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The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts. + Edmund Burke No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimetre nearer. + George Orwell Justice For All, Liberty For None Richard Rorty envisions an America that is vastly different from that of today. The capitalist system, with all of its inequalities, will be replaced with the socialist principals of redistributing wealth to the poorer citizens. Differences in religion, society, and partisan attitudes will be replaced by a civic religion that will enable citizens to have common outlook on issues. Self-consciousness among citizens is to be replaced with a mutual respect and curiosity for others. Rorty presents his ideas under the guise of pragmatism, but one has to wonder if the damage to liberty that would be done in the name of social justice is indeed pragmatic. Rorty seems to have a few central concerns about the nature of America in the present day.
Capitalism is perceived to be a failed system. The growing dichotomy between rich and poor is leaving the poor in a state of disenfranchisement, with very little political efficacy. The small group of super-rich, in Rorty s view, will soon control every aspect of the political process. Rorty also believes that capitalism has failed to help all of the citizens. Rorty does not see capitalism as a tide raising all boats; rather he sees many getting left behind or falling through the cracks of the system. According to Rorty, one of the most prevalent reasons for the social and political injustice in America today is the lack of input from the intellectual left, a group that Rorty describes as academics and professorial leftist. (57) These elite are no longer concerned with economic and social equality.
In Rorty s view, the left has removed itself from political participation and now study only theory and concern themselves with metaphysical and other non-pragmatic notions. Along with this removal from active participation, the left has developed a growing disdain for America. Rorty thinks that if there is to be any hope of reform the left needs to be more pragmatic in its thinking and concern itself with economic issues. He believes that a focus on social and economic justice is crucial to our ends. By concerning himself only with those on the left, Rorty discounts a great number of academic thinkers on the right.
Peter Mead, John Dillulio, Robert Woodson, and James Q. Wilson have all devoted serious works to the study of poverty and social inequality. In order to establish social equality, there must first be economic equality. The redistribution of wealth by a large, authoritarian central government (he distrusts local government) is foremost in Rorty s future. By empowering the poorer among us, Rorty believes that they will emerge as a great political entity, thus reducing the stranglehold that the capitalists have over the political process. The authoritative government of the future is to be comprised by those with a technocratic expertise. (103 - 4) These technocrats would efficiently redistribute the wealth to those in need and eliminate the need for a participatory government.
Herein lies one of the problems with Rorty s theory. He espouses that after social and economic equality has been attained, the stage would be set for development of a civic religion. The civic religion would replace cultural, religious, and personal differences with political longings and feelings of curiosity and love among citizens. (17) Like Marx, Rorty believes that eventually the government would wither away. There are two problems with this theory. A technocratic controlled government resists the notion of participatory democracy, yet Rorty wants a citizenry that has political longings. Also, it is hard to envision a large authoritative government filled with technocrats just withering away.
Has Rorty learned nothing from the history of the communist nations? Communism taught us that a large bureaucratic government becomes oppressive and self-serving. It empowers only its members. It is hard to imagine Rorty s technocrats voluntarily withering away, or at the least, utterly concerned with justice for all citizens. At the heart of Rorty s theory is the socialist notion of equal economic and social justice for all citizens.
Rorty wants a large, authoritarian central government that will ensure these justices. This notion of equality for every citizen goes against the very principals that America was founded upon. America is a land where every one is not equal, but has equal opportunity. Few are na ve enough to propose that all Americans have purely equal opportunity. A person born to a wealthy or prominent family will have a better opportunity to achieve their goals than a person born to a poor family on the south side of Chicago.
However, even if the poor person does not have equality of opportunity, they have an equal right to opportunity. The rich cannot, by law, infringe on the right of the poor to pursue their goals. It is the role of government to aid the poor and less able of the citizens to pursue their own notion of the good life. This should be done with programs financed by the limited distribution of wealth from the rich. It should not, however, be done by a systematic distribution of wealth from the rich to the poor, thereby resulting in a moral hazard where the poor are more dependent on the government. A massive redistribution in wealth could result in many forgoing the opportunity to create capital.
There will always be entrepreneurs who, despite the perceived punishment, will seek to create as much capital as possible. Those on the fringe, however, may be less likely to reinvest their money if they are to be punished for success by a government that gives a majority of their income to the poorer citizens. There is also a hazard concerning those who are not well off but still wanting to start a business or invest what little money they have in a venture. With the knowledge that the government will provide for their every need, these people may not think it worth the effort to try and succeed.
George Gilder speaks to the issue of redistributing wealth in an article in Ideological Voices. During the 1970 s there was a massive redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. On average the person receiving entitlements from the government was making more than the average person who received none. (Heilke 299) During this period the rich were taxed at the highest rate in American history. The result was that the rich sought ways to shelter their money instead of reinvesting it. This caused the economy to stagnate.
Inflation was in double digits and interest rates were as high as 20 % for average citizens with a mortgage. The times eventually got so bad that a misery index was created to let the American people know just how bad off they were. The number of people on the receiving end of government entitlements increased, not the contrary. Also, the gap between rich and poor grew. During this period there was very little upward social mobility, this was also virtually stagnate. Since the inception of Lyndon Johnson s Great Society, America has spent almost six trillion dollars on entitlement programs.
Despite this massive redistribution, the number of American s who receive these entitlements continue to grow. Thomas Sowell deals with the problems of social justice from a different perspective. Sowell says that history has taught us that those seeking justice are usually not satisfied when it is received. Rather, they feel the need for special treatment in the name of justice. When people want more, they call more justice. (Heilke 302) Sowell believes that many of the leaders of these groups seeking justice are often more interested in using the enthusiasm of their groups to promote self-serving actions. Sowell states that the groups can also be as impartial as those they perceive as oppressive.
When groups with a sense of grievance acquire power, they seldom stop at redressing grievances and seldom exhibit impartial justice toward others. (Heilke 303) This begs the question; would Rorty s government controlled by technocrats working under the guise of a civic religion exhibit impartial justice to those who are perceived as different? Following up on the previous question, it is this devotion to a civic religion that seems to be the most troubling aspect of Rorty s country. Civic religion seems as anti bourgeois and anti-individualistic as the cultural elitism that Rorty warns against. Civic religion replaces individual freedom with social justice as the country s principal goal. The civic religion in partnership with a ubiquitous central government could point to the end of individual liberty. One of the greatest aspects of being an American, and also one of the reasons that people throughout the world are clamoring to come here, is the freedom of the individual.
While Rorty s intentions seem well founded, he appears to place more emphasis on equality rather than individuality. In the resulting vicious circle, the citizens that he espouses equality for would have very little individual liberty to pursue their version of the good life. In order for a central government to ensure social and economic equality, there has to be a perception of inequality. Someone, or some prevailing thought, would have to be the determinate on what is to be considered a fair distribution. On the social end of the spectrum, anything viewed as outside the realm of the civic religion or the societal norm could not be acceptable.
Following Rorty s logical progression would lead to the conclusion that anyone or any group whose views or actions are different from the majority would be harmful to social harmony and the civic religion itself. Thereby these thoughts or actions could not be allowed. John Stuart Mill speaks to the issue of oppression by the majority in his essay On Liberty. Mill says that there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development and, if possible, prevent the formation of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. (Heilke 42) In Rorty s world governed by a civic religion, would the doctrine allow him the liberty to propose a normative theory that clearly contrast public opinion; such as the one he presents? One of the main differences that Rorty sees between himself and the cultural elites on the left is that, in his view, the role of philosophy is to change the world, not to simply understand it.
However, in order to espouse serious notions of how to change the world, one should first be able to understand it. That is the role of philosophy and empirical observation. One lesson that Rorty should have learned through empirical observation, (the failure of communism teaches this), is that Being and man invariably resist manipulation. People are inherently different, and no amount of manipulation from above or below is going to make them any more homogeneous.
Rorty s version of country may be achievable in a small homogeneous area, but it is hard to view it as a pragmatic theory when applied to the United States. One of the many things that make America great is its diversity. Citizens here do not all have the same view of the good life. Cultural, religious, economic, and political differences are all prevalent in our society, yet these differences are what make us a strong nation.
The ability to have and present these differences is the agent that binds the American society together. It can be argued that America already has a civic religion, and that religion is based on liberty. It is based on the principal that the citizen is free to pursue any interest that they want to. Contrast this with Rorty s country where citizens are free to be curious about only political choices and each other. The citizens should not even be curious about god. (17) Rorty claims to be a pragmatist, yet many of his views seem extremely un-pragmatic. The most substantial, longest lasting, and egalitarian political change throughout history has been as the result of a grass roots beginning.
Unless a tyrant rules the society, a groundswell of support by the masses for an issue usually results in the masses getting whatever reform they call for. Rorty s idea of change does not seem to place enough emphasis on the attitudes and interest of the everyday citizen. In Rorty s view, the masses do not know what is in their best interest. This precipitates the need for them being enlightened by the elite academic intellectuals.
This appears to be eerily reminiscent of Lenin and Trotsky s idea of telescoping the revolution. In Rorty s view, the citizens are nothing more than a misguided mass of confused souls; wandering aimlessly while crying out for change. Rorty s solution for this change appears as un pragmatic as the theories presented by the elites on the left that he so easily discounts. Works Cited Rorty, Richard. Achieving Our Country.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. Schumaker, Paul, Dwight C. Kiel, and Thomas Heilke. Ideological voices. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997.
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