those who killed their family members and friends? Similarly, under the Patriot Act, no one can expect to keep private the names of the books s/he purchases from a bookstore or borrows from a library. The government can demand this information from any library or bookstore. Suppose that next year we are asked to send the government a list of the books in our home libraries or offices. If the Government has a right to learn what we are reading currently, why shouldn't they be able to find out what we read last year or in college? After all, we might read these dangerous books again. What if next year terrorists killed every American who went to college? The fact is, the September 11 terrorists did use public libraries in their preparations. Hence, in the rare circumstances when there is specific evidence to suspect that documents of a given library are useful, and this evidence is presented to a court, libraries should not be exempt from the law. They cannot be permitted to provide safe haven for terrorists. To jump from these exceptional circumstances to the suppression of free reading is one of those absurd jumps that turns serious examination seeking reasonable balance between our rights and security into rubbish. Remember also that in defending its right to detain people in Guantanamo, the Bush Administration claimed, in its brief to the United States Supreme Court, that it had the right to seize any American citizen from anywhere in the United States or abroad and detain that citizen in Guantanamo (or elsewhere) and that no court could review whether the detention was lawful no matter how long it lasted. The Supreme Court rejected this idea, but there was virtually no outcry from the citizenry. It does seem easy to lose one's freedoms a little at a time and not to resist. Few seem to be resisting Bush. Please tell me when you think we will begin resisting. I am against the claim that the government can detain ANYONE without charging them and submitting them to the due process of law. We shall start resisting such dangerous moves by the authorities when civil libertarians will stop crying wolf about most every security measure, so we can tell those that really need resisting from the rest. I am less sanguine than you about whether we have learned the right lessons from Japanese internment or are actually avoiding racial profiling. Bush seems to have mastered the art of having this one both ways--denying that we are at war with Muslims or Arabs but occasionally letting his real feelings and intentions leak out by calling our efforts a "Crusade". As I stated in my last posting, I think it is stupid (or evil) to have declared war on a tactic--terrorism. So it may seem odd to complain that we didn't really mean it. But the reality of the Bush Administration's deeds, as opposed to its words, is that we are not actually trying to eliminate terrorism around the world. We are focused on Moslem and Arab terrorist groups. Nor, since we insist upon keeping the details of our detentions in Cuba and elsewhere secret, can anyone say with confidence that those held meet any objective criteria of dangerousness rather than some subjective sense of who our political enemies are. Nor can we say that racial profiling was not used to determine who is being detained. Another example might be helpful: The Bush administration has worked vigorously to dismantle Arab-American charitable organizations, claiming that money from these organizations ends up in terrorist hands. I will assume for the purposes of this piece that this claim is correct. However, for decades the US government looked the other way while Irish Americans sent money which ended up in the hands of the Irish Republican Army. I am not claiming that the Irish Americans who gave money knew how their money would be used; but this detail hasn't stopped us from seizing the money donated to charitable causes by Arab Americans. (That, as you correctly note, Arab Americans are "white" according to the Census Bureau seems beside You are right that the world changed for us on September 11. I am not sure that you can blame Bush for the fact that previous administrations (including Carter and Clinton) did not stop the flow of funds to Irish terrorists, or that therefore one should be free to contribute to Saudi ones. I also agree that we should oppose all terrorists with a global reach (as distinct from local freedom fighters). However, anyway you cut it, there no RACIAL profiling is involved in our policies. The reason those who oppose security measures call them racial profiling is because this is an emotional button which evokes more outrage than if one would admit that we focus on people from those nations from which all the terrorists who attacked us came. Regarding the point about Jews, about which I have some firsthand knowledge as a refugee from Nazi Germany, it is the Nazis who labeled us a race. Most Jews consider themselves an ethnic group. One can oppose anti-Semitism (which would encompass Arabs, another Semitic group) without turning the group one seeks to defend into a separate race.
My main point throughout is not that one should give a blank check to the Bush Administration, but that one does not help the cause of liberty or political mobilization on its behalf if one vastly overstates the dangers to our rights, treats the security threats lightly, and pushes emotional buttons instead of dealing with the complex issues in a reasoned manner.
Please feel free to join the dialogue.
Intelligent Design Feedback and Response
In the last Communitarian Letter I wondered whether progressive people should not lump Intelligent Design together with creationism and if ID deserves a different response. Here is what I wrote, followed by responses and my counterpoints. I started the dialogue with: Intelligent Design: A common ground?
Progressives are up in arms about the movement to teach Intelligent Design in public schools. They depict advocates of ID as Machiavellians trying to sneak creationism into the curriculum. They roundly condemn these people.
At the same time, progressives are recognizing that many Americans are concerned about values in general, often religious, spiritual and transcendental matters. How was the world FIRST created? Where are we destined to go? Why are we born to die?
Attempts to answer such questions in solely scientific terms are not going to do the trick. Whatever science tells us, those of us who are looking for normative answers will not be satisfied. To tell a grieving parent that their child died because his heart failed does not address the question they are asking. Similarly, to tell people concerned about where we came from and where we are headed, that we came from apes and going to become worm feed, does not cut it.
Many scientists, when not in a confrontational mood, admit that there are normative questions science cannot and is not meant to address. Call these questions “otherworldly.” As long as ID advocates raise these questions and wonder if they do not point us to a master creator, there is no reason I can see to oppose them. However, if they proceed to claim that they have “The Answer,” and of course if they try to force creationism into the curricula, then the time is right to say “wait a moment, not in our public schools.” Economist Rick Wicks of Goteborg University responded: Just as there are believers in God and the Bible (or other holy books) who have felt threatened by the theory of evolution, there are people, atheists I suppose, who use evolution as a club in their struggle with theists. (Personally I’m a Buddhist so take an agnostic view.) For example, recently at a fancy new museum here in Sweden I saw an exhibit which asserted not only survival of the fittest and thus the origin of species (which I take to be the heart of evolution), but also that the individual variation driving the process was caused by totally random mutation. And this drives theists nuts. UC Berkeley Professor William Z. Lidicker, Jr. writes : The sympathetic comments on intelligent design (ID) in the August 19 Communitarian Letter include inaccurate statements about science and by implication the role of scientists in this controversy. The controversy actually concerns introducing ID into the SCIENCE curriculum of public schools, not the curriculum in general. As far as I am aware, scientists (and progressives) have always recognized the importance of values to people. Moreover, science has much to offer in contributing to our understanding of these values. Scientists do not claim that they have all the answers to questions that people might ask, whether "normative" or not. The scientific mission is simply to improve our understanding of the world, and in this effort much progress has been made. Very much more remains to be learned. It is, however, misleading to suggest that there is a category of issues ("normative") that science cannot confront meaningfully. Science can in fact answer innumerable common questions, like why the sun rises in the east, how a TV set works, and what is the general history of life on this planet. The only questions that science is "not meant to address" are those for which evidence and reason cannot in principle distinguish truth from falsity. ID advocates can of course wonder whatever they want, but wondering does James Madison University Sociology professor Joe Spear writes along similar lines: The difficulty with the position stated below is that it does not clarify the conditions under which ID can/should be up for discussion in schools. The battles that are being fought over this are over the content of what is taught is science classes. By scientific criteria ID does not measure up - not even a little bit - and does not belong anywhere near a science classroom.
If progressives mind only if ID is taught in science classes, I wish they would say so a little more clearly. I wish they would tell us in which classes they would not mind if students heard about ID. I hear mainly opposition, no tolerance. For instance, recently a Smithsonian scientist found himself driven out of work by his colleagues after publishing a paper making the case for Intelligent Design. “They were saying I was a crypto-priest, that I was a sleeper cell operative for the creationists,” said evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg. Dr. Sternberg published a paper by a philosopher of science suggesting that an intelligent agent was behind a Cambrian-era explosion of multi-celled life. An independent panel later determined that Dr. Sternberg was subjected to false accusations, but did not have the legal remedy to reinstate him.
Professor Lidicker gives the game away when he shows no sign of understanding what moral values are about, normative issues are, and above all that there are numerous important issues on which science has nothing to say, such as what is morally right versus wrong. Maybe it is time to re-invoke Albert Einstein’s dictum “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.” Clemson University professor Steven Satris wrote: In a recent newsletter (Communitarian Letter #2) it was stated that the advocates of "Intelligent Design" should not be allowed to push their agenda if they believe they have "The Answer." I agree.
Other worldly does not mean other worlds, but not issues that are not a matter of empirical or logical concern. Like the sense that there may be a voice that appeals to us care about the poor, the sick, children and elderly, to be good.
Dr. Franklin E. Kameny of Washington DC writes: What people think and whether they are emotionally satisfied is utterly irrelevant to the validity or invalidity, or sufficiency or insufficiency of scientific theories. And last but not least, George Sherman writes: My response: My problem with intelligent design is that it is NOT an alternative to evolution, but an alternative to science. I have no problems even with alternatives to science, as long as they are not taught in a science classroom. Religion answers questions about why, science about how. And as Jay Gould proposed, the two shall not meet. [EH fix fonts _____________________________________________________________________________
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Sincerely, Amitai Etzioni |
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