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A new elegant book circulating in elegant circles suggests that we can become better citizens by following its 10 steps. The author is Richard Haas, longtime chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, an international relations think tank.
haas book Titled “A Bill of Duty: Ten Habits of a Good Citizen.” In it, he said he was often asked what was keeping him up at night, and the questioners wanted the answer to be China, Russia or North Korea.
But Haas wrote: “The most urgent and significant threat to America’s security and stability comes not from abroad but from within, from political divisions, and for the second time in American history the future of American democracy, and indeed America itself, is being called into question. “
he wrote in a boston globe Article: “Americans need to understand what is expected of them – their obligations to each other and to the country.”
Haas’ prescription wasn’t revolutionary. The first is a call for mandatory civic education: “Any student should be able to graduate high school or leave a college campus without exposure to the foundational texts of American democracy, from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, and without understanding the ideas at the heart of this nation and structure, and its underlying history.”
Of course, even such a suggestion would be worrisome in 2023, when an organizing principle of the Republican Party prevents teaching about America’s history as a source of failure and embarrassment, such as refusing any honest reckoning with African-American history.
Haas went on to list other ideas for how we could be better: make NS more common, embrace compromise, be civil, avoid violence even in deep political divides, put country before partisan interests, engage our community, respects norms, and promotes the common good.
I have a suggestion number 11 – we should stop thinking of politics as a form of entertainment in which many of us spend hours lost in the process of hearing why and how we despise the other side.
It got me thinking about my upbringing in the factory and the crowd I worked with during my college summers – almost all blue collar men. If they were alive today, I wonder what they would have thought of Haas. No one could possibly know little about the Federalist Papers, and no one cared about the minutiae of the Constitution.
But what they don’t do is listen to the late Rush Limbaugh or something on the store radio all day, or come home at night, have a beer, and watch Sean Hannity.
Most served in WWII but rarely talked about it, taking low-key patriot pride. They were more curious than angry about why so many of the next generation protested the Vietnam War, and they were more likely to laugh at them than at their long hair and liberal politics.
Yes, my colleague might make a sexist comment about an attractive woman in the front office. If they had an idea about the civil rights movement, they wouldn’t share it.
They pride themselves on their blue-collar craftsmanship and work ethic. I spent a summer working with the union glaziers who cut and installed glass. They do what they consider “real jobs” instead of sitting at a keyboard for a living like I do now.
Of course, a lot of things were different then, but that was before seditious political programs existed.
Then, for many years, for whatever reason, many Americans have enjoyed political vitriol as a form of daily entertainment. In my opinion, this is more important than whether people know about the Federalist Papers, which is a central factor in our dysfunction today.
How did we get here?
First, the main factor is that the blue-collar, bread-raising jobs that non-university workers could have done 40 to 50 years ago have largely disappeared. Today, the children of those 1970s workers may need to juggle two or three jobs to make ends meet. Their access to quality health insurance and pensions has disappeared. So yes, my sample of factory workers might feel differently today.
The second was in the 1980s, when the political right realized that trickle-down Republican economics had little blue-collar appeal. So they instead made gold in profits and political clout by stoking populist sensitivities about the loss of white male status, first on talk shows and later on Fox News.
They didn’t offer any solution. Their goal was to foment division, and they succeeded.
The third is the counterattack of the political left. Especially with the rise of Donald Trump, there has been a surge in shows and audiences for those who sneer at the far right.
Think of the weekend shows on MSNBC. Hour after hour, talker after talker breathlessly lashes out at the political right based on the day’s news. The most discussed topic at the moment is the Dominion Voting System’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News.
Is this a story worth understanding? Absolutely. But you can do it by reading the exhaustive coverage of the New York Times or the Washington Post instead of spending hours guessing about this or that about Rupert Murdoch or Tucker Carlson How bad or embarrassing it is.
In a column last year on a similar subject, a political scientist at Tufts University in Boston named Etan Hersh Tell me: “Now it’s easier than ever to… keep a news diet focused solely on nationalized, sensationalized, indignant, self-righteous garbage.”
Haas’ sage advice on how we can be “good citizens” certainly has theoretical merit. But maybe we should start by turning to other forms of “entertainment” more often.
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