Public-Spirited Citizenship

Leadership and Good Government in the United States

Ralph Ketcham

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351495486
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Any searching look at the theory and practice of citizenship in the United States today is bewildering and disconcerting. Despite earnest concern for participation, access, and "leverage, " there is a widespread perception that nothing citizens do has much meaning or influence. This book argues that for American democracy to work in the twenty-first century, renewed interest in teaching the nation's young citizens a sense of the public good is imperative.All of the nation's founders, especially Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison, addressed the question of whether and how a citizen can make a difference in the American political process. This concern harkens back even farther, to Locke, Erasmus, and Aristotle. Today, one obstacle to good citizenship is the social scientific turn in political science. Leaders in civic education in the twentieth century eschewed grand ideas and moral principles in favour of a focus on behaviourism and competitive, liberal politics. Another problem is the growing belief that the government has no business promoting the public good through the support of religious, educational, or cultural efforts.Ralph Ketcham vividly depicts the relationship of private self-interest and public-spirited action as these pertain to citizenship and good government. This is an enlightening book for the general reader, as well as for students, professional social scientists, and political philosophers.

1

Introduction

A. The Problem of Modern Politics: Rational Choice or Public-Spirited Citizenship

Any searching look at twenty-first-century theory and practice of citizenship in the United States is bewildering and disconcerting. Amid earnest concern for participation, access, and “leverage”—all in a way laudable and important in a democratic society—one also finds the widespread perception that nothing citizens can do seems to have much meaning or influence—or even that such an effort would help very much if it did influence the system. Increased citizen impact and improved quality of government seem to have little or no correlation. Tea Partiers and Wall Street Occupiers alike see “government” as out of control and out of their hands. Both groups struggle earnestly yet frustratingly within the parameters of the current liberal, corporate state to gain such advantages as they can for their aggregated interests. At the same time, vigilance for one’s special interests; foregrounding of racial, ethnic, lifestyle, or religious identities; skillful advocacy; manipulation of the media; and a sophisticated knowledge of how the political process works are offered as the most effective pathways to participation in public life and fulfillment of democratic government.

Citizens (and citizens-to-be) are taught that the “who gets how much of what when” definition of politics characterizes American government. Its institutions, processes, and results can best be understood, it is said, by using that definition, and that such a conflict-of-interest or politics-of-identity model in a liberal corporate state is both realistic and morally acceptable. Citizens are then further taught that their “effectiveness,” and even the discharge of their obligation, depends on active, single-minded participation in that system: to organize, advocate, maneuver, cajole, and bargain become the means of effectiveness— and even of fulfillment of duty. It should not be surprising to find that such teaching and such urging lead to widespread disenchantment as the underlying cynicism about the “process” of government becomes more apparent. Widespread disillusion often spreads as fragmented, inexperienced, and ill-financed fringe groups and associations—though often well-intentioned and justice-seeking—find themselves repeatedly outgunned and outmaneuvered by better-armed entrants in the battle for “how much of what when.” Those who seek justice and any enlarged sense of the public good (“virtue,” in eighteenth-century terms) are told to organize, lobby, demonstrate, and raise money if they want to defeat the narrow partisans and special interests at their own “game.”

What, then, would be a more proper idea of the office of the citizen? If any theory of democracy or government according to the consent of the governed (a “republic,” in Founding Era terms) must ultimately place sovereign authority—the final seat of decision-making power—in the people, then the performance of the citizen is critically important. The citizen, in a self-governing body politic, is the ruler. As such, he or she must, ideally, have a measure of the careful education, the high sense of duty and obligation, the disinterestedness, and the deliberate training and apprenticeship in job or lifestyle that are always assumed essential for the good ruler, at least if the society is to experience wise and virtuous government.

For the western world the inquiry undertaken in Plato’s Republic has properly set the question. If virtue—wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice—is essential to the good life, how can it be made the foundation of a state? Plato’s answer is that the state must be ruled and directed by those whose character embodies this virtue, that is, by philosopher-kings. Only thus could there exist a society that would go beyond mere survival, material wealth, or imperial power. For this reason Plato lavishes attention on the education and training of those who are to rule: in order to ensure that they will indeed be wise, courageous, temperate, just, and public-spirited. Plato insists upon decades of a thoroughgoing liberal education, firm distancing of rulers from the prejudicing temptations of family (nepotism) and ownership of property (corruption), and long practice in the efficient, disinterested administration of public affairs so that the quality of rule is guaranteed—a high ideal, of course. But Socrates’s reply to Glaucon’s skepticism that it “has its being only in words” and that “there is no spot on earth where it exists” is uplifting: “It is laid up in heaven,” Socrates replied, “for him who wills to see, and seeing, to found that city in himself.”¹

Plato, of course, believed that only a very few people possessed the talents and wisdom required of the ruling philosopher-kings. To identify, cull, and educate these people would be a vital task of the republic. Aristotle went on to emphasize the exacting nature of citizenship, explaining that in a government of the many, “all must have the virtue of the good citizen.” Only then, he wrote, could a state “seek not life merely, but the good life . . . [and] be perfect.” With the same connection in mind, Aquinas, Erasmus, and other Christian philosophers wrote of the “education of the Christian prince” as the key to a political society consistent with their worldviews.

In the Founding Era Thomas Jefferson and others accepted this understanding and believed that democracy, government by the people, would be a tragic farce unless those holding the final power were wise, courageous, temperate, just, and public-spirited, that is, virtuous. All agreed that the governors must be wise and virtuous, whether they are one, a few, or many. This perspective differs from much modern discussion of political participation, which often assumes that there is no objective standard of virtue—what Jefferson called “ideal right,” Benjamin Franklin “public spirit,” and Jonathan Swift and Barack Obama “public good.” Indeed, a good deal of contemporary argument asserts that there is no such objective standard—no body of principles, natural law, “habits of civility,” or “mandate of heaven”—that can define the goals or purposes of a society. Thus all votes, opinions, intentions, identities, cultures, and interests must be accorded more or less equal validity and be given more or less equal weight in making decisions. “Input” is emphasized. The need is to register all views, take into account all interests, and foreground all identity groups, under an assumption that society—in the United States’s case, “the Union”—is merely a heterogeneous aggregation of diverse, inclusive parts.

This book argues that for the American democracy to work in the twenty-first century, there must be a renewed interest in teaching the nation’s young citizens a sense of the public good. All of the nation’s founders, especially Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison, shared this concern, especially as put forth in the thinking of Aristotle, Erasmus, and Locke. Among the problems to be overcome is the social scientific turn in political science—that is, that leaders in civic education in the twentieth century eschewed grand ideas and moral principles in favor of a focus on behaviorism and competitive, liberal politics. Also problematic was a growing belief that the government had no business promoting the public good, through the support of religion in general or through any other educational or cultural effort to nourish or “improve” public opinion or sentiment.

For example, in Britain, the United States, and other mature democracies, as religion and ideological education are increasingly set aside, preoccupation with the widest possible voting franchise continues. Easy “access” to the process for all individuals and groups is made easy, in order to realize more fully the principle of “one person, one vote.” Even when these reforms have been made in democracies, preoccupation with the widest possible voting franchise continues. Removal of literacy and residence requirements for voting, ease of registration, and participation by all who are in any way disbarred—in the past, those who were of the wrong race or gender, or who did not own property; and more recently, those who are ex-felons, illegal immigrants, mentally retarded, or young people—are cardinal objectives. The point is not that expanded participation is not desirable; powerful arguments on its behalf exist, of course, but it may not be of the essence. One can readily imagine poorer government in a society where “access” is easy and participation universal. Walter Lippmann observed in 1920 that passage of the women’s suffrage amendment “resulted in the election of Harding.” Others have noted that giving the vote to eighteen-year-olds in 1971 was followed by the reelection of Nixon. Participation may broaden and heighten motivation to understand public affairs, and in that way might be of central importance, but access seems sometimes to facilitate corrupt, partial intentions. Merely taking part can be for good or for ill. Pericles, for example, called un–public-spirited, inattentive participation “useless” in sustaining a just and prosperous state.

If no concept of ideal right or public good is even entertained within a nation’s political consciousness, then the role of the citizen will quite naturally and properly become that of the exerter of private or group will. If larger, transcending perspectives have been set aside, what else is left, after all, other than “personal preference” or “rational choice” that seeks one’s self-interest? “Preparation for citizenship” then requires little more than that members of the body politic know and seek effectively whatever they take to be in their best interest individually, or in the best interest of the particular group, or groups, of which they feel a part. The essential training for citizenship would be intricate knowledge of “how the system really works,” shrewd understanding of how and where to exert pressure to achieve particular objectives, and skill in finding and negotiating with at least partially like-minded others.

The effect of such an idea of citizenship is apparent from the earliest efforts to acculturate young people into a political system. In public schools the emphasis is not on the polity as a whole, on understanding an “ideal right” or a public good that students might see as a basis for their society. Rather, it is on ever-sharper perceptions of individual interests and objectives, on the identity and needs of the groups of which students are a part, on the skills of organization and campaigning that would gain power for individuals and groups, on studying political behavior, and on how power worked. Of course, this rather practical approach to political education is important, and one would find little to object to in any of the parts. Surely it is desirable, for example, for young citizens to learn how the political system works, formally and informally; to be skilled organizers and campaigners; and to see the political implications of their individual and group interests. Surely citizens need to know how their own efforts and skills could be brought to bear on the political process and be encouraged to be “active” citizens. Young people thus educated, we might assume, would be good defenders and advocates of their individual and group interests, and thus effective opponents of efforts by others to exert undue influence or concentrate power in unfair or dangerous ways. As theorists of interest group politics from Hume and Madison onward have pointed out, the multiplicity of “factions” spawned by a free society and given voice in public life by democratic institutions can be effective preventers of tyranny. The simple plausibility in this scheme can be grasped easily and felt readily in the give-and-take of politics in a free society.

Madison’s model of contending factions, in which each limits the other in the public arena, and the emphasis on politics as “give-and-take” both suggest a kind of working together and common interest essential even in a polity thought of as an aggregation of “parts” calculus, or process of accommodation and compromise to work out the “resultant” of the contending forces. In such a model citizens need, and would likely develop, valuable negotiating skills: seeking out areas of agreement and sensing where and how to concede nonessentials in order to protect more basic needs, while displaying good humor toward one’s opponents. One can even speak of an “ethics of compromise,” of a “spiritual amplitude,” in accepting in good grace less than what one earnestly sought. These skills, though, do not open up and enlarge the idea of citizenship as a shared, public enterprise that asks members of a body politic to explore and discuss, together, what might enrich the life of the community and to seek, together, the ideals and aspirations that would enhance and fulfill both individual and social life. The wisdom of citizen rulers must, in this understanding, be more than procedural.

Citizens preoccupied with political behavior, with a description of what is happening politically, and with a quantitative analysis of political events and processes without any thought of transcending common purposes are left largely with the “who gets how much of what when” dynamic that requires a grasp of the facts and realities of political behavior. Within this understanding the citizen must become as much as possible a social scientist, that is, a sociologist with a knowledge of the groups, classes, and institutions of society; an economist conversant with the production and distribution of resources; a political scientist versed in the realities of the political system; and a social psychologist who understands and can work effectively with human “behaviors.”

This conception of citizenship is not so much wrong as it is problematic. One need only recall Jimmy Carter’s poignant complaint in his farewell address that the most serious obstacle he faced in trying to lead and govern the nation was the increasing tendency of “single-issue groups and special interest organizations to ensure that whatever else happens, our own personal views and our own private interests are protected.” This was especially disturbing, Carter noted, since “it tends to distort our [national] purposes, because the national interest is not always the sum of all our single or special interests. . . . The common good is our common interest and our individual responsibility.”²

Ronald Reagan proclaimed the same sense of common purpose when he called for a government as good and as good-hearted as its people, and Barack Obama when he called the nation in 2008 to “resist the partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.” He reclaimed concern for the common good and the values of “self-reliance and individual liberty and national unity” that Lincoln had brought to the White House a century and a half earlier.

Carter, Reagan, Obama, and Lincoln felt frustrated in their efforts to provide national leadership because the particular rather than the general, the parts rather than the Union, loomed so large. Though this attitude might not have been so harmful at some stages of our history, given the current need for “greener” energy policy, environmental sustainability, improved industrial and technological productivity, and expanded international trade, it may be simply calamitous that a president can find so little constituency “to promote the general welfare.” Carter had emphasized three urgent global problems—“the threat of nuclear destruction, our stewardship of the physical resources of our planet, and the pre-eminence of the basic rights of human beings”—that required for responsible resolution a sense in all nations of the public good. These challenges still stand before us. Their resolution cannot be left to the interplay of local or special interests, or to the comforting view of citizenship as requiring no more than the pursuit in politics of individual or group concerns. In 1714, in The Fable of the Bees, Bernard Mandeville had encapsulated the basis of modern conflict-of-interest politics with the mantra “private vice is public benefit.” In Adam Smith’s economic formulation, an “invisible hand” guided the self-seeking of innumerable private individuals toward “the wealth of nations.” In our postmodern era, though, the unguided pursuit of private interests may not be public benefit, or, all things considered, not even be individual benefit—in Alexander Pope’s scathing condemnation, “See all nature in some partial narrow shape, and let the author of the whole escape. . . . Find virtue local, all relation scorn / See all in self, and but for self be born.”

B. Human Nature in Good and Bad Citizenship

Just as problematic in American history as the self-centered view of citizenship has been the impoverished, perhaps even “irretrievably absurd,” conception, as Mark Roelofs has put it, of human nature it projects.³ In some sense this narrowing idea of human nature is the culmination, the logical fulfillment, of the understanding of the individual and of his or her relation to the state that has been gaining currency in the western world for centuries. If the independence, the desires, and the creativity of the individual parts are emphasized, then it is consistent to emphasize a citizenship that projects individual and group concerns into public life. This justification applies, moreover, whether the individual concerns projected are thought of as “moral” (for example, Thoreau’s conscience-propelled abolitionism, or evangelical support of Prohibition) or are put forth candidly as “special interests” (grocery store managers opposing bottle-return laws or HMOs opposing single-payer medical plans). In both cases the political involvement is seen as an extension of private or group values or needs into public life. If, as John Stuart Mill put it, “individual vigor and manifold diversity,” the hallmarks of human progress, required “freedom and variety of situations” to flourish, then man’s role as citizen would need to be defined to sustain that.⁴ That is, for unique “self-actualizing” individuals or experience-formed groups, the appropriate political obligation would be simply to project personal or group needs or interests into public life. In fact, if society itself is thought of as an aggregation of parts that exists to enhance the freedom and fulfillment of those parts, then the “projection of priv...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Premodern Ideas of Good Government and Citizenship
• 3 Citizenship and Moral Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century
• 4 Political Science, the Reconstruction of Citizenship, and the Nature of Government in the Twentieth Century
• 5 Counterpoints to Conflict-of-Interest Politics and to Minimal Citizenship
• 6 Citizenship, the “Influence of Norms,” and the Public Good
• 7 Public-Spirited Citizenship
• Appendix: The Maxwell School and Citizenship, 1924–2012
• Index