Vol. 2 No. 12 (April 2004)
The Newsletter of the Commonweal Institute
www.commonwealinstitute.org
"The right of
voting for representation is the primary right by which other
rights are protected."
-- Thomas Paine
Get
Involved: Fight the Right
Talking Points: Critical thinking -- critical
indeed!
Wit and Wisdom: A libertarian's dilemma
Check It Out: Revisiting
Featured Article: Bruce Barcott
on new-source review
Quoted! Condi on W.
Happenings: Strategizing voting technology
Endorsements: Joan Blades
* Raising awareness
among both politicians and the public of how new electronic voting technologies
represent potential threats to the integrity of the democratic process;
* Helping to defeat a bill in California that would have caused thousands of
teacher layoffs by increasing the maximum class size in public schools, and
that would have wasted billions of dollars the state has invested in teacher
recruitment and retention;
* Alerting the public to how conservatives have used the "tort
reform" movement, and attacks on trial lawyers generally, as a way of defunding the Right's political opposition;
* Forging alliances with organizations and individuals on the
moderate-to-progressive end of the spectrum -- alliances that will be necessary
to combat the Right's message machine.
Our approach in these
efforts and in future projects is to develop a communications strategy that
gives progressive ideas the force and profile they deserve, and that will help
move public attitudes back toward the center. In the words of Nancy Pelosi,
minority leader in the House: "In these challenging times, we need an
advocacy think tank like the Commonweal Institute to communicate our principles
and programs in ways that will resonate with the broad public and empower
citizens to take a more active role in our democracy." Robert Reich,
former Secretary of Labor and co-founder of The American Prospect,
concurs: "
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TALKING POINTS
Perhaps the greatest legacy of the Western Enlightenment has been the elevation
of individual reason and judgment over dogma and received wisdom. The
celebration of independent thought -- not to mention independent thought itself
-- has played a central role in the rise of both secular government and
religious ecumenicalism; in the steady expansion of liberty and civil rights;
in the major scientific and economic advances of the last 500 years; and in the
philosophical underpinnings of all these achievements.
It is a strange and troubling state of affairs, then, that in the United States
at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the art of "critical
thinking" (as we may conveniently term it) seems increasingly to be a lost
art. Our image-saturated culture is showing signs of what Lewis Lapham, in Harper's, has identified as a
"broad retreat into the forests of superstition." The qualities of
mind essential to a vibrant democracy -- curiosity, skepticism, self-awareness
-- have ceded too much ground to a creeping complacency and a willingness to
repose our faith in the good intentions of the powerful.
To this affliction critical thinking is a vital antidote. In the broadest
sense, critical thinking helps clear away the mists with which the status
quo shrouds itself. It exposes the inner mechanisms and workings of the
social machine. It enables us to resist the mystique of the powerful, drawing
aside the curtain and revealing the Wizard of Oz at the heart of our
There are practical policy implications here. Most importantly, for our
democracy to remain healthy, critical thinking must be more fully integrated
into the educational curriculum, particularly at the lower grade levels. As
it stands, it is taught primarily in the universities -- and there usually in
an ad-hoc fashion that depends on the pedagogical inclinations of individual
professors. Teaching critical thinking in college is also, in a sense, teaching
it too late. The qualities of thought we wish to promote should be promoted
among younger students -- those in elementary and middle school -- such that
they enter their adult years already better equipped to make good decisions for
their lives, and to understand the forces and
processes that shape their world.
The current trend in American education does not bode well in this regard. That
trend is toward "standards" as measured by standardized tests. This
is whole philosophy behind the "No Child Left Behind" act, which,
among its other unfortunate consequences, is pushing schools to adopt a less
creative, more homogenized approach to education, with teachers pressured to
"teach to the test." Educational standards are important, of course,
but how those standards are defined, and by whom, are crucial questions. If we
rely on a nationalized, uniform system of standards that emphasize technical
achievement only, we will, in effect, be stamping students out of the same
mold.
Our schools should not be assembly lines simply producing the next
generation of go-along corporate citizens. They should be incubators of
independent thought.
There are different ideas about what exactly critical thinking is, but it
generally involves a variety of intellectual skills and habits, including:
* a willingness and desire
to reevaluate one's own assumptions and presuppositions
* an ability to ask intelligent questions
* an orientation toward the big picture and the long term
* an awareness of how arguments (especially implicit arguments) function
* a refusal to take information or sources at face value
* a belief that conclusions must be drawn, but drawn cautiously
* a healthy skepticism toward authority, power, and tradition
In
his book "On Liberty," the British political philosopher John Stuart
Mill identified the connection between civil and intellectual freedom.
"The mental and moral, like the muscular, powers are improved only by
being used," he wrote. "The faculties are called into no exercise by
doing a thing merely because others do it, no more than by believing a thing
only because others believe it."
The antithesis of critical thinking is fundamentalism, in all the forms that
fundamentalism can take: religious, political, intellectual, cultural. The
fundamentalist mindset stifles debate, limits creativity, diminishes tolerance,
and refuses to confront itself in the mirror. Fundamentalism is anti-democratic
in spirit, given its self-righteousness, and it always seeks to acquire
political power. Fundamentalism views the world in black and white, and it is
directly responsible for some of the darkest passages of human history. And it
does not have a good sense of humor.
Today we see the resurgence of religious fundamentalism not only in the jihadist movement, but in the rigidity and messianism of the administration's foreign policy. We see
it not only in Hindu nationalism in India and Jewish nationalism in the
settlements, but in the Ten Commandments case in Alabama; in the wild
popularity of both "The Passion of the Christ," and the "Left
Behind" series of apocalypse novels; in the war against the teaching of
evolution and "anti-Christian" books such as "Harry Potter and
the Sorcerer's Stone"; in the campaign against gay marriage; and in the
overtly religious moralism of John Ashcroft's Justice
Department.
Such, then, are two of the major anti-democratic trends in our society: A
dependency on images, sound-bites, simplicities, and illusions, and an
encroaching fundamentalism that leaves little room for alternative viewpoints.
To achieve a fully functional democracy -- i.e., one in which citizens
understand the issues, are not unduly influenced by distortions or propaganda
in the media, and are able to provide valuable input into the process -- we
must press our elected leaders (especially local school boards) to emphasize
critical thinking as a core component of elementary and high school curricula.
If the
WIT AND WISDOM
Libertarian Reluctantly Calls Fire Department
-- From The Onion, April 21, 2004
CHECK IT OUT
On April 26, 1986, the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl-4, in the
Now, a young Ukrainian woman has created a powerful online documentary of the
incident and its ongoing aftermath. In words and photographs, she gives a vivid
and accurate history of the meltdown, describes her motorcycle journey from
"We are now crossing the border into
The photographs can be striking. Here is one of a street scene from
"This hellish inferno became a sort of paradise for wild animals -- at
least on the surface. They thrive with no humans to prey upon them, but nobody
fully understands how the nuclear poisons have altered their genetic makeup,
the extent of their migration or their interactions with the adjacent 'safe'
areas. Grotesque mutations have been reported, but zoologists deny that."
The most horrible photos are those from inside an abandoned kindergarten
building:
"Perhaps future archeologists will compare town to
The full documentary is available at www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/.
Check it out.
FEATURED ARTICLE
The following is an excerpt from "Changing All the Rules," by
Bruce Barcott, which appeared in the New York Times Magazine,
April 4, 2004.
"Of the many
environmental changes brought about by the Bush White House, none illustrate
the administration's modus operandi better than the overhaul of new-source
review. The president has had little success in the past three years at getting
his environmental agenda through Congress. His energy bill remains unpassed. His Clear Skies package of clean-air laws is
collecting dust on a committee shelf. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
remains closed to oil and gas exploration. "
"But while its legislative initiatives have languished on Capitol Hill,
the administration has managed to effect a radical transformation of the
nation's environmental laws, quietly and subtly, by means of regulatory changes
and bureaucratic directives. Overturning new-source review -- the phrase itself
embodies the kind of dull, eye-glazing bureaucrat-speak that distracts
attention -- represents the most sweeping change, and among the least
noticed."
Click here to
read the whole article.
QUOTED!
"As I was telling
my husb-. As I was telling President Bush...." -- National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, at a recent dinner party
hosted by New York Times D.C. bureau chief Philip Taubman
and his wife, Times reporter Felicity Barringer,
as reported in New York Metro.com, April 26, 2004
HAPPENINGS
Strategy session on voting technology -- From April 16-18, CI president
Leonard Salle and co-founder Katherine Forrest attended a high-level strategy
meeting on electronic voting machines in Chicago. Convened by the Quixote
Foundation, the group of funders, computer experts, and representatives of
national and state level organizations addressed both short-term and long-term
goals with regard to electronic voting equipment security and reliability. The
group adopted the following statement of its position:
"Every citizen has the right to equal opportunity and ability to vote, the right to confirm that their vote is cast as intended, and the right to have their vote counted as cast. The citizenry has the collective right to a voting system whose honesty and accuracy are verifiable. In electronic voting systems, voter-verified paper trails, features designed to promote accessibility, open source code, and regularly mandated recounts are necessary to ensure these rights, to legitimize the democracy, and to increase and broaden voter participation."
The
conference work groups came up with a number of specific steps to be taken
prior to the 2004 elections, assigned responsibilities, and created
coordination mechanisms for maintaining the momentum generated by the meeting.
The Commonweal Institute will be an active participant in these activities.
ENDORSEMENTS
"Quality information is the basis on which all good policy must be built.
Commonweal Institute's mission,
to research, educate and
communicate on issues of importance, is key for policymakers and activists
alike." -- Joan Blades, Co-Founder, Moveon.org
© 2004 The Commonweal Institute
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