Tag Archives: Essays

Ideas, Political Projects

Political Equality First

I just wrote a new essay — “Political Equality First” — for The Progressive Alternative.  I attempt to make the case that the Democratic Party’s revival of the economic message of Theodore Roosevelt’s New Nationalism (the idea that state power should be deployed to ameliorate disparities in economic power) will fail if we do not revive Roosevelt’s political message that political equality — restoring political power to the people and away from the grip of monied interests — must be achieved first:

Although the same sentiments are expressed, President Obama and his fellow “New New Nationalists” have echoed only half of Roosevelt’s program. They have failed to articulate the role political equality plays in achieving economic equality. The progressives of the First Gilded Age understood that if they wanted the New Nationalism to work — if they wanted state power to be able to occasionally counterbalance free-wheeling economic power — they had to ensure that state power was free from the control of economic power. They had to fight for state power to be deployed democratically, in the interest of the public sentiment of equal citizens.

In the Gilded Age that Roosevelt faced, state power was not deployed democratically. In practice, there was not an equal distribution of political power. Worse, the disparity in political power mapped on to the disparity in economic power, so that those with economic power had political power and those without economic power did not have political power. The government was not in the control of the People; rather, it was controlled by those with the economic power. Our nation — conceived as a democracy of citizens with equal political power — suffered a crisis of immeasurable political inequality.

…

Today, with the crisis of economic inequality in the spotlight, but the crisis of political inequality sidelined, we must finally address this second strand of Roosevelt’s New Nationalism and give the cause of political equality its due. Even more, we should call forPolitical Equality First: the strategic prioritization of equalizing our distribution of political power. If we want to use state power to better achieve income equality, wealth equality, or structural equality — or even gender equality or racial equality — we need political equality first. We need to wrest back control of state power from those with economic power.

Practicing a strategy of Political Equality First comes with important benefits. Whereas a sizable portion of Americans are — rightly or wrongly (in my view, wrongly) — philosophically opposed to efforts to increase economic equality, most Americans believe in the democratic principle of political equality. Political equality takes the relatively popular sentiment of “the rich deserve their economic power” off the table and centers focus on the even more popular sentiment of “the citizens deserve their political power.”  Whereas most efforts to increase economic equality will immediately affect the direct experiences of only a segment of Americans, the 90+% of Americans who have little to no voice in government would — given efforts to increase political equality — immediately experience increased political power.

Read the full essay here.

Ideas, Political Projects

The Democratic Promise, a Strong People, and an Open Nation: The Philosophy Behind the Progressive Alternative

I just posted my first major essay to ProgressiveAlternative.org, our new initiative to restore the integrity and broaden the vision of the Democratic Party.  It regards the philosophy behind the progressive alternative, examining the ideas of the democratic promise, strong people, and an open world. Here’s an excerpt:

That is what it means to have faith in the democratic promise, in the constructive genius of ordinary men and women. Unlike fundamentalists, we start from a place of political uncertainty. Unlike conservatives, we believe institutional evolution can lead us down bad paths and thus believe present ideas from living humans for institutional reform and replacement are worth considering. Unlike technocrats, we believe those ideas are not the providence of a small set of centralized experts, but rather should be harvested from every ordinary citizen.

This constructive genius has been called creative intelligence by secular thinkers like John Dewey. It has been called divine Grace that works through each of us by religious thinkers. InFalse Necessity, philosopher Roberto Unger describes it as follows:

The infinity of the mind is the model for our relation to all the social and cultural worlds we build and inhabit.  There is always more in us — more in each of us individually as well as more in all of us collectively — than there is in all of them put together, the past and present orders of society and culture.

This inexhaustibility is the most important fact about us.  It is inscribed in the plasticity that characterizes the human brain and makes us into language-speaking and culture-producing organisms.  Its deployment is the most important instrument of practical progress as well as of scientific discovery. (li-lii)

To the Progressive Alternative, our people’s living and constructive genius – our creative intelligence, our experience of divine Grace, the infinity of our mind, our inexhaustibility – is the great tool we have with which to face political uncertainty.

From this belief comes our political mission: to empower and equip this constructive genius of ordinary men and women, while restoring its political supremacy over non-living structures. Wise scripture, inherited institutions, and technical expertise should not be abolished, but they should be the servants, not the masters, of this constructive genius and its stewards, the living citizens and communities of today.

Read the full essay — “The Democratic Promise, a Strong People, and an Open Nation: The Philosophy Behind the Progressive Alternative” — here.

Read the original Progressive Alternative intervention, the founding document of the Progressive Alternative initiative, here.

 

Ideas

The Soul of Facebook Venting: Empowered Alternatives to Ranting Online

I had an essay published recently in Front Porch Republic​ on better things to do than rant online. Take a look to read one guy’s take on the spiritual origins of Facebook rants as well as the case for a small, empowered alternative to venting: philanthroventing, donating $5 to a positive organization or leader every time you’re mad about a news story: 

I know I am not alone in experiencing the Facebook venting cycle:

1. First, a glowing screen that you are reading or watching projects some news that upsets you. Perhaps it was news from a cable channel that is engineered to ceaselessly produce anecdotes designed to upset you. Perhaps it was news from a comedy show whose most popular bit is to aggregate upsetting quotes from those cable channels. Perhaps it was news from a viral media website who curates clips from those comedy shows about that cable channel’s quotes about those upsetting anecdotes. Whatever the source, the process begins with a glowing screen making you upset (with, of course, the source raking in the advertising revenue).

2. Next, a tension builds inside of you. You cannot stand the thought of living in the same world where that news occurred or being part of the same human community as the person who committed the upsetting act. You feel like you need to do something about it all. You sometimes even feel as if you cannot continue your daily work or see your friends or care for your family until this tension is resolved.

3. Finally, you release the tension by posting a link and rant to the ever-present release valve that is your Facebook status update box. Some rants are long-winded, but even short bursts – like “This is horrible!” “I can’t believe this is happening in 2015!” or “Kids these days!” – do the trick: you have “raised awareness,” you have declared your opposition to the upsetting news, your conscience is cleared, the cycle is over and you may continue with your day.

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Perhaps Bottum’s interpretation of our spiritually “anxious age” explains that deep tension that builds up when the news upsets us. Perhaps we see in those upsetting anecdotes a post-Protestant demon — social sin peeking out from behind the social order. Perhaps the tension that must be vented is our uncertainty in the presence of such sin: Am I going to be tricked by this evil or am I going to be aware enough to see it at work? Am I going to become part of it or am I going to reject it? Am I on its side of the great divide or am I on the side of the redeemed?

Facebook venting resolves this uncertainty. By pasting a link to a news story and properly identifying the social evil at work – “This is racism!” “This is bigotry!” “This is evil!” – you stand at the digital altar and testify to your awareness of social sin. By ranting against the news story, you validate that you have rejected this sin, broadcasting that you belong among the redeemed. When you click submit, your uncertainty about your moral goodness is temporarily washed away: you can proceed with confidence that you are one of the elect.

Read the whole essay — “The Soul of Facebook Venting: Empowered Alternatives to Ranting Online” — here.

Ideas

Beyond Josh Lyman Politics: How the West Wing Miseducated My Political Generation

The great localist blog, Front Porch Republic, just published my essay  on being a recovering West Wing-nut and how the insider mode of politics that the show promoted deeply miseducated our generation about what serious political engagement means:

My own college and post-college experience corroborates Weiner’s observation that The West Wing is to Millennials and Beltway politics what All the President’s Men was to Baby Boomers and journalism: I witnessed friend after friend be baptized into national politics with a binge-watch of the show’s seven seasons; on the night of Obama’s election, I had that exact same conversation that Yglesias had described (“In 2024, that’ll be us on election night,” “You’ll be Josh and I’ll be Toby”); and literally dozens of my friends, myself included, have been caught wistfully saying “If only [The West Wing’s fictional President] Jed Bartlet was President!” Indeed, Washington’s Obama generation might be more aptly named the Bartlet generation.

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When asked why they love The West Wing, most people point to the show’s idealism. But, if my fellow young politicos and I had to be honest with ourselves, I think we would say we mostly loved the show because it displayed characters similar to ourselves winning: winning elections, winning arguments, winning the job hunt, winning duels of wits, and winning debates. Most of we West Wingnuts – myself included – were nerds back in our school days, incapable or uninterested in the type of winning that playing (or even watching) sports brings. The West Wing showed us a game that we could play and win at: I can memorize facts, I can make snarky comments, I can win debates… and all the while I can feel good about myself because I am performing a ‘public service.’ While most of today’s nerd-empowering media wisely challenges us to stop caring about winning in the first place, The West Wing shined a path towards a more enjoyable option: who needs the high road when you have what it takes to be a winner in Washington?

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Viewing hundreds of millions of Americans who are not Washington insiders as useful only for votes and campaign donations is not an idiosyncrasy of Jim Messina and his fictional counterparts on The West Wing— it’s endemic to Beltway politicos. As Theda Skocpol pointed out in her wonderful book Democracy Diminished, we have moved from a “membership democracy” to a “management democracy” in the past century. A once-thriving national network of participatory federated societies – which involved routine local activities in small town chapters which cascaded bottom-up into member-driven state conventions and influential national offices – gave way to a politics where we send our checks in to D.C. managers, who engage in democracy for us. The West Wing will be a perfect historical artifact of this age of political management.

The blog A Patient Cycle posted a response to my West Wing essay, sharing similar experiences at Georgetown:

Like Davis, I still enjoy aspects of The West Wing, and have it to thank for much of my childhood political interest. In a roundabout way, it led me to where I am now. But its political culture is a terrible guide, and leads toward some sort of humility-free, revenge-of-the-nerds world that will never get us anywhere…Washington will never change if we continue to think of it as a battleground, or a prize to be won. That process must start at home, and in practicing a humane politics in the places we live.

Read my full essay — “Beyond Josh Lyman Politics: How the West Wing Miseducated My Political Generation” — here.

Community Projects, Press

The Imperative of Civic Education Reform

I just had a new guest commentary in the Falls Church News-Press regarding civic education:

Last year marked the 30th anniversary of A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Education Reform, the bombshell Reagan administration report that helped define today’s conventional wisdom about American schools. Thanks to the report – which implied that America’s “preeminence in commerce, industry, science and technology” was “being overtaken by competitors” due to a “rising tide of mediocrity” abetted by public schools – one cannot talk about schools today without hearing that classes are not “rigorous” enough, that American children are “falling behind” Chinese, Indian and Korean children in “competitive skills,” and that the answer is evermore “tougher standards.”

Three decades later, educators are standing up to call “hogwash!” on the report’s themes. When you adjust for poverty, American scores are not ‘falling behind’: non-impoverished school districts lead the world on recent PISA tests. Even more, there is no connection between a nation’s economic productivity and its test scores: Americans have had low-ranking scores for decades and yet still lead the world in economic productivity. Factories have moved to other countries not because they have better-educated citizens, but because they have lower labor standards than Americans find just. In fact, the largest recent economic threat to America – the financial crisis – was caused by the reckless corporate policies of the well-educated. Indeed, we are not A Nation at Risk of falling behind economically and, if we are, don’t blame our public schools.

America’s outlook isn’t exactly rosy, though: We are failing to stem climate change, reign in the corporate crime wave in the financial industry, roll back mass incarceration, and stop the corruption of Congress by monied interests. But these are not failures in economic competitiveness. Rather, they are civic failures: failures by us citizens to address shared problems.

When Ben Franklin was asked what governmental system America was going to end up with, he responded: “a Republic, if you can keep it.” To keep our Republic – the system that places the power to govern in the hands of the People, ourselves – we need civic education: schooling in the democratic values, civic skills, and public-minded determination needed to address today’s civic failures. Perhaps it’s time for a report entitled A Republic at Risk: The Imperative of Civic Education Revitalization.

Falls Church schools should lead the way in revitalizing American civic education. Only providing vague encouragement of ‘service hours’ and a single course on formal Government is a disservice to our high schoolers: Packing kits for the homeless is not the same as pairing such service with responsive political action against the structures that create homelessness; reading about how a bill becomes a law is not the same as developing the hands-on experience that is needed for legislative change.
Fortunately, there are signs of hope for a civic education revival in town: (1) Star teacher Rory Dippold has turned his 7th grade classroom into a home for dynamic, project-based civic engagement, leaving Huskies excited to actively participate in their communities. His Agnes Meyer Outstanding Teacher nominations illustrate how our community values vigorous civic education. (2) When I proposed a GMHS Public Project Program (www.tinyurl.com/GMHSPPP), dozens of neighbors reached out, excited to discuss how we can get more project-based civics in the schools. To quote one alumni: “As someone who worked on a public project during high school, it too often felt like the work we achieved was accomplished in spite of our obligations as students instead of in conjunction with them. If we had been encouraged by a program which not only formalized civic creativity as an expectation, but also integrated a supportive framework of knowledge, time, and resources into the high school education system, there’s no telling how far we could have gone.” (3) At the FCCPS Community Visioning, the audience issued a clarion call for more adult mentorship, tighter school-community bonds, and project-based learning. When asked explicitly whether FCCPS’ current level of civic education was adequate, a near-unanimous crowd expressed that FCCPS civic education needed work.

Stakeholders may not agree on the method, but they agree on the imperative: Falls Church needs a stronger civic education program to revive our at-risk Republic. But the question remains: will Superintendent Jones and the school board listen? If the FCCPS Community Visioning process was more than just lip service, then FCCPS will appoint a civic education czar to facilitate an open forum to craft a revitalized civics program for Little City schools. If we were able to find hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer funds to pay the Apple Corporation for controversial computers (money that could have paid for the salary of a full-time civic engagement coordinator), we assuredly can find the resources for the level of civic education for which the community is passionately calling. To join the push, email FCCPSCivicEducation@gmail.com!

Community Projects, Ideas

Civic Creativity: Democracy as a Platform for Our Public Projects

For my senior thesis, I wrote a piece called Civic Creativity: Democracy as a Platform for Our Public Projects.  You can download the work here.

Here’s a summary from within the work:

The first big idea is that, for the individual citizen, there is a new mode of civic action – independent of voting, deliberating, and protest – which I call: civic creativity. It is defined as “the imagining and implementing of public projects over multiple platforms.”  In Part 1, I will describe the history of the three commonplace modes of civic action (voting, deliberating and protest), define civic creativity as new mode of civic action, and compare civic creativity to the other three modes.

The second big idea is that the individual act of civic creativity, being a social and collective practice, has ramifications for our understanding of democratic society as a whole— that there is a new way to understand democratic governance that goes hand-in-hand with this new mode of civic action: democracy as a platform for our public projects. In Part 2, I will describe this new way of thinking. In this understanding, governance is not just Government— the institution commonly referred to as the government is not the only force that governs our lives. Rather, the model acknowledge that a network of various institutions – the media, corporations, religion, web platform architecture, culture, language, neighbors, foundations, universities, civic groups, and more – also govern our lives. Each of these governing forces are themselves governed by rules. To turn a civic creation idea into a reality, you must navigate the various “platforms of governance,” convincing various people and entities that your creations and purposes are worthy of their support.

Plus, here’s the table of contents to pique your interest:

Introduction: A New Paradigm Shift in Democratic Theory

  1. Strange civic actions
  2. A disconnect between such actions and common civic concepts
  3. Paradigm shifts in democratic theory.
  4. Outline of the argument for a new democratic model

Part 1: A New Mode of Civic Action 15

  1. Beyond civic engagement finger-wagging
  2. The three dominant modes of civic action: a history of voting, deliberation and protest
  3. Another turn in democratic thought
  4. Gaps in the three dominant modes of civic action
  5. How the three dominant modes capture and fail to capture the new civic actions
  6. Civic Creativity: A New Mode of Civic Action
    1. Spearheading instead of just participating
    2. Problem solving rather than law
    3. Decentralized work instead of a focus on the state
  7. A broader understanding of civic creativity

Part 2: A New Understanding of Democratic Governance 79

  1. The restricted spectrum of democratic models
  2. The restrictive assumption of the two models
  3. Democracy as a network of platforms of governance
    1. Governance is more than government 87
    2. Platforms of governance have their own specific rules and procedures 90
    3. Multi-platform governance and civic creators 92
    4. The ramifications of multi-platform governance 93
  4. Democracy as a platform for our public projects 96

Conclusion: On Generativity

I hope to develop these ideas into a book. You can follow progress on that book’s development here.

Ideas

Civics Education Lacking in F.C. City Schools

I recently had a Fourth of July-themed letter to the editor in the Falls Church News-Press regarding civic education in Falls Church. Here it is in full:

Editor,

The best way Falls Church citizens could honor the spirit of the Fourth of July would be to encourage Falls Church City Public School officials to take a serious look at bolstering the role of civic education in Falls Church schools.

I commend the work of Mary Ellen Henderson’s Rory Dippold in implementing a Civics program at the middle school. However, the rest of the school system should take a page out of Mr. Dippold’s book and implement a strong civics curriculum for the whole school system.

The current state of civic education in our schools falls short in two ways. First, our civic education needs to be broader. If knowing the tools of democratic participation is as important as knowing the tools of literary analysis, why is the latter taught for 13 grades and the former is taught for only two? Civic education should be present in every grade’s curriculum and the values of public activism should be engendered across subjects.

Second, our civic education needs to be deeper. Service learning and knowledge of the branches of government is not enough – Falls Church students need to know how to play active and effective roles in our community and democracy. If we can set standards that ensure that every Falls Church student can read, practice the scientific method and understand algebra by the end of senior year, surely we can set standards that ensure that every student can file a Freedom of Information Act request, hold a press conference, build a coalition group, utilize their civic imagination, and identify and actively take on community problems by graduation day.

Our schools should not only train students for their role in our economy – they should also help develop students’ public spirits and empower them for their role in our democracy. A good place to start the Falls Church civic education renaissance would be to ask the school board and Superintendent Berlin to initiate an official comprehensive review of the current state of civic education in Falls Church schools. If they were to do that, it would be a first step towards ensuring that all Falls Church students could play active roles in our democratic community. Now what’s more patriotic than that?

Peter Davis

Falls Church