The Best American Infographics 2013

"Artists have always been the real purveyors of news ..." - John Dewey

I've not actually seen this (initial, I think) installment of The Best American Infographics but I intend to track it down. A great idea. Why? Because instruments for communicating quantities are centrally important to both social science and democratic politics. (On this see Dewey, The Public & Its Problems (1927), especially the end of chapter five.) And so, becoming aware of strong practice in this domain is crucial.

Will Paul Ryan Recant (Again)?

Where is it written that Jesus refers to the poor as "parasites"? In all my years at Sacred Heart school I do not remember that ever being among the lessons. The church has at least the good taste to be hypocritical in its commitment to the meek and the poor.

Not so Paul Ryan, allegedly chosen to be the Vice Presidential candidate of the Republican party in large part for his traditional family values and Catholic faith. It turns out that he is an acolyte of the intellectual charlatan Ayn Rand. As is well known, Rand peddled a view called "objectivism," a doctrine of egoism that mostly appeals to post-adolescent American boys. In real life could not herself adhere to the doctrine. And, of course, the heroes of Rand's drivel are wholly warranted, on her account, in treating the poor with disdain. Make no mistake, the only ones who - with a straight face -  categorize Rand as a philosopher are the poor folks who need to shelve her works in big box bookstores.

Well, the conservatives started a drumbeat early on demanding that Obama renounce his pastor - that devilish Rev. Wright. It will be delicious to see if the Democrats make Ryan endure the same sort of show trial tactics. It also should be fun to watch as libertarians scurry about trying to place distance between their allegedly credible intellectual commitments and the nuttiness of Rand and Ryan. They should get a feel for what pragmatists have felt for four years as Obama slandered our good name!

An Interview with Vijay Iyer

"The arts are not something separate from us. I think that when we deal with . . . hierarchical notions of culture, we tend to think of the arts as something we go to, rather than something that is a part of us. And I guess my life experience with music has always been the opposite. It’s always been that we are the arts. And I say that with the utmost humility, because when I say “we” I don’t mean “we artists,” I mean we, as humanity. It’s something that has to be continuous with our daily lives, and I’m not interested in creating some kind of distance, or some sort of divide, between the arts and life as we live it every day." - Vijay Iyer

I stumbled across an interview with jazz pianist Vijay Iyer (follow link above) about whom I have posted here before. I picked out this passage mostly because it  seems to me as continuous with Dewey's notion of 'art as experience.' Iyer is from the local area. I've never had the chance to hear him perform live, but very much anticipate getting the chance to do so. And while I am here I will plug the latest in a string of astoundingly good recordings that Iyer has released in recent years.

Recommended Reading: Pragmatic Utopianism as "The Future of Black Politics"

You can find a smart and provocative essay by Michael Dawson (along with a set of pointed responses) here at The Boston Review. I agree with a much of what Dawson has to say about the crucial importance of African-Americans to any viable progressive political mobilization in the U.S.. Yet I am persuaded too by Tommie Shelby's insistence (in his comment on Dawson) on the importance of multi-racial political organizations. (More generally, I wonder if Dawson might craft a reply by building upon the distinction, articulated by Bob Moses and Charles Payne as they channel Ella Baker, between mobilization and organization and on the crucial importance of both for progressive politics.) Finally, and perhaps gratuitously, I wish Dawson had felt less need to rely on the pronouncements of obscurantist leftist "theorists" like Badiou and Žižek. I simply have no patience for them. He should stick with the tradition of African-American political thought from DuBois through King and Malcolm X to Walter Mosley. Reconnect that to the American political theory of pragmatism from Dewey to Unger and Cornel West, and you have more than sufficient resources to spell out the sort of pragmatic utopianism Dawson advocates.

Robb Westbrook

Late in this past Spring Term, my colleague Robb Westbrook was installed as the inaugural Joseph F. Cunningham Professor of History here at Rochester. It is an extremely well deserved, overdue honor. Robb is a remarkably accomplished intellectual historian. This is a picture of him, lifted from this story in The Rochester Review, giving a talk at the investiture. In my years at the university Robb has been an extremely generous colleague; he has twice tolerated my sitting in on his seminar on American Pragmatism. Indeed, it is likely that he's forgotten more about pragmatism than I ever have learned. Over the years he has sent a steady stream of smart graduate students my way - mostly for reading courses in this or that aspect of modern political theory or with requests that I serve as examiner on their oral exams. Given that my own department has virtually abandoned political theory as an area of graduate study, those students have provided a welcome source of insight and discussion. Robb and his students, in short, have been crucial to my intellectual life in Rochester. All I can say is Thanks!

Human Rights, Democracy, Pragmatism

"Thus, we come down to what is tangible and conceivably practical, as the root of every real distinction of thought, no matter how subtle it may be; and there is no distinction of meaning so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice" ~ C.S. Peirce (1878) "How To Make Our Ideas Clear"

At The New York Times blog "The Stone" today, Anat Bilezki has posted this nice, deflationary piece on human rights. More specifically, she argues that in one sense it makes no practical difference whether one grounds one's commitment to human rights in secular or religious terms.

"What difference does it make? [. . .] Why do we care, or why should we care, if the practice of human rights is born of religious or secular motivation?

Take a look at how we work on the ground, so to speak; look at how we do human rights, for example, in Israel-Palestine. When Rabbi Arik Ascherman, the leader of Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel, squats in the mud trying to stop soldiers who have come to set a blockade around a village or fights settlers who have come to uproot olive trees (as he has done so often, in villages like Yanoun and Jamain and Biddu, in the last decade) along with me (from B’Tselem — the Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories), or a group of secular kids from Anarchists Against the Wall, or people from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions — and he does this on a Friday afternoon, knowing full well that he might be courting religious transgression should the Sabbath arrive — does it matter that his reasons for doing so spring from his faith while the anarchists’ derive from their secular political worldview and B’Tselem’s and ICAHD’s from secular international human rights law? The end-product, the human rights activity, is similar, even identical; but the reason, the intention, the motivation for it are distinctly different. Does that matter?

In terms of active promotion of human rights, Bilezki clearly thinks the answer to her final question is simple - "no." But looking further into the political context she insists that the answer is "yes, it matters" and here she looks at the way authority works in political discourse, especially political disagreement. She insists, rightly, I think, that properly religious authority, deriving as it does from some belief in the divine - what she identifies as "God's command" - is a way of preempting political disagreement and debate with a call to simple obedience.

"The problem arises not when we act together, but rather when we don’t. Or put differently, when we act together, the problem stays in the realm of theory, providing fodder for the philosophical game of human rights. It is when we disagree — about abortion, about capital punishment, about settling occupied lands — that the religious authority must vacate the arena of human rights. This is not to say that all religious people hold the same views on these issues or that secular persons are always in agreement (although opinion polls, for whatever they are worth, point to far more unity of thought on the religious side). It is rather that an internal, secular debate on issues that pertain to human rights is structurally and essentially different from the debate between the two camps. In the latter, the authority that is conscripted to “command” us on the religious side is God, while on the secular side it is the human, with her claim to reason, her proclivity to emotion, and her capacity for compassion. In a sense, that is no commandment at all. It is a turn to the human, and a (perhaps axiomatic, perhaps even dogmatic) posit of human dignity, that turns the engine of human rights, leaving us open to discussion, disagreement, and questioning without ever deserting that first posit. The parallel turn to God puts our actions under his command; if he commands a violation of human rights, then so be it."

In the U.S., of course, the most obvious recent instance of this phenomenon has appeared in the "debate" over gay marriage in which many opponents insist that it is "God's command" that gay and lesbian people be excluded from equal rights. Invoking God in that context forecloses debate by excluding a segment of the population from the category "human" to which human rights apply. Bilezki, it seems to me, runs aground insofar as she intimates that a commitment to rights is or can be grounded in compassion. That is a topic for another time. But she is just right when she focuses not on agreement but on disagreement and on what we do, how we proceed, when we disagree. This, on my view, places the importance of democratic politics into relief - for democratic politics is best understood as a way of structuring disagreement.

I began with an observation from Peirce. It is a good general rule, I think. But it places pressure on us to consider consequences in the subtle way Bilezki does in this piece.

Beautiful Science

Q: What are the things you find most beautiful in science?

Science is beautiful when it makes simple explanations of phenomena or connections between different observations. Examples include the double helix in biology, and the fundamental equations of physics.

The opening quotation is a question posed to and answered by physicist Stephen Hawking. You can find an excerpt from the interview here at The Guardian. It brings to mind one of the books that is most influential in my thinking these days, which is by philosopher Hilary Putnam and is entitled The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and other Essays.* In the book Putnam argues against subscribing to a view of science (and social science in particular) as sustained by a strict metaphysical dichotomy between facts and values. The world simply does not come pre-packaged in that way. Sure we can draw a distinction between the two for specific purposes in particular situations. But that is that. Against those who seek to inflate some such particular distinction into a full-fledged, comfort affording dichotomy, Putnam offers something of a pincer argument. He suggests that (i) on the one hand, most views of "facts" are sustained by suspect philosophical commitments and (ii) values are plural and that they are entangled with our pursuit of scientific knowledge in complex ways. In particular he suggests that we become less pre-occupied with putatively "moral" or "ethical" values and recognize the ubiquity of cognitive and aesthetic values in science. Hence the way Hawking's comment reverberates: simple explanations are beautiful.
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* Hilary Putnam. 2004. The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays. Harvard University Press. I will note too that the color scheme of the cover is consistent with other recent works by prominent pragmatists.

The Priority of Democracy

"Knight and Johnson have written an essential volume for scholars, public officials, and citizens living in the contemporary era. They stress that democracy does not just work by itself. No single design enables every democracy to generate fair and effective outcomes given the vast diversity of circumstances around the world. Knight and Johnson examine factors that increase the likelihood that democratic systems can be effective."- Elinor Ostrom, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics

"Knight and Johnson have provided us with an excellent extension of Dewey's idea that democracy and experimentalism walk hand in hand. They put forward a pragmatist or epistemic justification of democracy, arguing that democratic decision making delivers the best answers, and they show us what legal, economic, and political institutions are conducive to getting those good answers. Anyone interested in deliberative democracy will do well to read this book."- Cheryl Misak, University of Toronto

"This is a very important book that has the potential to become a classic. Highly ambitious, it provides a compelling, realistic, and genuinely original way of thinking about democracy. Even if democracy cannot transform interests or produce harmony, Knight and Johnson argue, it has crucial pragmatic benefits that cannot be reproduced by any other forms of social organization, whether markets, courts, or bureaucracies." - Henry Farrell, George Washington University

"This is a major book. It represents a significant advance in democratic theory, contributing to both political economy and political theory approaches to democracy. It addresses fundamental questions of institutional choice and the justification and possibilities of the institutions we establish. In the process it also illuminates when decentralized decision-making is possible and normatively appropriate. Furthermore, it resuscitates John Dewey as a key analyst of democracy, making pragmatism relevant again for contemporary democratic theory." - Margaret Levi, University of Washington and University of Sydney

The book is being published jointly by Princeton University Press and the Russell Sage Foundation. Information here.

Pragmatism, Politics, and Disagreement

Stephen Breyer, 2009. Photograph Credit: Chicago Tribune.

Much has been made recently about Obama and his putative pragmatism - where by the latter I mean not simply opportunism but a philosophical position with political implications.* I think that that characterization of Obama is strained, at best. As an indication of why, I suggest that you watch the short clip included in this report. The clip is part of an interview that Justice Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court gave this morning with Chris Wallace at FOX News. Breyer is himself on tour, peddling a new book.** There are two issues on which Breyer seems especially astute. First, is his appreciation of the visual aspects of political ritual, in this case the annual State of the Union address. But, second and more importantly, Breyer who himself claims to be a pragmatist, stresses through out the segment the importance of diversity and disagreement. He, unlike Obama, is not all about consensus and compromise. So, while conservatives on the court took umbrage when - in a rare moment of actual progressive chutzpah (defined as audacity) - Obama criticized their Citizens United decision in last year's address, Breyer seems to welcome such disagreement as healthy. He is quite clear that while the court issues opinions in support of their decisions, the American population will - quite legitimately - challenge those opinions. So he is concerned less with forging consensus than with the basic issue of how disagreement can be structured in such a way that legislation and judicial decisions can be accepted and, hence, be effective. In raising that issue, and in recognizing the importance of robust disagreement, he makes both his colleagues on the court and Chris Wallace, the FOX interviewer - with their notion that the court is somehow due automatic deference - appear especially feeble.
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* James Kloppenberg. 2010. Reading Obama ~ Dreams, Hope & the American Political Tradition. Princeton University Press.
** Stephen Breyer. 2010. Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge's View. Knopf.

Cheering Education Follies at The Times

"The countries that have left the United States behind in math and science education have one thing in common: They offer the same high education standards — often the same curriculum — from one end of the nation to the other. The United States relies on a generally mediocre patchwork of standards that vary, not just from state to state, but often from district to district. A child’s education depends primarily on ZIP code.

That could eventually change if the states adopt the new rigorous standards proposed last week by the National Governors Association and a group representing state school superintendents. The proposal lays out clear, ambitious goals for what children should learn year to year and could change curriculums, tests and teacher training."

Those are the opening paragraphs of this editorial at The New York Times today. The folks there are very enthusiastic about the newly proposed standards. Let's just say I am dubious. I don't know the details of the proposal the editorial endorses. One can only imagine. But I have some views about the general, persistent, wrong-headed clamor for standardization.

First, it may well be true that a "child's education depends primarily on ZIP code." But the most obvious way that dependence occurs is in terms of financing. In the U.S. we rely on local property taxes to fund schools. The resulting inequalities are shameful. Standards will remedy neither that underlying problem nor the educational s it generates. What might is an overhaul of educational funding. If you are searching for something to make uniform, to standardize, nationalize the formula for education expenditures per pupil.

Second, I've not checked, but will give odds that the "countries that have left the United States behind in math and science education have" more than "one thing in common" beyond national education standards. I will bet the vast majority also have considerably lower rates of childhood poverty. I'll bet too that they have considerably less dramatic inequalities in the distribution of wealth and income. Go look. You can read the results into my first point.

But let's not follow the money. Surely, that would be too crass and would lead conservatives to crow that I simply have low expectations for poor kids and the schools that serve them. Pointing out that educational attainment reflects economic inequalities is simply an excuse, right? Wrong.

The first thing to note is a bit of rhetoric. Proponents of national standards, and the institutional uniformity - in terms of curricula, testing, teacher training - they would impose, engage in a none-too-subtle bit of persuasive definition. Their proposal is for "standards," making them hard-nosed and realistic. By contrast those of us who think that program of reform is misguided must, of necessity, be opposed to standards, right? Hence we support what? Laxity, coddling students, soft-headedness? No, we support democracy and educational attainment. The language of conservative reformers seeks to hide that.

The second, related thing to note is that the standards movement is fundamentally authoritarian and anti-democratic. Here is educator Deborah Meier on educational standardization:

"Even in the hands of sincere allies of children, equity, and public education, the current push for far greater standardization than we’ve ever previously attempted is fundamentally misguided. It will not help to develop young minds, contribute to a robust democratic life, or aid the most vulnerable of our fellow citizens. By shifting the locus of authority to outside bodies, it undermines the capacity of schools to instruct by example in the qualities of mind that schools in a democracy should be fostering in kids–responsibility for one’s own ideas, tolerance for the ideas of others, and a capacity to negotiate differences. Standardization instead turns teachers and parents into the local instruments of externally imposed expert judgment. It thus decreases the chances that young people will grow up in the midst of adults who are making hard decisions and exercising mature judgment in the face of disagreements. And it squeezes out those schools and educators that seek to show alternate possibilities, to explore other paths.

The standardization movement is not based on a simple mistake. It rests on deep assumptions about the goals of education and the proper exercise of authority in the making of decisions– assumptions we ought to reject in favor of a different vision of a healthy democratic society."

On the view Meier advances - and that she and others have implemented, repeatedly, in innovative schools located in decided un-affluent neighborhoods** - standards and the alternatives that ground genuine school choice emerge from local debates about the aims and organization of education. What she argues for are the sorts of standards that experimentation generates and it is difficult to see how standardization will promote that.

The third thing to note is that the standards movement is parasitic on a narrow understanding of the aims of education. Hence, the editorialists at The Times assert blithely that there is some consensus that schools ought to deliver "the skills students will need," but they do so without forming the question - skills for what? Roberto Unger***, for instance, identifies the importance for economic development and democratization of implementing "a form of education addressed to the development of generic conceptual and practical capacities rather than mastery of job-specific skills." He goes on to insist that such education be "administered in youth and made available throughout a working life." And he summarizes his view in this way:

"The distinguishing traits of such a form of education are to be analytical and problematic rather than informational; to prefer exemplary selective deepening to encyclopedic coverage; to encourage cooperation rather than isolation or authoritarianism, in learning and teaching; and to proceed dialectically - that is to say, by the exploration of contrasting methods and views rather than by appeal to a closed canon and right doctrine."

I suspect that this broad set of features is not what the conservative reformers who peddle standards have in mind. But Unger surely would agree with Robert Moses about the need to teach kids - all kids - algebra, not because they need to know algebra per se, but because learning algebra affords them practice in the sort of abstract thinking that is required if they hope to be productive citizens and creative workers capable of navigating the increasingly treacherous labor market. As Meier proposes, it might be that learning statistics could perform a similar function. The point is that mathematical literacy is important not just for its own sake but because it has political and economic consequences.

Oh, and finally, the folks at The Times editorial page might try reading their own paper. In recent weeks the news on the "education" pages has highlighted: (i) The apostasy of Dianne Ravitch, one of the leading proponents of conservative educational reform, who's become persuaded that the reform agenda she preached is deeply misguided. The source of her change of heart? She apparently looked at the evidence. [1] [2]; (ii) The financial disaster in Kansas City Missouri and its effects on the public schools - especially on the matter of school size (conservative reformers typically discount the importance of small schools and small classes) and racial and political-economic inequities. [3] [4]; And (iii) the concerted efforts of conservative fundamentalists in Texas to hijack educational standards in pursuit of a reactionary ideological agenda [5]. Thus far all I've suggested is that "standards" proposals are deeply flawed even when properly implemented. Let's not forget that - in the real world - they are ripe for precisely this sort of abuse as well.
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* Deborah Meier, et. al., 2000. Will Standards Save Public Education? Boston: Beacon Press, and Deborah Meier. 2002. In schools we trust: Creating communities of learning in an era of testing and standardization. Boston: Beacon Press.
** For example, Deborah Meier. 1995. The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem. Boston: Beacon Press, and Robert Moses. Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project. Boston: Beacon Press.
*** Roberto Mangabeira Unger. 2009. The Left Alternative. Verso.

Plagiarism? (again)

"Sometimes there is no acknowledgment, tacit or express, of the original author but [viewers] are indifferent; they may be deceived, but the deception has no consequences. . . . A judgment of plagiarism requires that the copying, besides being deceitful in the sense of misleading the intended [viewers], induce reliance by them. By this I mean that the [viewer] does something because he thinks the plagiarizing work original that he would not have done had he known the truth. . . . The [viewer] has to care about being deceived about the authorial identity in order for the deceit to cross the line to fraud and thus constitute plagiarism. More precisely, he has to care enough that had he known he would have acted differently. There are innumerable intellectual deceits that do little or no harm because the engender little or no reliance." ~ Richard Posner*

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The Mosque of Istiqlal, Jakarta, Indonesia, 1996.
Photograph © Sebastião Salgado

The National Mosque in Jakarta, Indonesia, 2009.
Photograph © James Nachtwey/National Geographic.

This post is a follow-up to this one - hence the (again). I am preparing a talk and came across the Salgado image which I do not recall having seen before. It reminded me of the Nachtwey image on which I commented here a few months ago. In any case, the confluence allowed me to come back to the topic and refer readers to the Posner book from which I've properly quoted and which I have (properly) cited. (I have altered the passage to substitute 'viewer' for 'reader', which is in keeping with what Posner himself allows.) Mostly, I think Posner pushes us to recognize that the recent fracas about plagiarism in photography is - in legal terms at least - much ado about not very much. Did Nachtwey (or, in my earlier post, Rai) set out to reproduce Salgado's photographs? The later images are in neither instance identical to the earlier ones. But the vantage point and subject matter and impression are virtually the same. Yet there is no reason to allege deceit in either case. Would you not buy Nachtwey's (or Rai's) image if you discovered Salgado's? There is no reliance in either case either. As I remarked in the earlier post the history of photography is replete with convergences like the ones I note.

That leaves our judgment of the creative merits of this or that photographer. This, I think is what is at issue. In the cases I have adduced - images by master photographers like Raghu Rai or James Nachtwey that reproduce earlier images by master photographer Sebastião Salgado - I see no reason to suspect that our assessments of the former are in any way diminished by awareness of the latter's work. Each man has an impressive body of non-overlapping work. But this brings us back to Posner who observes that:

"By far the most common punishments for plagiarism . . . have nothing to do with law. They are disgrace, humiliation, ostracism, and other shaming penalties imposed by public opinion on people who violate social norms whether or not they are also legal norms. . . . The stigma of plagiarism seems never to fade completely, not because it is such a heinous offense but because it is embarrassingly second rate: its practitioners are pathetic, almost ridiculous."

Posner concludes that mockery and disdain - not legal action - are in most instances the proper response to plagiarism when it is suspected. I agree. But that creates an immense burden. When thinking about behavior of various denizens of the art world, how are we to pick out the egregiously second rate, pathetic and ridiculous from that which is simply run of the mill?
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* Richard Posner. The Little Book of Plagiarism. New York: Pantheon, 2007.

An Introduction to Pragmatism

The folks at Philosophy Bites have posted this nice discussion with Robert Talisse on the topic of pragmatism. Rob is a smart guy and nice fellow who manages to convey the basics in straightforward terms.

Solidarity and Health Care Reform - Again

"The greatest obstacle to transforming the world is that we lack
the clarity and imagination to conceive that it could be different."
~ Roberto Mangabeira Unger

People outside the arena raised their hands before dawn on
Tuesday after organizers asked those holding tickets with
numbers up to 100 to identify themselves. The group was
already overwhelmed on the first day after allowing 1,500
people through the door, nearly 500 of whom had still not
been served by day's end and had to return early Wednesday.
Photograph © Ruth Fremson/The New York Times.

A few weeks ago I posted on the spectacle of thousands of poor Appalachian residents queued up for a free medical clinic coordinated by Remote Area Medical (RAM) in Wise, Virginia. Last week RAM coordinated a similar clinic at The Los Angeles Forum. You can read the report in The New York Times.

As The Times reporter succinctly stated: "The enormous response to the free care was a stark corollary to the hundreds of Americans who have filled town-hall-style meetings throughout the country, angrily expressing their fear of the Obama administration’s proposed changes to the nation’s health care system." Just so. If this is what private medicine gets us, that should be lesson enough. The Democrats seem to be blind to this. But as the view from Europe makes clear: "Americans Want 'Freedom to Pay Too Much for Inferior Health Care." (Thanks JC!) That is what the nutters screaming and threatening at 'town meetings' are defending - their god given right to have health care rationed by the market and insurance company bureaucrats.

Roberto Unger is a good pragmatist. He places emphasis on the role of imagination in politics. Obama's Democrats lack imagination and they surely lack the ability or the desire (maybe both) to awaken the imagination of the folks who elected them. In my earlier post on RAM's remarkable efforts, I noted that solidarity is intimately dependent of imagination. It is, I suspect, impossible to evince solidarity among people if they cannot imagine the plight of others.

Photography is a useful technology for doing to things. First, as Patrick Maynard argues, it amplifies our imaginations. Second, it is (as Maynard also claims) an 'engine of visualization' - it helps us see. Part of what is valuable about the images that I've seen from the RAM clinics is that they show large numbers. These are the people without access to health care. And Obama's new talk of 'health insurance reform' instead of health care reform has simply distracted attention from these people.

Last week K.H. Bacon, an advocate for refugees died. In his obituary he is quoted to the effect that before his stint as Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Clinton Administration, he "had never seen refugees before, never fully appreciated the sheer magnitude of one million people leaving their homes and needing food, shelter and medical care." What we need, is to see the millions of people who are in dire need of health care. Those people - not gun-toting lunatics - are who we need to see.

Democratizing Arts Organizations?

I came across a couple of provocative recent columns [1] [2] by Barry Johnson (no relation) in The Oregonian. He first raises and then defends the notion that major arts organizations, many of which are struggling financially, ought to be opened up and democratized. I have to say that I'm pretty sympathetic to his arguments. Around Rochester, for instance, the boards of arts outfits tend to be filled with rich folks. They tend, in my estimation, to be exceedingly risk-averse in their programming. I don't think that convergence is coincidental. More generally, as I argued here in an earlier post, they tend to envision their role as guiding spaces of presentation rather than fostering spaces for creativity. In the former role they hope to tempt suburbanites to venture into the city for an evening or two each year. If they could help provide spaces for creativity they might not only energize the arts for audiences, they might contribute to the social and economic revitalization of the city.

Posner on the Collapse of American Conservatism

"My theme is the intellectual decline of conservatism, and it is notable that the policies of the new conservatism are powered largely by emotion and religion and have for the most part weak intellectual groundings. That the policies are weak in conception, have largely failed in execution, and are political flops is therefore unsurprising. The major blows to conservatism, culminating in the election and programs of Obama, have been fourfold: the failure of military force to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives; the inanity of trying to substitute will for intellect, as in the denial of global warming, the use of religious criteria in the selection of public officials, the neglect of management and expertise in government; a continued preoccupation with abortion; and fiscal incontinence in the form of massive budget deficits, the Medicare drug plan, excessive foreign borrowing, and asset-price inflation."

Posner is a conservative/libertarian leaning pragmatist whom I admire even as I disagree with him about a lot of things. He posted this on the blog he keeps jointly with Gary Becker. Posner is no liberal and not a big fan of the current administration. What he bemoans is the craven anti-intellectualism of many American conservatives. On this I could hardly agree more. I suspect his broadside will meet with apoplexy and charges of apostasy from the very folks who most fully embody the brand of conservatism he sketches. Point made.
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Update: In The New York Times today we find this report - detailing the 'strategy' conservatives are formulating to oppose anyone Obama nominates to fill the upcoming vacancy on the supreme court - that confirms the mindlessness Posner identifies. What they apparently are planning is more slogans of precisely the same sort that brought them to disaster. (16 May 2009).

Update 2: And here you can find an exchange of sorts between Posner & former Federal Reserve Head Alan Greenspan (Added 25 May 09).

Solow on Posner on "the Depression"

In the NYRB this week you can find this review by Robert Solow of Richard Posner's new book A Failure of Capitalism. Here is the punchline, which appears at the outset:

"The plainspokenness I mentioned is what makes this book an event. There is no doubt that Posner has been an independent thinker, never a passive follower of a party line. Neither is there any doubt that his independent thoughts have usually led him to a position well to the right of the political economy spectrum. The Seventh Circuit is based in Chicago, and Posner has taught at the University of Chicago. Much of his thought exhibits an affinity to Chicago school economics: libertarian, monetarist, sensitive to even small matters of economic efficiency, dismissive of large matters of equity, and therefore protective of property rights even at the expense of larger and softer "human" rights.

But not this time, at least not at one central point, the main point of this book. Here is one of several statements he makes:

Some conservatives believe that the depression is the result of unwise government policies. I believe it is a market failure. The government's myopia, passivity, and blunders played a critical role in allowing the recession to balloon into a depression, and so have several fortuitous factors. But without any government regulation of the financial industry, the economy would still, in all likelihood, be in a depression; what we have learned from the depression has shown that we need a more active and intelligent government to keep our model of a capitalist economy from running off the rails. The movement to deregulate the financial industry went too far by exaggerating the resilience—the self-healing powers—of laissez-faire capitalism.

If I had written that, it would not be news. From Richard Posner, it is. The underlying argument—it is not novel but it is sound—goes something like this. [ . . .]"

The Summit Challenges Obama's Pragmatism

Obama claims to be a "pragmatist." But if he hopes to avoid letting that stance degenerate into the more common and less appealing "opportunist," he is going to have to recognize some consequences of being a pragmatist.

Obama is now in Trinidad, attending the Summit of the Americas. According to this report from AP, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has given Obama a copy of Eduardo Galeano's book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. The title will suggest that the book offers a critical account of Latin American history. Galeano is a Uruguayan journalist and author, who has endured prison and exile for his political views. You can find several of Galeano's essays here at The Progressive and an interview with him here at Democracy Now!. And here is a somewhat older but extremely entertaining conversation between Galeano and photographer Sebastião Salgado.

Of course, this gift may seem wholly inappropriate. Obama tends to complain that, as a pragmatist, he aims not to dwell on the past but, instead, to craft workable approaches to the future. But, a pragmatist recognizes that any of our beliefs or commitments might be mistaken, that regardless of how confident we are in those beliefs or commitments we might simply be wrong.* From this perspective the past is crucial a source of knowledge, a resource from which we might learn. Obama's pronouncements tend to imply that the past solely provides fodder for recrimination. Similarly, diversity provides a source of insight and a check on our confidence. Here too, the point is less to assign blame than to identify bases for defining and addressing common problems and concerns. In that sense, a pragmatist would insist that the prospect of learning from the past or from views at variance from our own implies that we needn't agree with everything that, say, Galeano writes to think we might profit from exposure to his view of the history of Latin America.

And, the administration simply cannot make the excuse that because he cannot read Spanish Obama can't read Galeano's book. After all, the book has been translated - look here at Monthly Review Press.
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* This view - falliblism - should not be mistaken for skepticism or the view that none of our beliefs or commitments are reliable; pragmatists reject the latter stance, insisting that not just belief but doubt must be justified too. Indeed, in order to question particular beliefs or commitments we must assume that a whole range of other beliefs and commitments are reliable.

Roberto Unger on the World Economic Crisis

I've just come across this recent piece ~ "Using the Crisis to Remake the Market" ~ by Roberto Mangabeira Unger about whose work I've posted pretty regularly. He starts as follows:

The financial crisis of 2008 provides an occasion to advance two projects of vast consequence. One project is to revise the post World War II settlement for the purpose of making international arrangements more hospitable to national divergence, experiment, and alternatives than they are today. The other project is to reshape some of the institutions that define market economies so that they can afford more opportunity to more people.

And he concludes this way:

Such initiatives would represent a small down payment on a large shift in the focus of ideological controversy. It is not enough to regulate the market economy. It is not enough to counterbalance inequalities generated in the market by resorting to compensatory redistribution through tax and transfer. It is necessary to change piece by piece and step by step, the institutions that relate finance to the real economy if we are to recover from the present crisis in a way that helps us avoid future crises. Other ideals, of inclusion and opportunity, will require us to enlarge the scope of this practice of institutional reconstruction. The crisis is a chance but it is also a crutch. The task of the imagination will be to do the work of crisis without crisis.

In between Unger notes that, among other things, the projects he identifies require that we recognize something that I have pointed out here before, namely that financial markets have little to do with providing capital to productive economic activity that might benefit large numbers of people and lots to do with rewarding risky speculation by a very few. So, our stock markets - as they are currently configured - hardly are necessary to the functioning of a market economy. They can be reformed and made more useful. That is the aim of experimenting with political-economic institutions [1] [2] [3]. The question is whether an organized political constituency will emerge to push that agenda. Given the sheer mal-distribution of income, wealth and opportunity in the U.S. (to say nothing of other palces) such a constituency exists, but remains, in Dewey's words, "inchoate." What is needed is for it to recognize itself as a pubic and act as one.

Annotating Obama's Inaugural Address

I have a tendency to be overly critical. So I thought it might be fun to offer some comments on Obama's inaugural address. I've not read any of the published analyses yet, so who knows whether I'm simply restating what others have already said. The point will be to try identify the 'good bits'; you can find the transcript here at The New York Times. So here are some of the things that stood out for me:

(1) "My fellow citizens: I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors."

Obama addresses us not as "my fellow Americans"' but as "fellow citizens"; there is a subtle difference there - the former, and, of late, customary form of address, invokes a nation and all that nationalism entails, the latter a set of shared ideals and obligations.

I wish he'd invoked the importance of democratic practices and activism in the process of how power was "bestowed" on him. It doesn't just happen.

(2) "That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age."

I think his condemnation of "greed and irresponsibility" is right on point, and identifying "collective failure" is too. The former is prosecutable, the latter not. But it seems to me that it is entirely fair to point out that even those who were not taking out unsustainable mortgages and so on, were more than happy to have their 401(k) accounts inflate on the crest of the financial boom. And there were lots and lots of people willing to look away from the mal-distribution of wealth and income that paralleled the rise in their investments too.

[Added later that day: It should also be clear that the problem with the economy is not with individual motivations and responsibility. Individuals act within institutions and practices that establish incentives and provide information and distribute risks and benefits and costs. So, the remedy for our economic mess is not re-education - the problem calls for (thoroughgoing) institutional reforms.]

(3) "Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real, they are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America: They will be met."

OK., here is a criticism - how about ending with "we will meet them." The passivity leaped out at me.

(4) "For us, they fought and died in places Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn."

OK, another .... I expected the grand narrative of American achievement. It comes with the genre. But notice how, in his historical narrative of sacrifices Americans have made, Obama rehabilitates Viet Nam. For those who fought and died there this is welcome. But it is not in the least clear that they - any more than our troops now in Iraq - fought and died "for us."

(5) "What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long, no longer apply.

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works, whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.

Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end."

I like the pragmatist move Obama makes here - and it reappears elsewhere - of deflating accepted dichotomies and focusing on consequences. What I worry about is whether the input into discussions about what "works" will be open and diverse or whether it will be dominated by those wedded to standard center-right positions.

(6) "Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched.

But this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control. The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.

The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart -- not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good."

Again, he deflates accepted dichotomies - this time bromides about 'the free market.' But while I applaud his concern for prosperity and opportunity as well as his point that this is not a matter of charity, I wish for once he might invoke justice and fairness rather than the "common good." The latter provides way too much opportunity for the rich and powerful and their mouthpieces to try to identify their welfare with the general welfare.

Obama's resolute unwillingness to talk about justice and fairness and equality clearly differentiates him from Martin Luther King, Jr.[*] and other American progressives.

(7) "Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.

They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use. Our security emanates from the justness of our cause; the force of our example; the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy, guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort, even greater cooperation and understanding between nations."

Here we get justice! But if we've not noticed that it "begins at home," who abroad will believe us? And here I mean not just respect for human rights and international treaties, but concern for economic justice her and abroad. That said, it seems to me that the focus on multi-lateralism and diplomacy is overdue.

(8) "For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.

We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.

And because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society's ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy."

There are atheists and agnostics in America?!?! I nearly drove off the road listening to this on the way home last night. Sure, Obama invoked god repeatedly in the speech - it comes with the genre. But acknowledging we "nonbelievers"? Even if we bring up the rear in his list ...

And the fact that he spoke in reasonable tones to Muslims around the world. What a relief.

More generally, Obama apparently recognizes and embraces social and religious diversity; and he invokes the lesson of what happens when fanatics seek to suppress or exploit differences. None of that makes dealing with the conflicts diversity inevitably will generate easy. But he is throwing the net widely in hopes of identifying ways to coordinate rather than fight.

(9) "To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.

And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it."

Another missed chance to talk about justice and fairness or to at least turn our attention away from the idea that economic hardship can be remedied via charity.

(10) "These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.

What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship."

He offers a litany of virtues - sacrifice, selflessness and liberty. He ends on citizenship. Fair enough. But citizens are defined not just by mutual obligation and duty, but by a sense of justness and fairness as motivating and sustaining those duties. And citizens in a democracy have a duty, first and foremost, to call officials to account. That, by the way, is a central theme in American pragmatism too. So, having tried to be less critical, I end on that critical note.

Law, Democracy, Social Consensus and Marrying Your Cousin

While doing some holiday shopping a week or so ago (and how the holidays ave gone here are a whole other tale) I came across a new book by Richard Posner who is a Federal Judge on the 7th Circuit (Chicago) and noticed that he cites a couple of papers that my co-conspirator Jack Knight and I have written. Like us, Posner advocates pragmatism in both law and politics. On many foundational issues he and we agree, but our view is that Posner comes up short because he is insufficiently pragmatist. That is a long argument - one we've made in a paper with which Posner takes issue.** In part, our differences revolve around the concept of social consensus - whether such a thing exists, whether judges rely on it in deciding cases and, if so, whether they are right to do so.

When I pointed out to Jack that Posner had nicely taken us to task on this matter in the new book, he replied that many people simply find our view untenable because they hold that there clearly exists social consensus on numerous broad political and ethical issues - especially prohibitions against, say, incest and murder. I will speak for myself here (Jack may or may not agree) but whatever consensus might exist on such matters exists at such a level of generality as to render it more or less useless as a means of making or deciding law. And any 'social consensus' at less abstract levels is more than likely the accretion of imposed 'values' and 'commitments' and so might more accurately be depicted as social acquiescence in the face of long-standing asymmetries of power. (Posner offers the example of the ways contract law is suffused by capitalist values which may be true enough, but there are plenty of people in our heterogeneous society who actively resist and dissent from any consensus around such values.)

As for consensus itself, I would point out that there have, in the past, been equally certain sorts of consensus - mostly concerning the practices we construct around surrounding Elliot's triad of "birth, copulation and death" - that now strike us not just as absurd but as racist, sexist, or both. Think of inter-racial marriage and variety of miscegenation laws. Think of the myriad repressive laws against homosexuality. Can 'social consensus' justify the cruelties and injustice meted out in those domains? Does it count as anything beyond a rationalization of bigotry?

So, what about marrying your cousin? It appears (and here I thank the kind folks at 3 Quarks Daily for their post on the subject) the consensus - social and legal - against it is roughly as ill-founded as those that once rationalized miscegenation laws. As the authors of one study argue, laws against marrying one's cousins "reflect once-prevailing prejudices about immigrants and the rural poor and oversimplified views of heredity, and they are inconsistent with our acceptance of reproductive behaviors that are much riskier to offspring. They should be repealed . . . because neither the scientific nor social assumptions that informed them are any longer defensible." The problem, on this account, is political. And while I have no interest in marrying my cousins nor they me (I've proven a poor bet in the marrying game) I see no reason to have laws against it.
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* Richard Posner. 2008. How Judges Think. Harvard UP.
** See, among other places, Jack Knight & James Johnson. 1996. "Political Consequences of Pragmatism," Political Theory 24::68-96 and Knight & Johnson. 2007 "The Priority of Democracy," American Political Science Review 101:47-62.