Posted on 11/05/2006 2:24:29 PM PST by tpaine
GOODBYE JUSTICE, HELLO HAPPINESS: WELCOMING POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY TO THE LAW
DAVID G MYERS
--- Liberty and Fraternity ---
Given that personal well-being flows less from economic factors than from psychological factors such as a sense of personal control over ones life, Bagaric and McConvill contend that most restrictive laws which do not directly harm others should be repealed. For example, laws restricting property rights and pornography should be relaxed.
Does happiness research mandate such libertarianism? I think not. Indeed, the growing evidence of our human need to belong -- to connect in close, intimate, supportive, enduring relationships suggests that what modern western cultures need is not more individualism but less.
The mantras of me-thinking individualism are familiar: Do your own thing. Question authority. If it feels good, do it. Follow your bliss. Don't conform. Think for yourself. Be true to yourself. You owe it to yourself.
Amitai Etzioni, a recent president of the American Sociological Association, urges us toward an alternative to libertarian individualism - a communitarian ethos that balances individualism with a spirit of community. Fellow sociologist Robert Bellah concurs.
Communitarianism is based on the value of the sacredness of the individual, he explains. But it also affirms the central value of solidarity . . . that we become who we are through our relationships. In Bowling Alone, political scientist Robert Putnam documents the decline of social capital that attends growing individualism.
What I have called The American Paradox describes the irony of post-1960 America, which was a time of surging liberty and affluence (the good news) and declining civility and social health (the bad news). As our rights become more secure and our disposable incomes rose, social connections frayed and depression, teen suicide, and crime became more severe. More than ever, we at the end of the last century were finding ourselves with big houses and broken homes, high incomes and low morale, secured rights and diminished civility. We were excelling at making a living but too often failing at making a life. We celebrated our prosperity but yearned for purpose. We cherished our freedoms but longed for connection. In an age of plenty, we were feeling spiritual hunger.
Communitarians, who proclaim a third way alternative to individualism and collectivism, believe that individual rights must be balanced with social responsibilities, that libertarian individualism must be restrained by concern for our communal well-being. We humans like to feel unique and in control of our lives, but we also are social creatures having a basic need to belong. Communitarian 'we-thinking' is leading to greater protections of communal well-being, as in smoking restraints on aeroplanes and in restaurants, environmental legislation that protects the commons, and restraints on individuals rights to sell and own weapons. The communitarian bottom line: we need to balance our needs for independence and attachment, privacy and community, liberty and fraternity.
Thus, if pornography can be shown (as I believe it has been) to contribute to an impulsive sexuality that undermines one of the biggest predictors of happiness a stable and close marriage and the co-parenting of children then Bagaric and McConvill would, I presume, want to make a case for restraints on pornography, or at least for a public education program that will increase awareness of the dividends of covenant relationships.
Listen to communitarians talk about European-style child benefits, extended parental leaves, flexible working hours, campaign finance reform, and ideas for fostering the commons and you'd swear they are liberals. Listen to them talk about covenant marriages, divorce reform, father care, and character education and you'd swear they are conservatives. In fact, communitarians see themselves not as a midpoint but as a third alternative to the individualism-authoritarian and liberal-conservative polarities.
This 'Third Way', as people first called it in Tony Blair's Britain, aims to synthesize some of the best ideas from both camps.
Communitarians welcome incentives for individual initiative and appreciate why Marxist economies have crumbled. If I were, let's say, in Albania at this moment, said Communitarian Network co-founder Etzioni, I probably would argue that there's too much community and not enough individual rights. Even in communal Japan (where the nail that sticks out gets pounded down), Etzioni says he would sing a song of individuality. In the individualistic American context, he sings a song of social order. Where there is chaos in a neighborhood, people may feel like prisoners in their homes.
Opposition to communitarians comes from civil libertarians of the left, economic libertarians of the right, and special interest libertarians (such as the U.S. National Rifle Association). Much as these organizations differ, they are branches of the same tree - all valuing individual rights in the contest with the common good. Communitarians take on all such varieties of libertarians. Unrestrained personal freedom, they say, destroys a cultures social fabric; unrestrained commercial freedom exploits workers and plunders the commons. Etzioni sums up the communitarian ideal in his New Golden Rule:
"-- Respect and uphold societys moral order as you would have society respect and uphold your autonomy. --"
To reflect on your own libertarian versus communitarian leanings, consider what restraints on liberty you support: luggage scanning at airports smoking bans in public places speed limits on highways? sobriety checkpoints? drug testing of pilots and rail engineers? prohibitions on leaf burning? restrictions on TV cigarette ads? regulations on stereo or muffler noise? pollution controls? requiring seat belts and motorcycle helmets? disclosure of sexual contacts for HIV carriers? outlawing child pornography? banning AK-47s and other non-hunting weapons of destruction? required school uniforms? wire taps on suspected terrorists? fingerprinting checks to protect welfare, unemployment, and Social Security funds from fraud?
All such restraints on individual rights, most opposed by libertarians of one sort or another, aim to enhance the public good.
Libertarians often object to restraints on guns, panhandlers, pornography, drugs, or business by warning that such may plunge us down a slippery slope leading to the loss of more important liberties. If today we let them search our luggage, tomorrow they'll be invading our houses. If today we censor cigarette ads on television, tomorrow the thought police will be removing books from our libraries. If today we ban handguns, tomorrow's Big Brother government will take our hunting rifles.
Communitarians reply that if we don't balance concern for individual rights with concern for the commons, we risk chaos and a new fascism.
"We have met the enemy and he is us."
Thanks for the bump.
I was going to say...communitarianism sounds so good in theory. In practice there has to be an arbiter higher than the group or else discord rules in short order. A monastery is a communitarian group that works because the organizing principles are founded on shared religious beliefs, with God as the ultimate arbiter. But secular communitarian groups invariably end up being personality cults.
In our society that arbiter would be the rule of law. But make no mistake about it. Even as Mussolini and Hitler rose to absolute power under the forms of law... so may administrative absolutism and theocratic fascism be fastened upon this country within the Constitution and within the forms of law.
A revolution has already occurred within our form of law but many are blind to it.
A government that had been supported by the people and so controlled by the people has become one that supports and regulates the people in nearly every aspect of life, and so controls them.
Much of the usurpation is irreversible. That is true because habits of dependence are much easier to form than to break. Once the government, on ground of public policy, has assumed the responsibility to provide people with buying power when they are in want of it, or when they are unable to provide themselves with enough of it, according to a minimum proclaimed by government, it will never be the same again.
Communitarianism in this country exists as a reality, not just a theory.
Then we see the reality:
"-- To reflect on your own libertarian versus communitarian leanings, consider what restraints on liberty you support:
luggage scanning at airports,
smoking bans in public places,
speed limits on highways?
sobriety checkpoints?
drug testing of pilots and rail engineers?
prohibitions on leaf burning?
restrictions on TV cigarette ads?
regulations on stereo or muffler noise?
pollution controls?
requiring seat belts and motorcycle helmets?
disclosure of sexual contacts for HIV carriers?
outlawing child pornography?
banning AK-47s and other non-hunting weapons of destruction?
required school uniforms?
wire taps on suspected terrorists?
fingerprinting checks to protect welfare, unemployment,
and Social Security funds from fraud?
All such restraints on individual rights, most opposed by libertarians of one sort or another, aim to enhance the public good. --"
In practice there has to be an arbiter higher than the group or else discord rules in short order.
Yep, in the USA, our Constitution serves that purpose.
A monastery is a communitarian group that works because the organizing principles are founded on shared religious beliefs, with God as the ultimate arbiter. But secular communitarian groups invariably end up being personality cults.
Agreed.. Thanks for your comments.
Yep, it is 'telling' in the fact that so few here really object to the majority rule aspects of communitarianism..
Re 'higher arbiter'; see Godel's Incompleteness Theorem or expanded upon for the layman, 'GEB: The Eternal Golden Braid' by Douglas R. Hofstadter.
"If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals–if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.
Ronald Reagan
It traces the roots of modern(so to speak)Conservative thought.
Isn't it odd, then, that there are two words describing the same thing? Are libertarianism and conservatism identical? I think not.
Look at it this way; would a leftist be offended at being called a libertarian? No. If a leftist would be a libertarian then they too are somehow my enemy.
And I recommend you read on the Science Wars that are being fought against post-modernism (modernism so-to-speak).
A good starting place is Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science by Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt
I think you're missing the whole point. While I don't agree with the communitarians on what constitutes the public good, such as smoking bans, seat belt laws, etc., they are right about the fact that individualism is running rampant in western countries, to the point where it is undermining any sense that there even is a common good or any good beyond that of the individual. We have exalted individual rights above everything else, including the responsibility that accompanies the exercise of any right. When the individual's right to pursue happiness becomes more important than his duty to the community, then justice suffers.
When I think of leftist I think of an ideology that embraces wealth redistribution and Federalist involvement in issues that are either private to the individual or the purview of the State or even local governments. Except on a limited number of social issues no two ideologies could be more different then the Democrats and Libertarians.
What we have a right to do may not in fact be right to do. The difference is crucial and it must be embedded in the law itself, because only then can we prevent the collapse of the morally right into the legally right. Acknowledging the limits of the law is indispensable to preserving the recognition of a moral order beyond it.
Conversely, relieving legality of the burden of moral rightness is also indispensable to its preservation. The legal and the moral must remain distinct if they are to perform their roles of supporting and facilitating one another.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39f7ad0d0b86.htm
You might be interested in reading this 6 year old post I made.
I was taught a political continuum with socialism somewhere on the left and conservatism (not that they are symmetrical) somewhere on the right-hand of the spectrum. To allow another dimension, from a one-dim line to 2d plane, allows triangulation like the Clintons'(spit). Triangulation is quibbling and avoiding the point.
And I apologize for carrying on a second dialog on another forum and having forgotten to include my current political spew, beyond my tagline.
Either we are equal or we are not. Good people should be armed where they will, with wits and guns.
Any quibbling would be about the number of dimensions from a one-dim line to 2d plane that already exist.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.