Cultivating the Democratic way of Life

I want to begin this piece with an admission. I fall squarely on the left side of the political spectrum. People on the right might call me a “liberal”; some of my buddies on the left will probably shun “liberal” in favor of “progressive” to describe our political persuasion (although this label is fast becoming as pejorative as ‘liberal’). What I want to make clear is that whatever others say I am, there are some things that I am NOT. I am not in favor of “destroying America.” I do not support the erosion of personal liberty in this country. And certainly, I do not wish to undermine the principles of the democratic process upon which this nation was founded. Finally, I not for elitism of any kind…
Just as I declare these things about myself, I must also say the same for many of my adversaries. They do not wish to eradicate freedom, liberty, or prosperity in this country either. Today we too often descend to name-calling and demonizing when stating and defending our political beliefs. Underneath this phenomenon lies an faint and irrational hope that those that see things differently from us will simply fade away. That way, we can just be given the space to make our own agenda into reality. So, we go on… sitting in a circle with our peers in ideology, patting ourselves on the back that we get things right, and that those “crazy” or “evil” people over there are simply deluded. At most, we might reach out to the “indifferent middle/independent” voters and try to convince them of the same view of our opponents, but we never, never, never, even try to engage the extreme “other” in dialogue. This is because we share a particular, and ultimately I believe, misguided depiction of modern democracy: if we simply convince enough people to vote our way, we can put people in office who will implement our agenda for us. This, however, only describes the formal structure of democracy, as we might learn in a high school course on American government. Such a view stands behind the current stalemate in congress and the repeated ineffectiveness of the executive.
We elect politicians in the same manner as we shop. Companies that design a brand of toothpaste, for instance, seek the input of the public about how to design and market their product. They might present a range of possibilities to focus groups, who help narrow these strategies. Ultimately, the company selects path to market the a particular design. Finally, consumers in the store choose which brand among many will best meet their need. Parties offer us their candidates; a few of us might narrow these choices through a primary election; finally, the rest who show up to the polls pick which option will best address the issues I see as important. Once we make our selection, our role is complete; if our candidate wins, we expect them to take care of the problems for us. This is the problem. Once the voter/consumer exercises choice, we perceive the job done. Healthy teeth, however, require that we not only have the toothpaste, but also that we use it everyday, along with flossing, regular trips to the dentist for preventative care, and even cultivating healthy eating/drinking habits. The point is that selecting a good toothpaste is only one very minor portion of dental health. In fact, in the end, any brand of toothpaste would likely suffice were we to include it in a comprehensive plan of health. Essentially, we put the toothpaste to work for us.
The same rings true for a healthy democracy. Just because we vote doesn’t make us good citizens, for this is only one very minor aspect of the democratic process. We cannot rest with getting a particular party into the majority, or “our guy” elected as President. In fact, these things matter little if not part of a more comprehensive initiative of social action by “the people.” We must force the politicians to work for the good of our society. Voting is simply a formality, and we all understand this, even if we don’t admit it openly. The real work of democracy takes place at many levels: behind closed doors, in smoky rooms, and all those places we say undermine the will of the people. Still, democracy also emerges in many other ways as well: through open mass protest, organized popular movements (which we sometimes call lobbyists, PACs, interest groups), blogging, or even a heated debate on the patio of your local café. Democracy is a national conversation about how we might best take care of ourselves. It is not only the formal structures that we put in place to express this spirit. Citizenship requires that we not only vote, but that we also inform ourselves of ALL sides of an issue, explore the dimensions of these angles with our fellow citizens (and non-citizens), and then support directly or indirectly social action which will push our representatives to acknowledge our position and legislate their realization. It is only the total package that leads to a healthy democratic society, all parts working together for the common good. Just because those you elected are in office, doesn’t mean that their failure is the fault of the opposition of “the powers that be.” IT IS YOURS as well if you are doing nothing to put pressure on your local, state, and national governments to listen. Don’t stop with voting; you and I have an obligation to participate in democracy. WE ARE THE ONES THAT WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR to make good on the promise of freedom and the good society…

Unemployment Benefits

So I was watching the local news today and saw a story about a dad in Woodstock who has 2 kids, was laid off a while back and has steadily been trying to find work. He has been collecting unemployment during this time frame, and his benefits are about to run out. He was hoping, like many others, that congress would pass something to extend these benefits. As of yet, they have yet to do so, so he is basically shit out of luck. The reporter was able to get in touch with Senator Isaackson, a republican Senator from GA, and found out that he voted against the bill to extend these benefits. When asked why he did it, this was his answer "If we passed that bill, we would have to incur more debt in our national debt, and I don't believe any father would want to mortgage his kids future." This reporter then told the dad in Woodstock what the Senator said and his answer made perfect sense "I understand his point by not wanting to put hardship on our kids in the future, but by not extending these benefits, we are trading that hardship for the future to right now." He is absolutely right. Yes, no one likes the idea of having to go further in debt for the future, but at the same time, I think it is more important that we help these families out now so these kids do not have to go through the hardship now, while they are kids. There are so many reasons why the Senator is wrong, but I am sure he does not care. His plan to extend unemployment benefits was to fund it with the stimulus money. Now, if we were to do that, then what would that mean? Simple as this, if we take money from the stimulus package to fund unemployment, we are simply putting more people on the unemployment line. The stimulus money is for creating / keeping jobs. So if we take funding away from that, we accomplish nothing. What is messed up is that we, the people, keep re-electing these jackasses to represent us. Mainly because most of GA is republican and will always vote that way, no matter what they do in Washington or what they say they will do. Our other Senator, "Zaxby" Chambliss, has sponsored 1 bill sense he has been in Washington, since 2003. National Watermelon Day. His voting record is 100% with the majority of republicans and has NEVER voted for a bipartisan bill. So, Chambliss has accomplished nothing since his time in the senate, and he just got re-elected in 2008. Funny how congress has a 14% approval rating in GA during the 2008 election, but our wonderfully intelligent people in this state re-elect someone who has been there and done nothing. If we want things to change in this country, we, as citizens, need to stand up and let our voice be heard. Instead of letting the media, especially Fox News, who pawn themselves off as a "fair and balanced news agency" brainwash you, go out and do the research for yourselves. You will all be surprised of what you find out.

States sue to Block Healthcare Bill

So, it has been a tumultuous weekend in Washington, and already the rest of the nation is reeling from the aftershocks of the passage of the first bill to overhaul the Healthcare system. Already, several states’ attorney generals have formally or informally proposed moves to block the new legislation from extending into their jurisdictions. Reuters reports that “eleven of the attorney generals plan to band together in a collective lawsuit on behalf of Alabama, Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Washington.”
The plaintiffs challenge the right of the national legislature (i.e. Congress) to pass laws that compel individuals to obtain insurance (in this case health insurance). The White House, on the other hand, cites precedent of more than a century, giving the federal government the role of regulating interstate commerce. In fact, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) was the very first administrative bureau for the US government, created during the late nineteenth century.
Still, the opponents maintain that this is not an issue of interstate trade. Virginia attorney general Cuccinelli states that “If a person decides not to buy health insurance, that person by definition is not engaging in commerce… If you’re not engaging in commerce, how can the government regulate you?” At first glance, of course, this logic appears valid. However, isn’t there more to this issue than such simple hypothetical statements suggest?
Allow me to tell a brief story… During the civil rights struggle, the Supreme Court ruled in Atlanta Motel v. United States (1964) the Congress had the power to employ its jurisdiction over interstate commerce to combat racial segregation in certain cases. Because hotels facilitate interstate commerce, to deny patrons on the basis of race impeded the goal of promoting trade, and, therefore, state laws that allowed such activity were unconstitutional.
Now, on its surface, this case appears quite distinct from the current contention over compulsory healthcare. Congress, after all, was compelling businesses to open their doors to citizens previously denied access. Today, Congress is presumably compelling citizens to purchase health insurance or face penalties (which seems more like telling people they HAVE to stay in hotels when they travel). The Virginia attorney general’s statement above seems to bear out this claim, but his words overlook the fact that people aren’t simply “choosing” not to buy insurance. Indeed, most of the uninsured simply cannot afford to have a policy. The individual lacks the power to demand affordable coverage and thus, she marginalized not through a choice of her own, but by the institutional arrangements of the national healthcare industry. Congress, consequently, should theoretically be able to use the commerce clause to open access to medical coverage for those now unable to participate. Obviously, a public option more explicitly solves this problem, but when this failed to gain traction last fall, the new bill (soon to be law) attacks the same issue from another direction. By forcing individuals to have insurance, the whole private sector must adjust to accommodate this requirement. If insurers or businesses fail to provide viable options for the currently uninsured, these organizations, then, open themselves to accusations of opportunism and malfeasance. Ultimately, the bill’s goal is to help individuals obtain healthcare, not to hurt them, and the commerce clause certainly works properly for this purpose, despite the rhetoric from this lawsuit.
This is the first installment of several more posts to come regarding healthcare reform… Stay tuned for more.

Meditation on the Rhetoric of Political Language

If the 1960s (actually, most of the 60s happened in the early 70s) was the decade in which genuine mass dissent and suspicion of the large, overdetermining, and powerful institutions ordering American lives surged forth, then the 1980s was certainly the decade when those institutions absorbed these ideologies into their own vocabularies in order to further their goals.
John Lennon might roll over in his grave were he to witness the Beatles’ “Revolution” deployed to sell Nike shoes: a pivotal moment in this trend in the mid-80s. Indeed, in subsequent decades, Americans have seen “cool” become a commodity; civil disobedience has become a product from which profits can be abstracted. Sprite, for example, capitalized during the mid-90s on the emerging hip-hop scene, associating through its commercials its lemon-lime soft drink with a particular way of life.
The 1980s also gave birth to the use of dissident language in the political sphere when Ronald Reagan announced in his 1981 inaugural address, “in the present crisis,” referring to the economic woes of the Carter years, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Here, we have a newly elected president, the head of the government, indicting the very institution of which he is the symbol. This move bears out some important implications for how we can understand the current political divisiveness in our nation in 2010.
Foremost, this move forces us to reconsider how we relate to the state. Democracy, even in its republican form, depends on an educated and involved citizenry. To state that the government IS our problem, implies that we are not a part of its machinery, but, rather, stand in opposition to “it.” Of course, this idea is not new, as it can easily be linked to our mythic past when the colonies revolted against the policies of the British Parliament. Still, we are placed in an adversarial relation to the national government, which objectifies it into something other than we are, something “foreign” and threatening to me. Ultimately, this leads to a lack of civic involvement in politics, unless it is about curbing the abuses of the “nanny state.” In essence, we move from becoming “citizens” whom produce our government through our work to becoming “consumers” of the government’s initiatives. And, clearly, if we are consumers, then only those who can afford the product (pay their taxes, etc.) should be eligible to purchase. Thus, any programs that extend benefits normally found in the private sector (money, shelter, medical care, even education) to those who cannot meet the price should be eliminated as somehow “un-American.”
This ideology is most clearly exemplified in the goals of the current tea-party movement, which aims to “keep intrusive government out of our lives.” But, rhetoric such as this serves the same ends as when companies like Nike market their products as objects of dissent. Whom does it serve, after all, if we choose to wear merchandise that extols such messages as “Just Do It” or “Carpe Diem”? We simply are paying retailers to advertise their products for them, at no cost to them. Similarly, when we line up behind the talking heads in the media, accusing anyone attempting to solve social problems through the government as supporting “big government” or even worse, of being “socialists,” we are doing two things. First, we alienate people from the democratic institutions meant to represent them, and, consequently, this allows multi-national corporations to continue unfettered in their pursuit of profit, because these are really who benefits from a “hands off” approach to politics. Perhaps, if we began to encourage an alternative rhetoric, than maybe we gain a fresh perspective. If we are “citizens” and not “consumers” we might understand government not as an oppressive force intruding on our liberties, but rather as the highest forum in which our national conversation about our goals takes place.

The Problem of the Independent Voter

Today in the United States, more often than not, we hear our friends and colleagues assert something like the following: “I vote independent;” or perhaps, “Since both parties are corrupt, I cast my vote for each individual candidate, not for a party;” or even worse, “I don’t ever vote, that way, I don’t ever have to share any of the blame for the failure of the system.” While voter registration has traditionally always been low in this country, party affiliation since the 1950s has experienced a marked decline among those that do register. On one hand, advocates of this trend claim that this forces parties to work harder on explaining their positions and solutions to the public. On the other hand, critics often cite that the rise of disaffiliated voters leads to a “run to the middle” of the political spectrum where both parties eventually seem virtually indistinguishable. In some sense, both these views are intuitive, but I want to argue an alternative perspective. The independent voter, rather than undercutting the power of the political party, actually increases its influence, and ultimately marginalizes the electorate from meaningful political action. In fact, I contend that the many of the problems we blame on the bipartisan system in Washington (polarization and gridlock, corporate and lobbyist influence, alienation of the constituencies, etc.) stem from the refusal for this large group of Americans to affiliate some political party.
For those independents out there, I imagine you’re saying right now, “There isn’t a party out there that accurately reflects my beliefs, so why would I commit myself to some organization that doesn’t share my political and social goals?” I intend not to dispute this claim, because I share your view completely. However, the modern political party, as it emerged in the 1830s in the United States, was never intended to be an ideologically driven group. This would be what some of the founding fathers referred to as a faction. Instead, we might better understand political parties as a loose coalition of vested interests, networked together in order to attain the requisite power to direct policy and legislation. Of course, broadly, a party would be linked through some basic political philosophy, but one in which there should be a good deal of diversity.
With this new picture in mind, we are motivated to change how we engage and use our rights as voters. We, in effect, become political actors. For too many decades have we encountered our politicians as we do any other commodity, as consumers, waiting to see who will sway us in their favor, who can convince us that they have the best product to sell. As participants, we not only vote in the general election, but we also exercise our choice in primaries, something that even most affiliated voters fail to accomplish. After all, if we only vote in the general election, are we really exercising our suffrage, or merely putting our stamp of approval on one of a few candidates deemed acceptable by the party leaders?
Moreover, if we understand parties as coalitions, then we also might be encouraged to work within the party to change its culture, beliefs, and goals. Of course, we have to allow for some disagreement, but our involvement would reclaim these parties for the people on the ground. Currently, the lack of popular investment in the party system is precisely why these organizations tend to behave more like factions, and less like coalitions. The party must sell itself like a brand, it must present a coherent and strict ideology to the voters, while hiding its coalitional behavior from the public. Politics in a republic of 300 million citizens cannot be as simple as ideology; it is, in the end, about give and take, about compromise, and if voter can understand that the political party is the most effective means to achieving certain ends in our system, then perhaps we can all begin to more effectively harness their potential for the greater good. Until we do, parties will continue to misdirect the electorate, remain polarized between extreme competing ideologies, and respond only to pressures external to the parties (i.e. corporate interests, and other moneyed groups). So, I beseech of you to join a party, even if it’s a third party, get involved at the local level, and work to build back the civic-consciousness that has withered…

IT's Not a Culture War, Silly

I came across an opinion column on the FOX news website today entitled “It’s the Culture, Stupid,” which discussed how the conservatives in the United States will never be able to bring their goals to fruition as long as they don’t understand one thing: America will never become conservative as long as the culture in this nation remains driven by its “default” liberal culture. It this “battle for the culture” that I wish to address today.

According to the article, the left “rules the trifecta of cultural influence: the media, academia, and entertainment.” Fighting merely the issues, such as healthcare, climate change, and taxes, is not enough, because the liberal power structure actually determines the parameters of these debates. The article continues with a look back on a golden age of the post-WWII period when private cultural institutions such as churches provided Americans with meaning and some sense of unified purpose. The solution to this vacuous and narcissistic society in which we live lies in setting a more long-term agenda through a robust and reinvigorated private realm. Think tanks, conservative research institutes, film studios, publishers, and even museums would do much to cure the decadent woes of our social ills.

Now that I’ve offered a brief summary of this article, I would like to point out for the author that she has done a thorough job of describing precisely how the conservative movement functions today. Conservatives rule daytime radio talk shows, are aptly represented by think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation; I will only mention FOX news itself, which, despite its logo of “fair and balanced” clearly represents the source with which more conservatives identify. These and many other institutions which seek conservative solutions to our issues have been the backbone of the GOP since the Reagan years, and in the subsequent decades have only increased their legitimacy among the people. In fact, the term “culture war” is a well-established and favored concept to describe the conservative ordering of our society.

So, we have here an article that is attempting to offer a fresh solution to what’s wrong with “liberal” society and to reorient conservatives towards a strategy that will work better, and yet, this isn’t new at all; it’s business as usual. Still, I do think that the article brings to light a few important points about the great level of miscommunication that currently persists in American political discourse. First, although we perceive a unprecedented divisiveness in twenty-first century politics, people actually persist on a spectrum of beliefs, and a messy one at that. The author of the article, although a self-identified conservative, remains disenchanted with many of the tactics of conservative politics. She feels that the conservative agenda actually strengthens the slide towards materialistic self-indulgence that is destroying the social fabric. Consumerism is clearly not her vision of a healthy America; it must be undergirded with solid values and vibrant community life on the local level. Otherwise, the government will continue to oppressively encroach upon our lives.

Even though she exposes conservative beliefs, however, the author, Andrea Tantaros, paints liberals or progressives as completely uniform, almost monolithic. From the article, the reader would consider all those on the left support a big “welfare state,” follow the “mainstream liberal media” unwaveringly, seek to encourage a free-fall into materialistic self-absorption, and approve wholeheartedly of the ethics of mass entertainment (aka Hollywood). Also, you might have noticed that I left out any reference to academics; there’s a good reason for this: I am a member of academia, a financially-challenged student currently working on my PhD after leaving the corporate world for a vocation more geared towards public service. I am a progressive, and I feel that it’s important that I state how I, and many others in the progressive movement do NOT conform so easily to the picture often ascribed to us.

Now that I have “outed” myself as an academic, I must beckon you, the conservative reader, to not shut down immediately and categorize me as some elitist in an ivory tower, peering down snobbishly at the common folk. Give me a chance to state my case, because this is, after all, what democracy is all about: honest conversation about our problems. I come from a rather blue-collar background, was educated in an urban public school system, flunked out of college my first time, and spent my twenties working in retail management before returning to graduate school. Further, most of us academics do not earn large salaries. In fact, I’m probably the poorest among my lifelong friends. As for my politics, I can state unequivocally that I am not in favor of the government managing our lives from the cradle to the grave; I do not feel that any mainstream media outlet does a good job of informing citizens about issues and encouraging involvement in our democracy; and I agree that most of what Hollywood, television, and advertisers produce is poisonous to healthy civic consciousness; I also believe that Americans have become rather self-centered and disengaged from their obligations from one another. On these things, I think that Ms. Tantaros and I would agree.

I do, however, recognize a few items that she has failed to mention that cause me to feel differently about how to solve the nation’s woes. The golden age of 50 years ago to which she refers is also a time when the government was involved in social and economic planning on a large scale. Most large corporations were heavily regulated, banks were restricted to limited scope, the mentally ill (aka most of the would-be homeless) were cared in government-run and government-subsidized institutions, and strong (though admittedly corrupt) organized labor offered protection for many middle-class workers from exploitation by corporate greed. Thus, while our private institutions might have been functioning, so was our public bureaucracy. Moreover, while I support the efforts of private institutions, studies do demonstrate that in comparison with the effectiveness of large-scale public initiatives, their impact has always been marginal at best.

My point is that despite our different perspectives, we do see many of the same problems: poverty, joblessness, out-of-control multinational corporations which lobby for government influence, a self-indulgent populous of “consumers” who have forgotten that they are also “citizens.” However, as long as we paint those on the other side of the fence as “the enemy,” we will never actually bring back into civic participation those who have shrunk into their consumerist lifestyles, and thus, the lynchpin of our democracy, the civic-minded individual, will continue to erode. So, instead of painting our current struggle as a culture war, we might want to realize that most of us who are invested in serving our democracy are actually trying to attack the same difficulties. Then, we might remember that in order to protect our individual liberty, we need citizens who care about each other (yes, even the occasional freeloader) and not just our own little universes.

MEDIA VS. POLITCS: Obama and Fox come to Blows

As many of us know, the Obama administration recently aimed its sites on the conservative news outlet, FOX news. While many of us in the progressive camp have been sounding off for years about the inherent conservative bias of its talking heads, to have an official from the executive branch criticize the newsworthiness of a particular media source forces us to ask some difficult questions. This move, I fear, will merely stoke the fires of conservatism, as it reifies the fears many Americans share about a growing “imperialistic” presidency (in this case, Obama). Also, the issue beckons us to ask what, if any, is the substantial difference between FOX news and other 24-hr media outlets like CNN. How should we, as progressively minded citizens, weigh in on this issue? Can we simply stand by the administration’s position because they are “on our side”? I would suggest a more critical stance here, once we consider the implications of this kind of political discourse.
In liberal circles during the Bush years, it was not uncommon to speak of an imperial presidency. Senators on the floor of the Chamber openly called for Bush’s impeachment, naming him “dictator.” Certainly, the preemptive invasion of Iraq, the claims of torture at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, and the infiltration of privacy from the Patriot Act warned many citizens of the growing independence of the executive branch. Today’s political climate exhibits a clear reversal of the political mood where the conservatives jeer the president’s policies as arrogant and unconstitutional and liberals cheer the moves as necessary to combat the woes of our society. However one sees the situation, when a sitting president attacks the integrity of a single news source, we must all pay attention to the implications from both sides. In one sense, FOX news does contain an inherent conservative bias, not only in its editorial programming but in its reporting as well. The Glenn Beck’s of the world do employ rhetoric that constructs Obama and “liberals” as the great enemy of America, encouraging a political climate ruled by emotion rather than the exploration of carefully reasoned positions. As long as Obama is president, according to this view, the country is headed for trouble. Our culture, these pundits would have us believe, stands in the balance, for the American way is disintegrating. Such fears are nothing new. Huey Long, former governor of Louisiana, deployed radical rhetoric in his attacks on Roosevelt during the Great Depression. And, indeed, in our own day, liberal critics have often chosen to characterize former VP Cheney as a dark, malevolent figure pulling the strings of the Bush White House. Still, the issue for all these parties is the freedom of the press, guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution. Conservatives fear the overtures of the Obama administration are the first almost imperceptible moves to censor public opposition to its policies. And, frankly, as reasonable thinkers, we should consider the implicit concerns here. While not overtly seeking to censor debate, Obama’s staff has taken up the mission of painting FOX as a dubious source. I see this as an indication that public discourse has now largely abandoned reasonable thinking and given way to attacking persons and organizations as simply “evil.” If Bush had directly attacked CNN or ABC as reporting propaganda and not news, liberals undoubtedly would have viewed this as an attempt to interrupt the free press. We, as progressives, need to remember this. After all, while the present form of media might not service our critical thinking skills, the press is still nominally free to choose and, indeed, “distort” the stories reported as they see fit. When a president openly questions the integrity of a news outlet, he is questioning the integrity of the total institution of the press, and this should always arouse the attention of those that support free-thinking. CNN and others certainly employ their own talking heads, albeit somewhat less radical, and construct reporting that chooses some stories rather than others. This is an unavoidable reality of the politics of information in a media-saturated society such as ours. The onus, unfortunately, is on the citizens and not our government to wade through the rhetoric and develop a reasoned position. We cannot approach politics as passive consumers that simply accept what is given to us. Instead, we must actively participate in the construction of public knowledge, lest we relinquish our right to think to the talking heads on our TVs, our radios, and in Washington.