Legality is No Excuse

Suppose you discover that your elected representative is a (literal) Nazi, who enjoys using racist slurs and openly advocates for reinstituting slavery and apartheid.  Horrible, right?  Further suppose that whenever anyone objects to this, his co-partisans excuse it on the grounds that it isn't illegal: he is "100% within his rights" to have, and advocate for, atrocious views.  This would be a ridiculous defense.  It neglects the obvious fact that it's possible to exercise your legal rights in ways that are morally wrong.

Unfortunately, people seem extremely prone to conflating ethics and legality in just this way.  This can then be exploited by politicians to deflect criticism without offering any actual justification or defense.  Witness Mitch McConnell: "President Trump is 100 percent within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options."

It's nuts that a line like this has any rhetorical force.  If only our media, and our citizenry, were more philosophically competent!

Political Beliefs, Uncertainty, and the Expected Value of Paralysis

Jason Brennan argues that most people can't have the faintest clue about the expected value of voting for either candidate in an election:

They don't know the difference in the value between the candidates and they don't know they probably of being decisive. If it's not rational to buy a lottery ticket in such situations, why would it be rational to vote?

But I think his framing is misleading.  It's true that a robust, precise, and dialectically persuasive estimate would take a lot of work.  But it would also take a lot of work (much more than Brennan does here!) to show that most people have no good reason to think that one candidate would be better than the other, or that they epistemically must be indifferent.  Yet that is what Brennan really needs to show, if he is to undermine the rationality of voting.

Ideological Ascent and Asymmetry

There's a certain dialectical move I sometimes see, wherein you criticize someone's political conduct as unreasonable on grounds that abstract away from the (first-order) details that they're actually responding to.  We might call this ideological ascent, as the critic insists on looking only at abstract features of the dialectical situation, e.g. the mere fact that it involves an "ideological disagreement", without any heed to the actual details of the dispute.

Ideological ascent seems to presuppose a symmetrical view of political/ideological merit: that "both sides" of a dispute are (at least roughly) equally reasonable.  This convenient assumption saves one from the hard work of actually evaluating the first-order merits of the case under dispute.  (See also: in-betweenism.)  Alas, people have been known to advance unreasonable political views from time to time.

Philanthropy Vouchers and Public Debate: Political vs Civic Advocacy

It's interesting to compare the ways we talk and think about political vs non-political (civic/philanthropic or market) agents, advocacy, and organization.  Consider the common objection to Effective Altruism, that it allegedly "neglects the need for systemic change."  I've rebutted this objection before, but a different aspect of it that I want to focus on today is that the criticism seems to presuppose that only politics can be systemic.  But why assume that?

Civility and Politics Beyond the Pale

Michelle Goldberg has an excellent opinion piece in the NYT on the recent 'civility debate':

The norms of our political life require a degree of bipartisan forbearance. But treating members of Donald Trump’s administration as ordinary public officials rather than pariahs does more to normalize bigotry than exercising alongside a white separatist. [...] As long as our rulers wage war on cosmopolitan culture, they shouldn’t feel entitled to its fruits. If they don’t want to hear from the angry citizens they’re supposed to serve, let them eat at Trump Grill.

Ordinarily, my sympathies are all for showing civic respect to our political "opponents" (who ideally we should not think of as opponents at all).  But these aren't ordinary times.  As Goldberg briefly recounts, the Trump administration (and indeed much of the broader Republican party) has abandoned any pretense of abiding by norms of civil democracy in favour of blatant dishonesty, inhumanity, and political corruption.

Do those who insist on continued civility (for moral rather than tactical reasons) deny that Trump and his cronies have gone beyond the pale?  If so, where do they draw the line -- must we tolerate everything short of the gas chamber?

The Best Case for Voting

To follow up on my last post, let's consider a Regan-esque case for voting.

The set-up: Suppose there are two candidates, Good and Bad, and a large population (e.g. several million voters).  90% of the population are unreasoning voters, and suppose that each such voter is (independently) 0.55 likely to vote for Bad, and 0.45 likely to vote for Good.  Suppose that the remaining 10% of the population consists of utilitarians, who are initially disposed not to vote (unless their voting will be instrumental to changing the result from Bad to Good).  I am one such, and I wonder whether I should bother voting.

Valuing Unnecessary Causal Contributions

In 'Why Citizens Should Vote: A Causal Responsibility Approach', Alvin Goldman argues that (i) there's a sense in which each vote for the winning party causally contributes to their victory, even if they receive many more votes than are necessary for victory (and similarly each vote against the winning party serves to causally "counteract" them), and (ii) you are morally responsible for outcomes that you are, in this way, causally responsible for.  So you get moral credit for voting for good parties, and against bad ones, and on this basis have (non-trivial) reasons to act accordingly.

I'm happy to grant this talk of "causal contribution", but I wonder about its normative significance. I'm more inclined towards Donald Regan's account of the ethics of cooperation and coordination. Roughly: we should be disposed to coordinate with like-minded others to bring about the best collectively possible results. But if others are not disposed to coordinate with you, then there's no point in pretending otherwise, or in valuing things (such as unnecessary "causal contributions") other than good consequences.

Suffocating Significance

Hilzoy is, as usual, spot on:

This is an instance of something that generally bothers me about many discussions of politics: the assumption that political figures are not doing things for normal human reasons, but should instead be seen as communicating in a sort of code. Everything they do has a symbolic meaning: it's a symbol of disrespect for this, or craven obedience to that, or whatever; and if we want to understand them, we should not try to figure out why some comprehensible human being might have done what they did, but try to crack this code.

This is, in my view, silly. It's what leads to things like outrage over Obama's shaking hands with Hugo Chavez: if you view that handshake as the normal civil response to someone's extending his hand to you, it seems completely innocuous; but if you see it as a Fraught With Meaning, it looks like a sign that Obama thinks that Chavez is a wonderful guy.

I'm reminded of Nagel on Cultural Liberalism (original here):

Forty years ago the public pieties were patriotic and anticommunist; now they are multicultural and feminist. What concerns me is not the content but the character of this kind of control: Its effect is to make it difficult to breathe, because the atmosphere is so thick with significance and falsity...

Liberalism should favor the avoidance of forced choices and tests of purity, and the substitution of a certain reticence behind which potentially disruptive disagreements can persist without breaking into the open, and without requiring anyone to lie. The disagreements needn't be a secret -- they can just remain quiescent.

Back to Hilzoy:

If we wish to construe anything other than clear expressions of disdain or horror as "legitimizing" Chavez, we deprive politicians of the option of being basically civil and non-committal. Is there any earthly reason to suppose that narrowing their options in this fashion would be a good thing? That it would advance America's interests, or those of anyone other than people who thrive on perpetual outrage? I can't see how.

Obama, Warren, and Civic Inclusion

Many are complaining that by reaching out to Rick Warren, Obama is offering a slap in the face to progressives. This is silly. Yes, Warren has badly screwed up views on social issues. Most Americans do. That doesn't mean they must be shunned or demonized; it means that we need to do more to engage with them and bring them to their senses.

No matter the strength of our first-order disagreements, we should be able to 'detach' from these and treat each other with respect. That was kind of the whole point of Obama's "new politics". For those culture warriors who are shocked, just shocked, that Obama can bear to associate with evangelical conservatives, or who see such expressions of respect as somehow undermining his first-order commitment to liberalism, I can only ask: weren't you paying attention? This is exactly what we want: a president who will advance solidly liberal policies, without demonizing or alienating conservative-leaning people. If we can leave off the tribalistic hating for just a moment, maybe some of 'Them' can even be brought around to our side.

Bipartisanship and In-Betweenism

A commenter recently criticized a post of mine for being 'partisan'. This strikes me as illustrating a common confusion regarding civic virtue and various senses of 'partisanship'. It's easy to clear up the confusion if we simply remember that one should always exercise critical judgment and be intellectually honest in pursuit of the truth. So if one political party really is better than another at present, then our judgments should accurately reflect this. It's entirely appropriate to be 'partisan' in this weak sense of preferring (what one judges to be) the better party. Indeed, it would be frankly irrational not to -- that would be to sacrifice one's critical judgment in the service of a sick image fetishism that treats appearing 'neutral' as more important than actually getting things right.

Partisanship is only objectionable when it becomes an obstacle to the truth. That is, when one becomes a closed-minded partisan hack, concerned with promoting the party line by any (rhetorical) means, regardless of the true merits of the case. The hack treats reasons as mere ammunition, not principled considerations that they'd recognize as having equal weight even if the party roles had been reversed.

Anyone who cares about truth will despise partisan hackery and bias. This much is generally acknowledged. What is less widely recognized is that bipartisanship or 'in-betweenism' is yet another 'tribe' or uncritical ideology. Just as there are blind, uncritical partisans, so there are blind, uncritical fence-sitters. There's nothing inherently better about adopting an 'in-between' position (or suspending judgment altogether). What matters is ensuring that (i) you end up in the position that is best supported by reasons, whichever position that may be; and (ii) you remain open to any new reasons or evidence that may come your way in future.

We should take care to distinguish:
(1) The first-order content of one's present political beliefs/preferences.
(2) Various quantitative dimensions internal to the first-order state, e.g. strength of credence (current confidence level), and weight of preference (or believed importance).
(3) The external 'robustness' of one's current state, i.e. a measure of stability, or how likely one of the above factors is to change in the near future.
(4) One's dispositional commitment to retaining an open mind, i.e. being receptive to reason, and willing to revise one's current beliefs/preferences in light of new reasons/evidence (should such arise).

I've previously noted the unfortunate tendency to conflate strength of credence (#2) with closed-minded 'dogmatism' (#4). These are two very different things, and should not be confused. One is a first-order judgment about the weight of evidence, and the other is a higher-order commitment to revisit this judgment if new evidence comes along in future.

I think similar confusions may be found in common talk about 'bipartisan' politicians. We should take care to distinguish (i) a higher-order commitment to cooperating with whoever is right (no matter their party), from (ii) a first-order commitment to "in-betweenism" or compromising with the other party (no matter whether they're right). Obviously there is nothing particularly laudable about the latter. It is not intrinsically better to "reach across the aisle" than to reach in the opposite direction; it all depends on which potential collaborators could better help you pass good legislation. So a mere disposition towards the middle is no sign of civic virtue. What matters is one's being receptive to cooperating with sane and competent people regardless of their party.

So it is really very stupid when conservatives object that Obama must not be capable of 'bipartisanship' because he is a left-leaning liberal. They are hankering after some worthless notion of centrism (in-betweenism), when what really matters is being bipartisan in the 'good' sense that Hilzoy documents:

Obama tries to find people, both Democrats and Republicans, who actually care about a particular issue enough to try to get the policy right, and then he works with them. This does not involve compromising on principle. It does, however, involve preferring getting legislation passed to having a spectacular battle.

In sum: we shouldn't let party affiliations muddle our thinking. One form of failure here is to uncritically favour one's own party. Another form of failure is to uncritically favour some 'in-between' bipartisan compromise. In both cases, one is irrationally adopting a position for reasons to do with party affiliations rather than assessing the issues on their merits. The reasonable agent assesses matters on their merits, and if they happen to end up agreeing more with one party than another, so be it. It'd be daft to adopt an unwarranted view just so as to appear independent. That's like the "non-conformist" who slavishly adopts the most unpopular fashions. If he were truly independent of the crowd, he wouldn't care whether they end up in the same place.

Bad Voters Should Opt Out

In yet another great diavlog, Will Wilkinson talks with Jason Brennan about his thesis that some people should refrain from exercising their right to vote. The argument seems clear enough: people who vote badly make the world worse, and you shouldn't do that without damn good reason. (See also the discussion at Crooked Timber.)

Now, you might claim that people are obligated to vote well. But as a matter of non-ideal theory, it doesn't follow that they should vote (simpliciter). Whether they should vote depends on whether they actually would vote well or badly. Clearly the ordering of the possible actions, from best to worst, is:
(1) Vote well
(2) Don't vote
(3) Vote badly
Merely saying 'vote', simpliciter, does not provide sufficient information to determine whether it's advisable or not. That's true even if you think option 1 is obligatory, because committing an egregious wrong [3] rather than a minor wrong [2] is all the worse -- not something to be advised.

In any case, I don't think there's any good reason to think that voting is obligatory. Most positive demands aren't. [See also my post 'Against Moral Mindfulness'.] Perhaps we have an 'imperfect duty' to serve the common good in some or other fashion, but there are obviously any number of ways to do that, and there's no particular reason to privilege voting above all the rest. (Jason makes this point nicely towards the end of the diavlog.) It takes a fair bit of time and effort to become a responsibly informed citizen, and it's not hard to imagine better things one might do with those resources.

Curiously (you might think), I actually think there's a strong case to be made for compulsory voting -- or rather compulsory attendance at a voting booth on election day. But that institutional recommendation is compatible with the above moral directives. Anyone likely to vote badly can fulfill their legal and moral obligations alike by turning in a blank ballot.

Finally, I want to raise some doubts about one of Will's claims. He infers from Jason's thesis that "many voter participation initiatives promote pretty straightforwardly immoral behavior." A couple of thoughts:

(i) They're not encouraging people to vote badly, but simply to vote. My above discussion suggests that this is neither determinately good nor bad, but rather morally ambiguous behaviour. Some people they encourage will go on to do good, others will do something bad. Hopefully the former group is larger. This brings me to my second point:

(ii) Encouraging a particular form of "immorality" in others is not necessarily itself a bad thing, if you can foresee that this will have good effects. As Will points out, the effect of voter turnout drives is to increase the Democrats' electoral chances. One might plausibly consider this to be a good thing. There are significant numbers of people who act immorally in voting for Republicans. (That's not to say every Republican supporter is unjustified or immoral.) It's not obvious to me that there's anything wrong with attempting to counterbalance their wrongdoing, even by means of encouraging comparably ignorant Democrats, so long as the people pulling the strings are really (and reliably) acting for the best. Two 'wrongs' might make a 'right' after all.

Update: Jason has more up at Public Reason.

Values in Everything

Peter Levine makes a nice point about value judgments in testing:

It would be possible to create a valid and reliable test of the 10 greatest virtues of Saddam Hussein. Those virtues could even be facts about him: for example, that he was unafraid to die. Such a test would be morally worse--really worse, not just worse in my opinion--than a test of students' understanding of the First Amendment.

We have limited cognitive resources, so educators must choose which facts or issues warrant raising to salience. I take it the Saddam example is disturbing because it fails on two counts: (1) it is not as important for students to learn about as (say) the First Amendment; and (2) it could leave students with a distorted impression of Saddam's overall moral character -- which is (again) more important than simply learning a few truths about his virtues (such as they were).

Now compare political reporters:

On the one hand, they perceive their role as entirely above the fray – they cover political controversies but aren’t supposed to be embroiled in these controversies themselves. On the other hand (and this is a point that both netroots types and bloggers like Ezra Klein have hammered home again and again), they themselves play a crucial and unacknowledged political role in deciding what is salient news and what isn’t – controversies don’t usually become controversies until they are described as such in the big newspapers and cable tv talkshows.

Once again, "value neutrality" is not really something to aspire to. (That way lies worthlessness -- or worse, naked David Broder [safe link, don't worry].) What we require is normative discernment, an apt appreciation of what matters and what doesn't, or - most simply - good judgment.

That's not to excuse blind partisanship, of course. Party identification seems an incredibly common cause of poor judgment, or moral/intellectual blindness. But it's the blindness that's the problem, not partisan support per se. One should criticize the flaws that most warrant criticism, and it's hardly an a priori truth that these will be equally distributed across all parties and politicians.

Worthless Political Journalism

I'm beginning to think that most media coverage of the election should be shifted to the 'sports' section of the newspaper. There's precious little substantive reporting of the sort that actually serves any civic purpose -- e.g. helping citizens to decide who they should vote for come November. Hell, most of it isn't even objective sports reporting (polls, etc.), but gossipy fluff about 'expectations' and 'what person X needs to do' in order to receive favourable reporting from oneself and other journalists. The media shapes perceptions through this process of allegedly reporting perceptions, and somehow these stories of mirrors within mirrors, reflecting nothing but themselves, is supposed to constitute news. Perhaps the 'entertainment' section is where they really belong: fluff that is only news because the media focus on it, alongside celebrities that are famous for nothing more than being famous. Smoke and mirrors, the lot of it.

As noted by the navel-gazing NYT:

It is not clear whether [Mrs. Clinton's] substantive case [against McCain] would break through the story line about how well she would do in easing tensions with Mr. Obama and unifying the party.

Is there not anything more important at stake in this election than clashing personalities, emotions, and tribalism? Not the economy? Not foreign policy? Obama's liberal internationalism or McCain's hotheaded belligerence and moral posturing -- not a difference that matters, perhaps? Or at least not as much as whether Clinton gestured enough during her speech to convey whole-hearted support for Obama. It's sickening. Just sickening.

What ever happened to the Fourth Estate? To the civic role of the press in a flourishing democracy? To the idea that their purpose, as journalists, is to educate and inform citizens on the pressing issues of the day? Where are the public broadcasters when you need them?

This ranting and exhortation is all very well, but I wish something could come of it. (Perhaps one day it will, if enough people come to recognize and deplore the problem.) It would be nice if the media could be shamed into raising their standards -- just imagine if they had to affix an immature-looking horse stamp on all their substance-free political reporting, or banish it to the 'entertainment' section as I suggested above. As it is, they get to pretend they're doing "serious" journalism, as a high-status "newspaper of note". And we're supposed to take them seriously! What a sham.

Change Congress open to donations

I previously wrote about the launch of Change Congress, and why it deserves our support. So, readers may be interested to learn that they're now accepting donations. (I just gave $25.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.