1984 all over again? The Reagan/Biden analogy

Posted on July 24, 2023 by Peter

The Biden team is preparing for a Reagan-style victory lap in the event that the economy looks healthy in 2024. I hope they are also prepping for more difficult circumstances, since the economic forecast is highly uncertain. However, for what it’s worth, Morgan Stanley “now projects 1.9% GDP growth for the first half of this year.”

These are my prior assumptions:

A president has limited and ambiguous impact on macroeconomic trends. Too many other factors matter, from the Federal Reserve and Congress to the business cycle, and from wars and technological developments to the budgets of 50 states.
Although many people vote on other grounds, enough marginal voters are influenced by recent changes in the economy that those trends predict the results of presidential elections.
People cite the economic and electoral fortunes of each presidential administration to support their ideological positions. For instance, the apparent successes of FDR and Reagan were used to vindicate New Deal liberalism and neoliberalism, respectively.
Economic trends influence public opinion, but they do not determine the outcome of the debate about ideology. Eisenhower, Clinton, and Obama are examples of presidents who saw healthy net economic growth and were reelected, yet their administrations did not move public opinion as FDR’s and Reagan’s did. The big shifts in opinion seem to reflect changes in the Zeitgeist, not just electoral and economic developments.

Applying #1 means that Biden’s policies will not affect the economy much in 2024, even though Morgan Stanley believes that he is responsible for the upturn. According to #2, Biden will win pretty easily if growth is robust but could lose to Trump or another Republican if it stalls.

Per #3, if the economy grows and Biden wins, the President and many Democrats will argue that the reason was his industrial policy, which is aggressive, green, and pro-equity. I favor the policy, so I will be hoping that this argument sticks, even though I believe that macroeconomic trends are out of his hands.

If the case for Bidenomics does persuade, it will be thanks to the Zeitgeist. To make that explanation a little less mystical, I would focus on two factors.

First, the previously dominant neoliberal view really is fading now, much as late-Victorian laissez-faire was faltering by 1932 and New Deal liberalism had run its course by 1980. By a certain point, established theories don’t offer plausible solutions to the problems of the day, but alternatives do. By the time FDR took office, his home state of New York and several others had already moved in the direction of the New Deal; Roosevelt took the opportunity to bring their ideas to Washington. Likewise for Reagan in 1980–and for Biden in 2020. Indeed, Trump is no neoliberal, and there will probably be no national candidate who runs on cutting taxes and spending.

Second, the demographic basis of politics has shifted. I avoid crude materialistic and class-based predictions, yet the people who have the most to gain from low taxes and light regulation are business owners and investors. They are now outweighed in the GOP (which they once controlled) by working-class voters. They are represented in the Democratic Party, but outweighed there, too, by diverse lower-income voters, public sector workers, and salaried professionals.

The tectonic plates are shifting, and it’s at such moments that presidential administrations become examples or even metaphors for fundamental change. We had a “new deal for America” and then saw “morning in America” once the actual New Deal state faltered. The opportunity to make another such shift is a good reason to run a celebratory campaign in 2024–if (but only if) the economy holds up.

the Supreme Court against civic education

Posted on July 19, 2023 by Peter

In Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard (2022), the Supreme Court prohibited affirmative action on the basis of theories about race in America, the Fourteenth Amendment, its own proper role and authority, and its power over other institutions (such as universities) that I strongly contest.

Those are the most important issues. However, the Court also adopts a problematic view of education that deserves attention. In essence, the majority sees education as a consumer good that benefits the students who purchase it, not as a public good that can be designed to benefit the society. Both Chief Justice Roberts’ decision and Justice Thomas’ concurring opinion explicitly name college admissions as “zero sum,” since “a benefit provided to some applicants but not to others necessarily advantages the former at the expense of the latter.”

Many people share this assumption. To a significant extent, US colleges and universities act accordingly: they provide experiences and degrees as scarce consumer goods with tangible–generally economic–benefits for the individuals who purchase them (Levine 2023). But this is an impoverished view, and the Court’s ruling reinforces it.

Chief Justice Roberts writes that the Fourteenth Amendment bans consideration of race in the provision of all goods and services by public and private entities. “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it. … Any exceptions to the Equal Protection Clause’s guarantee must survive a daunting two-step examination known as ‘strict scrutiny.'” Under this test, any policy that considers race at all must be strictly measurable so that a court can determine whether it is necessary and effective for achieving a constitutionally appropriate end. “For example, courts can discern whether the temporary racial segregation of inmates will prevent harm to those in the prison.”

The defendants in Students for Fair Admissions (Harvard and UNC) had asserted that their affirmative action policies were necessary for important public goals:

Harvard identifies the following educational benefits that it is pursuing: (1) “training future leaders in the public and private sectors”; (2) preparing graduates to “adapt to an increasingly pluralistic society”; (3) “better educating its students through diversity”; and (4) “producing new knowledge stemming from diverse outlooks.” … . UNC points to similar benefits, namely, “(1) promoting the robust exchange of ideas; (2) broadening and refining understanding; (3) fostering innovation and problem-solving; (4) preparing engaged and productive citizens and leaders; and enhancing appreciation, respect, and empathy, cross-racial understanding, and breaking down stereotypes.”

Roberts replies:

Although these are commendable goals, they are not sufficiently coherent for purposes of strict scrutiny. At the outset, it is unclear how courts are supposed to measure any of these goals. How is a court to know whether leaders have been adequately “train[ed]”; whether the exchange of ideas is “robust”; or whether “new knowledge” is being developed? Even if these goals could somehow be measured, moreover, how is a court to know when they have been reached, and when the perilous remedy of racial preferences may cease? There is no particular point at which there exists sufficient “innovation and problem solving,” or students who are appropriately “engaged and productive.”

Roberts acknowledges that a court can determine at trial whether it is necessary to segregate incarcerated people by race, “but the question whether a particular mix of minority students produces ‘engaged and productive citizens’ or effectively ‘train[s] future leaders’ is standardless.”

In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor argues that the “measurability” criterion is an innovation, not based on precedents. The court has accepted other goals that are not particularly measurable. In any case, we can measure whether students have been prepared for leadership, whether they are empathetic and knowledgable, and whether campus discussions are robust. We can also investigate the effect of any given policy, such as affirmative action, on such outcomes. There are large literatures on these topics. For instance, Bowen and Bok (1998) found positive effects, and their work has been cited 3,900 times.

But policies are not like chemical compounds that can be tested in randomized experiments and predicted to work consistently when mass-produced. Outcomes depend on the context, the participants’ motivations and preparation, the degree to which people undermine or distort the goals, and the evolution of relevant practices. For example, college admissions are managed by admissions officers who are selected, trained, provided with rubrics and other tools, and assessed–and those efforts can go well or badly. Meanwhile, applicants pursue their own interests, and at least some may try to “game” any system.

Thus the effects of affirmative action on outcomes like empathy or leadership will always be a bit ambiguous and subject to change. Besides, affirmative action is a very modest tweak to a system of intense competition for scarce economic advantage that could be reformed in much deeper ways. As such, it will never solve the problems it purports to address. As Roberts says, “There is no particular point at which there exists sufficient ‘innovation and problem solving,’ or students who are appropriately ‘engaged and productive.’”

But the Court says: You cannot try. Outcomes like leadership and empathy may be “commendable,” but they are too contingent and open-ended to be taken seriously in a court. Let’s face it, Roberts says, the real purpose of higher education is to sell individual consumers the services they prefer, and discrimination is illegal in any consumer marketplace. Colleges may claim that they are helping to build “an increasingly pluralistic society” or “preparing engaged and productive citizens and leaders” (and that is how they may justify their tax-exempt status, their public subsidies, and their fundraising), but they are not really in that business.

In her dissent, Justice Jackson commends UNC for considering racial diversity in its admissions process as a way of building a more equal society. “Once trained, those UNC students who have thrived in the university’s diverse learning environment are well equipped to make lasting contributions in a variety of realms and with a variety of colleagues, which, in turn, will steadily decrease the salience of race for future generations.” The Court forbids that approach. We are not allowed to try to make it work; we must immediately cease.

The decision does allow universities to consider “an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” Their account must be strictly individual. “A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination.” (Italics in the original.) As many have noted, this holding will encourage students of color to write application essays that may distort how they really think about their own identities and goals, and it will offer advantages for people who can afford coaching and expert advice to write essays that comply with the law.

I would add, again, that Roberts’ logic here is consumeristic. An applicant is treated as a potential consumer who might be more valuable to the institution than is evident from test scores and grades alone, and who should be allowed to mention race in making that case. It is impermissible, however, to ask whether the applicant’s demographic characteristics might help build a better community for everyone.

As Justice Jackson writes, it has become illegal to ask whether students will make “a meaningful contribution to the larger, collective, societal goal that the Equal Protection Clause embodies (its guarantee that the United States of America offers genuinely equal treatment to every person, regardless of race).”

Justice Sotomayor concludes her dissent:

Notwithstanding this Court’s actions, however, society’s progress toward equality cannot be permanently halted. Diversity is now a fundamental American value, housed in our varied and multicultural American community that only continues to grow. The pursuit of racial diversity will go on. …. Despite the Court’s unjustified exercise of power, the opinion today will serve only to highlight the Court’s own impotence in the face of an America whose cries for equality resound. As has been the case before in the history of American democracy, “the arc of the moral universe” will bend toward racial justice despite the Court’s efforts today to impede its progress.

We can only hope she is right.

Sources: Levine, Peter. “The Democratic Mission of Higher Education: A Review Essay.” Political Science Quarterly (2023); Bowen, William G., and Derek Bok. The shape of the river: Long-term consequences of considering race in college and university admissions. Princeton University Press, 1998.

Religious Pluralism and Robust Democracy in Multiracial Societies

Posted on July 17, 2023 by Peter

It’s not for me, as the chief organizer, to assess how this year’s Frontiers of Democracy went, but I loved every minute of it. I am deeply grateful to all the people who made it happen, from the plenary presenters to people who joined the conversations, plus my Tufts colleagues who supported the event.

Our theme in 2023 was “Religious Pluralism and Robust Democracy in Multiracial Societies.” I believe that explicit attention to religion helped to make the participants more diverse than they have been in the past and allowed us to talk in frank, personal, and existential ways that might otherwise be missed or even suppressed.

Just for example, on the first plenary panel, Rev. Cristina Moon, a Zen priest and activist, recalled how renouncing the self had helped her to take better care of herself, and Sharon Stroye, who is an associate pastor as well as an academic leader and activist, responded with a memory of giving herself over to Jesus–with similar results. Although I can’t speak for either of them or know what they believe about religious matters, I suspect that their metaphysical premises are very different, yet their psychological needs and journeys are similar; and the human bond between them was palpable.

I am not sure that anyone really articulated an account of how the concepts named in our conference title–religion, pluralism, democracy, and race–might all fit together. Anyone’s theory would be that person’s alone, and most of the other 125 participants would disagree. Of course, this diversity of opinion is an asset.

For myself: I happen not to be religious in any of the major senses of that word. I don’t identify with a faith, belong to or participate in any religious-defined community, believe things that are coded as explicitly religious, or practice religious observances. But I hold abstract beliefs that cannot be demonstrated empirically, such as the intrinsic value of all human life. Some of these beliefs derive from religions, or at least they have been articulated in religious terms that I have absorbed. I belong to communities that matter deeply to me and that are organized around ideas and rituals as well as human ties. And I practice–although I wish to practice more–exercises for self-improvement, self-discipline, self-care, and connection to others.

Meanwhile, I observe that all around me are people who articulate their identities, memberships, activities, and beliefs in explicitly religious terms, often professing one of the global faiths, such as Christianity or Islam. And among those who are hostile to all of such faiths, many seem to be just as committed to abstract metaphysical and moral premises and are just as likely to draw boundaries around their respective communities of belief, whether those are labeled science, socialism, free enterprise, nationalism, or something else.

A democracy is a society in which people freely form their own views about who they are, what they want, and what is right and then make some decisions collectively–on an equal basis–while also creating the social world by acting in a whole range of diverse smaller groups.

Our actual society is very far from this ideal because people are not even roughly equal and we often do not even try to make collective decisions fairly or wisely, in part because some of us are hostile to others. But we have democratic impulses and opportunities.

The explicitly defined religions are relevant because they help people to make sense of who they are, what is right, and what they want. Religions recruit individuals into public life and educate and organize them for effective participation. Although they reflect and reinforce the characteristics that make our society unequal, such as race and class, they also break those boundaries on occasion. They provide vocabularies and conceptual materials for thinking relatively deeply about justice. And they connect the inner life to action in the world.

Religions certainly have mixed records, causing or reinforcing many forms of cruelty and injustice. Their adherents blatantly violate their most explicit principles in the name of those principles themselves. Violent Buddhist priests and Christian denominations battling over inches of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher are just two examples of human folly expressed religiously. Then again, the major anti-religious movements also have poor records, and religions have often been helpful at moments of progress.

In any case, I would not distinguish sharply among the religions or between religion and secularism. It is not true, as John Rawls and many other modern thinkers have presumed, that “A modern democratic society is characterized … by a plurality of reasonable but incompatible comprehensive doctrines.” (Rawls explains: “A reasonable doctrine … covers the major religious, philosophical, and moral aspects of human life in a more or less consistent and coherent manner. It organizes and characterizes recognized values to that they are compatible with each other and express an intelligible view of the world.”)

Rawls imagines society as divided among namable groups like the Protestants, the Catholics, the Muslims, the Confucians, the Marxists, the libertarians, and the nationalists (my examples), each with core assumptions that explain all their other beliefs. Since their assumptions are incompatible, a fair government is one that treats them all impartially.

But we don’t have neatly organized systems of beliefs. (Perhaps a few of us do, but those people tend to be the fanatics.) Most of us have many beliefs, some organized, some disconnected, some in mutual tension. We get them from all kinds of sources. Stories, maxims, practices, and forms of organization tend to migrate from one faith community to another, as the story of Siddhartha Gautama’s childhood morphed into the Book of Bilawhar and Budhasaf in 8th century Muslim Baghdad, turned into a Georgian Christian epic written in Greek in Constantinople, turned into the Latin story of the monkish saints Barlaam and Josaphat, became La vie de seint Josaphaz in Anglo-Norman and the German medieval romance of Barlaam und Josaphat, supplied a plot motif for Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, and fueled anti-Reformation propaganda in the 16th century.

This kind of story does not suggest that we are all alike. An early Mahayana Buddhist believed very different things from a counter-Reformation Catholic. But the fact that they told the same story shows that they were connected.

Separated, unequal, but connected is our condition, and we need to talk about all of that.

Source: Rawls, John. 1993. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. See also the relevance of American civil religion to K-12 education; notes on religion and cultural appropriation: the case of US Buddhism; when political movements resemble religions; are religions comprehensive doctrines? the political advantages of organized religion etc.

The Democratic Mission of Higher Education

Posted on July 13, 2023 by Peter

Newly published: Peter Levine, The Democratic Mission of Higher Education: A Review Essay, Political Science Quarterly, 2023; https://doi.org/10.1093/psquar/qqad068.

Abstract: Controversies about speech on college campuses attract intense popular attention. Three recent books analyze campus speech as one of the ways that academia affects American democracy. In The Channels of Student Activism, Amy J. Binder and Jeffrey L. Kidder argue that college-student activists respond to incentives. Progressive students have opportunities to engage closely with their universities but often end up frustrated, while conservative students get support from national organizations to work off-campus and endorse conservative visiting speakers as a way of influencing their own institutions. Among other recommendations, Binder and Kidder suggest that universities should promote democratic values by adopting more persuasive positions about controversial speech. In Cancel Wars, Sigal-Ben Porath defends one such position: universities should avoid censorship and punitive responses to speech while actively ensuring that all members of their community are valued. In What Universities Owe Democracy, Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels argues that higher education affects democracy in many ways beyond explicit political speech, and he presents recommendations that involve admissions, curricular reform, and research. Levine finds many helpful insights and suggestions in these books but adds reasons to doubt the democratic potential of prestigious colleges and universities. He advocates serious public investment in democratic education for children and for adults who are not students.

Coryat’s Crudities (note #1 from the Levine library)

Posted on July 11, 2023 by Peter

For reasons that Angela Nelson describes in this article, my office at Tufts contains about 2,000 books printed before 1800 that my late father collected. Recently, I brought a ladder to campus so that I can see what’s on the upper shelves. I’m planning to pull down a book or two at a time and blog occasionally about what I find.

For instance, I found a 1611 edition of Coryat’s Crudities. It is in characteristically poor condition, split into two parts along its spine, with its cover loose. As a result, its market value is just about zero. However, the split reveals some considerably older, Gothic printed text that was used to repair it.

A previous owner has hand-written a kind of index on five blank pages at the front. I am not certain, but I think this owner was the Obadiah Cookson who signed his name on the title page in 1754. If that’s true, it’s fascinating, because the Obadiah Cookson known to Google lived nearby in the Massachusetts Colony. My Dad bought most of his books in London, so possibly this one has made three Atlantic crossings.

As for the book: Thomas Coryat or Coryate was an eccentric, a courtier who seems to have been more laughed at than laughed with–most popular as a butt of jokes. In 1608, during a period of peace, he traveled in Continental Europe and published his Crudities as an anthology of notes, letters, anecdotes, and poems that he ostensibly collected along the way. It was the first work in English to tell the story of William Tell and the first to describe the implement that we call a fork:

The Italian and also most strangers that are commorant in Italy, doe alwaies at their meales use a little Forks when they cut their meat. … so that whatsoever he be that sitting in the company of any others at meale, should unadvisedly touch the dish of meate with his fingers from which all at the table doe cut, he will give occasion of offence unto the company, as having transgressed the lawes of good manners, insomuch that for his error he shall be at the least brow-beaten, if not reprehended in wordes.

Coryat adds that he still uses a fork in England, and a friend has nicknamed him “Furcifer”–fork-bearer.

The first pages of the book are headed, “Certain opening and drawing dystiches [two-line poems] to be applyed as mollifying Cataplasmes [poultices] to the Tumours, Carnosities, or difficult Pimples full of matter appearing in the Author’s front …”

In other words, if the author’s main text offends, you can apply his rhyming couplets for relief. For example:

Our Author in France rode on horse without stirrup
And in Italie bathed himself in their syrrop.

These lyric gems are all attributed–falsely–to B[en] Jonson, who is also credited with an introductory poem in honor of Coryat. A different “charitable friend” purportedly wrote the character-sketch that comes next in the volume. This text describes the “famous … Traveler and Gentleman Author of these … Crudities” thus:

He is an Engine, wholly consisting of extremes, a Head, Fingers, and Toes. For what his industrious Toes have trod, his ready Fingers have written, his subtle head dictating. He was set a-going for Venice the fourteenth of May Anno 1608 and returned home (of himself) the third of October following.

We’re told that he absolutely loves to travel:

The mere superscription of a letter from Zurich sets him up like a top: Basil or Heidelberg makes him spin. And at seeing the word Frankford, or Venice, though but on the title of a Booke, he is readie to break doublet, cracke elbowes, and overflowe the roome with his murmure. Hee is a mad Greeke, no lesse then a merry, and will buy his Egges, his Puddings, his Ginger-bread, yea, cobble his shoes in the Atticke dialect …

This fellow seems to have been a sort of Yorick, or a Jacobean Edward Lear, or a bit like Anthony Bourdain in his enthusiasm for travel and food and his self-deprecating humor. I think I would have liked him, although at times he may have talked too much about himself.

Civically Engaged Research in Political Science

Posted on July 10, 2023 by Peter

Today begins the 2023 Institute for Civically Engaged Research (ICER) at Tisch College, a project of the American Political Science Association that I am co-directing with Valeria Sinclair-Chapman. Seventeen committed political scientists have gathered here to develop their skills for “collaborating in a mutually beneficial way with people and groups beyond the academy to co-produce, share, and apply knowledge related to power or politics, contributing to self-governance.” (Cabrera Rasmussen, Lieberman, Levine, Sinclair-Chapman, & Smith 2022).

Civically Engaged Research in political science is not sharply distinct from Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR), Transdisciplinary Research, or Participatory Action Research (PAR), all of which we will discuss during the institute. Why then work to develop a specific approach for political science?

I see two reasons. One is that the discipline of political science is a community composed of thousands of people who have some influence. If engaged approaches to research have value, then it’s worth developing them in this community–as in other fields. CBPR and Transdisciplinary Research are more deeply rooted in public health than elsewhere. Sociologists have developed Public Sociology. We seek to bring similar change to political science–not to supplant other methods but to expand the toolkit.

The other reason is that political scientists may have distinctive ways to practice engaged research, because we focus more than other disciplines do on governance, political acts, and power.

philosophy of boredom

Posted on July 7, 2023 by Peter

This article is in production and should appear soon: Levine P (2023) Boredom at the border of philosophy: conceptual and ethical issues. Frontiers of Sociology 8:1178053. doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2023.1178053.

(And yes, I anticipate and appreciate jokes about writing yet another boring article–this time, about boredom.)

Abstract:

Boredom is a topic in philosophy. Philosophers have offered close descriptions of the experience of boredom that should inform measurement and analysis of empirical results. Notable historical authors include Seneca, Martin Heidegger, and Theodor Adorno; current philosophers have also contributed to the literature. Philosophical accounts differ in significant ways, because each theory of boredom is embedded in a broader understanding of institutions, ethics, and social justice. Empirical research and interventions to combat boredom should be conscious of those frameworks. Philosophy can also inform responses to normative questions, such as whether and when boredom is bad and whether the solution to boredom should involve changing the institutions that are perceived as boring, the ways that these institutions present themselves, or individuals’ attitudes and choices.

An excerpt:

It is worth asking whether boredom is intrinsically undesirable or wrong, not merely linked to bad outcomes (or good ones, such as realizing that one’s current activity is meaningless). One reason to ask this question is existential: we should investigate how to live well as individuals. Are we obliged not to be bored? Another reason is more pragmatic. If being bored is wrong, we might look for effective ways to express that fact, which might influence people’s behaviors. For instance, children are often scolded for being bored. If being bored is not wrong, then we shouldn’t—and probably cannot—change behavior by telling people that it’s wrong to be bored. Relatedly, when is it a valid critique of an organization or institution to claim that it causes boredom or is boring? Might it be necessary and appropriate for some institutions … to be boring?

I have not done my own original work on this topic. I wrote this piece because I was asked to. I tried to review the literature, and a peer reviewer helped me improve that overview substantially.

I especially appreciate extensive and persuasive work by Andreas Elpidorou. He strikes me as an example of a positive trend in recent academic philosophy, also exemplified by Amia Srinivasan and others of their generation. These younger philosophers (whom I do not know personally) address important and thorny questions, such as whether and when it’s OK to be bored and whether one has a right to sex under various circumstances. They are deeply immersed in relevant social science. They also read widely in literature and philosophy and find insights in unexpected places. Srinivasan likes nineteenth-century utopian socialists and feminists; Elpidorou is an analytical philosopher who can also offer insightful close readings of Heidegger.

Maybe it was a bias on my part–or the result of being taught by specific professors–but I didn’t believe that these combinations were possible while I pursued my BA and doctorate in philosophy. In those days, analytical moral and political philosophers paid some attention to macroeconomic theory but otherwise tended not to notice current social science. Certainly, they didn’t address details of measurement and method, as Elpidorou does. Continental moral and political philosophers wrote about the past, but they understood history very abstractly, and their main sources were canonical classics. Most philosophers addressed either the design of overall political and economic systems or else individual dilemmas, such as whether to have an abortion (or which people to kill with an out-of-control trolley).

To me, important issues almost always combine complex and unresolved empirical questions with several–often conflicting–normative principles. Specific problems cannot be abstracted from other issues, both individual and social. Causes and consequences vary, depending on circumstances and chance; they don’t follow universal laws.

My interest in the empirical aspects of certain topics, such as civic education and campaign finance, gradually drew me from philosophy into political science. I am now a full professor of the latter discipline, also regularly involved with the American Political Science Association. However, my original training often reminds me that normative and conceptual issues are relevant and that positivist social science cannot stand alone.

Perhaps the main lesson you learn by studying philosophy is that it’s possible to offer rigorous answers to normative questions (such as whether an individual or an institution should change when the person is bored), and not merely to express opinions about these matters. I don’t have exciting answers of my own to specific questions about boredom, but I have reviewed current philosophers who do.

Learning to be a social scientist means not only gaining proficiency with the kinds of methods and techniques that can be described in textbooks, but also knowing how to pitch a proposed study so that it attracts funding, how to navigate a specific IRB board, how to find collaborators and share work and credit with them, and what currently interests relevant specialists. These highly practical skills are essential but hard to learn in a classroom.

If I could convey advice to my 20-year-old self, I might suggest switching to political science in order to gain a more systematic and rigorous training in the empirical methods and practical know-how that I have learned–incompletely and slowly–during decades on the job. But if I were 20 now, I might stick with philosophy, seeing that it is again possible to combine normative analysis, empirical research, and insights from diverse historical sources to address a wide range of vital human problems.

Gillray and Blake

Posted on July 6, 2023 by Peter

During the “Age of Revolution,” London was a hub of rapid technological, aesthetic, and economic change in the marketplace for political communications, foreshadowing our current experiences with digital media and propaganda.

James Gillray has been called the father of the political cartoon. As Clare Bucknell notes, he and William Blake, the visionary Romantic artist and poet, studied academic drawing and painting at the Royal Academy Schools in Somerset House around 1778. Later, Blake demonstrably borrowed from specific prints by Gillray (Marcus Wood, 1990). They were both part of the same London scene of artistic and technical experimentation, mass publishing, and political debate and censorship that Esther Chadwick, among others, explores. Their similarities and differences are interesting to trace.

The first illustration with this post offers a taste of Gillray. With the French Revolution at full tilt and a rebellion brewing in Ireland, the Prime Minister, William Pitt, called up the militia. The leader of the opposition, Charles James Fox, accused Pitt of stoking fear to confuse and oppress the people. Gillray depicts Pitt atop a coastal fort, clinging to the personification of England, John Bull, who is depicted as a yokel with symbols of both the French Revolution and the British monarchy attached to his hat.

James Gillray, John Bull bother’d:-or-the geese alarming the Capitol (1792) Copyright British Museum. Creative Commons

Watching geese through binoculars, Pitt cries, “There, John! – there! there they are! – I see them – get your Arms ready, John! – they’re Rising & coming upon us from all parts.” He claims he sees French revolutionary mobs, “the Scotch [who] have caught the Itch too; and the Wild-Irish have begun to pull off their Breeches!” He issues panicked orders to address the crisis: “down with the Book-stalls! – blow up the Gin-shops! – cut off the Printers Ears!”

John Bull answers, “Wounds, Measter, you frighten a poor honest simple Fellow out of his wits! – Gin-Shops & Printers-Ears! – & Bloody-Clubs & Lord Mayors! – and Wild-Irishmen without Breeches, & Sans-Culottes! Lord have mercy upon our Wives & Daughters! – And yet, I’ll be shot, if I can see any thing myself, but a few Geese, gabbling together – But Lord help my silly head, how should, such a Clod-pole as I, be able to see any thing Right?”

The gabbling geese might be a metaphor for the “public sphere” of political debate, treated as powerless. This is a satire of conservative nationalism and propaganda, by an artist who was equally adept at mocking radical ideas–and who accepted money to design cartoons for and against both parties at various times.

And here is an image by Blake from just about the same moment.

William Blake, Plate from *Marriage of Heaven and Hell* (1793), depicting Nebuchadnezzar, via Wikimedia Commons

The Devil has just said, “I tell you, no virtue can exist without breaking these ten commandments. Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules.” The text in the image reads, “When he had so spoken, I beheld the Angel, who stretched out his arms embracing the flame of fire, and he was consumed, and arose as Elijah.”

Blake appends a “Note.—This Angel, who is now become a Devil, is my particular friend; we often read the Bible together in its infernal or diabolical sense, which the world shall have if they behave well. I have also the Bible of Hell, which the world shall have whether they will or no. One law for the lion and ox is Oppression.” The next section is entitled “A SONG OF LIBERTY” and offers numbered points, beginning:

The Eternal Female groan’d; it was heard over all the earth:
Albion’s coast is sick silent; the American meadows faint.
Shadows of prophecy shiver along by the lakes and the rivers, and mutter across the ocean. France, rend down thy dungeon!

It’s likely that Blake really did experience a devil as his particular friend and read the Bible with him; mystical experiences influenced him as strongly as partisan cash motivated GIilray. Here Blake sings the very song that terrifies Pitt, the song of radical liberation.

Both Gillray and Blake incorporate their own handwritten text into their etchings or engravings. In both cases, the dialogue is fevered, histrionic. Neither has patience for the stuffed shirts of their day or any allegiance to “rules,” whether artistic, social, or sexual.

(Supposedly, Gillray and his business and personal partner, Hannah Humphrey, were on their way to church to be married when he remarked, “This is a foolish affair, methinks, Miss Humphrey. We live very comfortably together; we had better let well alone.” Blake and his spouse were once found stark naked in their garden, doing a dramatic reading of Paradise Lost.)

Those are similarities, but Blake was intensely earnest, whereas Gillray seems to have been a manic cynic (unless he was a canny subversive). I’d love to know what they said to each other when they were studying drawing and history-painting under Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Statistics

Posted on July 5, 2023 by Peter

(Apologies to Wislawa Szymborska)

Attentive to all in a conversation:
Ten percent of the population. 
Someone's shame provokes a laugh:
Often true for over half. 
Ready and willing to reconcile:
Rare below the top quintile. 
Twenty percent, plus-or-minus three:
Those who’ll let an eccentric be. 
Almost three out of every four
Are quick to pity the sick or poor,
But doing something to counter hate: 
No more than one in any eight. 
Scoring high on all these measures:
We've found no such human treasures.
Of compassion, pure examples?
One or two in all our samples. 
But needing someone’s forgiving love:
Ninety-nine percent thereof.

federal spending for both climate and democracy

Posted on June 30, 2023 by Peter

Two huge problems may have the same solution. If this is true, it makes a powerful case for the main strategies of the Biden Administration.

The first problem is climate change, disastrous for both natural ecosystems and human lives and welfare. Underlying that problem is the fact that many constituencies around the globe benefit from burning carbon: not only authoritarian governments and powerful corporations (although they deserve the most criticism), but also regular communities and the parties and unions that represent them. As long as people who benefit in the short run from burning carbon have preponderant political weight, it is hard to pass truly satisfactory policy solutions.

The second problem is the marked tendency of poorer people to vote for the right, not only in the USA but in many other countries—in an eerie echo of the 1930s. Parties of the right that have lower-income constituencies cannot offer their voters tax cuts or deregulation. Instead they typically promise to strengthen the state to the exclusion of–or even against–minority groups or foreign populations. Unlike libertarianism, this form of politics has no natural limits; state power can keep ratcheting up until it reaches genuine fascism. Meanwhile, the center-left parties that are left with relatively upscale voters may try to defend individual rights, but they won’t address deep social inequities.

Federal finding authorized by Congress in Biden’s first two years addresses both problems. It tilts toward poorer districts (including those that are predominantly white and nowadays Republican) and green industries. The “theory of change” might be: 1) use federal funds to 2) “leverage” private investments in new industry that 3) mitigate climate change while 4) providing good jobs, thereby 5) building constituencies for green policies.

I am all for also using other strategies simultaneously, such as regulating or taxing carbon and divesting. I just think the Biden theory of change may be a necessary complement.

The map with this post (from the White House website) shows the locations of private investments in clean energy, batteries, and biomanufacturing that have been leveraged by new federal spending in the Biden years. Many observers have noted that a majority of this money–perhaps two-thirds–goes to districts represented by Republicans, who generally voted against the bills. I would draw attention to the concentration of projects along the Appalachian spine and in the heart of the Rust Belt. These are poor regions that happen, today, to be dominated by Republican representatives.

The effects are not yet evident in polling. In Pew’s June survey, 62% of all Americans disapprove of Biden, 41% very strongly. He receives net approval from college graduates but the disapproval of 66% of people with high school diplomas or less. He performs best among those who classify themselves as upper income and faces 2-1 disapproval among everyone else. Fifty-six percent of whites without college strongly disapprove of him, as do 57% of rural people.

This political strategy will take several years to work. People will have to see clear and sustained benefits from state action that is both equitable and green. The argument must begin now, but it will take time to change minds.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and some of her cabinet colleagues are visiting the locations of major new investments, most of which are in Republican districts. If Granholm were trying to affect the 2024 election, this trip would probably be a waste of her effort, since many of these districts are very safe for the GOP. For instance, she recently visited the district of Rep. Patrick McHenry, who won his last reelection by 45 points. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is going to Kentucky’s fifth district, which GOP Rep. Hal Rogers won by 65 points last time and which has been Republican since 1962. These trips may generate some social media calling out Republicans’ hypocrisy, but that won’t change minds. However, I do think actual jobs can shift people’s fundamental beliefs about both government and climate. For that purpose, both the federal spending and visits by Democratic leaders to tout it can be seen as highly promising.

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