Kevin: No real time today for lengthy replies to most of my e-mails, but let me say that , yes, indeed, your voice in this forum is welcome and appreciated. We may not always agree but you always make us think. If anyone has good intentions you certainly do, also. Happy Thanksgiving Billy ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11/24/2011 6:53:23 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, [email protected] writes:
Yes, I am a member of the Communitarian Network and a fan of Etzioni. The New Golden Rule was a huge influence on me and is credited in my book. Some Communitarians lean toward statism, some are voluntarists like me. I signed the communitarian platform several years ago. http://communitariannetwork.org/about-communitarianism/responsive-communitar ian-platform/ I see communitarianism and classical liberalism as entirely compatible because I believe in a free society where people are unencumbered by too much state management, people are not only free to be good neighbors but they have a moral responsibility to be good neighbors. Many libertarians focus too much on the freedom and not enough on the responsibility. I emphasize responsibility more than freedom. Thus, I believe moral suasion is essential if we are to reduce the size of the state and I'd argue the church. I believe the Progressive Movement from the beginning employed a statist tactic in an attempt to perfect society. Had the various movements stuck to moral suasion, I'd be OK with progressivism. I write about it this way: During this age of government expansion and declining personal responsibility I am increasingly attracted to the Libertarian thesis, which is reflected above, but unlike some Libertarians I strongly emphasize the necessity of voluntary social responsibility, which I refer to as neighborliness in this book. In my opinion, political Progressives and social justice advocates have illegitimately changed the meaning of neighborliness. They believe government has a moral responsibility to take from some people in order to give to others in order to right the wrongs of the past. Neighborliness, from my perspective, is by definition voluntary, which is a point of view I will delve into more deeply later in the book. As importantly, unlike some Philosophical Communitarians and Progressives, I do not support the twentieth century concept of positive rights[i] because I believe our rights come solely from Nature's God (which mirrors the Deistic emphasis and Classical Liberalism of many of the prominent Founding Fathers), and not from government, individuals, or even the community itself. In my opinion, one person or one community does not have the moral authority to demand a right from another and no surrogate authority can demand positive rights on another's behalf. I believe individuals within communities have the moral authority to decide how they will exercise their freedom in order to build healthy communities AND find personal happiness, which reflects a uniquely American style of Communitarianism. More simply stated, I am advocating that the American community needs to restore a heavy dose of liberty with an equally strong emphasis on voluntary neighborliness, which was the original American foundation. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Introduction: Restoring America - A Place for Possibilities [i] Jeff Landauer and Joseph Rowlands, Importance of Philosophy Website, last updated 2001; available at: http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Bloody_PositiveRights.html. Since the concept of rights limits the actions of the government, the only way to circumvent them is by adding new rights that are allegedly superior to the others. The concept of Positive Rights was developed. These new rights differ from the old rights. Instead of involving freedom from interference from others, these new rights demand goods and services. "Positive" refers to the fact that to satisfy these rights, other people must provide them. As to Teddy Roosevelt. There is a lot to like about him but I also believe he had an authoritarian and racist impulse that showed itself in his values regarding Japan etc. that were disclosed in a recent book (can't remember the title). For all his good, unfortunately I think he also set the tone for too much central planning and government. Also see below for more comments Hi Kevin, On Nov 7, 2011, at 4:05 AM, Kevin Kervick wrote: > I would like the reader to know this has been a personal transformation > for me. I have evolved from a wide-eyed professional helper who was very > much connected to the progressive political orthodoxy that under-girds > much of the professional culture in human services, to a right-leaning > American Communitarian who believes the Progressive Movement in America is > one of the root causes of community devolution and personal unhappiness. Could you clarify what _you_ mean by Communitarian? Around here we associate the term with Amitai Etzioni's third-way, but that seems very different than your classical liberalism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amitai_Etzioni Also, did I miss your reply to Billy's questions about Progressivism? I would say most Radical Centrists would support Teddy Roosevelt-era progressivism: women suffrage, child labor laws, trust-busting. Are you against those political innovations? We completely agree that progressivism as it is today is ideologically sterile and culturally destructive. But we don't want to roll the clock back to before the Civil War, much less to the original Constitution or even the Articles of Confederation. How far back do you want to go? >From our perspective, the Civil Rights Movement was the last good idea the Left had. And a very good one, though it carried a lot of baggage in the form of affirmative action and socialistic tendencies. Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, however nobly intentioned, is probably when it jumped the shark. That said, Radical Centrism is inherently progressive in the sense that we believe we *can* do better, because frankly there *has* been so much genuine political innovation in the last two centuries that (despite the cost and downside) we consider our political environment far better (in most, though not all ways) far better than what existed prior to the 1970's. In particular, we believe that the role of government is not merely to enforce the law and defend the borders. Rather, it is to nurture an intellectual/esthetic/relational/physical *commons* which allows individuals to flourish. That is true of all levels of governance, from the federal (or even supra-national, like the United Nations) down to the local park district and book club. Yes, maintaining such a commons is *hard* -- it can easily degenerate into freeloading or tyranny -- but it is incredibly powerful. The fact that libertarians deny the relevance of such commons -- despite enormous empirical data about their value -- is one reason we have a hard time taking them seriously. In that sense, we are optimists, in that we believe it is possible to make things much better. But we are also realists, in that we believe there is no easy silver bullet. We believe it will take massive intellectual effort, emotional energy, and moral courage to improve our country, and create a political and cultural commons far better than any that has previous existed (by most, though not all, measures). But we're going to try. How about you? Do you have a positive vision of a richer political system in the future, or is your goal solely to move us back to the Articles of Confederation? -- Ernie P. I like how you describe your approach and feel this might be a nice home for me if you are willing to accept by idiosyncrasy. I believe in the commons and that is why I have said I am not a radical libertarian and certainly not a quasi anarchist. The Founders believed in the commons. The question for me is not whether there should be a commons but how big should the commons be, how are the commons managed, and by whom. I'd like to devolve much of the commons that are managed by the feds back to smaller levels of abstraction. But I do want a federal commons too. I live right in downtown Portsmouth and if you have ever been there you know we have a great physical common space called Market Square. It is right out my window. I love it. If I am walking by and see trash on it I pick up the trash. I say hello to anyone I see there. I engage in protests there and listen to music there. I nurture it and it nurtures me. Kevin -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
