Liberal hypocrisy can be a good thing

I'm awfully critical of Ellen Goodman's political and moral ideals. Nonetheless, I find myself quite attracted to her personal life, when she writes about it. She wrote one article about how gardening makes her feel close to the land and more involved with her food. It was beautiful. I even mostly agree with the economic and political statement that she made in this article supporting locally grown food and environmentally friendly eating practices, though I also keep in my thoughts those men and women who make a difficult living transporting our food and other goods across the nation.

This past Friday, Ms. Goodman wrote about the island on which she and her husband have their summer home. The island community recently received established a local government, whereas they had previously been governed as an extension of the mainland community. The island's reasons for wanting local government (and we can assume Ms. Goodman's reasons as well) rang true of our Founding Fathers - a distant government cannot govern for local needs. In Catholic social teaching, the term for this principle is subsidiarity, and it holds as true for families and local communities as it does for colonies and island communities.

Ms. Goodman also opines,

ELLEN GOODMAN: Secession a miniature experiment in democracy -- OrlandoSentinel.com

There are places in America where schoolchildren are increasingly seen as an expensive luxury or a tax burden. But here, everyone understood that the island's 20-plus schoolchildren were the difference between being a community and a summer resort. So, what made fiscal sense to a suburb was lethal to an island. The desire to control our destiny took hold and grew into the plan for home rule.

Could I agree any more? Our culture increasingly sees children as a sometimes pleasurable liability, much like a car. If you find pleasure in it, you need to weigh the costs as well. If you are able to live without the luxury, you are better off doing so. It's healthier to ride a bike to work - and to enjoy sex without consequences. But the reality is that children are in every community the difference between being a community and a "summer resort."

But wait a second! Does anyone else sense a bit of hypocrisy here? Isn't there a major disconnect between Ms. Goodman's public ideals and her private ones?

1. Publicly, Ms. Goodman pushes for public health care. Privately she pushes for the privatization of food production.
2. Publicly, Ms. Goodman, with all political liberals, pushes for government oversight of everything from childcare to welfare. Privately, she supports the principle of subsidiarity.
3. Publicly, Ms. Goodman treats children as an expensive luxury, telling us that they are only enjoyable when they are wanted and that they are otherwise nothing more than a liability. Privately, she embraces children (and one would assume family) as the cornerstone of community.

In the same article, she says,

Some who opposed secession wanted to keep government "over there." What will happen, they worried, when problems can't be blamed on "them" and must be resolved by "us"?

Doesn't this sound strangely contrary to the liberal idea that government should take care of everything?

Another fascinating quotation - same article:

Indeed many islanders spent long hours thinking about the balance of "trust and constraints" that go into self-governing. Herb Maine still wonders about the right proportions for a place where people leave their doors unlocked and feel sure that the volunteer rescue and firefighters will come as needed. "We hope to build a community on trust," he says, "not on rules and regulations."

I couldn't agree more.

Again,

ELLEN GOODMAN: Secession a miniature experiment in democracy -- OrlandoSentinel.com

On the mainland, the national political culture has become carelessly fractured. People who disagree go to the polar ends of their arguments and hurl opinions at each other. They live in cul-de-sacs of like-minded people as if they had no ground in common. How many Americans think of government as something imposed from Washington, not created at home?

These last two sentiments are not embraced by either political party. However, they were embraced by our Founding Fathers and they are embraced by Catholic social teaching.

Ms. Goodman joins other liberals (and modernists) in decrying hypocrisy. However, she is herself guilty of the same sin. However, there is one big difference. Whereas for those striving to live the moral life, hypocrisy is a travesty, for people like Ellen Goodman it can be a sign of hope. Like one of my modernist college professors said, "post-modernism is a wonderful philosophy, but you can't really live it can you?"

Exactly.

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Problems of Globalization

“Globalization, Desire, and the Politics of Representation” by R. Radhakrishnan states quite clearly the problem that I have with America’s current foreign policy. However, he states with equal clarity the problem that I have with most other options presented by philosophers and politicians today. The root of the problem on both fronts is that the world seems to see international relations only through modernist glasses – as relations of power. While power struggles are inevitable and need to be dealt with, there is another stage on which foreign relations can be set as well. That is the stage of interdependence and solidarity. However, this stage will remain darkened as long as we continue to seek the solution to disparity in the relativistic scenery of modernist thought.

Radhakrishnan forwards the concern that globalization is actually nationalism in disguise, a system in which the powerful nation-states force the rest of the world into conformity. To build his case, he uses the so-called “benevolent” actions of the G7, the IMF and the World Bank toward “third-world” countries. Such benevolence, Radhakrishnan argues, is not intended to help lift third-world countries into the realm of independent nation-states and equal partners in the world community. Rather, it is intended to keep these countries in a continuous state of “dependence and heteronomy.” Radhakrishnan makes a great point – that you never hear politicians speaking of “human” jobs. They are always speaking of “American or Canadian or Mexican or Indian jobs.” Radhakrishnan asks, “When was the last time that an American president showed concern or altered foreign trade policy in response to dire job losses in Mexico or in the Philippines?” Recently on CNN, I almost heard President Bush express such a concern. Defending himself against criticisms that he was promoting unemployment in America by opening the door wider for American companies to take jobs overseas, Bush commented, “I understand that unemployment is a problem in America, but I don’t see that as a valid reason for retreating from the world market.” A Bush supporter could certainly make the argument that his ambiguous phrase meant that American economic might should be spread out to benefit people of the entire world. However, I don’t think suspicion that Bush is really looking out for American big business interests would be too paranoid. Radhakrishnan makes another valid point using nuclear weapons as an example. Powerful nation-states punish “subaltern” (weaker, subordinate) countries for wanting the same things that dominant nation-stages “have successfully monopolized.” I agree with Bush to the extent that I really don’t want Muslim dictatorships or oligarchies to have nuclear weapons. After all, the self-stated purpose of Islam is to conquer the world for Allah. However, it strikes me as odd that there should be comfort with any country having nuclear weapons. These weapons by their very nature are antithetical to the ideologies that America claims to stand for. The argument is often made that the dominant nation-states have proven their right to have nuclear weapons because of the restraint they have shown in their use. However, if the right to have such weapons is proven by not using them, then why have nuclear weapons at all? This is a clear example of hypocrisy (a word that is too often misapplied, but really does fit in this case).

Radhakrishnan forwards the philosophical bedrock for a possible solution. Third-world countries continue to be victimized by the dominant nation-states because they imagine that a relationship with the dominant powers within the context of globalization will eventually given third-world countries what they want – a piece of the power pie. However, the dominant nation-states are influenced by a technological progress vision of the world (which I take to come from enlightenment philosophy’s ideal of progress), in which power is seen as an end-sum game. The only way for third-world countries to gain power would be for the leading countries to lose power. Since this is undesirable for the countries who dominate the process of globalization, their-world countries are hoping for the impossible. Radhakrishnan claims that third-world countries need to shift their philosophical outlook. They need to reject the technological progress model and instead embrace a postmodern philosophy. According to such a viewpoint, there is no objective definition of reality. “Reality” is not a single entity, but a complex interaction of a multiplicity of realities. Therefore, definition of reality is dependant on the perceiver of reality. It is “important that people invent their own realities rather than dwell passively and reactively in realities invented by others.” So how do people interact when their perceptions of reality differ? Radhakrishnan states, “But the real and intricate challenge is how to imagine one’s reality not in egocentric isolation, but relationally with other imaginings.” In other words, we have to find a way to allow our reality to harmonize with other realities, without passively sacrificing our reality for theirs. One suggestion for doing this on the world stage is for third-world countries to stop seeing themselves as “developing” nations, a term forced on them by the technological viewpoint of progress. In its place, they need to find their own self-definition and their own reality. Radhakrishnan recommends that third-world countries see themselves as “suffering” nations, rather than “developing” nations. They should become “a representation of the victims of man-made suffering everywhere in the world and in all past times.” They could then unite themselves to others who suffer throughout time and space, dissolving the geo-political limitations that define them as “developing nations” and instead defining themselves as people who suffer. They could then relate to globalism on their own terms, seeking relationships of “reciprocal rehabilitation” with the dominant countries. They could direct the efforts of globalism toward a new kind of utopia in which each member would be free to find its own reality in harmony with the realities of other members, and therefore in which suffering would be eradicated.

Does the postmodern perception of reality really have the power to do this? The greatest mystery of postmodernism is where the moral imperative for harmonious coexistence comes from in the ebb and flow of individual realities? If the dominant nation-states see power as an end-sum game, and believe that the harmonious coexistence of realities demands that they act as stewards of the power and look out for their subordinate brother-countries, who is to say that their vision of harmonious realities is any worse than the vision of reciprocal rehabilitation? I understand that the latter fits the postmodern worldview better than the former, but if reality is really so fluid then there can be no standard by which to judge opposing realities. Fortunately, I don’t believe that it is necessary to believe in postmodern deconstruction of objective reality to see that Radhakrishnan’s practical solution is a good one. However, it would be necessary for me to find a new philosophical groundwork to lay it on.

That philosophical groundwork begins with the objective answer to Radhakrishnan’s question, “If going global means acknowledging a certain connectedness, what is the basis for such a connectedness?” Radhakrishnan argues against the basis of “blood” – or nationalism. However, there is a legitimate basis for connectedness. We must first understand that nationalism and globalism are subjective “imagined” associations. However, they are human attempts to satisfy the objective reality of the need for human connection. Historically, this need was satisfied on a local level. Human beings banded together into communities to make it easier to meet each other’s needs, and because humans are naturally drawn to community. Here we find the authentic bases for all human connection: interdependence and solidarity. Nations took this local sense of connectedness and attempted to expand it over greater geographical areas. While there are benefits to doing this, there are also detriments. Human beings do not naturally bond with people that they do not have regular personal contact with. To make nationalism work, artificial bases for association had to be created. Cultural commonalities, national pride, a sense of “us” vs. “them,” and an organizing government all added to the natural sense of interdependence and solidarity to expand the “village” into a “nation.” Likewise, in globalization artificial bases for association will have to be added to the authentic bases in order to bind together people who do not share the same culture or language. The key to success for nationalism and for globalization is to put more focus on the natural, authentic bases for association than on the artificial ones. Nationalism goes astray when national pride or cultural ideologies trump interdependence and solidarity as the nation’s teleology. The same will be true of globalism. The problem Radhakrishnan points out is an authentic one. America and the other dominant nations are using globalization to forward nationalistic agendas to the detriment of “subaltern” countries. However, if the dominant countries remember that international relationships need to reflect the authentic bases for human association, they should begin to act for the authentic good of all human beings, not simply for the good of their own ideologies and political and economic constituencies. An appeal based on the demonstrable objective reality of human association has to be more powerful than the groundless appeal to harmony between individually perceived realities.

In the love of Christ,

Brother Thomas

TV Bites Back

Summary: Newsweek's online front page for May 27, 2005 featured an interesting story about a program called TV-Watch. It's a program sponsored by members of the entertainment industry to attempt to keep government out of the censorship business. Instead of governmental censorship, it promotes equipping people (especially parents) to make wise media choices.

This program promoted educating parents on how to use devices like the V-chip and strategies such as family TV watching and family discussions about what is watched. The surprise is that this program is sponsored by television network moguls. The key here is that they don't want the government sticking its nose into private business, even if that private business is broadcast on public air waves.

Putting aside my skepticism about big-business, I have to day that at first blush I agree with the tenants of this program. The principle of subsidiarity is too often ignored by the Right and the Left in American politics. Here is a group that is promoting subsidiarity and media morality. It deserves some thought. However, I do have some questions that may just challenge this program.

First of all, the people quoted in the articles seem to assume that government cannot come up with universal standards of decency. Is this because no universal standards for decency exist, or is it just because government is too inefficient to think clearly about it? I may agree with the latter statement. However, my guess is that the article is actually intimating the former. For example, here is one quote from the article:

Why should we trust government to come up with the standards? Standards for who? I can’t even agree with my wife about what we ought to watch on television. Do you really think government is going to be able to come up with a standard for all of us?

This quote seems to reflect the typical attitude of modernist and post-modernist thinkers. These are philosophers that I want to more deeply explore this summer. One of the main assumptions of these philosophies is that no universal standards exist. Standards are personal and are for the most part useless. This is one of the most difficult areas of impasse between Christian believers and "modernist" and post-modernist" thinkers. Catholics especially believe in a universal human nature, and in universal standards that can be drawn out of a careful study of human nature. Universal standards such as "decency" are possible.

However, sin and fallen human nature sometimes make it difficult to judge what those standards are. The documents written by our country's founding fathers make it clear that they expected government to have the ability to make such judgments. However, those same documents clearly show that the founding fathers disagreed about to what degree government should shoulder such a responsibility. It was also up to the people to decide on such standards through the public square and in private settings.

I have no problem putting the responsibility of judging standards of decency into the hands of parents. However, I question how effective such an approach will be without the support of either the government or (better yet) the willing support of the networks. Even with the V-chip and other technologies, even with better education, would we and our children be protected? Would young children be protected against immoral advertisements? Such advertisements come on even during "family-friendly" programming. Would parents be able to know when a certain episode of an otherwise "safe" program may contain offensive material? How would a V-chip or a ratings system have protected young eyes from Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" during the Super Bowl? No one watching the Super Bowl expected to be subjected to an act - accidental or purposeful - of exhibitionism.

If the answers to these questions would be "no" then this solution is insufficient. When networks are driven to "push the envelope" because of the erroneous yet viral belief that "sex sells," the ability of families to protect themselves from indecency, violence, and harmful attitudes is seriously handicapped. Exploring options such as better parental training and technology such as the V-chip should be the first step. However, as much as I would like to keep government out of it, it is the duty of government to protect our families when private measures are weakened by greedy and unscrupulous media producers.

In the love of Christ,

Brother Thomas