LBCC Subjective Discussion
Description
Major Course Themes class notes – Also, complete all of the assigned readings for this topic (as listed in the Assignment Outline and Reading Schedule). (Note: All of our discussion forum posts this session are set up so that you will be able to see what others post once you submit your own response. If there aren’t any responses from your classmates immediately after you post your own response, please be sure to come back into the assignment prior to the due date for the assignment to make your 2 comments. Also, please do not post a blank response in order to see your classmates’ responses before posting your own response to the prompt. An initial, blank response will result in an automatic 30 point deduction from your assignment score.)For this assignment:1. In approximately 2 to 4 paragraphs (worth a maximum of 30 points):Briefly define the concepts of “freedom” and “order,” as discussed in the Major Course Themes class notes.Briefly explain how the ever-changing relationship between freedom and order in the United States (as explained in the class notes and in this week’s video from prof. savoie) can be effectively illustrated by national and state governmental responses to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, as well as by the American public’s varied reactions to these governmental policies.2. In approximately 3 complete sentences each, briefly comment on 2 of your classmates posts (worth a maximum of 10 points): Please be sure to keep all of your comments constructive and professional.
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Major Course Themes
Introduc on
I.
Im old, but things change over me: In the over twenty- ve years that I have
been teaching POLSC 1 (yes, I am that old), there have been many semesters when
students, colleagues from other academic disciplines, friends and family have said that,
because of major poli cal events taking place in the U.S. at the me, there couldnt be a
be er me to teach or learn about American government and poli cs. There has o en
been a lot of truth to these statements, such as when I met an 8:00 AM POLSC 1 class on
September 11, 2001 in the immediate a ermath of the terrorist a acks on the United
States: We watched events unfold on a grainy, blurry television screen (no cable or Wi-Fi
available) and a empted to process in real- me what was happening and what might
come next as best we could. Of course, my approach to teaching about American
government and poli cs signi cantly changed during the rest of that semester and, since
that me, I have a empted, as best I can, to discover the medium and long term trends
in poli cs and society that could have a signi cant in uence on U.S. democracy in the
future. These trends become the three to four major course themes that guide our
learning in my POLSC 1 and 1H classes each semester: The big ideas that bring context to
and seamlessly connect with everything that we learn about na onal and state level
poli cs and government throughout the course. Most of the me, I am quite certain as
to what I want our major course themes to be in a par cular semester but, I have to
admit that the selec on of themes for this semester has been signi cantly more
challenging as we con nue to live through an unprecedented global pandemic, an
ongoing economic crisis, fervent calls for an -racism and racial jus ce in the face of
ongoing police abuse, the January 6, 2020 a ack on the U.S. Capitol and the second
impeachment of former President Donald Trump.
Whats most important for you to know: For the last month or so, I have
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struggled to gure out the best, most relevant themes to guide our learning in POLSC 1
and 1H for this semester. A er much mental gymnas cs, I have realized that, of course,
there is no single best way to organize our thinking on the origins, evolu on and
contemporary problems inherent in the U.S. governmental and poli cal systems. I have
also realized that the best approach for this semester is to s ck with what has become
my central focus in POLSC 1 and 1H over the past een years or so: How strong and
resilient is our democra c poli cal system in the United States and what, if anything can
be done by elected o cials and ordinary folks to strengthen and support American
democracy? The need to reemphasize this crucial ques on became obvious to me as I
read some startling sta s cs regarding the a tudes of adult Americans in general to
democracy and its future. According to a very recent poll conducted by the Associated
Press and the NORC Center for Public A airs Research, Just 16% of Americans say
democracy is working well or extremely well, a pessimism that spans the poli cal
spectrum. Nearly half of Americans, 45%, think democracy isnt func oning properly,
while another 38% say its working only somewhat well. This, for me and a large
number of other poli cal scien sts, is very chilling data in the sense that, while no
poli cal system is perfect, indirect or representa ve democracy (rule by the people
through our elected leaders) o ers the greatest possibility for the rights and freedoms
for the greatest number of people to be protected and nurtured. With all of this in mind,
we begin our learning for the semester with the four themes discussed below:
I.
Is it possible to understand the en re poli cal history of the
United States as being a struggle between freedom and order?
A. Freedom: Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one
else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those
which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights.
These limits can only be determined by law. (Taken from Ar cle 4 of the French
Declara on of the Rights of the Man and the Ci zen, 1789)
1. Poten al ques ons and problems with this de ni on:
a. What is meant by injure? Human nature being what it is, we tend to think of
injury in purely physical terms, but there are a lot of other ways that someone
can do harm to another. Some examples include: Emo onal harm, nancial
harm, harm to ones reputa on, etc.
b. The de ni on implies that freedom is not absolute. While this is de nitely
consistent with reality in the United States, as well as in any organized society, a
signi cant number of folks living in the United States believe that if freedom is
not absolute, then we are not free at all. For example, Second Amendment
advocates who argue that even a universal background check law is an
unacceptable restric on on an individuals ability to own and use rearms. Also,
individuals who believe that government should not have the ability to ban
indoor, in-person religious services or require the wearing of facial masks in
public during a pandemic.
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c. What is meant by no one else? Do individuals living in the United States have
the freedom to harm living things other than persons? The answer is mixed
since, for example, most jurisdic ons have laws banning cruel treatment of
animals but, at the same me, animals are rou nely slaughtered to provide food
for humans. Also, while there are laws banning some forms of damage to the
natural environment (i.e. water, soil and air), these laws are o en vague,
inconsistently applied and, most recently, subject to signi cant rollbacks.
d. Do we truly have the freedom to do anything that we want, even in
circumstances where we are not directly causing harm to someone else? What
about so-called vic mless crimes, such as pros tu on?
e. What are some other poten al ques ons and contradic ons that come to your
mind? Has your understanding of what freedom means in the United States
changes as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic or the large public protests
occurring in the a ermath of the police killing of George Floyd and others?
B. Order: Governmental limits on freedom through the legi mate use of force.
1. Poten al ques ons and problems with this de ni on:
a. What cons tutes legi mate force and who in society is en tled to make these
determina ons? In a democra c poli cal system like the United States, it would
appear to be easy to determine who in society has the ul mate authority to
determine what cons tutes proper or acceptable force on the part of
government but, maybe, not so much in reality
(1) Democracy: A system of governmental organiza on in which ul mate
poli cal authority is held by the people.
(2) Do the people determine how government maintains order in society?
Given the ongoing debates amongst the American public regarding whether
or not speci c instances of police use of force on civilians, especially persons
of color, are excessive and the frequent disagreements between public
opinion and actual government decisions on these issues, it is obvious that
we cannot automa cally assume that democracy always governs these
decisions.
II.
Do extreme par san and ideological polariza on threaten
American democracy?
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A. Democracy: A system of governmental organiza on in which ul mate poli cal
authority is held by the people. In other words, in an indirect or representa ve
democracy like the United States, we the people are supposed to have the last word
over what government does and how government does it through regularly scheduled,
free and fair elec ons.
B. Origins of Polariza on: Since the establishment of our current U.S. Cons tu on in
1789, ordinary Americans and our elected o cials have divided ourselves into par san
and ideological groups. Since the U.S. Civil war in the 1960s, our two major poli cal
par es have been the Republican party (tradi onally seen as holding a conserva ve
poli cal ideology though, as we will learn in a few weeks, this may be changing) and the
Democrats (tradi onally seen as holding a more liberal poli cal ideology), though each
party has involved signi cantly in terms of their belief systems and preferred public
policy preferences over me.
C. Our Two Party System: As we will learn in a week or so, the authors of our current
U.S. Cons tu on inten onally designed our poli cal system to assure that there would
never be more than two, major fac onal groups compe ng for poli cal power in the
United States. While there have always been ideological and policy di erences between
the two par es, those di erences have usually been rela vely minor (vanilla v. French
vanilla ice cream), allowing the two, major par es to compromise when necessary to
develop new government policy to solve major problems in society.
D. Contemporary Growth in Polariza on: Beginning in the 1990s, however, the
di erences between Democrats and Republicans began to grow signi cantly, for a
variety of reasons. According to poli cal scien st and journalist Ezra, Klein, What is
di erent now is not fac on or fracture. It is the way the di erent fractures align on top
of each other. The way weve become polarized by party means that poli cal iden ty has
linked to a lot of other iden es and a lot of other fractures in American poli cs.
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E. Is American Democracy Threatened: While many poli cal scien sts and other
analysts argue that exponen ally increasing levels of par san and ideological
polariza on themselves threaten the future of democracy in the U.S., Klein takes a more
nuanced view, arguing that the problem is not polariza on per se. Polariza on is o en
another word we have for disagreements that need to come to the surface. The problem
in our system is that it is built so that in condi ons of polariza on, there is not a way to
resolve disagreement. This system gridlocks into forms of paralysis or just unending
con ict. But that is a poli cal system design problem, not a polariza on problem. Given
this, we will be examining what, if anything can be done to ease poli cal polariza on in
the United States. If con nued, extreme polariza on is inevitable, we will also explore
what, if anything, can be reasonably to redesign our poli cal system to be er cope with
it.
III.
Does Republican countermajoritarianism threaten democracy?
A. The Argument: According to Harvard poli cal scien sts Steven Levitsky and Daniel
Zibla , The greatest threat to American democracy today is not a repeat of January 6,
but the possibility of a stolen presiden al elec on. Contemporary democracies that die
meet their end at the ballot box, through measures that are nominally cons tu onal.
The looming danger is not that the mob will return; its that mainstream Republicans will
legally overturn an elec on. In 2018, when we wrote How Democracies Die, we knew
that Donald Trump was an authoritarian gure, and we held the Republican Party
responsible for abdica ng its role as democra c gatekeeper. But we did not consider the
GOP to be an an democra c party. Four years later, however, the bulk of the Republican
Party is behaving in an an democra c manner. Solving this problem requires that we
address both the acute crisis and the underlying long-term condi ons that give rise to
it.
B. The Core Problem: Levitsky and Zibla go on to argue,
that the U.S. Cons tu on,
in its current form, is enabling the radicaliza on of the Republican Party and
exacerba ng Americas democra c crisis. The Cons tu ons key countermajoritarian
features, such as the Electoral College and the U.S. Senate, have long been biased
toward sparsely populated territories
.Americans tend to view countermajoritarian
ins tu ons as essen al to liberal democracy. And some of them are. In the United
States, the Bill of Rights and judicial review help ensure that individual liber es and
minority rights are protected. But many of our countermajoritarian ins tu ons are
legacies of a pre-democra c era. Where they pervade the electoral or legisla ve arenas,
they do not protect minority rights so much as empower par san minori es and, in
some cases, enable minority rule.
IV.
Does the current State of California represent America Fast
Forward?
A. California as America Fast Forward: In his 2018 book, State of Resistance: What
Californias Dizzying Descent and Remarkable Resurgence Mean for Americas Future, Dr.
Manuel Pastor states that:
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Understanding both what happened and what will happen in Californiaand roo ng this
story in larger structural forces and long histories of civic change, not just poli cal
personali esis certainly cri cal to the future of the Golden State. California may have
moved from the crisis of division to a tenta ve state of repair, but tenta ve is the
appropriate modi er: the state remains plagued by regional divisions, racial dispari es,
environmental challenges, and a desperate need to reboot the middle and shore up the
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bo om of the labor market. Addressing these issues will require crea ve policies as well as
a new social compact that re ects the values, needs, and aspira ons of all Californians. But
while ge ng the state narra ve right is an important part of that process, char ng
Californias past, present, and future is also important for the United States as a whole.
Because as much as those in the Midwest, the South, New England, and indeed any other
part of the country may hate to hear it, the demographic, economic, and social trends
reveal a simple truth: California is America fast-forward. (Pastor, 2-3) In other words,
Pastor is arguing that Californias poli cal, economic, social and cultural reforms, begun
under Governor Jerry Brown in response to the State of Californias budget and economic
crises beginning in 2008, may represent a poten al blueprint for solving the myriad
challenges faced by the United States as a whole in 2020 and beyond. We will thoroughly
examine this rather controversial argument throughout the semester.
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