Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Political Theory

  • India’s Internal Clash of Civilizations

    It was no strange coincidence that the day the Indian parliament convened for the first time since American president Barack Obama addressed it this month, praising India’s rise as a world power, proceedings were disrupted because of a scam charged against telecom minister A. Raja.

    It is an irony that a statesman of the stature of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh could not afford to dismiss Raja due to petty party politics.

    India is nothing if not a kaleidoscope of superficial and competing images. It is the only country in the world, for instance, to simultaneously speak of ahimsa (nonviolence) and nuclear deterrence. However, the stark is too big and cracks are widening. (more…)

  • Freedom of the Press, Speech and Liberty

    Independence Day, for me, is symbolic of the ability to freely express opinions; the hallmark of a free society. It was Thomas Jefferson who wrote, in 1791, that, “Government being founded on opinion, the opinion of the public, even when it is wrong, ought to be respected to a certain degree.”

    In the United States, it is commonplace to hear partisans and pundits on both sides of the political spectrum accuse one another of intellectual laziness and moral laxity. I maintain that it is impossible to prove such charges because they are dependent upon the perception and cultural lens of the individual leveling the charge.

    The issues raised by the debates over the intrinsic value of The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Twilight, and the Golden Compass series provide examples of this tendency. The current legal challenges have expressed a wide array of viewpoints that represent the opposing ends of the sociopolitical spectrum and the many shades of grey in between. These debates have resulted in many intensely heated exchanges and debates between conservatives and liberals.

    Social conservatives argue that these series promote religious systems and beliefs that are contrary to the religious traditions of the United States by advocating intellectual principles that denigrate traditional forms of education. They favor school libraries limiting access or completely barring students from accessing the aforementioned series by either restricting the ability of students to checkout their books, or by banning them from collections outright.

    Conversely, social liberals maintain that interest in these series encourages students to read and serve to develop literacy skills and provide opportunities to nurture critical thinking. Liberals assert that by limiting the right of students to read series in the vein of The Lord of the Rings promotes a culture which embraces censorship and inhibits the intellectual development of students. Being too restrictive in allowing students access to this literature would be inimical to the freedoms of press and speech as enshrined in the First Amendment.

    Despite their differences, there exists at least one point upon which both parties can agree as a matter of principle. Any attempt to mandate or make compulsory a single opinion is anathema to each. Every conservative, liberal, moderate or independent regardless of social, economic or political leanings would concur with Voltaire’s long-held maxim — “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

    The fact that a dispute over a series of books that began its life as an issue at school board meeting has evolved into a court case and made its way into a legal setting is deeply disturbing.

    It seems to me the continued endurance and health of the republic requires that individuals take great care and remain wary of utilizing the legal system to impose through force of law an individual viewpoint as Robert Jackson eloquently pointed out in 1943.

    Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.

    Officials face the dilemma of censorship on a daily basis and must tread carefully because the freedoms of speech and the press are among the most treasured by Americans. Yet of all the rights endowed to the American people, the freedoms of speech and press are the most difficult to wield. The power to use speech freely grants to an individual the ability to influence others as President Woodrow Wilson once pointed out.

    I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking. It cannot be so easily discovered if you allow him to remain silent and look wise, but if you let him speak, the secret is out and the world knows that he is a fool. So it is by the exposure of folly that it is defeated; not by the seclusion of folly, and in this free air of free speech men get into that sort of communication with one another which constitutes the basis of all common achievement.

    Considering the current social, political, and economic ongoing within the nation we as Americans possess a duty to exert the rights, privileges, and duties under the Constitution of the United States and to maintain the vitality of our republic. The continued freedom of the nation lies within their respect for the liberties of the individual as Learned Hand asserted in 1944.

    What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the mind of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near 2,000 years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned but never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.

    It is only with the preservation of liberties that justice and freedom can endure, continue to grow and flourish in the face of all challenges.

  • The Decline of States’ Rights

    With a population of over three hundred million people and an increasingly diverse set of principles and opinions, the United States has a growth problem.

    The Founding Fathers predicted this issue and emphasized the importance of local governments. Their logic: that people with similar principles will congregate in similar areas. As members of the overall country, the process is made simple and requires no special passport or application. Smaller communities can take a stand on issues of importance and make an exception for their jurisdiction.

    The individual state, as originally intended as the largest of these communities, has now been subverted by an even larger national one. We are increasingly merging into the United State as opposed to a collection of United States. Just saying the “United State” sends 1984 chills down my spine.

    Here’s the problem; the federal government is growing. Just look at the latest bailout bill, national health-care legislation or TARP funds. It doesn’t end there either; just a few days ago another smaller $15 billion dollar billion “jobs bill” was passed.

    Do you believe in socialized medicine? You have a right to that belief, but why forces it on every other state instead of making it a priority in your own? Massachusetts attempted health-care reform and it didn’t work out too well. But they have a much better chance of successfully overhauling their system because they have a population of 6.5 million compared to three hundred million. Do you trust the government to efficiently run a project of that size?

    Then there is the issue of majority opinion. Even if they manage a 51 percent majority consensus on an issue like health care (which is impossible), wouldn’t you rather have a larger percentage? If every state had a different health-care initiative, people could rally more successfully for what they want. Why not take it a step further and bring it down to counties and cities. There would be less need to compromise on crucial issues and more chance of a higher ratio of majority acceptance. And best of all, your opinion and your voice are (literally) much more likely to be heard and appreciated.

    Look at your local proposals for the last few years; individual states and communities can actually make decisions with greater than a 60 percent popular vote! How likely is that on the national scale? In the local scenario you would have the freedom to go or move to another city, county or state if you really cared enough about certain issues. And you wouldn’t have to change your citizenship.

  • Participation — Why Bother?

    Participate? Why? You’ve got enough people in your movement that I shouldn’t have to participate. I don’t need to join your group, you guys will do the work for m–

    A free glossy magazine? Group potlucks? A tote bag with a logo on it? Why didn’t you say so?! I’m in!

    The above is just one illustration of how leaders of informal political processes mobilize people; by offering selective benefits (as Mancur Olsen and many others suggest), a group can gain members, money, and thus power. Because public goods are, by definition, public and usable by all, they have the opportunity to fall victim to the tragedy of the commons–overuse by selfish (or perhaps rational-thinking?) individuals.

    Indeed, Olsen and many others wonder why Joe the UPS Delivery Man Who Never Comes On Time and Jane the Part-Time Working Mother Who Is Completing Her Master’s Degree At Night School bother to participate in informal processes at all — why fight for something that other people can fight for for you? (more…)

  • How Disturbed Are You?

    No, really, how disturbed are you? Disturbed enough to join a social movement? Maybe help out as a checkbook member? Perhaps you’re disturbed enough to go out and start your own social movement.

    But wait a second — are you rich? You aren’t. Well, that may cause some difficulties. You see, the heavenly choir sings with an upper-class accent (as E.E. Schattschneider tells us), because clearly they are able to represent their interests better than you, shall I say, more “blue-collar” types. (more…)

  • Why Do We Bowl?

    Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

    In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam suggests that we act politically because of a shared trust and sense of community. Other political scientists (such as Benedict Anderson) believe that cultural cleavages are what drive us to act. Still others (Lipset, Almond, Verba) think that a shared tradition and shared cultural norms are what drive our political activity. These culturalist schools of political science all have merits and all can explain some past forms of political motivations.

    Putnam’s idea of shared trust (“social capital”) and sense of community can explain a lot and is closely related to those who believe in a shared tradition and cultural norms as motivational factors. (more…)

  • What We Call the News

    This title stolen from JibJab’s song of the same title found here.

    In talking about the information networks of the twenty-first century, one cannot omit the rise of the Internet and the revitalization of conversational media.

    As lecturer Alex Whalen has told us, in the first era of the American newspaper, conversation was key; the back page of every newspaper was left blank for people to leave their comments. These newspapers were passed from person to person and the conversation was looked upon by the founders as vital to a republic.

    Indeed, in the words of Jack Anderson, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist:

    Thomas Jefferson… He advocated and supported a free press and yet Thomas Jefferson was savaged by the press. He was excoriated by the press. He was abused more by the press than Bill Clinton or Richard Nixon or anybody that we have had in recent times. Thomas Jefferson was savaged by the press. Excoriated. And he was human. He didn’t like it. He went nose to nose with a couple of editors in Philadelphia. He said to one Philadelphia paper: “Nothing in this paper is true, with the possible exception of the advertising, and I question that.” And yet that wise Thomas Jefferson, in a moment of truth, said, “If I had to choose between government without newspapers and newspapers without government, I wouldn’t hesitate to choose the latter.” After all he had been through, he was wise enough to understand. And there is no one here that has been through as much as Thomas Jefferson.

    But now, with information almost instantly available to us from more sources than we have ever had available to us before, what effect will this conversation have?

    For a little less than a century, we have been completely reliant on one-way media — television, newsreels, radio — that turn the general public into passive consumers of information.

    Now, with tools like this blog and the newly-added comment sections on the websites of major news outlets, as well as online forums and Twitter, conversation is making news interactive again, much like in colonial times. (more…)