Vol. 3 No. 10 (February 2005)
Uncommon Denominator
The Newsletter of the Commonweal Institute
www.commonwealinstitute.org
"It is a
wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the
contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility."
-- Rachel Carson
CONTENTS
Talking
Points: The cross in the jungle
Wit and Wisdom: On indecency
Around the Corner: On the precautionary principle
Quoted! John C. Yoo on
American values
Featured Article: "Revenge of the Right
Brain"
Happenings: Monthly round-up
Endorsements: Steve Westly
Get Involved: Spread the word; become a
contributor
TALKING POINTS
It's a curious feature of American political culture
that today, in 2005, we are witnessing both a determined assault on the
country's long-standing entitlement and assistance programs and,
simultaneously, a newly energetic Christian politics on the Right. Curious,
because to many on the Left, it's hard to see which "moral values"
are served by making it easier for people to get left behind or to fall between
the cracks.
While it might seem that these political trends represent separate strains of
conservatism -- the libertarian and the religious -- there is actually a
profound connection between the two. Understanding that connection may suggest
strategies for how the Left can reclaim the initiative.
The elemental divide between the governing philosophies of conservatives and
progressives involves the role of self-interest in society. Those on the left
typically advocate a sharper abridgement of what we might call the
"natural liberty" of human beings to pursue their own self-interest
by accumulating ever more resources and power. That abridgement, most visible
in the form of progressive taxation and regulation, means to create a more
level social playing field and to diminish the abuses inherent in a free market
system. Metaphorically, it is meant to raise us out of the anarchic jungle,
where the natural liberty of the strongest lion to eat the entire antelope is
unchallenged by law or morality. Progressives want the antelope to be shared,
and in order to do so, appeal to the "right" of the majority to band
together and take some of it away from the strong lion. This orientation
toward greater equality is, in a nutshell, the essential moral vision of modern
progressivism.
Conservatives, meanwhile, have much less of a problem with self-interest.
Indeed, they argue that the unfettered pursuit of individual self-interest
will, in the aggregate, advance the general public good. In this view, the free
market, low taxes, and minimal regulation will enable a growing economy to lift
all boats. That, at least, is the idealistic version. There's also a strain of
conservatism that isn't particularly concerned with the public good, and that
sees self-interest as simply an inevitable or even desirable fact of human nature
that should not be hindered. In both cases, the conservative philosophy is
closer in spirit to the jungle.
Let's acknowledge that the conservative suspicion of government can be a good
thing -- insofar as it aligns itself against such power-grabbing ideological
tyrannies as Soviet communism -- but we should also be clear that conservatives
are not suspicious of power per se. In fact, they seem to have a
great fondness for power (particularly in their engines and their armies). The
Cold War aside, on a day to day basis the conservative suspicion of
governmental power seems oriented most toward programs designed to create a
more equitable society.
There's an apparent paradox in all this. What we find is that the same
conservatives who, by and large, oppose the teaching of evolution on religious
grounds are also those most committed to a social Darwinist vision of human
life. That is, the doctrine of "survival of the fittest" seems to
deeply inform conservative philosophy at the same time that the evolutionary
idea itself is dismissed as un-Christian. How is it possible to live
comfortably with the sink-or-swim, red-in-tooth-and-claw, free-market
jungle (despite the rhetoric of "compassion"), while rejecting
natural selection as a scientific principle?
What makes that possible is the cross in the jungle, a figure for the
Christianizing of nature. In other words, the conservative nonchalance
regarding economic competition and self-interest depends on a faith in a
superintendent God who upholds a moral order rather than allowing moral anarchy
to reign. The cross in the jungle is an image of nature redeemed by culture, or
of nature serving culture. Rather than relying on coordinated social action
(i.e., government) to solve problems, conservatives have faith that individuals
operating according to the law of the jungle will somehow forward the will of
God. Regarded in this light, humankind in a state of nature is not threatening
to conservatives, because the very processes and phenomena of nature are informed
and guided by a transcendent, divine morality.
So perhaps the seeming paradox between social darwinism
as policy and anti-evolutionism as creed is not really a paradox after all. We
might say that the dominant conservative philosophy today is like an application
of the principle of "intelligent design" to human society.
Intelligent design (a recent form of creationism that aspires to scientific
respectability) acknowledges that species change over time, but maintains that
this change is guided and given purpose by a higher being. In that sense, it
goes back to pre-Darwinist evolutionary theory, or "developmentalism."
Translated into social policy, this implies that the inequalities and abuses in
an economic system are incidental to the larger good that the system produces,
that the grinding under of some individuals does not negatively redound to the
moral order itself. What we're seeing in modern conservatism, in short, is
like social darwinism softened and sanctioned by
religious faith.
The problem, however, is that history tells a different story. By seeking to
undo the New Deal, to fundamentally change the nature of American governance,
conservatives would return us to something like the Gilded Age of the 1880s and
1890s -- the age of the robber barons, of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, of
grotesque disparities in wealth and power, and of social darwinist theory at its very worst. The history of
unfettered capitalism in the
The whole system of entitlement assistance programs that developed during the
twentieth century was based on a conviction that people need to take
responsibility for one another, and that an enlightened government represented
the people coming together to do that. Of course there are problems in the
system. But compared to the abuses and excesses that came before, the system is
profoundly humane. By planting the cross in the jungle, conservatives have
seized the initiative on both religion and economics, but progressives have no
less a claim to the moral high ground. Evolution and natural selection are
facts -- but that doesn't mean we need to apply them to human society while
hoping that
WIT AND WISDOM
"Congress may pass a law that would result in TV networks that broadcast
indecency being even stiffly penalized. In fact, it is going to cost us 500
more bucks because I said stiffly penalized." -- Craig Ferguson
AROUND THE CORNER
Where medical knowledge goes, perhaps environmental
policy should follow. Over the past half century, as we know, modern medicine
has increasingly emphasized a proactive, preventive approach to bodily
affliction. Better to cut cholesterol, the thinking goes, than to call the
heart surgeon. The same thinking underlies a recent concept in ecology called
the "precautionary principle," which aims at identifying
environmental risks and implementing policies that will head off environmental
damage before it occurs.
In the 1980s, the precautionary principle began appearing in policy statements
and mechanisms in Europe and Canada, and it has been written into international
treaties such as the North Atlantic Treaty, the Maastricht Treaty on the
European Union, and the 1992 Rio Declaration from the UN Conference on
Environment and Development (Agenda 21), to which the United States is a
signatory. In 1998, at the Wingspread
Conference on the precautionary principle, an international gathering of
scientists, government officials, lawyers, labor representatives, and
environmental activists formulated some of the principle's key components:
* When an activity or policy potentially threatens human
health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken, even if
certain cause-and-effect relationships are not fully established
scientifically.
* The burden of proof regarding environmental damage falls not on the public
but on the specific proponents and actors behind a given activity or policy.
* Application of the precautionary principle must be open, informed, and
democratic, and must include potentially affected parties. It must also involve
an examination of the full range of alternatives, including no action.
Simply put, the precautionary
principle embodies a philosophy of "better safe than sorry" in
matters of commerce, industry, environmental law, and public health.
So how can the precautionary principle be put into
practice? One approach is an open, public review process for evaluating new
products and technologies before they are manufactured and marketed -- similar
to the current system of vetting new pharmaceutical medicines. In addition to
protecting public health, this review process promotes transparency in
decision-making and greater accountability in the private sector. Another precautionary
approach is to require insurance bonds from private entities whose proposals
have the potential for causing environmental damage. This would provide a means
of offsetting or covering the monetary costs of clean-up or repair. (Compare
this to the Superfund approach, where taxpayers, not polluters, are footing the
bill for a variety of environmental disaster sites, while the perpetrators walk
away with money in their pockets). In each case, the fundamental idea is to
create powerful incentives for private actors to anticipate and avert the
environmental harm that their products or activities might cause down the road,
rather than making a mess and then trying to duck responsibility.
These incentives are carrots as well as sticks; they are based not just on
regulation but on the market. Certainly some new products might be more
expensive to bring to market, at least in the short term. But
there are long-term savings overall to the business community when no harm is
done to the environment or to the public health -- savings in terms of
litigation, public reputation, and mandated environmental restoration.
Indeed, new, cleaner technologies have become increasingly important and
popular exports for countries that have begun incorporating the precautionary
principle into their economies. In the
There's still a long way to go, and the precautionary principle per se is not
always the motivating factor for cleaner, greener business practices, but the
signs are encouraging. (For news on this front, check out a company called Clean Edge, whose mission is "to help
companies and investors understand and profit from the clean-tech revolution
and to catalyze the development of clean-tech companies and markets.")
For more information on the precautionary principle, take a look at: the Science and Environmental Health
Network (SEHN), AG
Biotech Infonet, and the Environmental Research Foundation.
A particularly useful document is SEHN's
Precautionary Principle Handbook, a practical implementation guide for
communities and environmental groups.
Some critics of the precautionary principle fear that it will cut into
corporate profits. Others, operating at a somewhat higher level, argue that it
will stifle the spirit of innovation that has yielded products beneficial to
the well-being of humankind. That does not have to be the case, however, if the
precautionary principle is implemented in a sensible and forethoughtful way.
And after all, those critics who are concerned about entangling red tape are
engaged, even if they don't realize it, in the very dynamic that the
precautionary principle advocates: one of vigorous, multi-sided debate about
the potential future consequences of a particular course of action. That's the
whole idea, and the stakes are too high, for ourselves
and for future generations, not to take it seriously.
The public campaign against cholesterol hasn't ruined the dairy industry (although
hopefully it will decrease the demand for heart surgeons), and a preventive
approach to environmental problems won't destroy the economy -- indeed, it will
strengthen it over the long run. Besides, no one has yet figured out how to do
a bypass operation on the environment.
-- Karen Watters
Cole
QUOTED!
Congress cannot "tie the President's hands in regard to torture as an
interrogation technique. It's the core of the Commander-in-Chief function. They
can't prevent the President from ordering torture." -- John C. Yoo, formerly deputy assistant attorney general, and
now a law professor at
FEATURED ARTICLE
The following is an excerpt from "Revenge of
the Right Brain," by Daniel H. Pink, which appeared in the February
2005 issue of Wired magazine:
"Scientists have
long known that a neurological
"Until recently, the abilities that led to success in school, work, and
business were characteristic of the left hemisphere. They were the sorts of
linear, logical, analytical talents measured by SATs and deployed by CPAs.
Today, those capabilities are still necessary. But they're no longer
sufficient. In a world upended by outsourcing, deluged with data, and choked
with choices, the abilities that matter most are now closer in spirit to the
specialties of the right hemisphere -- artistry, empathy, seeing the big
picture, and pursuing the transcendent.
"Beneath the nervous clatter of our half-completed decade stirs a slow but
seismic shift. The Information Age we all prepared for is ending. Rising in its
place is what I call the Conceptual Age, an era in which mastery of abilities
that we've often overlooked and undervalued marks the fault line between who
gets ahead and who falls behind."
Click here to read
the whole article.
HAPPENINGS
New Advisory Board Member -- The Commonweal Institute is proud to
welcome Bruce Codding to its Advisory Board. Mr. Codding
is President and CEO of Librx, a management
consulting firm that focuses on improving clients' decision-making in three
strategic areas: future direction, marketing, and hiring key personnel. To
reach effective long-term solutions and develop change strategies, he
approaches problems from multiple perspectives, considering both present and future
stakeholders and the potential ramifications of change. Mr. Codding
has extensive experience in several disciplines-business, consulting,
insurance, risk management, government, and nonprofits. As a consultant for
nearly 20 years, he has worked with corporate clients in the financial
services, food processing, healthcare, manufacturing,
transportation, and utilities sectors; and with state and local governments.
Prior to consulting, Mr. Codding was, for five years,
the Director of Risk Management for Varian, a multinational electronics
manufacturer based in
Progressive Infrastructure -- A condensed version of the Commonweal
Institute paper, "Creating Progressive Infrastructure Now: An Action Plan
for Reclaiming America's Heart and Soul," was published in February, 2005,
issue of The New Democrat, the newsletter of the Peninsula Democratic
Coalition. Also, a new Progressive
Infrastructure Information Page has been added to CI's website. If you wish
to suggest other articles that might be listed there, please send the links to
David Johnson at djohnson@commonwealinstitute.org.
Voting Reform -- Dennis Paull, a member of the
Commonweal Institute's Advisory Board and Chair of its Election Systems Reform
Committee, has accepted an invitation to be a founding member of the new Voting
Systems Performance Rating (VSPR) group. He has also agreed to chair VSPR's "Definitions Working Group," which will
develop a variety of ways to measure system performance and create standards so
that elections officials and others can objectively compare the products of
various voting equipment vendors. The VSPR for the first time brings together
advocates, social scientists, elections officials, computer and security
experts, and voting systems vendors in a joint effort to improve our elections
systems. Please visit www.vspr.org for more
information.
ENDORSEMENTS
"As a candidate for political office, I saw the pressing need for a
large-scale think tank that can gain public and media support for progressive
and centrist positions, and that will serve as a valuable resource for candidates
and office-holders who take such positions. The Commonweal Institute will help
office-holders put their progressive and centrist principles into action."
-- Steve Westly,
GET INVOLVED
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© 2005 The Commonweal
Institute