Sockpuppet Journalism

The dismal ABC debate raises many questions about journalistic ethics and the civic obligations of the media. One thing I want to explore is the use of quotes from "ordinary voters", in light of revelations that Nash McCabe - the woman used by ABC to ask whether Obama "believes in the flag" - has had past media exposure:

Presumably, a researcher for ABC or Gibson saw the piece in the Times, figured, hey, this lady hates Obama and is seriously ginned up about the lapel issue. Let's send a camera crew and film her slamming Obama to his face. It'll be great in the debate.

A TPM reader adds:

In [certain other debates], citizens asked questions that weren't obvious or oriented toward sound bytes. They were the kinds of questions that would not, for whatever reason, be asked by these tv moderators. Moreover, these were their questions. In this case, the producers put the producers' question into the mouth of a voter, because it made the question seem more authentic, as if people care in large numbers about the flag pin question. That is, the woman was used to legitimize the traditional media's focus on these frankly trivial and, yes, distracting issues.

So it's not just bad that they sought out someone to ask the question, but that they did it in order to avoid asking the question themselves because, you know, it's sort of embarrassing. It's not about content; it's about TV content and TV optics. There's no way for Gibson to ask that without looking petty and stupid. So they used this woman.

Let's define journalistic sockpuppetry as the practice of starting with a preconceived statement 'X' in mind, and purposefully searching for someone (anyone) to echo it, so that you can present your desired statement 'X' under the guise of neutrally reporting someone else's words.

I suspect that journalistic sockpuppetry is fairly common. Such gratuitous dishonesty also seems pretty clearly unethical. (Any counterarguments?) Journalists shouldn't use others merely as a mouthpiece. If you've stacked the deck in such a way as to ensure that your final quote matches some preconceived content, the quoted person is no more the author of that content than my keyboard is the author of this post. They're merely a mechanism through which you've expressed yourself, and it's deceitful to pretend otherwise.

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Change Congress (beta) Launched

This presentation, from Stanford's brilliant Lawrence Lessig, is the best thing I've seen all year.



He discusses how institutional corruption undermines public trust (in case of experts such as academics and doctors), and leads to transparently bad policy (in case of government). People may care more about substance than process, but just like the alcoholic who can't save his job, family life, or liver until he addresses his alcoholism, so the most substantial problems facing the world today cannot be solved until we reform our corrupt political processes.

This is a message that should resonate across the political spectrum. Increased transparency, porkbusting, and an end to 'crony capitalism' or anti-market regulatory capture -- these are projects that liberals and conservatives alike can recognize as important and necessary. Public financing is a harder sell, but we may draw on Scott Scheule's insight that what libertarian and conservative principles really call for is limited government, not small government. If we must invest in public financing to prevent government/regulatory capture by corporate interests (and the gross inefficiencies that go along with such market distortion), that's surely a good deal from the perspective of limited government!

Anyway, building on the efforts of existing reform groups, Lessig has launched the Change Congress project to help realize these much-needed reforms. A Google Maps overlay makes transparent the PAC money feeding into each congressional district. Another, once the site is in full swing, will track congressional support for the four key reform proposals. This will make it much easier to see which politicians are doing their bit to guard against corruption, and -- once a critical mass is reached -- to pressure the rest of them to follow suit. (See the presentation for more detail.)

You may notice I've added a 'button' of support to my sidebar. You can get your own here.

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Civic Virtue and Negative Campaigning

David Brooks speaks of "negativity and cheap-shot campaigning". But it's worth noting that these are two very different things. Cheap shots obviously detract from the quality of our politics, as does gratuitous negativity and demonization. But, just as obviously, not all negativity is unwarranted. Sometimes -- no, often -- other politicians are up to no good, and it's important and worthwhile to draw attention to this. (How else are we to hold them to account?) Negativity is entirely appropriate in response to substantive flaws or wrong-doing.

How is it that people so often fail to appreciate such a perfectly obvious point? Perhaps it is a side-effect of popular subjectivism. Since all perspectives are "equally valid", there's no distinction to be made between legitimate and illegitimate criticism. There's "no truth of the matter," so whenever people disagree they must simply be trying to impose their own will by means of verbal force. It's a game that involves only emotions, not reasons. Criticism is mean and nasty, something only bad people engage in. Nice people are always happy and co-operative, appealing to our positive emotions rather than negative ones. So the story goes.

Once we reject subjectivism, however, a better alternative presents itself: not 'be positive', but be reasonable -- do what the situation calls for. If there is good reason to criticise the opposition, then do so. Otherwise, don't. Simple.

The upshot: you can't just complain that the other team is engaging in 'negative campaigning'. There's nothing wrong with negativity per se. The real question is whether their negativity is justified: i.e. whether their claims are important and true.

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Good Government requires Civic Culture

Democracy is only as good (or as bad) as the demos. Cf. Matthew Yglesias:

If you have the relevant social conditions to support good government -- competent media, engaged citizenry, civil society groups that can form the basis of electoral coalitions, a political culture that values honesty -- then a politician who engages in a lot of shady behavior is likely to find himself voted out of office whether or not the shadiness in question is formally illegal. Conversely, absent adequate social conditions even the most admirable legal framework becomes a dead letter -- nobody investigates violations and/or nobody cares. At the end of the day there are always going to be loopholes in whatever scheme you create. You see good government when and where the citizens want it and are able to punish those who don't give it to them.

See also Timothy Burke:

The key priority is to rebuild the way the federal government actually functions in both its everyday and extraordinary business... the whole point of the U.S. Constitution [is] that it is an uncommitted, non-partisan prior constraint on the uses of governmental authority. If it turns out that its guarantees rest not so much on its formal provisions, but just on men and women of good will and honest commitment agreeing to live up to their responsibilities under the law and the social contract, then that’s what we need to work to rebuild and restore. The last eight years have been a test, and a lot of people, some of them surprising, failed it. Equally, many people in all parties and factions passed, which is also worth a lot of attention. A lot of the downward momentum has been arrested by people with whom I strongly disagree on political positions, but whose dedication to their office and responsibilities I appreciate. Much of what we know about what has gone wrong in the last eight years is due to Republicans inside and outside the Administration drawing some lines in the sand...

We thought transparency could help, and it does somewhat. Transparency only helps, however, if there are strongly internalized professional and social ethical commitments that are widely distributed both in the general population and among the people who do the business of government, or education, or medicine, or any other major institution. If you don’t have enough people like Grant Woods, the liberal state will fail.

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Schooling for Democracy

A NYT op-ed argues that we should lower the voting age to 16:

Legal age requirements should never stand alone. They should be flexible and pragmatic and paired with educational and cognitive requirements for the exercise of legal maturity...

16-year-olds who want to start voting should be able to obtain an “early voting permit” from their high schools upon passing a simple civics course similar to the citizenship test. Besides increasing voter registration, this system would reinforce the notion of voting as a privilege and duty as well as a right — without imposing any across-the-board literacy tests for those over 18.

I would go further: Imagine a 'democracy' class in which students researched and debated issues of public concern -- immigration, war and foreign policy, civil liberties, health care, crime and justice, etc. -- learning about social science and political philosophy, and applying their knowledge to the real-world problem of who to vote for. What better way to prepare the next generation of citizens? Of course, it would depend upon good teachers offering critical but unbiased guidance. And anti-rationalist parents will be outraged at what they can only imagine to be 'indoctrination'. Cf. my old post: Teaching Values.

As Peter Levine writes in his excellent paper, 'Youth-Led Research, the Internet, and Civic Engagement' [PDF], pp.11-12:

public schools court controversy whenever their students engage in political advocacy and/or “faith-based” community action. Yet forbidding politics and religion drastically narrows the range of discussion and action; as a result, service-learning often becomes trivial.

Many of the best programs are found in Catholic high schools, where service experiences are connected to a challenging normative and spiritual worldview: post-Vatican II Catholic social thought. There is no evidence that these programs cause their graduates to agree with the main doctrines of Catholic theology; but students do develop lasting engagement with their community.

(He goes on to recommend "public-interest research using the new digital media" as a more 'neutral' alternative for public schools.)

On his blog, Levine adds:

Developmental psychology tells us that civic experiences in adolescence have profound, lifelong effects on civic participation, whereas experiences in adulthood tend not to affect people much. Therefore, if you want to build a public, you must give teenagers positive civic opportunities.

The opportunity to vote in national elections would be a good start. But it is possible to make do in the meantime, as Kids Voting USA demonstrate:

After classroom preparation, students take part in a voting experience using a ballot that mirrors that of the adults with the same candidates and issues. This “real life” practice dispels the mysteries of the voting process and reinforces the knowledge and skills gained through Kids Voting classroom activities...

It is the combination of classroom instruction, family dialogue and an authentic voting experience that makes Kids Voting USA a powerful strategy for achieving long-term change in voting behavior.

I recall reading elsewhere that these programs even result in immediate increases in voter turnout, due to broader family involvement.

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Hilzoy on Hardheaded Idealism

After detailing substantive reasons for supporting Obama (see also my old post) Hilzoy concludes:

I sometimes wonder why, exactly, people go on saying all this stuff about Obama lacking substance. Sometimes, I suspect it's just laziness, as in the case of this dKos story in which mcjoan, who is usually much better than this, lists a whole lot of questions she wishes the candidates would answer, apparently unaware that Obama (and, for all I know, Clinton), has already answered most of them. I suspect, though, that part of it might be the assumption that idealism is necessarily woolly and misty-eyed and all about singing Kumbaya, while realism is necessarily cynical and disillusioned.

I have never believed this. There are certainly hard-bitten, cynical people who don't think particularly clearly about the world (Dick Cheney leaps to mind.) More to the point, I can't see any reason why there shouldn't also be people who are both genuinely idealistic and hardheaded at the same time. I suspect Obama is one of them. I do not for a moment imagine that he is perfect. (Cough, clean coal technology, cough cough.) But I do think that he's one of the best candidates I can remember, and that's good enough for me.

Do read the whole thing, though. The details are important, and not the sort of thing that's covered in our dumbed-down mainstream media.

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The Role of Rhetoric

I know some intellectuals are put off by Obama's rhetoric, complaining that his campaign represents the victory of "style over substance". But I think this is mistaken. The complaint would only be legitimate if his rhetoric were serving to mask a genuine lack of substance, but closer examination reveals that in fact there is no such lack. Instead, we have a substantial candidate who, when campaigning, plays up style for the sake of motivating and winning over the electorate. Isn't this just good politics?

In an ideal world, of course, the electorate would not be swayed by non-rational influences. Wonkish talk about increasing transparency by RSS-ifying government data should suffice to "uplift" and motivate support. But this is not an ideal world, populated by ideally rational citizens. People are influenced by a nice suit and haircut, personal charisma, and eloquent rhetoric. So an effective politician will play to these biases in order to shore up support. Would it be better if they didn't? I don't see how. They should want to reform the system to make it more responsive to reason, of course. But for as long as the flaws still exist, it would seem imprudent not to take advantage of them. (Their opponents certainly will.)

N.B. This only holds within moral limits. I certainly don't want to excuse deception, for example. But there is a clear and principled distinction here. Rhetoric and such are rationally neutral, making us neither more nor less likely (in general) to reach the truth. Deception, on the other hand, is anti-rational, a positive obstruction to informed decision-making.

So I don't see any grounds for objecting to politicians using all morally permissible (even if non-rational) means to garner support. Granted, this just shifts the question to which methods are morally impermissible. But I doubt that anyone could seriously contend that rhetoric belongs on the blacklist.

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Dogmatism and Political Illegitimacy

Suppose a faction rises to political power, and subsequently imposes their will without regard for the claims of others in society. This looks to be an abuse of power. Why? I'm tempted by the following answer: political legitimacy requires that the State be sufficiently responsive to reasons. If it were not relatively reliable, it would have no claim to authority, for legitimacy attaches only to procedures that have an appreciable tendency to generate substantively good outcomes. (Cf. Estlund on Epistemic Proceduralism and the analogy with the jury system.) But to be unreceptive to others' arguments is one obvious way to lack the requisite sensitivity to reasons. The closed-minded exercise of power is thus inherently illegitimate.

(It's worth noting that such illegitimacy can arise even in a democracy: the "tyranny of the majority" is a very real threat in a democratic society where first-order sectarianism commands greater loyalty than metapolitical values. So it is not enough for a polity to hold elections and empower the majority. Much depends on the manner in which this power is wielded. In particular, a legitimate democracy must be guided by a widespread commitment to pursue the common good in co-operation with all others who share this commitment.)

I think the problem with dogmatic sectarianism is not just epistemic, though. There also seems to me something important about the idea of civic respect, i.e. respect for the capacity of other agents to contribute to collective decision-making. I'd be curious to hear what readers make of the following argument (which I first offered in comments elsewhere):

1. (Legitimate) Politics is the collective endeavour of co-existence, i.e. deciding together how we are to live together.

2. Receptivity and civic respect are preconditions for this collective activity.

Thus,
3. Dogmatism is inherently illegitimate in the political sphere.

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Critical Values

It is sometimes assumed, at least in popular discourse, that if different groups have different ways of doing things, they must all be equally good ("valid"). Consequently, if some way of doing things can be associated with one group in particular -- if it's categorizable as "Western", say, or "male" -- then there is no reason for anybody else to care about it. Each community has its own values and practices, immune from criticism or improvement. The only universal principle is that one must not judge others.

This is silly, though of course there are reasonable sentiments in the vicinity. One should not pre-judge others. (But that needn't disqualify considered judgment.) A practice should not be dismissed because it is non-Western, or whatever. That is no reason. (But that doesn't preclude there being other, legitimate reasons to criticize a practice that happens to be common among some minority group.) We should not force our views on others. (But such tolerance is perfectly consistent with vocal, reasoned disagreement / criticism.)

Note that it is not a priori that everyone is living equally well. It's entirely possible that some ways of life are better -- more conducive to human flourishing, "meaningfulness", and other important values -- than others. So it's worth trying to discern which are which. (Though of course we must go about this with the humility appropriate to fallible agents seeking facts that lie beyond our mere subjective opinions. And, epistemic virtues aside, there's no need to be a jerk about it.) As with anything else, the way to pursue this inquiry is through rational thought, and reasoned discussions with those who believe differently from us.

It is possible for us to learn from one other, if we are not afraid to voice our disagreements and discuss them reasonably. It would be a better world, I think, if this was more widely accepted. But if you disagree, do feel free to criticize and tell me why.

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Bad Means Have Consequences

Liberals usually recognize this point (see also: indirect utilitarianism). The kind of self-styled "pragmatists" who are willing to countenance torture as a means to their ends are shooting themselves in the foot. And it is not necessarily "realistic" to think that belligerent bullying and overwhelming force will secure one's foreign policy goals. As Hilzoy put it, with characteristic wisdom:

Violence is not a way of getting where you want to go, only more quickly. Its existence changes your destination. If you use it, you had better be prepared to find yourself in the kind of place it takes you to.

Yet people keep telling me that my penchant for intellectual honesty is too naive and idealistic to be worth adhering to in the real world of politics. We've gotta play dirty if we want to win. My worry is, when we look at where playing dirty might get us, it doesn't look to me much like victory at all.

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Tribalism as Bad Faith

I know I've said all this before, but I wish more people would assess political bloggers (and contributions to public debate more generally) on their intellectual honesty and other rational virtues, rather than anything so vulgar as their partisan credentials.

With that in mind, Infinite Injury's defense of Ann Coulter is the single most admirable blog post I've read all month:

Ann Coulter generates a lot of controversy, mostly because she says some really stupid shit but I’m absolutely totally shocked and horrified at the latest kerfuffle she has spawned [re: "want[ing] Jews to be perfected"]. But this time, for a change, she was being perfectly reasonable (well except for believing in god) and it is her critics that are totally fucking nuts.

(Read on for the explanation.) In a later post, he asks, "what explains the outraged reactions we see in some cases [but not others]?"

I think the clear answer here is that people are parsing these statements as matters of identity an allegiance rather than actual factual claims. People aren’t so much interested in the actual content of the issue or even so much whether you have noble intents but whether you’re with us or with them.

This is exactly right and, moreover, completely intolerable. If we really care about what's right and good, then we should take greater care to work out what really is right and good, rather than just getting huffy at the opposing tribe whenever an opportunity presents itself. It's not a priori that our team is always right, after all. But too many moralists seems to assume exactly that -- casting doubt on the sincerity of their "moral concern".

Of broader concern is the fact that we get the democracy we deserve. So, to avoid screwing up the world too badly, we really ought to start acting like better citizens. Partisanship is simply evil, and so are we insofar as we enable and perpetuate it.

A sad illustration of this can be found in this comments thread at the Feminist Philosophers blog, where the inaptronymic 'Dove' starts yelling and swearing at another commenter for pointing out that there's an uncontroversial sense in which "there are too many abortions" is true. Shameful. I mean, what are the chances of coming to the right result if one cannot even think straight? Multiply that by a few million, and ta-da: welcome to our democracy.

It's noteworthy how tribalism precludes good-faith cooperation among diverse parties. Anyone who so appears to deviate from the accepted party line is immediately ostracized, labelled as the "enemy", and attacked accordingly. No longer can we question and inquire together towards an ideal of the common good that is recognized as potentially outstripping our present beliefs. Without the shared commitment to rationalism, we're left with a shallow and belligerent subjectivism: either you're with me, or you're against me. Now, where's my gun?

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Deliberation and Restorative Justice

In their article, 'Restorative justice: deliberative democracy in action?' [previously available here], John Parkinson and Declan Roche argue that "restorative justice vividly illustrates the potential of deliberative processes, showing that ordinary citizens are capable of deliberation and negotiation even when they are angry and hurt, scared and nervous."

One might wonder to what extent it really demonstrates public-minded deliberation as opposed to just self-interested bargaining. The authors elaborate:

The various parties to the dispute offer their proposals as to what needs to happen to restore the situation and must defend those proposals with reasons, meaning that outcomes are supposed to be the result of agreement, not imposition. Even though the agreements reached may be supported for very different reasons... still the parties create a collective decision through public reason rather than simply voting on pre-deliberative preferences. In the highly charged context of criminal justice, such a vote would be highly unlikely to settle even on a common understanding of the values and issues at stake let alone an acceptable agreement about the way to make amends. As already alluded to, empirical evidence available so far indicates very high levels of agreement, compliance and subsequent satisfaction with those agreements where both victims and offenders are present.

It's an interesting question what lessons can be transferred from the criminal justice system to our broader political institutions (or vice versa). I recently mentioned the idea of Citizens Juries, for example. How plausible do you find the general claim that what works in the one setting will work in the other? (My initial reaction is that the analogy seems weak; but something may be used merely as a source of ideas without depending on any such analogical argument.)

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Political Reality

Some policy proposals are dismissed not because they are flawed, but simply because it is perceived that they could not be implemented in the current "political climate"; though recognized to be objectively good, they are denounced for ignoring "political reality". This objection is strangely circular, for - ex hypothesi - there are no real grounds for anyone to object to the policy. The only objection is this one itself. And so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. No-one takes the proposal seriously, merely because they expect others to be similarly dismissive. That's "political reality": two mirrors set to reflect each other, regardless of the world beyond.

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On your blog, anything goes?

Clay Shirky offers a good partial defense of blog comments. But I was puzzled by two aspects of the following:

I have long thought that the ‘freedom of speech means no filtering’ argument is dumb where blogs are concerned — it is the blogger’s space, and he or she should feel free to delete, disemvowel, or otherwise dispose of material, for any reason, or no reason.

1. The ‘freedom of speech means no filtering’ view is dumb for reasons that are not specific to blogs. The value of free speech lies in its contribution to reasoned debate, as J.S. Mill himself recognized. We're not infallible, and so rational progress is made more likely if critics are allowed to question the conventional wisdom. (And even if we're right, reasoned challenges keep us on our toes, and prevent the truth from becoming a 'dead dogma'.)

But "no filtering" won't necessarily advance this end. If someone in a town meeting is yelling so loudly that no-one else can be heard, their unfiltered contribution is in fact preventing reasoned debate from taking place. In this way, they are violating the spirit and purpose of free speech. So it may be necessary to silence the loudmouth precisely for the sake of (everyone else's) free speech. The same goes for blog comments: nonconstructive or abusive comments should be deleted precisely for the sake of ensuring that the blog can remain a venue for reasoned debate.

Not all forms of speech are valuable. Strictly speaking, we should replace 'free speech' as a slogan with the 'free exchange of reasons/ideas'. Abuse is not an idea. And it merely serves to scare off those who might actually make a positive contribution to our discourse. So, while we ought to tolerate any civil disagreement (no matter how strongly we disagree with the substance of the view expressed), the arguments for free speech do not extend to the protection of abusive or otherwise unreasoned discourse.

2. I'm also puzzled by the suggestion that there are no ethical limits to what a blogger might do in "their space". Imagine, for example, a blogger who deletes civil but critical comments -- merely because the blogger doesn't want his mistakes to be exposed. Surely such intellectual dishonesty is unethical in any situation. It's possible to act badly even in your own home, after all!

This does seem a remarkably common view, however. For example, earlier this year NZ blogger Span (in an otherwise excellent post, which noted that accusations of spin have become a too-common substitute for reasoned counterargument) wrote:

What do bloggers owe their readers? Do we owe you honesty? Do we owe you truth? No, not really.

A comment Make Tea Not War made (on a post she wrote about phalloblogcentrism at What We Said) challenged me to think about the annoyance I feel when other bloggers don't link or hat tip - we don't even owe each other that. There is no code of ethics for nz pol bloggers.

No Right Turn concurred, adding that he chooses to "maintain some basic intellectual standards" - as if it were just a personal quirk - YMMV, and all that. I don't think he really believes that, fortunately, as he's quite scornful of the 'sewer', and isn't shy to denounce their lies and bullshit. But then I'm puzzled by his claim that there are no "obligations" in the blogosphere. (Why so critical of the sewer-dwellers if they haven't done anything wrong?) Perhaps he was talking about enforceable obligations.

People have the "right" to act like jerks, in the limited sense that it would be wrong for others to coercively prevent them. But the mere fact that we are at liberty to act in some way, says little about whether we should so act, or whether it's even morally permissible. The relevant question is not, 'Are others allowed to stop me from doing this?' but 'Is this something that any minimally decent human being would do?'. Morality obliges us to be minimally decent people. Blogging, like any other arena in life, provides ample opportunity to violate this most minimal standard, e.g. through abusive or intellectually dishonest behaviour.

(That's not to endorse proposals for a blogging 'code of ethics'. Rules are tedious and often stupid. We can merely point to some general virtues - civility, honesty, etc. - and let people discern for themselves how these apply in any particular situation.)

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Consensus Politics?

In his post, Age of Janus, Timothy Burke laments the dearth of principle and good faith in contemporary political debate:

Mostly, it’s something grubbier and more depressing. People who argue that perjury is a grave crime against the rule of law, until it’s their own guy getting caught. People who have two completely different standards for reasonable judgements about evidence: absurdly stringent when the political opposition seems to favor a claim, promiscuously loose when it’s a case that favors their own perspective. People who have one view of what constitutes unwholesomely “political” interference with good governance when it’s the other guys (or some “corrupt” regime in the Third World) and another view when it’s the home team.

I don’t know what to say in those kinds of conversations any longer. I can’t just keep coming back to them with faith and hope that men and women who have the capacity to think clearly and behave ethically will eventually reconcile their political commitments with some kind of consistently held standards. All I need is even a small sign that this could happen to keep thinking it’s worth it to look for a way to talk. But I’m precisely the chump that I have been accused of being if I continue to agree that (for example) perjury is indeed a serious crime, and that Bill Clinton’s perjury was a serious issue if all that gets is derisive laughter when it’s time for others to pay off their own prior declarations of serious, serious concern with that crime.

It really is depressing. Given that civic respect is the core political virtue - the basis of a healthy democracy - partisan hypocrites are simply being evil. I'm serious: there's nothing worse. (All political evil is ultimately an extension of civic disrespect.) No matter how repugnant your first-order views, they will remain safely unimplemented as long as you respect procedural constraints and the normative acumen of your fellow citizens. But once we turn our backs on reasoned debate, and engage in rhetorical warfare designed merely to manipulate each other, all bets are off.

Outcomes decided by power rather than reason will, of course, be predictably worse. But, more than this, unreasoned politics is degrading -- a corruption of our potential as human beings. When partisans engage in lies and manipulation, they are treating us merely as a means, in violation of Kant's categorical imperative. They deny our political agency -- our ability to make discerning and ethical judgments, and to thus contribute to the collective decision-making process. They might as well spit in our faces while they're at it.

I'm encouraged that most people are turned off by partisan politics. They recognize the dishonesty and disrespect, and want no part of it. Unfortunately, most then turn away from politics altogether, leaving the vicious scumbags to reign supreme. Given that politics is the scene of important decisions - decisions that affect the lives of millions - we can't really afford to turn our backs on it like that. Instead, we must reclaim the public sphere in the name of consensus politics, deliberative democracy, and basic civic respect. (Easier said than done, perhaps. Yet all it would take is for more of us to speak up and insist on these minimal principles. Our present predicament only exists because our social norms don't yet recognize civic evil as beyond the pale. Silence is enabling.)

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Reckless Punditry

Alonzo Fyfe suggests that "[committing] informal fallacies in public discourse is morally contemptible... a sign of intellectual recklessness."

Right now, people throw fallacies around with reckless abandon. Once upon a time, drunk driving was, for the most part, an accepted activity. This was until enough people got fed up with the harm done by those who engage in this activity that they decided to ‘raise the consciousness’ of society to those harms. I do think that we are long past due for a concentrated effort on the part of individuals to insist that people recognize the harms that result, and the moral problems associated with using, these fallacies.

He adds, "It should be considered a minimum standard of competence for any reporter that they can demonstrate capacity to recognize informal fallacies by name," but this seems excessively schoolmarmish. What we really want to promote is the art of good reasoning -- something not readily reducible to such mechanical competencies. This presents us with something of a catch-22: it takes broad rational competency to diagnose incompetence, so when everyone is incompetent, nobody quite realizes it. (Hence the need to promote philosophical education, to break the cycle of bad reasoning!)

Those quibbles aside, I'm definitely sympathetic to Fyfe's complaint. Public discourse is often of quite poor quality, and this ought to be considered a bad thing. Fallacies are just one symptom of this; the broader problem is a lack of meta-political principles or commitment to deliberative democracy, understood as collective inquiry into normative issues.

Metapolitical principles are ethical principles, which identify the bounds of healthy political behaviour. Pundits who flout these principles are behaving unethically, and should be recognized as such. Our democracy is a moral cesspool, polluted by those who show no concern for truth, reason, or intellectual honesty. It's about time we cleaned it up.

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Pandering Contests

Bryan Caplan writes:

Almost everyone takes this for granted, but it still freaks me out: Audiences in presidential debates applaud just because a candidate says something they agree with... Why not just hold up big signs that say: "TELL US WHAT WE WANT TO HEAR"?

Keep this in mind the next time someone blames politicians for the low quality of political dialogue. The hard truth is that politicians are just responding to the perverse incentives that the people give them.

Democracy is only as bad as the demos. Unfortunately, at present we suck. Not intrinsically; I don't think the general public is irredeemably stupid, or anything like that. It's a simple attitude problem. Most people, it seems, don't care about honest inquiry. Our social norms encourage pandering, close-mindedness, and intellectual dishonesty. It's shameful.

What can be done? Two things, I suppose:
(1) Model good practice. "Be the change you want to see in the world," as Gandhi put it.

(2) Apply social pressure to create better norms. Praise intellectual virtues, and scorn those who wallow in cognitive vice.

Sound right?

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Opinions and Inquiry

Chris Dillow argues against opinion as "just prejudice". This is why raw 'public opinion' is not the proper foundation for democracy. It has no normative significance; the mere fact that people believe something tells us nothing about what is true or ought to be done.

Similarly, a liberal education is not just about enabling students to express themselves. (As Chris says, "Selves aren't interesting." I'd disagree, but it's true enough in these contexts, at least.) Rather, what's interesting is intellectual inquiry. Students should be encouraged to draw their own conclusions, not because any belief will be magically "validated" by the mere fact of their holding it, but because thinking for yourself is the way to develop your rational discernment. The take-home item of value here is not the 'opinion' one forms, so much as the reasons that led to it -- and, even more, the discernment that enables one to appreciate these.

If there is to be a positive case for democracy (as opposed to simply showing it to be less bad than every alternative), it cannot rest simply on 'one man, one vote'. To have all opinions count equally in the tally is a feeble sort of equality, given the general worthlessness of opinions anyway. But to be granted an equal opportunity to participate in democratic inquiry -- to seek, offer and assess reasons in deliberation about the common good -- now that's something worth getting excited about!

At least, that's my opinion.

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Safekeeping Cyberspace

[Part Six in a series: Reading Benkler's Wealth of Networks.]

We've seen that the Internet, as a more open and accessible public media space, creates new opportunities and advances important democratic values. It makes the broader culture more transparent and responsive, it empowers citizens to express themselves creatively, and it enhances autonomy by broadening the range of possibilities open for us to choose between. The end result – if this opportunity is recognized – is a more ‘conversational’ public sphere, whereby citizens can deliberate together in an ongoing dialogue, at least to a greater extent than was possible under the mass-mediated industrial model that dominated the twentieth century.

These benefits are not inevitable, however. Private control over its physical infrastructure could threaten the democratic potential of the Internet, for example:

Clearly, when in 2005 Telus, Canada’s second largest telecommunications company, blocked access to the Web site of the Telecommunications Workers Union for all of its own clients and those of internet service providers that relied on its backbone network, it was not seeking to improve service for those customers’ benefit, but to control a conversation in which it had an intense interest. (p.398)

Possible solutions to this might involve public provision of broadband and/or open wireless network infrastructure, as several U.S. municipalities are currently investigating (pp.406-7). Public provision of this essential infrastructure would also help overcome the ‘digital divide’ that excludes non-connected residents from the full benefits of networked citizenship.

Other threats include excessive IP laws (e.g. copyright extensions) that diminish the public domain and crowd out peer-production in favour of incumbent commercial industries. Further, hardware "fixes" -- i.e. the crippling of information devices, so as to preclude the very possibility of copyright infringement -- inevitably overreach, equally obstructing "fair use" and other perfectly legitimate actions.

Past posts in this series have highlighted the Internet's incredible potential, based on the distinctive ease with which people can use it to produce and share information. If we don't want to see its value squandered, we need to be wary of lobbyists and legislators who would undermine these distinctive qualities of the Internet (thus precluding its distinctive benefits). So, this is an important political issue for citizens to be aware of. In light of the democratic potential of the Internet, it would be an awful shame for our laws to convert it into just another commercial medium.

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Activating Citizenship

[Part Five in a series: Reading Benkler's Wealth of Networks.]

"The easy possibility of communicating effectively into the public sphere allows individuals to reorient themselves from passive readers and listeners to potential speakers and participants in a conversation. The way we listen to what we hear changes because of this; as does, perhaps most fundamentally, the way we observe and process daily events in our lives. We no longer need to take these as merely private observations, but as potential subjects for public communication." (p.213)

This leads to “a fundamental change in how individuals can interact with their democracy and experience their role as citizens” (p.272):

Ideal citizens need not be seen purely as trying to inform themselves about what others have found, so that they can vote intelligently. They need not be limited to reading the opinions of opinion makers and judging them in private conversations. They are no longer constrained to occupy the role of mere readers, viewers, and listeners. They can be, instead, participants in a conversation. Practices that begin to take advantage of these new capabilities shift the locus of content creation from the few professional journalists trolling society for issues and observations, to the people who make up that society. They begin to free the public agenda setting from dependence on the judgments of managers, whose job it is to assure that the maximum number of readers, viewers, and listeners are sold in the market for eyeballs. The agenda thus can be rooted in the life and experience of individual participants in society—in their observations, experiences, and obsessions. The network allows all citizens to change their relationship to the public sphere. They no longer need be consumers and passive spectators. They can become creators and primary subjects. It is in this sense that the Internet democratizes.

This ‘conversational’ approach represents a deliberative-democratic transformation of the public sphere itself (p. 180):

The Internet allows individuals to abandon the idea of the public sphere as primarily constructed of finished statements uttered by a small set of actors socially understood to be “the media” (whether state owned or commercial) and separated from society, and to move toward a set of social practices that see individuals as participating in a debate. Statements in the public sphere can now be seen as invitations for a conversation, not as finished goods. Individuals can work their way through their lives, collecting observations and forming opinions that they understand to be practically capable of becoming moves in a broader public conversation, rather than merely the grist for private musings.

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