Health Care Debate: Beyond an Informed Electorate
The quotation is widely attributed to our third president:
The best defense of democracy is an informed electorate.
Over the past month, I recall a number of writers invoking Jefferson and bemoaning the apparent lack of his “best defense” in the current debate over health care reform.
But Mark Slouka* suggests being “informed” or “educated” is not enough to defend democracy. He argues that the type of education matters and that the best, democracy-boosting education is one steeped in the humanities (history, literature, etc.) — because the humanities:
… complicate our vision, pull our most cherished notions out by the roots, flay our pieties. Because they grow uncertainty. Because they expand the reach of our understanding (and therefore our compassion), even as they force us to draw and redraw the borders of tolerance. Because out of all this work of self-building might emerge an individual capable of humility in the face of complexity; an individual formed through questioning and therefore unlikely to cede that right; an individual resistant to coercion, to manipulation and demagoguery in all their forms.
The emphasis in bold is mine. I chose to highlight those words because I’m starting to believe we may not find, in this lifetime, a debate that is more demanding of humility and questioning, more complex but prone to demagoguery, than health care reform.
Even on the pages of this blog — although there are examples that rise above the fray — our failures remain: Rather than display humility, we have too often bragged about our convictions. Instead of asking questions, we have chained ourselves to iron-clad answers. Rather than resist “coercion, manipulation and demagoguery,” we have propagated them, “in all their forms,” on the right and left and all points in between.
I, too, am guilty of these sins. We should each commit to doing better. Kudos to those who have already begun.
————
* Slouka’s essay is in the September edition of Harper’s. To read it online, you may have to pay $17 for an annual subscription to the magazine. It’s well worth it.
61 Responses to “Health Care Debate: Beyond an Informed Electorate”
HemmD, DLS, and CStanley,
I have a theory that the ideology of a particular generation generally negatively correlates with which party is in office as they reach the voting age. That would explain, for example, why so many younger people supported Obama, since they grew up knowing mostly only Bush as president. If my theory is correct, we should expect the next round of young voters to lean more Republican (I doubt they would be a majority Republican, as there are also other factors as play, but I would expect them to be at least more Republican than in 2008).
My reasoning is that since both parties are usually blatantly partisan and generally slimy, it is easy to look at the ruling party and be critical. That's not a problem, as I support being critical of the government no matter who is in charge. But it is also easy to look at the minority party and think, “If only they could be in power, all of these problems would be solved.” Thus a partisan is born. By the time the minority party gets in power, sometimes the ideology is too far sunken in.
I'm not saying that is the case for any of the commenters here, I'm just saying that I wonder about that pattern in the population in general. In some ways that would be a good thing, since it would prevent any one party from being in power for too long.
Here you go: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/05/bush-may…
“I would think a broad-based education including economics, humanities and science would be more the ideal.”
I agree. I especially think economics education is lacking, although that's probably just because I lean conservative. But actually both sides often ignore basic economic principles. (Blatant self-promotion alert) I've written about that here: http://sovereignmind.wordpress.com/2008/12/21/e…
Thanks for the link mikkel. I think I have actually read that, and that's where I must have gotten the idea. Actually looking at the graph I admit it's more complicated than I described (if a president is popular, it can have the opposite effect), but still the basic point is made that political ideology is somewhat formed based on who is president at the time the voter turns 18. It is especially interesting to note the sharp turns in ideology that correlate with shifts in power, such as LBJ/Nixon and Clinton/Bush.
That doesn't say much for our open-mindedness as we get older, I suppose.
I agree and have commented about it on social issues before (http://themoderatevoice.com/25108/gay-marriage-…) Also, there is similar data about less serious things like musical tastes as well. In general people's opinions and preferences are fixed by the time they reach their mid-20s.
mikkel
“Their self identification and interests were a direct response to the ideological frameworks and definitions that were around during their formative years.”
I believe one runs a risk of missing the significant factor in how people come to their own system of beliefs. Where it's useful to classify others within their philosophic environment, analyzing the process of a person's education oversimplifies that process if one relies upon taxonomy to describe it. For me, it's never been a Chinese menu; one from column A and two from column B may in fact be choices I make, but those choices come not from reading the menu, but more from having inimate knowledge of the cook.
“I've often thought about Jung and Huxley being two steadfast anti-rationalists, but reading their reasoning,”
This is the very insight I was alluding to in Jefferson, and the education these three exhibit shows that truth for them was an amalgam of personal thought not limited by any particular system. No one system encompassed the world they viewed, so they blended ideas according to their own lights. This kind of education allows for solutions to be drawn as needed regardless of its source. An electorate thus educated is “resistant to coercion, to manipulation and demagoguery in all their forms.”
It may be that you have seen this at the outset of this thread. The strictly partisan lines that line these threads demonstrate to me that many neither see that synthasis of thought nor do they stop to consider that process on a personal basis.
You mention Jung and Huxley as two anti-rationalists who methodically described that philosophy within the framewok of rational analysis. My example of Jefferson, the constructionist who found reason to extend a government's rights to make a land purchase. All three demonstrate the characteristic of an education that as not self limiting and so they found solutions to the problem before them that flew in the face of everyday orthodoxy.
What has been my frustration with TMVs discussion of health care is the current political orthodoxy that would have made Jefferson a flip flopper and Huxley a drug addict. The answer to our problem requres the same kind of synthesis of ideas across the political lines that have steadfastly been maintained.
Thanks
adelinesdad,
I pretty much concur with your general thoughts here, but I'm uncertain who will hold the majority of the youth vote.
Some of the other factors I see in play
1) the liberal tendencies of youth (advantage D)
2) Record Deficits they will inherit (advantage R)
3) Betrayal as “Hope and Change” becomes politics as usual (advantage R)
4) The Religious Right (advantage D)
5) War in Afganistan (advantage D)
6) Gay rights (advantage D)
7) The poor job market (advantage R)
add to those the factor you mentioned
Disatisfaction with Party in Power (advantage R)
and you get a pretty equal slate.
Now two other related factors,
9) Tendency to get more conservative with age (advantage R)
10) Tendency of young Americans not to vote (advantage R, due to last wave being pro-democratic)
and Republicans should make some good gains.
I agree completely that we need those type of people, although I am unsure whether it has anything to do with education. I personally have what I call the 5% rule, which is that I find that roughly 5% of people seem to have that ability and it's independent of their ideological sympathies. I am very process oriented and I value cstanley way more than the vast majority of people that on the surface share my values. This is because they haven't come to it through synthesis and don't understand the implications, giving them less flexibility or ability to think about something new.
I've met quite a few people that aren't highly educated that think like this, the only difference is that they don't have the knowledge base to make allusions and aren't elegant in their presentation. But I find the concrete simplicity of that understanding refreshing, as talking in the abstract about people that have been dead for years is intellectually stimulating, but someone referencing their own life in those terms is a validation. I have thought about this for many years and have come to the belief that the number of those people is relatively constant throughout time, and what changes is whether society values them or not.
mikkel
“I have thought about this for many years and have come to the belief that the number of those people is relatively constant throughout time, and what changes is whether society values them or not.”
I concur but have reached a slightly different analysis of the 5% rule, most everybody has the ability to see outside their ideological sympathies, but at best, they make use of it 5% of the time. This is not intended to be too cute by half.
People's lives are driven by intellectual routines because the brain itself derives comfort from similarities. Try changing your morning routine before going to work to feel it firsthand.
These routines are the same in how we come to examine higher function experiences also. Unfortunately, the effect of such reliance also desensitizes one to subtle changes occurring around us. At its worst, one can see people making the same mistakes in judgment over and over because they adhere to the Devil they know instead of entertaining an alternate view. Call it the Stockholm Syndrome of thought.
When one reads of history's “aha” moments, you see that briefly, a person has pushed through the habitual and finds the other side of the intellectual coin. Rationalist/antinationalist, conservative/liberal, any two seeming diametric opposites; when we note that person's transition we see how they have melded opposites that bring out new approaches.
As to education, starting at three years old, my daughter was known as “the pet lawyer” around our house. Always lobbying for every stray and quick to defend any pet offense. I explained to her that I would listen to any argument she made as long as she gave me three reasons and none of those were “Because I want to.” That worked until she hit high school and found the debate team. I then got 7 reasons – with subsections – to every discussion we had.
Eventually, she developed the talent to argue either side of a debate with equal strength. That was when I finished her “education” by simply asking her one question. Which side is right?
BTW
I couldn't agree more with your about cstanley. You see the process at work there.
Aw, you guys are making me blush.
I was reflecting a bit about 'the process', and education, and the like, and that brought to mind that Polimom and I discovered a while back that we attended the same small (and excellent) high school in New Orleans. I can't speak for her, but I do feel that I learned very good critical thinking skills there (if she's reading, she may think of the same teacher that I'm recalling in particular.)
I didn't get a liberal arts higher education- by a longshot- I was on a fasttrack for a veterinary degree. But some of the critical thinking skills transfer over there too, with regard to analyzing technical writing and research data.
Going back farther than that, I did have a Dad like Hemm seems to be- who made me think things through very thoroughly. There wasn't a lot of those kinds of discussions regarding family matters- it was a fairly authoritarian household with Mom playing the lead role- but Dad was the politically minded individual in the household and though he didn't wear his politics on his sleeve he could always articulate and provoke thoughtful discussions.
My older brother and his friends were died in the wool libertarians, and I was too shy to participate but took a lot in. He definitely did go the humanities route- got a masters in philosophy from University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, and almost completed a PhD. He ended up coming home to join in my Dad's small business when Dad became ill, and now he owns the shop.
I've absorbed and read some philosophy at his recommendations, but mostly my observations are the kind Mikkel mentioned- from my own experiences.
“I have a theory that the ideology of a particular generation generally negatively correlates with which party is in office as they reach the voting age. [...] In some ways that would be a good thing, since it would prevent any one party from being in power for too long.”
There's something to this, but I still hesitate. Youth are naturally liberal and even nowadays they avoid being identified as (or choosing to be) formally partisan — that's why a lot of “independent” voters are often liberal but not identifying themselves as Democrats. (There's more room for proper identification if we ask not about Democrats and Republicans but Democratic-leaning and Republican-leaning, if not liberal and conservative.)
I do notice that not only did the out-of-school electorate revive the Republicans after 1979 but this was to some extent accompanied by a revival where one would least expect it in modern times, on college campuses.
I'd also like to say that often it's not so much support of one party or another, but rejection of one or the other (the lesson I suspect many have never learned about both the 2006 and 2008 elections, as well as the 1994 elections and even the 1980 elections).
As to “one party or the other,” I'm not one of the typical “progressive” or far-left activists who wants it (in large part as it's the only way their ideas will win some kind of official support, most of the time), but I am also in favor of changing from the Duopoly (there's no single kind of liberalism or conservatism, anyway) to four to six or more parties and proportional representation in state legislators and other government bodies such as the US House of Representatives (possibly regionally to aid the small states with less than five seats in the House).
I own the following person's book, and recommend the following person's Web site for interested readers.
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/polit/damy/prlib.htm