16th Street Forum

After the election, Scott McLemee, who blogs for Inside Higher Ed, asked some folks for ideas about what the new president should read before taking office. One that particularly struck me was Eric Rauchway's recommendation of Isaiah Berlin's essay on Franklin Delano Roosevelt. (Rauchway's focus as a historian is on the Great Depression and the New Deal; he just wrote a Very Short Introduction on the topic. I love the VSI series - it's like mind candy.)

I thought that the following excerpts were particularly resonant - especially in comparing the campaign styles of Obama and McCain, and in laying out the kind of approach to politics that we hope the Obama administration will follow.

He did not sacrifice fundamental political principles to a desire to retain power; he did not whip up evil passions merely in order to avenge himself upon those whom he disliked or wished to crush, or because it was an atmosphere in which he found it convenient to operate; he saw to it that his administration was in the van of public opinion and drew it on instead of being dragged by it; he made the majority of his fellow citizens prouder to be Americans than they had been before. He raised their status in their own eyes - immensely in those of the rest of the world.…

But Roosevelt's greatest service to mankind (after ensuring the victory against the enemies of freedom) consists in the fact that he showed that it is possible to be politically effective and yet benevolent and human: that the fierce left- and right-wing propaganda of the 1930s, according to which the conquest and retention of political power is not compatible with human qualities, but necessarily demands from those who pursue it seriously the sacrifice of their lives upon the altar of some ruthless ideology, or the practice of despotism - this propaganda, which filled the art and talk of the day, was simply untrue. Roosevelt's example strengthened democracy everywhere, that is to say the view that the promotion of social justice and individual liberty does not necessarily mean the end of all efficient government; that power and order are not identical with a strait-jacket of doctrine, whether economic or political; that it is possible to reconcile individual liberty - a loose texture of society - with the indispensable minimum of organising and authority; and in this belief lies what Roosevelt's greatest predecessor once described as 'the last best hope of earth'.

The full essay is available online from the Southern Cross Review.

There's a line in Primo Levi's Moments of Reprieve: A Memoir of Auschwitz that I came across. Reflecting on Italy, he says:

It often happens these days that you hear people say they’re ashamed of being Italian. In fact we have good reasons to be ashamed: first and foremost, of not having been able to produce a political class that represents us and, on the contrary, tolerating for thirty years one that does not.

Now there's a fine statement of the American situation as well!

I’ve just finished reading through Christopher Kelty’s Two Bits, which is a review of the Free Software movement from an ethnological standpoint, as well as an exploration of his concept of the ‘recursive public’. (True to the open source mission, the book is available free on the Web.) I was particularly struck, though, by the remark he makes in the Conclusion:

The Mertonian ideals [disinterestedness, communalism, organized skepticism, objectivity] are in place once more, this time less as facts of scientific method than as goals [for society]. The problem of stabilizing collective knowledge has moved from being an inherent feature of science to being a problem that needs our attention.

I think this translates into a very powerful statement about what the Forum approach can address. It can encourage the participants to strive to the ideals Robert Merton defined in the context of the scientific method, but in the context of understanding political discourse and governance. And it sets a goal of achieving stable (i.e., tested, validated, and accepted) collective historical and social knowledge with which to pursue that understanding.

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., was fond of this quote from Finley Peter Dunne's Mr. Dooley:

I've seen the Dimmycratic party hangin' to the ropes a score iv times. I've seen it dead an' buried an' th' Raypublicans kindly buildin' a monymint f'r it... I've gone to sleep nights wonderin' where I'd throw away me vote afther this an' whin I woke up there was that crazy- headed ol' loon iv a party with its hair sthreamin' in its eyes, an' an axe in its hand, chasin' Raypublicans into th' tall grass. 'Tis niver so good as whin 'tis broke.

The Seventh Oration of Isocrates, the Areopagiticus, is one of the great explications of classical ideas about ideal republican government. It's interesting to see, though, how he sets up the interest of his audience at the beginning, in ways that are eerily familiar to the modern ear.

Many of you are wondering, I suppose, what in the world my purpose is in coming forward to address you on The Public Safety, as if Athens were in danger or her affairs on an uncertain footing, when in fact she possesses more than two hundred ships-of-war, enjoys peace throughout her territory, maintains her empire on the sea, and has, furthermore, many allies who, in case of any need, will readily come to her aid, and many more allies who are paying their contributions and obeying her commands. With these resources, one might argue that we have every reason to feel secure, as being far removed from danger, while our enemies may well be anxious and take thought for their own safety.

Now you, I know, following this reasoning, disdain my coming forward, and are confident that with this power you will hold all Hellas under your control. But as for myself, it is because of these very things that I am anxious; for I observe that those cities which think they are in the best circumstances are wont to adopt the worst policies, and that those which feel the most secure are most often involved in danger. The cause of this is that nothing of either good or of evil visits mankind unmixed, but that riches and power are attended and followed by folly, and folly in turn by license; whereas poverty and lowliness are attended by sobriety and great moderation; so that it is hard to decide which of these lots one should prefer to bequeath to one's own children. For we shall find that from a lot which seems to be inferior men's fortunes generally advance to a better condition, whereas from one which appears to be superior they are wont to change to a worse.…

I am in doubt whether to suppose that you care nothing for the public welfare or that you are concerned about it, but have become so obtuse that you fail to see into what utter confusion our city has fallen. For you resemble men in that state of mind -- you who have lost all the cities in Thrace, squandered to no purpose more than a thousand talents on mercenary troops, provoked the ill-will of the Hellenes and the hostility of the barbarians, and, as if this were not enough, have been compelled to save the friends of the Thebans at the cost of losing our own allies; and yet to celebrate the good news of such accomplishments we have twice now offered grateful sacrifices to the gods, and we deliberate about our affairs more complaisantly than men whose actions leave nothing to be desired!

And it is to be expected that acting as we do we should fare as we do; for nothing can turn out well for those who neglect to adopt a sound policy for the conduct of their government as a whole. On the contrary, even if they do succeed in their enterprises now and then, either through chance or through the genius of some man, they soon after find themselves in the same difficulties as before, as anyone may see from what happened in our own history.…

And yet we are quite indifferent to the fact that our polity has been corrupted, nor do we even consider how we may redeem it. It is true that we sit around in our shops denouncing the present order and complaining that never under a democracy have we been worse governed, but in our actions and in the sentiments which we hold regarding it we show that we are better satisfied with our present democracy than with that which was handed down to us by our forefathers.…

And yet how can we praise or tolerate a government which has in the past been the cause of so many evils and which is now year by year ever drifting on from bad to worse? And how can we escape the fear that if we continue to progress after this fashion we may finally run aground on rocks more perilous than those which at that time loomed before us?

These excerpts are from the Speeches and Letters, sections 7.1-5,9-11,15,18; edited by George Norlin and posted by the Perseus Project at Tufts University.

Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (1952):

A democracy can not, of course, engage in an explicit preventive war. But military leadership can heighten crises to the point where war becomes unavoidable.

The power of such a temptation to a nation, long accustomed to expanding possibilities and only recently subjected to frustration, is enhanced by the spiritual aberrations which arise in a situation of intense enmity. The certainty of the foe’s continued intransigence seems to be the only fixed fact in an uncertain future. Nations find it even more difficult than individuals to preserve sanity when confronted with a resolute and unscrupulous foe. Hatred disturbs all residual serenity of spirit and vindictiveness muddies every pool of sanity. In the present situation even the sanest of our statesmen have found it convenient to conform their policies to the public temper of fear and hatred which the most vulgar of our politicians have generated or exploited. Our foreign policy is thus threatened with a kind of apoplectic rigidity and inflexibility. Constant proof is required that the foe is hated with sufficient vigor. Unfortunately the only persuasive proof seems to be the disavowal of precisely those discriminate judgments which are so necessary for an effective conflict with the evil, which we are supposed to abhor.

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), chapter 1, paragraph 13:

I must be tolerably sure, before I venture publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have really received one. Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver; and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings. I should therefore suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France, until I was informed how it had been combined with government; with public force; with the discipline and obedience of armies; with the collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue; with morality and religion; with the solidity of property; with peace and order; with civil and social manners. All these (in their way) are good things too; and, without them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not likely to continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations, which may be soon turned into complaints. Prudence would dictate this in the case of separate, insulated, private men; but liberty, when men act in bodies, is power. Considerate people, before they declare themselves, will observe the use which is made of power; and particularly of so trying a thing as new power in new persons, of whose principles, tempers, and dispositions they have little or no experience, and in situations, where those who appear the most stirring in the scene may possibly not be the real movers.