Vol. 3 No. 7 (November 2004)
Uncommon Denominator
The Newsletter of the Commonweal Institute
www.commonwealinstitute.org
"I believe there
are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and
silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden
usurpations."
---- James Madison
CONTENTS
Talking
Points: Truth and the Right
Wit and Wisdom: In the dark
Check It Out: Red state blues
Featured Article: "The Godly Must Be
Crazy"
Quoted! Rick Santorum on American destiny
Happenings: Defining progressivism; new CI
report; infrastructure initiative
Endorsements: Ted Lempert
Get Involved: Spread the word; become a
contributor
1. The critics are just
being political. The flawed logic of this charge is that, if a critical
stance or statement might have political consequences, that criticism is
intrinsically political and must therefore be untrustworthy. Example: Richard
Clarke, the former chief of counter-terrorism, who after criticizing the
invasion of Iraq was accused of trying to give the administration a black eye
simply because he hadn't received a promotion.
2. The critics are just conspiracy theorists. In this case, the
reasoning is that, if a critical argument requires a number of dots to be
connected, involving a variety of actors and events, then that argument is a
confection or a paranoid fantasy. Example: Legitimate concerns about the
accuracy of electronic voting equipment are dismissed as the rantings of the
"loony left" who refuse to accept the results of the election.
3. The critics are like Chicken Little. Here, the approach is to make
reasonable claims seem unreasonable by suggesting that they are unfounded or
that they imply more than they actually do. Example: Environmentalists who
point to evidence of global warming's potential economic and social impacts are
accused of concocting doomsday scenarios designed to scare people into
supporting a radical agenda.
What
links these three tactics is that they are ad hominem attacks
designed to undercut the very authority to speak of those making the criticism.
This holds true, frequently, even when the substance of the criticism is
engaged ---- but that engagement, we should note, often takes the form only of
denial or distortion.
But isn't the Left also guilty of ad hominem attacks, we might ask, and
of distorting its opponents' claims? Why should the Right come in for more
severe censure? Well, yes, the Left is far from perfect, but there are some
crucial differences here.
First, consider that two of the Right's primary targets over the last 30
years have been the media and the universities. Conservatives say that what
these institutions have in common is "liberal bias." What they really
have in common, however -- as a matter of professional and institutional
mission -- is that they are devoted to the pursuit of the truth. Journalists
and academics can fall short of that ideal, of course, but is it mere
coincidence that these "liberal" institutions nonetheless represent
most fully our society's liberal (in the original sense of the word)
dedication to free inquiry and the dissemination of knowledge? Perhaps
Americans, when they hear attacks on the press and professors, should stop and
consider why it might be that so many members of the media and universities --
those whose job descriptions commit them to figuring out what's going on in the
world -- reject the Right's worldview.
In any case, the cumulative result of the conservative campaign against
these two institutions is that it has become much harder for Americans to know
what the truth is. Their healthy trust (meaning a trust informed by
critical awareness) in the institutions of knowledge has been deliberately and
systematically undermined, and now an unhealthy suspicion or confusion reigns.
In our image-saturated, message-mad world, when the sheer quantity of
information can seem overwhelming, that makes it easier for misconceptions to
propagate and for the public to be manipulated. >From this view, the
supposedly "elitist" press and universities are in fact anti-elitist,
in that they help people cut through the static, make good decisions for
themselves, resist the lure of demagogues.
A second important difference is the Right's comparatively greater penchant for
governmental secrecy. Again, there's no monopoly of virtue here; political
actors across the spectrum have tried in their own ways to suppress evidence or
conceal the truth. As a matter of declared and practiced policy,
however, the conservative record trends toward less public information, not
more. Usually justified in terms of Presidential prerogative, this
"darkness" policy has emerged in a variety of recent cases: Dick
Cheney's energy task force meeting behind closed doors; the Justice Department
holding secret trials of terrorism suspects; the military refusing to release
information about detainees at
If you think about it, the hypocrisy of all this is stunning. That's because
conservatives have long prided themselves on their belief in "objective
truth," while accusing the Left of espousing a kind of sickly postmodern
moral relativism. Yet one need look no further than the current
administration's famous contempt for science in order to take the measure of
conservative cynicism about the truth. Dismissing unpleasant truths as
politically motivated without giving them any sort of hearing is not,
whatever they may say, a belief in the sanctity of fact -- or in the sanctity
of life. And no less hypocritical is it to claim self-righteously the mantle of
"populism" while making it more difficult for the populace both to
get and to interpret reliable information. Increasingly, modern American
conservatism has come to seem both premodern and postmodern in the worst ways:
premodern in its blinkered fundamentalism, and postmodern in its skill at
creating a "reality" that can be packaged and sold.
It's symptomatic that simply putting the argument in these terms seems to verge
on paranoia. Things have gotten to where just pointing out the undisputed facts
can make one sound like a wild-eyed fanatic: American soldiers torture and kill
prisoners in Iraq; half a million fewer Americans have health insurance now
than in 2001; the climate gets warmer and warmer, and oil consumption goes up
and up; more Americans believe in the devil than in evolution. What's a
progressive to do?
That's an easy one. Never back down, unless the facts call for it. Never stop
calling it like you see it. Press for more information and better information.
Point out falsehood where it shows itself. Stand on conviction, yet be willing
to adapt to new truths. Have faith that the truth shall set us free, and will
prevail in the end. "By their fruits shall ye know them," a wise man
once said, and as the bitter fruit of conservative ideology ripens, and the
public wearies of its taste, progressives must be there standing on principle:
justice, compassion, fairness, equality, honesty.
WIT AND WISDOM
New Tourist Video at
"A conservative group says that a videotape being shown to tourists at the Lincoln Memorial implies that President Lincoln would have supported a laundry list of radical causes. They're urging that the National Park Service edit out the offensive scenes of civil rights marches and replace them with less celebrated moments from American history."
-- parody, from The Swift Report. Read more.
CHECK IT OUT
Ever since the election, there's been a lot of talk about "red
states" and "blue states," and the conventional wisdom is that
the latter represent a relatively small slice of the country -- fringed around
the West Coast, crowded up into the Northeast. This is, of course, a misleading
view, and part of the problem is that the maps showing the state-by-state,
winner-take-all, red-blue results are covered mostly in red. Now, three
researchers at the
"The (contiguous 48) states of the country are colored red or blue to
indicate whether a majority of their voters voted for the Republican candidate
(George W. Bush) or the Democratic candidate (John F. Kerry) respectively. The
map gives the superficial impression that the 'red states' dominate the
country, since they cover far more area than the blue ones. However, as pointed
out by many others, this is misleading because it fails to take into account
the fact that most of the red states have small populations, whereas most of
the blue states have large ones. The blue may be small in area, but they are
large in terms of numbers of people, which is what matters in an election.
"We can correct for this by making use of a cartogram, a map in which the
sizes of states have been rescaled according to their population. That is,
states are drawn with a size proportional not to their sheer topographic
acreage -- which has little to do with politics -- but to the number of their
inhabitants, states with more people appearing larger than states with fewer,
regardless of their actual area on the ground. Thus, on such a map, the state
of Rhode Island, with its 1.1 million inhabitants, would appear about twice the
size of Wyoming, which has half a million, even though Wyoming has 60 times the
acreage of Rhode Island."
It's visually quite revealing! Check it out.
FEATURED ARTICLE
The following is an excerpt from Glenn Scherer's "The Godly Must Be Crazy:
Christian-right views are swaying politicians and threatening the environment,"
which appeared in the Oct. 27 edition of Grist magazine, an online
journal of environmental news and commentary.
"Forty-five senators
and 186 representatives in 2003 earned 80- to 100-percent approval ratings from
the nation's three most influential Christian right advocacy groups -- the
Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum, and Family Resource Council. Many of those
same lawmakers also got flunking grades -- less than 10 percent, on average --
from the League of Conservation Voters last year…
"Today's Christian fundamentalist politicians are more politically savvy
than Reagan's interior secretary [James Watt] was; you're unlikely to catch
them overtly attributing public-policy decisions to private religious views.
But their words and actions suggest that many share Watt's beliefs. Like him,
many Christian fundamentalists feel that concern for the future of our planet
is irrelevant, because it has no future. They believe we are living in the End
Time, when the son of God will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and
sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire. They may also believe, along
with millions of other Christian fundamentalists, that environmental
destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed -- even
hastened -- as a sign of the coming Apocalypse."
Click
here to read the whole article.
QUOTED!
"I've read the Bible. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that
HAPPENINGS
Defining Progressivism -- The Commonweal Institute has been a sidelines
member of the Reaching Beyond the Choir Project (RBCP), started and run by Wade
Hudson. RBCP has solicited a number of proposed statements of purpose for the
progressive movement (as a whole) and is now asking that everyone interested
cast their vote for the one(s) they think best. The deadline is Dec. 20.
Dear Fellow
Progressives:
You are invited to rank nine proposed statements of purpose for the progressive
movement. These statements are at: blogs.utiligeek.com/towardpeace.php?cat=62
Instructions are included as the first comment at the end of each statement.
The full, undivided text of the statement can also been seen in that first
comment.
These statements have been submitted in response to the Request for Submissions
circulated by the Reaching Beyond the Choir Project.
The purpose of this project is to "identify one or more short Statements
of Purpose that will enable the progressive movement to better connect with
mainstream Americans by expressing political principles that are clearly rooted
in underlying American moral values."
Your feedback will assist in the evaluation of the effectiveness of these
statements. After December 15, we will tabulate the results, identify the
authors of the statements, and widely distribute a report on the results.
Thanks very much for participation. Please extend this invitation to your
associates by posting it to e-lists and websites.
For more information about the Reaching Beyond the Choir Project, see:
http://blogs.utiligeek.com/towardpeace.php/2004/11/11/aboutrbcp
Sincerely,
Wade Hudson, Coordinator
Reaching Beyond the Choir Project
New CI Report on Medical
Malpractice -- A new report from the Commonweal Institute examines the
existing data about medical malpractice awards and the data sources, and
discusses obstacles to understanding what is actually happening with regard to
medical malpractice awards. In particular, the authors detail serious problems
with use of the data from Jury Verdict Research (JVR), on which many so-called
"tort reform" initiatives are based. JVR data, by their nature, are
strongly biased toward very large outcomes of successful court cases, which
represent only a small fraction of the total medical malpractice cases filed.
The report, titled "Faulty Data and False Conclusions: The Myth of
Skyrocketing Medical Malpractice Verdicts," discusses why present data
sources are inadequate for determining the truth of what is happening with
medical malpractice awards, and shows that there are a number of reasons to
suspect that awards in general are quite modest and are not rising. Full report available
online.
New CI Initiative -- The Commonweal Institute is undertaking
ground-breaking work to improve the political influence of moderates and
progressives. This will require creation of a substantial network of
organizations and individuals-an infrastructure-that will be able to market
moderate and progressive ideas to the broad public and move the political
center of this country. The conservative assault, not only on Democrats but
also on moderate Republicans, shows that this is an issue that goes beyond
political party affiliation. CI staff have done extensive analysis on
infrastructure design and function, have been giving presentations on the
topic, and have publications planned. For further information, please email Katherine Forrest.
ENDORSEMENTS
"Commonweal will play three critical roles in helping all of us and our
organizations in making the world a better place. They will frame the debate,
provide research for existing organizations and expand the base." -- Ted
Lempert, former California State Assembly member and CEO of EdVoice, now
President of Children Now
GET INVOLVED
If you agree with Ted Lempert (see above), there are a number of ways you can
help the Commonweal Institute achieve its goals.
Right now, as you read, you can simply forward the Uncommon Denominator
to friends and family who might be interested in learning about the Commonweal
Institute. Getting the word out is crucial.
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© 2004 The Commonweal Institute
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