This post continues my Small Government Odyssey (SGO), a series of reflections on what it would take to reduce the size of government on the one hand, while seeing to it that the legitimate needs of the citizens are met (by someone, but not by the national government) on the other.
The diagram shows economic, social, and political sectors. My argument is that to the extent that the needs of the citizens are met in the social sector (families, schools, neighborhoods, clubs, etc.) and in the economic sector (producers make money, consumers receive affordable goods and services, employees receive a living wage), there will no appeal to the political sector. The size of government, accordingly, will shrink. So will the proportion of the GNP it consumes and the power it gets from making authoritative decisions on the appeals made to it by dissidents in the economic and social sectors.
This view does not distinguish between legitimate dissidents and illegitimate ones. In the small government business, the focus is on reducing the appeals to the national government made by people who think they aren't being treated fairly in the social and economic sectors. It is what they think, not what a panel of fairminded citizens decide, that makes them want to invite government in.--an action we all pay for in higher taxes and fewer freedoms. You can do that by simple repression, of course, but repression gets expensive after a while, so that is self-defeating. You can do it by lowering expectations, but the principal commercial strategy involves raising expectations, so that isn't a sure thing either. You can do it by coopting resentment or by deflecting it to other targets, but whenver that fails, the federal government is there, looking for an invitation to substitute their judgment for yours.
In fact, school boards are governments, so they are part of the polity. The force of these questions, however, has to do with the national government, so for the purpose of this question, I am going to consider the school boards as part of society, rather than polity. If we want the national government to stop interfering with the preferences of local boards and the parents who elect them to office, what would we have to do?
Since the Constitution forbids any promiscuous mixing of religion and government, we would have to find that Creationism is not a “religious doctrine.” It is a theory, like any other, about the origins of our world and the species of plants and animals that have come to live on it. Evolution is a theory and Creationism is a theory and which theory is to be taught is to be at the discretion of the local voters. That would work. The national government does not intervene in local school district decisions to mandate balanced histories or any particular approach to art or any of several methods of teaching arithmetic. Under this scenario, biology would work the same way.
Once the political hysterics had quieted down, however, the professional side of the question would have a chance to emerge. Just as there are pharmacists who refuse, on personal grounds, to dispense drugs they disapprove of, so we might find some biologists who refuse, on professional grounds, to teach poorly supported theories in place of well-supported ones. Just as the voters who elected the judge must share their authority with the judge’s professional promises, so the school district voters would have to share their authority with the teacher’s professional promises. It wouldn’t be an altogether bad idea if science teachers adopted “First, Do No Harm” as their professional motto.
If there were a professional certification by the Biology Teachers of America and if you couldn’t teach biology without a professional certificate, then schools would have to choose between certificated biologists—who would emphasize the value of well-supported over poorly supported theories—and noncertificated biologists, who would teach anything the school board demanded of them. Parents might gather at the home of a certificated science teacher who refused to teach Creationism in his biology class, but the teacher has his oath to protect him and the parents would have to choose between a well-prepared teacher for their children and an ill-prepared one.
Presumably, colleges and universities would not be forced to treat applications equally—those from school districts with professionally certificated teachers and those from districts without them. It would take action by the national government to require them to accept students who were, in the judgment of the university, ill-prepared for university work. We are trying to do without national government intervention and besides, there is the question of the grounds on which the government might intervene.
The Constitution requires the intervention of the national government in the affairs of the school districts IF Creationism is a religious doctrine.[1] If it is not a religious doctrine, then the present appeal to national government authority falls short and local preferences prevail. This provides a wonderful opportunity for biology professionals to decide what they are willing to do, as educators, and what they will need to refuse to do because of the harm it would cause.
For myself, I would rather see a conflict between a popularly elected school board, on the one hand, and professionally accountable biologists on the other than a conflict between a national government wielding the Constitution and local school boards wielding parent preference. I think it would be a more useful conflict and I am quite sure it would be more fun.
[1] It wouldn’t have to be religious. There are agnostic versions. “The earth and all subsequent living things were created at a single recent time, but the data now at hand provide us no way to say how that happened.” There are thousands of theistic versions. Nearly every culture, no matter how small or how isolated, has an account of how the god [name of local deity] or the gods [name of college of local deities] created the world and all that is therein. There could be a rotation of Creation myths, using each in turn.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
SGO: Creationism
This post continues my Small Government Odyssey, a series of reflections on what it would take to reduce the size of government on the one hand, while seeing to it that the legitimate needs of the citizens are met (by someone) on the other. The diagram shows economic, social, and political sectors. My argument is that to the extent that the needs of the citizens are met in the social sector (families, schools, neighborhoods, clubs, etc.) and in the economic sector (producers make money, consumers receive affordable goods and services, employees receive a living wage), there will no appeal to the political sector. The size of government, accordingly, will shrink. So will the proportion of the GNP it consumes and the power it gets from making authoritative decisions on the appeals made to it by economic and social dissidents.
In fact, school boards are governments, so they are part of the polity. The force of these questions, however, has to do with the national government, so for the purpose of this question, I am going to consider the school boards as part of society, rather than polity. If we want the national government to stop interfering with the preferences of local boards and the parents who elect them to office, what would we have to do?
Since the Constitution forbids any promiscuous mixing of religion and government, we would have to find that Creationism is not a “religious doctrine.” It is a theory, like any other, about the origins of our world and the species of plants and animals that have come to live on it. Evolution is a theory and Creationism is a theory and which theory is to be taught is to be at the discretion of the local voters. That would work. The national government does not intervene in local school district decisions to mandate balanced histories or any particular approach to art or any of several methods of teaching arithmetic. Under this scenario, biology would work the same way.
Once the political hysterics had quieted down, however, the professional side of the question would have a chance to emerge. Just as there are pharmacists who refuse, on personal grounds, to dispense drugs they disapprove of, so we might find some biologists who refuse, on professional grounds, to teach poorly supported theories in place of well-supported ones. Just as the voters who elected the judge must share their authority with the judge’s professional promises, so the school district voters would have to share their authority with the teacher’s professional promises. It wouldn’t be an altogether bad idea if science teachers adopted “First, Do No Harm” as their professional motto.
If there were a professional certification by the Biology Teachers of America and if you couldn’t teach biology without a professional certificate, then schools would have to choose between certificated biologists—who would emphasize the value of well-supported over poorly supported theories—and noncertificated biologists, who would teach anything the school board demanded of them. Parents might gather at the home of a certificated science teacher who refused to teach Creationism in his biology class, but the teacher has his oath to protect him and the parents would have to choose between a well-prepared teacher for their children and an ill-prepared one.
Presumably, colleges and universities would not be forced to treat applications equally—those from school districts with professionally certificated teachers and those from districts without them. It would take action by the national government to require them to accept students who were, in the judgment of the university, ill-prepared for university work. We are trying to do without national government intervention and besides, there is the question of the grounds on which the government might intervene.
The Constitution requires the intervention of the national government in the affairs of the school districts IF Creationism is a religious doctrine. If it is not a religious doctrine, then the present appeal to national government authority falls short and local preferences prevail. This provides a wonderful opportunity for biology professionals to decide what they are willing to do, as educators, and what they will need to refuse to do because of the harm it would cause.
For myself, I would rather see a conflict between a popularly elected school board, on the one hand, and professionally accountable biologists on the other than a conflict between a national government wielding the Constitution and local school boards wielding parent preference. I think it would be a more useful conflict and I am quite sure it would be more fun.
In fact, school boards are governments, so they are part of the polity. The force of these questions, however, has to do with the national government, so for the purpose of this question, I am going to consider the school boards as part of society, rather than polity. If we want the national government to stop interfering with the preferences of local boards and the parents who elect them to office, what would we have to do?
Since the Constitution forbids any promiscuous mixing of religion and government, we would have to find that Creationism is not a “religious doctrine.” It is a theory, like any other, about the origins of our world and the species of plants and animals that have come to live on it. Evolution is a theory and Creationism is a theory and which theory is to be taught is to be at the discretion of the local voters. That would work. The national government does not intervene in local school district decisions to mandate balanced histories or any particular approach to art or any of several methods of teaching arithmetic. Under this scenario, biology would work the same way.
Once the political hysterics had quieted down, however, the professional side of the question would have a chance to emerge. Just as there are pharmacists who refuse, on personal grounds, to dispense drugs they disapprove of, so we might find some biologists who refuse, on professional grounds, to teach poorly supported theories in place of well-supported ones. Just as the voters who elected the judge must share their authority with the judge’s professional promises, so the school district voters would have to share their authority with the teacher’s professional promises. It wouldn’t be an altogether bad idea if science teachers adopted “First, Do No Harm” as their professional motto.
If there were a professional certification by the Biology Teachers of America and if you couldn’t teach biology without a professional certificate, then schools would have to choose between certificated biologists—who would emphasize the value of well-supported over poorly supported theories—and noncertificated biologists, who would teach anything the school board demanded of them. Parents might gather at the home of a certificated science teacher who refused to teach Creationism in his biology class, but the teacher has his oath to protect him and the parents would have to choose between a well-prepared teacher for their children and an ill-prepared one.
Presumably, colleges and universities would not be forced to treat applications equally—those from school districts with professionally certificated teachers and those from districts without them. It would take action by the national government to require them to accept students who were, in the judgment of the university, ill-prepared for university work. We are trying to do without national government intervention and besides, there is the question of the grounds on which the government might intervene.
The Constitution requires the intervention of the national government in the affairs of the school districts IF Creationism is a religious doctrine. If it is not a religious doctrine, then the present appeal to national government authority falls short and local preferences prevail. This provides a wonderful opportunity for biology professionals to decide what they are willing to do, as educators, and what they will need to refuse to do because of the harm it would cause.
For myself, I would rather see a conflict between a popularly elected school board, on the one hand, and professionally accountable biologists on the other than a conflict between a national government wielding the Constitution and local school boards wielding parent preference. I think it would be a more useful conflict and I am quite sure it would be more fun.
Monday, May 9, 2011
High Cost Students
I've been thinking about the 80/20 rule. An online group, about whom I know nothing at all (VentureLine.com) offers this description, of which the last line is the one that is most important to me.
80 - 20 RULE (Pareto Principle/Law) is a general rule of thumb in business that says that 20% of the items produce 80% of the activity, while 20% of the product line produces 80% of the sales, 20 % of the customers generate 80% of the complaints, and so on. In evaluating any business situation, look for the small group which produces the major portion of the transactions you are concerned with. This rule is not exactly accurate, but it reflects a general truth, nothing is evenly distributed.
Certainly it is true that, so far as the experience of teaching students in concerned, the costs are not evenly distributed. So let's say that my usual American government class of 60 or so has a 20% that cause most of the confusion, take most of the in-class organization time, most of the office hours time, etc. That give me 12 high cost students. Let's say four of them are trying to overcome very demanding obstacles of language and culture. Four of them are deeply risk avoidant. Four of them are just lazy. These 12 take up most of the time that would otherwise be spent teaching or working on academic questions during office hours. What to do?
Nothing is to be done about the first group. They need all the help they ask for and don't ask for more than they need. The response I should make to these high cost students is to pay the cost and be glad to have the privilege. The other two groups are a little more complicated.
There are two approaches to the risk avoiders. The first, and probably the preferable, approach is to reassure them. It's not so hard; you understood most of the assignment correctly; this is a mistake from which you can easily recover; you are a smart college-competent student; it'll all make more sense as we go on, and so on. If that works, all is well. If not, the other alternative is to raise the risk of trying to avoid risks. For the students who will try to take up ten minutes of class time making sure that they have done the assignment correctly or have understood the assignment correctly, or who do that same job in 30 minutes of office hours, they need to know that they will be losing points on the assignment by doing that. If there is an uncertainty, say what it is. That's free. If you want me to grade your paper as a preface to your handing it in so I can grade it, that will cost you.
It's crude, but the theory makes sense. If risk is what they are sensitive to, make bad student behavior more risky.
That leaves the remaining four students, the lazy ones. The goal of these students is to get me to do as much of their work as possible. They are confused; they want more specific instructions; perhaps an outline of their papers would help them grasp the assignment. These students hope to leave the office ready write a paper I have just constructed, outlined, and pre-graded. And they themselves have not yet done anything except show up and act helpless. But even in this sorry category, there are different kinds of students. Some of the students who "act lazy" are just doing what they have been taught to do. They have been taught to be helpless and to succeed as students by being parasitic. They need to know that we do it differently here at the university level. Or that, however they do it in the department of your major--that awkward phrasing keeps me from having to choose a poster child--we don't do it that way here in political science.
The remaining two students are accomplished parasites. They know what they are doing. They will take you for your last minute and despise you as a sucker when they leave the office. Your lack of the most basic defenses makes you the sucker in the stories they will tell their friends over a couple of beers that night. And the next night, and the next.
The most appropriate response to these two students, out of the class of 60, is to refuse to be a sucker. Turn the project back on them, so they can begin to learn how to do it. Not clear enough? Write a paper that illustrates your current understanding of the assignment and I will use it to help you move in a more profitable direction? Not specific enough? Let me remind you of the principles we covered; what examples come to your mind as illustrations of that principle? What ways of doing the assignment can profit from those illustrations?
There's no way not to have high cost students, but there are ways of understanding them that allow you to be generous to some, independence-granting to others, and savvy enough not to be a sucker for the remaining ones.
80 - 20 RULE (Pareto Principle/Law) is a general rule of thumb in business that says that 20% of the items produce 80% of the activity, while 20% of the product line produces 80% of the sales, 20 % of the customers generate 80% of the complaints, and so on. In evaluating any business situation, look for the small group which produces the major portion of the transactions you are concerned with. This rule is not exactly accurate, but it reflects a general truth, nothing is evenly distributed.
Certainly it is true that, so far as the experience of teaching students in concerned, the costs are not evenly distributed. So let's say that my usual American government class of 60 or so has a 20% that cause most of the confusion, take most of the in-class organization time, most of the office hours time, etc. That give me 12 high cost students. Let's say four of them are trying to overcome very demanding obstacles of language and culture. Four of them are deeply risk avoidant. Four of them are just lazy. These 12 take up most of the time that would otherwise be spent teaching or working on academic questions during office hours. What to do?
Nothing is to be done about the first group. They need all the help they ask for and don't ask for more than they need. The response I should make to these high cost students is to pay the cost and be glad to have the privilege. The other two groups are a little more complicated.
There are two approaches to the risk avoiders. The first, and probably the preferable, approach is to reassure them. It's not so hard; you understood most of the assignment correctly; this is a mistake from which you can easily recover; you are a smart college-competent student; it'll all make more sense as we go on, and so on. If that works, all is well. If not, the other alternative is to raise the risk of trying to avoid risks. For the students who will try to take up ten minutes of class time making sure that they have done the assignment correctly or have understood the assignment correctly, or who do that same job in 30 minutes of office hours, they need to know that they will be losing points on the assignment by doing that. If there is an uncertainty, say what it is. That's free. If you want me to grade your paper as a preface to your handing it in so I can grade it, that will cost you.
It's crude, but the theory makes sense. If risk is what they are sensitive to, make bad student behavior more risky.
That leaves the remaining four students, the lazy ones. The goal of these students is to get me to do as much of their work as possible. They are confused; they want more specific instructions; perhaps an outline of their papers would help them grasp the assignment. These students hope to leave the office ready write a paper I have just constructed, outlined, and pre-graded. And they themselves have not yet done anything except show up and act helpless. But even in this sorry category, there are different kinds of students. Some of the students who "act lazy" are just doing what they have been taught to do. They have been taught to be helpless and to succeed as students by being parasitic. They need to know that we do it differently here at the university level. Or that, however they do it in the department of your major--that awkward phrasing keeps me from having to choose a poster child--we don't do it that way here in political science.
The remaining two students are accomplished parasites. They know what they are doing. They will take you for your last minute and despise you as a sucker when they leave the office. Your lack of the most basic defenses makes you the sucker in the stories they will tell their friends over a couple of beers that night. And the next night, and the next.
The most appropriate response to these two students, out of the class of 60, is to refuse to be a sucker. Turn the project back on them, so they can begin to learn how to do it. Not clear enough? Write a paper that illustrates your current understanding of the assignment and I will use it to help you move in a more profitable direction? Not specific enough? Let me remind you of the principles we covered; what examples come to your mind as illustrations of that principle? What ways of doing the assignment can profit from those illustrations?
There's no way not to have high cost students, but there are ways of understanding them that allow you to be generous to some, independence-granting to others, and savvy enough not to be a sucker for the remaining ones.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Are the Problems Too Big?
I start my course in political psychology by introducing "the problem." We start with "frictional" rather than "normative" problems. The friction is easy to describe: either you wanted something you couldn't have or do or something you didn't want was done. Those are frictions. "Wanting" seems a fundamental part of human motivation. It is the "willing" part of "willing and able." But the narrower condition that this leaves out is "wanting and in consequence, trying." For class purposes, the question is this: "Is just 'wanting' in the absence of any specific attempt to achieve the purported goal, useful evidence of an actual intention?" The conventional notation has been W = wanted to, b1 = because, but (D) = was not able to, b2, because. The first explanation (b) says why you wanted to; the second, why you were not able. But what if we changed it to I = intended to; to to T = tried to? "Tried to" captures the immediacy I am after. It screens out "I always wanted to live in Japan," which certainly needs to be screened out. "Intended to" is helpfully broader, but it raises the question of what ought to count as an "intention." It is more than wanting to but less than trying to.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Our Commitment to Justice
The American view of justice sounds familiar to me. In fact, it sounds just like us. It reminds me of Justice Potter Stewart's "definition" of obscenity, which was "I know it when I see it." Americans don't have a clear view of what "justice" is and as a result, our discussions among ourselves never end and never decide. We have a much clearer view of what "injustice" is. This is the difference, if I may just play with the words a little here, between Justice Stewart's lack of interest in defining "scenity" and his interest in defining "ob-scenity" clearly enough that it could actually be achieved. When we saw bad things happening to unresisting Negro protesters--if you are in my 101 class, the chances are that you will not remember "Negro protesters." They seemed so harmless and so ill-used and we saw it all on television. That is what made the civil rights movement popular among northern liberals and tolerable even among northern conservatives. All these pictures of "injustice" shoved in our faces. Surely we can't be asked to just stand by. Now we are seeing pictures of Khadafi (or Gaddafi) threatening the overwhelmed people of Benghazi, Libya and we think we surely can't be asked just to stand by. So we haven't. We have attacked Libyan air defense installations, then planes, then tanks, then concentrations of the Libyan army. Now CIA agents are on the ground for the purpose of "targeting" future airstrikes. Some positive notion of "justice," some sense of how it really could be for a society with Libya's current make up and recent history, would really help us. Do they need to be a national, rather than a tribal, society? If they insist on being Muslim, could they be secular Muslims? Do they need the civil institutions that will allow they to transcend the narrow loyalties that have sustained them to this point in their history? Whether they need those or not, those will not be--trust me, they will NOT be--the first projects they take on. Will we take them on, on their behalf? Will we be the teachers of "ultratribalism?" Will we formulate their civil institutions: impartial, impersonal, and fair? Will we offer our kind of religion, a distant, pale, buffet line kind of religion, in exchange for theirs? Are we, in other words, prepared to work toward some peculiarly Libyan incarnation of "justice?" Or do we just want to condemn and oppose "injustice?" We do, after all, have several other acknowledged wars going on and we have to judge our appetite for substantial investment in a society where our failure may safely be taken for granted.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Just How Bad is Colonel Kadafi?
I was living in Missoula, Montana in the summer of 2002. The U. S. was ratcheting up the war of words against Iraq. The American military was preparing for war there (note the active verb) and the American public was being prepared (note the passive verb) for war there. The First Presbyterian Church of Missoula held a series of midweek lectures that summer (lectures with discussion, it turned out) and one of the lectures had to do with this increasing bellicosity toward Iraq. The church membership was mostly conservative but some of its members were faculty at the University of Montana and they were mostly liberal.
I was there for the lecture on Iraq. It was given by a faculty member whose name I have forgotten, but I will never forget his pitch to the congregation. He was warning against the impending invasion of Iraq in the strongest terms. He was warning a gathering of his friends, nearly all of whom thought that removing Saddam Hussein, that “Hitler of the Middle East,” was our duty. The speaker made a good case against the war, but it was a pretty standard case. I could have made it, myself. But he got a hearing for his point, which I would not have been able to do, by talking about all the nights he and a lot of his fellow members stayed after meetings to finish washing up the dishes. He apologized to another section of the congregation whom he addressed as “my fishing buddies,” for the contentious nature of the argument he was making. He was wonderful. I understood why he was so well received in a church that had no ears at all for his message.
Afterwards, I had a conversation with an old man with a very heavy German accent. I am going to try to represent the accent in the way I spell the words because I want you to be able to “hear” what I heard. The old man said, “I know vere ziss iss goink. I haff heard all ziss before.”
My blood ran cold. I knew that he had heard it from Hermann Goering in the 1930s. He heard it over loudspeakers, and all the radio stations, and saw it on the “newsreels” in the theaters. This is the Goering who said:
“Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
This week, I have been feeling a little bit like that old German man. Muammar el-Qaddafi is getting more reprehensible by the day, following the path by which Sadaam Hussein got more deplorable by the day. For people who pay any attention at all to public affairs and who are old enough to remember the run-up to the Iraq War, this has got to sound familiar. We may be excused for feeling, “I haff heard all ziss before.”
So just how bad is Kadafi? We can’t know, of course, so I have another way of approaching the question. How bad do we need him to be? I think someone who knows more of the facts on the ground in Libya and on the proper floor of the Pentagon could work out a correspondence that would help us. I’m thinking of something like this.
1a. Kadafi is a pompous hypocrite.
1b. We are trying to draw that attention of potential allies to the need for some action against Libya.
2a. Kadafi is terrorist.
2b. We have begun efforts to isolate him diplomatically and economically
3a. Kadafi has unleashed the power of a brutal regime against his own people.
3b. We have decided to neutralize his air defenses and to ground or destroy his air force.
4a. Kadafi is a clear and present danger to everyone and has a stock of mustard gas that he will unleash on anyone he deems an enemy.
4b. We are about to begin bombing civilian targets in Tripoli and are making “surgical strikes” against buildings where Kadafi or his family might be hiding.
We could go on, of course. I am not saying that any particular charge about Kadafi is untrue. I don’t really know. My point is that if they are true, they were always true—he took over in 1969, when my 50 year-old daughter was not yet 10—and the information we can glean from which ones are trotted out is best treated as the information that will justify whatever we are preparing to do next.
I know that’s cynical and it may not be fair, but I haff heard all ziss before and I am deeply uncomfortable.
Footnotes:
1. I haven’t made a study of this, but my guess is that the spelling of his name is going to get stranger and more foreign-looking by the day. Imagine a time when we referred to him as “Uncle Mo-Mo” in the way we were taught to refer to “Uncle Joe” Stalin after the U.S.S.R. became out ally in World War II. He could then become “Colonel Kadafi,” which isn’t that bad since there are U. S. colonels as well. And maybe after a few references to that title, it might just be “the Colonel,” to call up the notion of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Then we could go to the whole name, Moamar Kadafi—the pronunciations would vary, I am sure from NPR to Fox News—and get, eventually, to the form I say in the New York Times today, Moamar el-Qadaffi. Notice the –el (strange and foreign-sounding) and the substitution of Q for K as the first consonant. Short of “Adolf el-Qadafi,” I don’t know where else there is for us to go.
2. Should it become necessary, we can always begin referring to Libya by its official name, “Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.”
I was there for the lecture on Iraq. It was given by a faculty member whose name I have forgotten, but I will never forget his pitch to the congregation. He was warning against the impending invasion of Iraq in the strongest terms. He was warning a gathering of his friends, nearly all of whom thought that removing Saddam Hussein, that “Hitler of the Middle East,” was our duty. The speaker made a good case against the war, but it was a pretty standard case. I could have made it, myself. But he got a hearing for his point, which I would not have been able to do, by talking about all the nights he and a lot of his fellow members stayed after meetings to finish washing up the dishes. He apologized to another section of the congregation whom he addressed as “my fishing buddies,” for the contentious nature of the argument he was making. He was wonderful. I understood why he was so well received in a church that had no ears at all for his message.
Afterwards, I had a conversation with an old man with a very heavy German accent. I am going to try to represent the accent in the way I spell the words because I want you to be able to “hear” what I heard. The old man said, “I know vere ziss iss goink. I haff heard all ziss before.”
My blood ran cold. I knew that he had heard it from Hermann Goering in the 1930s. He heard it over loudspeakers, and all the radio stations, and saw it on the “newsreels” in the theaters. This is the Goering who said:
“Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
This week, I have been feeling a little bit like that old German man. Muammar el-Qaddafi is getting more reprehensible by the day, following the path by which Sadaam Hussein got more deplorable by the day. For people who pay any attention at all to public affairs and who are old enough to remember the run-up to the Iraq War, this has got to sound familiar. We may be excused for feeling, “I haff heard all ziss before.”
So just how bad is Kadafi? We can’t know, of course, so I have another way of approaching the question. How bad do we need him to be? I think someone who knows more of the facts on the ground in Libya and on the proper floor of the Pentagon could work out a correspondence that would help us. I’m thinking of something like this.
1a. Kadafi is a pompous hypocrite.
1b. We are trying to draw that attention of potential allies to the need for some action against Libya.
2a. Kadafi is terrorist.
2b. We have begun efforts to isolate him diplomatically and economically
3a. Kadafi has unleashed the power of a brutal regime against his own people.
3b. We have decided to neutralize his air defenses and to ground or destroy his air force.
4a. Kadafi is a clear and present danger to everyone and has a stock of mustard gas that he will unleash on anyone he deems an enemy.
4b. We are about to begin bombing civilian targets in Tripoli and are making “surgical strikes” against buildings where Kadafi or his family might be hiding.
We could go on, of course. I am not saying that any particular charge about Kadafi is untrue. I don’t really know. My point is that if they are true, they were always true—he took over in 1969, when my 50 year-old daughter was not yet 10—and the information we can glean from which ones are trotted out is best treated as the information that will justify whatever we are preparing to do next.
I know that’s cynical and it may not be fair, but I haff heard all ziss before and I am deeply uncomfortable.
Footnotes:
1. I haven’t made a study of this, but my guess is that the spelling of his name is going to get stranger and more foreign-looking by the day. Imagine a time when we referred to him as “Uncle Mo-Mo” in the way we were taught to refer to “Uncle Joe” Stalin after the U.S.S.R. became out ally in World War II. He could then become “Colonel Kadafi,” which isn’t that bad since there are U. S. colonels as well. And maybe after a few references to that title, it might just be “the Colonel,” to call up the notion of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Then we could go to the whole name, Moamar Kadafi—the pronunciations would vary, I am sure from NPR to Fox News—and get, eventually, to the form I say in the New York Times today, Moamar el-Qadaffi. Notice the –el (strange and foreign-sounding) and the substitution of Q for K as the first consonant. Short of “Adolf el-Qadafi,” I don’t know where else there is for us to go.
2. Should it become necessary, we can always begin referring to Libya by its official name, “Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.”
Friday, March 4, 2011
The Three Things You Need to Know
The Introduction to Public Policy has three emphases. The three are the three most important things to know about the course.
APP
Policy issues can be usefully analyzed into the topics on which positions will be taken and the positions themselves. This sequence of Axes, Positions, and Problems gives the emphasis the name APP. I call the topics axes, because more than one axis is involved as the alternatives are presented, thought some in the field call them “frames.” Each position can be usefully examined by constructing a problem (a problem is a violated norm and a causal statement which explains why it was violated) from the standpoint of someone who holds that position. Following naturally from the problem formulation are a) the solution, b) the tools appropriate to the solution, and c) the rationale which will place the solution within the rhetorical space of American politics. From a political standpoint, each position can be understood by looking at the allies it attracts and the constituents it serves. The former are elites who can help formulate, evaluate, and defend the position; the latter are the masses whose interests, either material or symbolic, will be advanced by this position.
Policy Process
The public policy process is the way issues that were not formerly thought appropriate to government action or that had not formerly required government action, are placed on the government’s action agenda. As you would expect from the problem table, issues are placed by constituents who desire a benefit, by ideologues, by policy entrepreneurs, or by the possessors of underutilized mechanisms, the use of which would validate the possessor. Most potential issues are retained by the social segment where they originated. I consider the society—including religious, racial, ethnic, educational, familial, and sexual—to be one such segment. I consider the economy—including all the employers, owners, and financiers at the top end and all the employees, borrowers, and consumers at the bottom end—to be another such segment. As conflicts “escape” (or are rescued from) these segments, they become the property of public controversy and are likely to become agenda.
Once government has acquired an issue, the process of development is more straightforward. A policy is formulated, funded, implemented, and evaluated. Then, commonly, it is reformulated with new implementation mechanisms and reevaluated. Occasionally, the issue goes away and, even less often, the institutional response to it goes away.
Conflict here has less to do with ideology that with partisanship. Sometimes those parties are the Democratic and Republican parties. Sometimes they are the In party and the Out party. The conflicts that were guaranteed by the Framers, giving every governmental body the means, the motive, and the opportunity to bring any policy initiative to a standstill, always have a home here.
The Policies Themselves.
Since every policy is a “solution,” or was claimed to be a solution at the time of its promulgation—the time of its “milking forward”—by a legislative, executive, or regulatory body. So every solution has an official “problem” to which it is a response. The natural context of such issues is the historical era, the values of the current elites, and the way the policy space has been shaped by previous attempts. Similarly, every problem has a constituency, whether economic, regional, social, or ideological.
Policies can be grouped by whether they related more closely to some outcome or to some process and by how deeply they penetrate into the economy or society, which was their home before “went public.” An administration that digs too deeply into the economy will, in the U. S., be called “socialist.” Digging too deeply into the society will elicit “Nanny State” as a protest.
APP
Policy issues can be usefully analyzed into the topics on which positions will be taken and the positions themselves. This sequence of Axes, Positions, and Problems gives the emphasis the name APP. I call the topics axes, because more than one axis is involved as the alternatives are presented, thought some in the field call them “frames.” Each position can be usefully examined by constructing a problem (a problem is a violated norm and a causal statement which explains why it was violated) from the standpoint of someone who holds that position. Following naturally from the problem formulation are a) the solution, b) the tools appropriate to the solution, and c) the rationale which will place the solution within the rhetorical space of American politics. From a political standpoint, each position can be understood by looking at the allies it attracts and the constituents it serves. The former are elites who can help formulate, evaluate, and defend the position; the latter are the masses whose interests, either material or symbolic, will be advanced by this position.
Policy Process
The public policy process is the way issues that were not formerly thought appropriate to government action or that had not formerly required government action, are placed on the government’s action agenda. As you would expect from the problem table, issues are placed by constituents who desire a benefit, by ideologues, by policy entrepreneurs, or by the possessors of underutilized mechanisms, the use of which would validate the possessor. Most potential issues are retained by the social segment where they originated. I consider the society—including religious, racial, ethnic, educational, familial, and sexual—to be one such segment. I consider the economy—including all the employers, owners, and financiers at the top end and all the employees, borrowers, and consumers at the bottom end—to be another such segment. As conflicts “escape” (or are rescued from) these segments, they become the property of public controversy and are likely to become agenda.
Once government has acquired an issue, the process of development is more straightforward. A policy is formulated, funded, implemented, and evaluated. Then, commonly, it is reformulated with new implementation mechanisms and reevaluated. Occasionally, the issue goes away and, even less often, the institutional response to it goes away.
Conflict here has less to do with ideology that with partisanship. Sometimes those parties are the Democratic and Republican parties. Sometimes they are the In party and the Out party. The conflicts that were guaranteed by the Framers, giving every governmental body the means, the motive, and the opportunity to bring any policy initiative to a standstill, always have a home here.
The Policies Themselves.
Since every policy is a “solution,” or was claimed to be a solution at the time of its promulgation—the time of its “milking forward”—by a legislative, executive, or regulatory body. So every solution has an official “problem” to which it is a response. The natural context of such issues is the historical era, the values of the current elites, and the way the policy space has been shaped by previous attempts. Similarly, every problem has a constituency, whether economic, regional, social, or ideological.
Policies can be grouped by whether they related more closely to some outcome or to some process and by how deeply they penetrate into the economy or society, which was their home before “went public.” An administration that digs too deeply into the economy will, in the U. S., be called “socialist.” Digging too deeply into the society will elicit “Nanny State” as a protest.
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