"When philosophy paints its grey in grey then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's grey in grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk." -- G.W.F. Hegel, 'Preface', Philosophy of Right.
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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx
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Dworkin on (deliberative) democracy
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August 28, 2006
Ronald Dworkin makes a remark on American politics that apply to Australia. He says:
American politics are in an appalling state. We disagree, fiercely, about almost everything. We disagree about terror and security, social justice, religion in politics, who is fit to be a judge, and what democracy is. These are not civil disagreements: each side has no respect for the other. We are no longer partners in self-government; our politics are rather a form of war.
The paragraph is from the first chapter of Dworkin's Is Democracy Possible Here? Principles for a New Political Debate. He says that one explanation for this state of affairs is the cultural wars. According to some commentators Americans --and Australians---are:
... more deeply and viscerally divided even than these political differences suggest; the stark political split emerges, they say, from an even deeper, less articulate contrast between two mutually contemptuous worlds of personality and self-image. Blue-culture Americans, they say, crave sophistication; they cultivate a taste for imported wine and dense newspapers, and their religious convictions, if they have any at all, are philosophical, attenuated, and ecumenical. Red-culture Americans guard a blunter authenticity; they drink beer, watch car racing on television, and prefer their religion simple, evangelical, and militant. Bush won the 2004 election, on this story, in spite of the fact that his first-term performance was unimpressive, because the red culture slightly outnumbers the blue culture at the moment and Bush managed to embrace not only the political preferences of that red culture but its morals and aesthetics as well.
Dworkan is not convinced. He suggest that the two-cultures thesis may not be so much an explanation of our politics as itself the creation of our politics. The political alliance between 'evangelical religion and powerful commercial interests is less the result of an underlying, deep cultural identity than of a political masterstroke: persuading people who hate gay marriage that they should therefore also hate the progressive income tax.'
I reckon he is right on that. So what is the consequence of the hostility between the two political cultures.
Dworkin says:
The most serious consequence of the assumption of a comprehensive and unbridgeable cultural gap is not the stereotyping, however, or even the contempt each side shows for the other. It is the lack of any decent argument in American political life. I mean “argument” in the old-fashioned sense in which people who share some common ground in very basic political principles debate about which concrete policies better reflect these shared principles.
I've noticed this in Australia. There is little debate, little public political conversation over policy issues. Nor is there any desire to have one. Politics appears to have become a kind of war.The common ground is the terrain on which the war is fought, not the principles of liberal democracy.
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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Dworkin on (deliberative) democracy:
» Dworkin on (deliberative) democracy #2 from philosophy.com
In an earlier post we have established that our political is marked by a kind war between two armed camps--conservative and liberal and that this unbridgeable divide --and lack of a common ground--- has resulted in a lack of debate about policy options... [Read More]
» Dworkin on (deliberative) democracy #3 from philosophy.com
I want to pick up on this previous post on Ronald Dworkin's Is Democracy Possible Here? Principles for a New Political Debate Dworkin is arguing that his two principles---every human life is of intrinsic potential value and that everyone has a responsi... [Read More]
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I can relate to this.
I'm a lefty social democrat, while a number of my friends are small-"l" liberal conservatives. A number of us are politically active, but our most productive debates (involving both myself and my friends as opposites) occur in our personal interactions, not through our political activities.
The kind of candid relationship I have with a number of my conservative friends is hard to propogate. When we offer this kind of candid dialogue to "outsiders" from the "other side", such as when I write on my blog, we make ourselves vulnerable.
Through this vulnerability, we are often subjecteded to visceral and opportunistic attacks. The democratic palsy seems self-perpetuating.