Fungible? What means, "fungible?" It means that philanthropy can substitute for government programs. Here is Bill Schambra fuming that Social Security got off on the wrong foot. Instead of being supported by a national payroll tax, the aged should rely on direct handouts from local rich people moved by their compassionate conservatism to drop a coin in the old woman's palm, while her son bows and tugs his forelock in gratitude. If only today's peasants were as grateful.
Phil!!! You completely misread it!!!!!!
I - argggh. Read the part about Social Security again. You read it, like, completely backwards. This is what happens when you pay more attention to the name at the top than the content.
Posted by: Holden | August 04, 2007 at 09:34 AM
Please explain, Holden.
Posted by: Phil | August 04, 2007 at 10:05 AM
Schambra: "Had the Progressives managed to install a 'pure,' community-minded system, it would have been an altruistic transfer of wealth from the rich to the vulnerable aged in the name of preserving the sense of national oneness or national community." Seems to say that the pure version of Social Security would have been an altruistic transfer from rich to poor, not a tax.
Posted by: Phil | August 04, 2007 at 10:09 AM
Wrong. You're reading what you expect to read, not what he's saying.
The topic of the debate is whether progressivism has been successful in achieving ITS goals. Schambra argues that it has not. His evidence is that it failed to get Social Security passed on altruistic REASONING. He reasons that if progressivism had its way, Social Security would be a pure transfer of wealth from the rich to the vulnerable aged (mandatory - via tax - justified by altruism). But since it could never sell people on this, it had to sell Social Security as an individualistic insurance scheme (which is what he says immediately after).
This is an argument that conservatives make about 200x per day. The question is altruism-based taxation vs. private-accounts-based taxation, not taxation vs. charity. "Altruistic transfer of wealth" does not refer to what Schambra wants; it refers to the exact opposite - what Progressives wanted, and failed, to implement. Schambra's not discussing how Social Security should work. He's boasting over the progressives' failure to make it work the way THEY wanted.
Does that clarify?
Posted by: Holden | August 04, 2007 at 11:12 AM
No Holden, he is not advocating a progressive tax to fund it, but rather "an altruistic transfer from rich to poor", hence alms. He wants you to think that his alternative to Social Security would adequately provide a secure retirement for most elderly. He implies a local phenomena that would likely include some and exclude many from any type of security at all.
Relying on the generosity of the rich is not my idea of security.
Posted by: Gerry | August 04, 2007 at 12:10 PM
Gerry, did you read the article? Not just that passage, but the intro, first guy that Schambra is responding to, things that Schambra says afterward, topic, context?
If the name "Schambra" weren't attached, I believe you would have read it correctly.
Posted by: Holden | August 04, 2007 at 12:57 PM
Holden, the passage is not crystal clear, but I think you are missing what is one of Bill's most characteristic themes. He looks back to a world, long gone, in which Americans in small towns relied on themselves and on one another. We didn't need welfare programs and transfer taxes, we took care of ourselves and one another. He sees this as the America of our Founders and Constitution. He wishes to restore it, by rolling back the Great Society, and then the New Deal. What this leaves us with is self reliance and voluntary giving. Hence his interest in philanthropy. Giving will have to do much of the work now done by government. Will it work? Is it feasible? No, and rather than blame himself for even considering it, in this passage he somehow manages to blame progressives for failing to make the dream, his dream, a reality. He doesn't mention individual accounts as a solution, as far as I can see. He just says that we have the illusion of those accounts today not the reality.
To get Bill's work you have to read for the larger themes, not just the details. The details will shift from text to text but the impulse, the vision, the direction remain constant. He is feeling his way back to a vision of America that resonates with many. He wants it to resonate not just with Kirkian conservatives, and Main Street voters, but also with progressives or communitarians. He is saying, "Hey, progressives, if you are so big on community, and caring for your neighbors, and so big on giving and philanthropy, pitch in and do it locally, rather than through big foundations, big government, and taxes. Get engaged and take care of one another." That is his message and it is why I am fascinated with his work. The message has appeal, it does resonate. But it also plays into the hands of those who would tip toe off with their tax savings and do nothing for the poor. I am also hesitant to take the vision at face value when it comes from a man long associated with Bradley Foundation who have often funded programs that seem very close to hostile to inner city black people. The vision can easily become a way of saying to poor blacks, "You do not take the initiative. You are not self reliant. Don't expect handouts from me or from the government. Get off your butt and go to work! I will not reinforce your culture of dependency." That message is not overt in Bill, he is not going to risk being called racist, but you can hear it in Charles Murry who was supported by Bradley Center.
I am surprised how hard it is for you to see the importance of this kind of discussion for your own work in poverty relief. What role does public policy have in creating or ameliorating poverty? How, for example, is Head Start funded? If private givers were to take up such work locally, would it be more efficient and effective? If so could taxes be reduced? If you think it through for yourself, you will begin to pick up the threads of what is partly an overt theoretical conversation and partly a covert effort to gradually dismantle the Great Society and the New Deal. The code phrase is, "Make government so small it can be strangled in a bathtub." To do that many people have to be duped. Don't be first in line. Politics is not a game of transparency. It ain't Habermas. Don't blame me!
Posted by: Phil | August 04, 2007 at 01:02 PM
Phil, as I've said, I disagree with you on the details, not the relevance or the philosophy.
And details are where I think you are really having problems. Your reading of this article is a perfect example. Maybe your picture of Schambra's general philosophy is accurate (I think it is not), but his article is not saying what you're saying it is. It just isn't. You think he blames progressives for failing to enact his vision? That doesn't make any sense! Progressives never wanted Social Security to be charity, they always wanted it to be govt.
I'll argue the details of Head Start with you if you insist. I am convinced that private funds pouring into preschool programs would build a case for expanding Head Start, not contracting it. But I just don't think you are interested in details.
Posted by: Holden | August 04, 2007 at 01:17 PM
Holden,
Of course he is not saying what I attribute to him. If he did he would be vulnerable to obvious refutation. He is sidling or vectoring in a direction.
You know it would be helpful if you read a work by an author referenced in the piece we are discussing, Leo Strauss. He is the opposite of Habermas, actually, the direct opposite. He sees the world as consisting of an elite who speak in code for other members of the elite. They write in the presence of the masses but for an elite who are able to decode what is hidden between the lines. Unless you apply that double-reading to neoconservative thought you remain on the outside of the text. Here is a bit from Wikepedia on Strauss.
"In 1952 Strauss published Persecution and the Art of Writing; a work that advanced the possibility that philosophers wrote esoterically to avoid persecution by the state or religious authority, while also being able to reach potential philosophers within the pious faithful. From this point on in his scholarship, Strauss deepened his conception of this means of communication between philosophers and “potential knowers”. Stemming from his study of Maimonides and Al Farabi, and then extended to his reading of Plato (he mentions particularly the discussion of writing in the Phaedrus) Strauss thought that an esoteric text was the proper type for philosophic learning. Rather than simply outlining the philosopher's thoughts, the esoteric text forces readers to do their own thinking and learning. As Socrates says in the Phaedrus, writing does not respond when questioned but this type of writing invites a kind of dialogue with the reader, thereby reducing the problems of the written word. It was therefore also a teaching tool, and even a filter to help prevent the creation of Alcibiades-like students. One of the political dangers Strauss pointed to was that of students' too quickly accepting dangerous ideas. This was indeed also relevant in the trial of Socrates, where his relationship with Alcibiades was used against him."
Ultimately, Strauss believed that philosophers offered both an "exoteric" or salutary teaching, and an "esoteric" or true teaching, which was concealed from the general reader. By maintaining this distinction, Strauss is often accused of having written esoterically himself."
When a piece co-written by an author, Thomas West, who studied under Strauss references Strauss, I think it might be a clue that a Habermassian plain surface reading may not be in the spirit of the text.
Increasingly, I am afraid, many of us will have to learn how to write for two audience at once. We will write for those who wish we had a Habermassion public square, who can remember what it was like, and who are willing to work for it yet, and we will write for those who wish us ill. That exercise of writing under hostile eyes is new to those of us raised in the once dominant liberal tradition that Habermas defends. It is not new to the followers of Strauss, who knew that their ideas were hostile to democracy in many ways. Nor it is it new to those whose ancestral folkways were broken and disparaged in the Civil War, under Reconstruction, and in the Civil Rights era. The saving remnant of that old traditional culture, of small town virtues and small town bigotry, withdrew in the Goldwater and John Birch Society era and began creating their own mythology, their own history, their own vocabulary, and pressed it forward with funders like Scaithe, Bradley and Coors. They are still writing partly in code, but now as they are in the ascendency more and more overtly.
As they take control, I am afraid it will be our turn to work out of a Dumpster, as a Saving Remnant, writing in code for fear of being persecuted under one pretext or another, for not getting with the program.
Take this seriously, Holden. Read a little Strauss, a little Machiaveli. Follow them back to Plato. Think more about the parable of the Cave.
Posted by: Phil | August 04, 2007 at 01:33 PM
I should add that the Schambra half of the piece does not seem to be carefully written. We may both be over-reading a piece whose logic is not double-sided but unresolved. The audience is Heritage readers. So a lot of the context can be taken for granted by such a reader. We have good guys (the Heritage faithful) ranged against well meaning but basically un-American progressives who gave us the New Deal and the Great Society. The Heritage set are personified as the traditionalists who hark back to the Constitution and to true American values, who would roll us back to what we were before the muck rakers and Teddy Roosevelt busted the trusts, and Roosevelt gave us social security. What you have in the piece is like a finger exercise, trying to get the notes right, so the piece might later be played in public to the rousing march of a John Phillips Sousa Band, as the politician on the hustings calls for kindness, compassion, lower taxes, less gummint, and an end to welfare and social security.
The rhetoric of the piece remains convoluted, high flown, and unconvincing. Well, try and try again. One way or the other, for whatever reasons will appeal to the voters, social security and welfare have got to go.
Posted by: Phil | August 04, 2007 at 01:50 PM
Progressives versus Founders (aka constitutionalists) .. the WWE Smackdown Series.
I read the whole thing .. it's intellectual jargon that states baldly that Progressivism has been so dominant that even the media have a liberal or progressive bias, which has no doubt conributed to "today's welfare state and cultural decay".
In this para, Thomas West sets out what he then proceeds to "prove" .. that most of the last 100 years and the major societal problems are the fault of liberals (progressives) repudiating some of the core principles of the constitution.
"My own view is this: Although the first two of the three mentioned causes (material circumstances and politicians' self-interest) certainly played a part, the most important cause was a change in the prevailing understanding of justice among leading American intellectuals and, to a lesser extent, in the American people. Today's liberalism and the policies that it has generated arose from a conscious repudiation of the principles of the American founding."
[ Snip ... ]
Surprisingly, although Progressivism, supplemented by the more recent liberalism, has transformed America in some respects, the Founders' approach to politics is still alive in some areas of American life. One has merely to attend a jury trial over a murder, rape, robbery, or theft in a state court to see the older system of the rule of law at work. Perhaps this is one reason why America seems so conservative to the rest of the Western world. Among ordinary Americans, as opposed to the political, academic, professional, and entertainment elites, there is still a strong attachment to property rights, self-reliance, and heterosexual marriage; a wariness of university-certified "experts"; and an unapologetic willingness to use armed forces in defense of their country.
The first great battle for the American soul was settled in the Civil War. The second battle for America's soul, initiated over a century ago, is still raging. The choice for the Founders' constitutionalism or the Progressive-liberal administrative state is yet to be fully resolved.
After yards of dispassionate reasoning, we are left with the understanding ffered in Schambra's conclusion ...
He writes:
As much as the Progressives succeeded in challenging the intellectual underpinnings of the American constitutional system, they nonetheless faced the difficulty that the system itself--the large commercial republic and a separation of powers, reflecting and cultivating individual self-interest and ambition--remained in place. As their early modern designers hoped and predicted, these institutions continued to generate a certain kind of political behavior in accord with presuppositions of the Founders even as Progressive elites continued for the past 100 years to denounce that behavior as self-centered, materialistic, and insufficiently community-minded and public-spirited.
The Progressive Foothold
The Progressive system managed to gain a foothold in American politics only when it made major compromises with the Founders' constitutionalism. The best example is the Social Security system: Had the Progressives managed to install a "pure," community-minded system, it would have been an altruistic transfer of wealth from the rich to the vulnerable aged in the name of preserving the sense of national oneness or national community. It would have reflected the enduring Progressive conviction that we're all in this together--all part of one national family, as former New York Governor Mario Cuomo once put it.
Indeed, modern liberals do often defend Social Security in those terms. But in fact, FDR knew the American political system well enough to rely on other than altruistic impulses to preserve Social Security past the New Deal. The fact that it's based on the myth of individual accounts--the myth that Social Security is only returning to me what I put in--is what has made this part of the 20th century's liberal project almost completely unassailable politically. As FDR intended, Social Security endures because it draws as much on self-interested individualism as on self-forgetting community-mindedness.
As this illustrates, the New Deal, for all its Progressive roots, is in some sense less purely Progressive than LBJ's Great Society. In the Great Society, we had more explicit and direct an application of the Progressive commitment to rule by social science experts, largely unmitigated initially by political considerations.
He's saying that Progressives like to sing Kumbaya and develop and deliver centrally-planned but community based programs that absent self-centeredness would truly be altruistic .. it would be alms because the community values itself and its members ... but isn't only because the Progressives compromised so that conservatives to get some of that red-tooth self-interest in there .. which is what the Founders intended.
"1. The Rejection of Nature and the Turn to History
The Founders believed that all men are created equal and that they have certain inalienable rights. All are also obliged to obey the natural law, under which we have not only rights but duties. We are obliged "to respect those rights in others which we value in ourselves" (Jefferson). The main rights were thought to be life and liberty, including the liberty to organize one's own church, to associate at work or at home with whomever one pleases, and to use one's talents to acquire and keep property. For the Founders, then, there is a natural moral order--rules discovered by human reason that promote human well-being, rules that can and should guide human life and politics.
The Progressives rejected these claims as naive and unhistorical."
I don't think either of the authors are suggesting anything as beneficent or altruistic as alms. I suspect that they are saying that absent the meddling of Progressives in the late 19th and early 20th Century, the USA would not have a social security system at all, as it is conceived today.
Some communities might have some charity and some philanthropy initiatives in operation .. but it would depend upon the makeup of the individuals of any given community and whether or not they were able to organize such if they felt it useful or important.
They would have to find it in rtheir self-interest to do so .. and so one is left assuming that it might be in the self-interest of some of the members of that given community or society once the debtors prisons and the dungeons were full of those who for one reason or another were not able to "use one's talents to acquire and keep property".
The piece is an argument for social darwinism at its finest, I think, and a devious twisting of logic that enables the blaming of liberalism as it has been tainted by (unfortunately long-standing) belief in American exceptionalism.
Alms are the least of it .. the logic outlined leads inexorably to the creation of a version of The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Posted by: Un Autre Singe | August 04, 2007 at 02:08 PM
... sorry for the sloppy tag management at the end of the previous comment I posted.
My concluding comments after citing Schambra ...
"I don't think either of the authors are suggesting anything as beneficent or altruistic as alms. I suspect that they are saying that absent the meddling of Progressives in the late 19th and early 20th Century, the USA would not have a social security system at all, as it is conceived today.
Some communities might have some charity and some philanthropy initiatives in operation .. but it would depend upon the makeup of the individuals of any given community and whether or not they were able to organize such if they felt it useful or important.
They would have to find it in their self-interest to do so .. and so one is left assuming that it might be in the self-interest of some of the members of that given community or society once the debtors prisons and the dungeons were full of those who for one reason or another were not able to "use one's talents to acquire and keep property".
The piece is an argument for social darwinism at its finest, I think, and a devious twisting of logic that enables the blaming of liberalism as it has been tainted by (unfortunately long-standing) belief in American exceptionalism."
Alms are the least of it .. the logic outlined leads inexorably to the creation of a version of The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.
Posted by: Un Autre Singe | August 04, 2007 at 02:11 PM
Thank you, AS. I think you did as good a job as can be done of parsing the logic/illogic o f the piece. If we make too much sense of it we might be misreading it. The one constant is the blaming of progressives. The reasons come from all angles. Whether alms enter into it or not, ferocity certainly does. Those who voted for Roosevelt, Teddy or FDR, have much blame to bear for the sorry state of our Republic. May Heritage set us to rights.
Posted by: Phil | August 04, 2007 at 02:19 PM
The first battle for the soul of America was the Civil War. Was that the first battle where progressives won, defeating the south in the name of modernity and racial justice?
Posted by: Phil | August 04, 2007 at 02:20 PM
nichts
Posted by: Happy Hobo (The Tag Closer) | August 04, 2007 at 03:22 PM
de nada ... or is that all there is ?
Posted by: Un Autre Singe | August 04, 2007 at 03:37 PM
UAS,,, again with the anagrams, as I said, I don't believe in them. Another thing: don't believe everything you read, eg, "altruism" is a clever coding of "all-true"-ism, not all-"truism". The Founders meant the ladder, the Progressives the foamer, and the Liberals... well, the Liberals have yet to learn that when submerged one follows the bubbles up, not the ballast. Ahoy.
Posted by: O Lucky Man | August 04, 2007 at 04:12 PM
All we know for sure, having all read the article several times, is that the liberals are to blame. How or why we are not sure, but their guilt speaks for itself. Liberals are out of tune with the values of the Founders and the writers of the Constitution now shredded at our feet under the rule of those who take their cue from Heritage. Why not write about civil liberties at Hudson and checks and balances in government?
Posted by: Phil | August 04, 2007 at 05:11 PM
"Let's declare ourselves Dictator and blame the liberals for making us do it." So says Smoky Joe at The Cruikshanks Center for Philanthropy and Civic Comity. "We are in tune with God and with the American Constitution which we hereby suspend in order to protect it. Martial law is now in force. Liberals on the streets after dark will be shot on sight. Anyone have any objection? Now, to the serious business of serving America's biggest corporations. There is money in that. Who is charge of Halliburton these days? Let's make him Vice-Dictator. I will join their Board. Meanwhile, we can sell MA to Castro, or maybe Canada. Privatize those liberal bastards. VT you're next if we hear one peep out of you."
Posted by: Phil | August 04, 2007 at 05:21 PM
Guilt speaking for itself is more efficient, I think. Mr. Heritage will like that.
Posted by: Horslink | August 04, 2007 at 05:41 PM
If you can't beat them, join them. Always room for another Fool among the Knaves.
Posted by: Phil | August 04, 2007 at 07:05 PM
What struck me was the religious invocation of "the Founding" with a capital "F." I don't know much about history, but I thought that if the "Founders" could read this, it'd make them a little queasy to be referred to like they were gods or something. Like, I think they'd be really creeped out. The constitution does not say there is a "natural moral order." The closest you get to anything like that is in the Declaration of Independence "we hold these truths to be self-evident," which isn't an endorsement of natural rights so much as a compromise purposed to avoid an argument. "We're just not going to talk about this in particular so we can get some other stuff done."
Also, and this is stretching, but the use of "foundation" is especially creepy because the word "Al-Quaeda" is etymologically similar to "foundation."
I also thought the interchangeable application of "progressive" and "liberal" was a bit odd in the article and in the comments. Progressivism was an attempt to break out the fool/knave dichotomy that characterized liberalism/conservatism, which both find their base in natural rights, and which still persists in this thread as the Strauss/Habermas thingie. That's why I like the work of philiosophical superstar Slavoj Zizek, whose critique in his early work touched on this problem.
Posted by: Saluk | August 04, 2007 at 07:58 PM
By progressivism you or Zizek mean what figures? Marx?
Posted by: Phil | August 04, 2007 at 08:07 PM
By progressivism I mean the ideas of the historical US progressive period. I'm pretty sure that liberal is not the same thing as progressive in that context, although they are colloquially interchangeable now.
Posted by: Saluk | August 04, 2007 at 08:48 PM
Agreed. What seems missing from the Heritage piece are the muckrakers and trust-busters of the Gilded Age, the rise of the union movement, the fears of revolution as Marxism took hold abroad, riots and the rising violence between labor and management. Instead, what Heritage provides is a potted history of ideas. "Justice" as in economic justice is what they want to banish, and it is why they fear the old style progressivism which was a popular backlash against monopolies, concentrated wealth and concentrated power. Bill wants to contrast the little guys in small towns with colossal government bureaus in the Johnson era, he does not want us to recall the populist backlash that in the original era of progressivism led to the minimum wage, work safety regulations, food purity laws, child labor laws, and on and on.
Posted by: Phil | August 04, 2007 at 10:23 PM
... what was not said, in the manner Phil just said it, is the best parsing of the piece.
The authors like centralism and want the founders' work to be interpreted to enable feudalism, as those who use their talents to acquire the most property then proclaim they understand the moral order intended by the founders. The landmarks established in / by the backlash Phil cites, and other current and future forms, are more human and more evolved ways of people living together in society. Social hierarchies, like other forms, are gradually shifting from ancient roots in monarchies and the church and then through an era that witnessed the life-cycle of Taylorism-driven bureaucracies towards what today may become a saw-off between populism and the primordial leverage of money and closely-held connections (see Phil's earlier post about board member interconnectedness).
We are just witnessing moments, points of reference in a very long march. America is growing up, individuating as a society with a mix of peoples vastly different than 230 years ago. There are fundamental schisms along interesting class, ethnic, religious and philosophical lines. America is having a very difficult time these days existential-crisis wise and the work of the Heritage Institute will be part of what psychological and cultural historians of the future will regard as central elements of a desperate attempt to hold back the massively-shifting realities of a more diverse and more complex world.
The jingoism, xenophobia and cultural rigidity of the current American idea will be seen as the expression of mass neurosis driven and enlivened by irrational fear. Maybe it already is seen that way in many other places.
Posted by: Un Autre Singe | August 05, 2007 at 12:20 AM
Interesting about Strauss. From all I've seen (and for my age I've been to a lot of "inner circles"), I fundamentally don't believe that lies and evil are as powerful as self-deception and incompetence. I believe that the latter are overwhelmingly strong and the former incredibly weak, especially in today's society. Things were different for Strauss, but here and now, the Habermas approach has never failed me, and I've never been given a reason to speak in code. I've been over why I don't consider mediatransparency.org's claims to be a reason.
You've clearly had a different experience. That's OK; we'll fight for the same thing in different ways, and each of us is free to change his mind.
Posted by: Holden | August 05, 2007 at 11:34 AM
Different experiences, yes, but similar ends in view. The public square is fragile. We should model it, but also maybe fight to preserve it. When Knaves pass for candid, we have the choice of playing the Dupe or the Fool.
Posted by: Phil | August 05, 2007 at 04:00 PM