I’ve had better days in the fight for things in which I believe deeply. Nathan Newman began a chain noting a religious split on the question of immigration. I wrote a bit about this over there. I felt rather lonely–far less persons reflected sympathy for undocumented persons than I do. I took a licking and kept on ticking (I think), but garnered my second (1) and a (2) or two for my efforts. I shall add them to my merit badges.

A significant amount of objection to what I was saying came from people who objected to my attribution of a "large part" of opposition to the New Immigration to Xenophobia. For me, "large part" equates to "significant" not to "most" or "all". Rather than get into a mud slinging match I thought I’d move over to my blog, write a bit, and see what kind of discussion, if any, it evokes.

I thought I’d begin with something in the nature of an annotated bibliography of some web analysis of American Xenophobia. In each case, I’ll provide a link and a little taste of the writing one finds there, beginning with a Non-partisan website which defines the situation, the Migration Information Service. I may occasionally add a thought or two of my own. Or I may wait until I see what kind of comments arise, first.

From the non-partisan Migration Information Service

A New Century: Immigration and the United States

By Staff, updated by Kevin Jernegan

• Immigration, perhaps more than any other social, political, or economic process, has shaped the United States over the past century. As the next decades of the 21st century unfold, the rate of immigrant-driven transformation, which began in earnest in the 1960s, will continue to accelerate. Never before has the Statue of Liberty, long the symbol of America's rich immigrant heritage, lifted her torch over so many foreign-born individuals and families.
• In short, America's profound demographic and cultural transformation continues — and the policies that govern who can enter the US, and how, will affect every aspect of American life in the new century. Just how to minimize the challenges confronting this "nation of immigrants" while maximizing the attendant opportunities will continue to animate the US immigration policy discourse in the years to come

Also from the M.I.S.,

Mexican Immigration to the United States: The Latest Estimates

By Jeffrey Passel

• Mexican immigrants account for about one-fifth of the legal immigrants living in the United States. This large percentage is actually a legacy of the legalization programs of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), under which about two million formerly undocumented Mexicans acquired legal status. In terms of the annual inflow of legal immigrants, about one in seven are Mexican. This share is substantially larger than the legal flow from any other country.
• Mexico is also the single largest source of undocumented immigrants. There were an estimated 9.3 million undocumented immigrants in the United States as of March 2002. Note that this estimate encompasses those included in the March 2002 CPS plus an allowance for those missed. Of these, about 5.3 million or 57 percent were from Mexico. The rest of Latin America (mainly Central America) accounts for another two million or just under 25 percent. Asia at about 0.9 million represents 10 percent. Europe and Canada together account for about five percent, as do Africa and the rest of the world (see Figure 1).

Next, a sampling of opinion on what might be called the left. I’m feeling quite at home with what I found there, by and large.

By JOHN CHUCKMAN

• But in America, the broadcast of a Spanish version of The Star Spangled Banner has aroused a somewhat different response. Charles Key, great great grandson of Francis Scott, offered the immortal words, "I think it's despicable thing that someone is going into our society from another country and changing our national anthem."
• "This is evoking spirited revulsion on the part of fair-minded Americans," offered John Teeley, representative of one of innumerable private propaganda mills in Washington commonly dignified as think-tanks. Mr. Teeley continued, "You are talking about something sacred and iconic in the American culture. Just as we wouldn't expect people to change the colors of the national flag, we wouldn't expect people to fundamentally change the anthem and rewrite it in a foreign language."

From The Library Journal

A successful first conference of librarians of color builds solidarity

By Rebecca Miller & Aída Bardales -- Library Journal, 11/15/2006

• That sentiment was echoed in programs like "After 9/11: Latino and Asian Immigrants & the Public Library." California State University–Long Beach’s Susan Luévano said current anti-immigrant attitudes "demand librarians take an active part in defending [immigrants’] use of the public library." Luévano pointed to efforts, since reversed, at Gwinnett County Public Library, GA, to halt purchase of Spanish materials, calling it a "new...anti-immigrant tactic." "Libraries are being put on the defensive, having to justify the collections we worked so hard to put together over many years," she said. The new "American xenophobia," she argued, targets legal immigrants as well.

From Salon

American goodwill, in shackles: How Bush hardliners and even mainstream pundits have hogtied one of our greatest potential strengths in the war on terrorism.

By P.W. Singer

• But there is a critical aspect of this debate that no current presidential contender has faced. While leaders like Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ and even Nixon saw that we would never defeat the Soviet bloc in the Cold War battle of ideologies until we openly wrestled our deep problems with racism and civil rights at home, no candidate yet has wrestled with that period's 21st-century parallel. Just as it was hard to win hearts and minds in the Cold War battlegrounds of Africa and Asia as long as Jim Crow stood strong, it'll be impossible to win hearts and minds in the Muslim world as long as a vapid prejudice against Islam continues to grow in our political discourse and on our airwaves.
• The deep and rapid deterioration of America's standing in the world is one of the greatest challenges the United States now faces. It took us most of the 20th century to build up a global reputation that melded both power and popularity, and yet we are squandering it away in the first years of the 21st century. The erosion of American credibility and standing in the world is not just some lost popularity contest. It alienates our allies and reinforces the recruiting efforts of our foes, and denies American ideas and policies a fair shake.

From Ed Strong, "The Best That’s Left" (which, MHO, should be better known)

Racist America Wages War on the 'Wetbacks'

• As anyone who’s watched CNN’s Lou Dobbs can attest, vicious hysteria regarding undocumented foreign workers is being generated especially by Republicans who recognize the key role that scapegoats can play in consolidating their own, reactionary rule.
• In fact, with fascistic attitudes emanating from the White House, progressives should appreciate that "aliens" could be the divide-and-conquer contrivance that so dupes the masses that unequivocal authoritarianism might actually be realized here.
• If working people of all races unite -- without obfuscating qualifiers pertaining to documentation -- we’ll acquire the collective power to prevent anyone’s exploitation. Including our own.

From Boston Review

Their Liberties, Our Security,

By David Cole

• In short, when we balance liberty and security, we should do so in ways that respect the equal dignity and basic human rights of all persons and not succumb to the temptation of purchasing security at the expense of noncitizens’ basic rights. The true test of justice in a democratic society is not how it treats those with a political voice, but how it treats those who have no voice in the democratic process.

Also from the Boston Review

A Legacy of Xenophobia

by Bonnie Honig

• When foreigners are celebrated in American political culture, it is because "they" make "us" better. For example, foreigners are said to bring family values to a culture that cannot sustain them due to New-World mobilities, sexualities, materialisms, and freedoms. The true entrepreneurial spirit, central to American capitalism, is more often identified with America’s newest comers than with its native-born. And communitarians see immigrant communities as one of the few sites of mutuality and care left in a liberal polity driven by individualism and self-interest. Again and again foreigners are represented symbolically as much-needed agents of national renewal. In the 1990s, many multiculturalists lobbied in favor of immigrants by deploying these xenophilic arguments.
• Unfortunately, such arguments carry within them the seeds of American xenophobia. Positioned as the saviors of the nation, foreigners slide all too easily into becoming its scapegoats. Their "family values," celebrated by some, look to others like patriarchal infringements of cherished American freedoms.1 From the perspective of the native poor, iconic hard-working immigrants, celebrated for their perseverance, put working class Americans out of jobs. Liberals see immigrant communities as ethnic enclaves that retard the development of American individualism. And so on and so on.

From the Houston, TX, Catholic Worker

The Truth about Immigrants: Xenophobia existed in Early America

By Brian Frazelle

• Hostility towards the Germans had been around since they began to immigrate en masse in the eighteenth century. Benjamin Franklin, in his 1751 pamphlet Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, wrote
• "Why should the Palatine Boors [Germans] be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Languages or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion."

From The Atlantic Free Press: Hard Truths for Hard Times

Xenophobia and the Hatred that goes with it.

By Frank Pitz

• White America is culturally predisposed toward xenophobia and hatred. Taking our early history of burning "witches," slavery and of course, genocide against Natives. These injustices were socially and intellectually acceptable. Things didn’t get much better through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries either. Many immigrants were driven by shame and did not hold on to their cultural traditions, because of fear many among them changed their names.
• We "interred" the Japanese and some Germans during World War II, the Italians and Eastern Europeans also came in for their share of bias directed against them. Today, the current climate of fear and hatred is directed towards Muslims, Arabs and as well, Latino immigrants. Americans have always viewed foreigners with suspicion, fear and hatred, even when they needed these immigrants they still looked upon them as something less than human, just think of our favored idiom for foreigners: "alien."

These websites all evoked some sympathy for Immigrants, documented or undocumented, and in general condemned the worst excesses of those who see the recent immigration primarily as a threat. The Right, on the other hand, behaves as I’ve come to expect the right to behave, with venom and condescension. How about we start with a comment about the actions of religious organizations, seeing as this is what brought Immigration to Nathan Newman’s attention in the first place.

David Horowitz’ Front Page Magazine brings us this:

Christian Churches Moving Leftward Together

By Mark D. Tooley

• "Christian Churches Together" (CCT) was to have been the new, more spiritually vibrant alterative to the decaying, chronically left-wing National Council of Churches. But instead, as reflected by its new Religious Left leader, CCT will likely become a tool for exporting the NCC’s failed brand of political activism into Catholic and evangelical circles.
• Six years ago, with the National Council of Churches (NCC) then near collapse, CCT was initially conceived as a new coalition for mainline Protestants, Roman Catholics, Pentecostals, Eastern Orthodox and black church denominations.
• But CCT is already quickly repeating the NCC’s mistake of substituting left-wing politics for faith. Emblematic of its new course is the hiring of a mainline Protestant bureaucrat, Richard Hamm, as its first full-time executive. Having recently quit after ten years as president of the Christian Church-Disciples of Christ, Hamm will help ensure that CCT becomes little more than a thin echo of the reflexively political NCC.

It seems fair to offer CCT a chance to reply.

From CCT

Statement on Poverty

• Four Objectives
  CCT will promote its commitment to overcoming domestic poverty by inviting all Christians and all people, especially our leaders in public life, to embrace and implement the following objectives:
• to strengthen families and communities; because they are essential bulwarks against poverty;
• to reduce child poverty; we seek to cut child poverty by 50 percent in the next ten years;
• to make work work; by combating racism and guaranteeing that full time work offers a realistic escape from poverty and access to good health care;
• to strengthen the educational system in our country with particular attention to the public schools; because access to quality education offers perhaps the best way out of poverty.

Meanwhile, back at the Right Wrong

From Faultline U.S.A.

• In the past, the left has been fairly successful in creating an atmosphere of political correctness where only the left and their far left Marxist brethren are free to promulgate their filthy race-baiting tactics with impunity. It is in the interest of the left to stoke the fires of racial and cultural warfare in a thinly veiled attempt to win future votes by playing into the fears of the very people they hope to keep marginalized. It’s a 20th century fascist trick that has outlived its usefulness. . . . 
• Now Xenophilia or Xenophily is the opposite of Xenophobia. A Xenophiliac or Xenophily is someone who has an inordinate attraction to strangers and people of other lands usually to the detriment of their own welfare. The word is derived from the word Philoxenia. Philoxenia is a compound made up of two Greek words: philos, means "love" or "attraction" and xenos, means "stranger" or "foreigner."
• According to wikopedia.com, there’s a sexual as well as a UFO connotation to the word Xenophily. I leave it to your imagination to play with this word and its implications the next time some loony leftist "loose-bolt" tries to label you a Xenophobe!

From Human Events

It’s not Xenophobia, it’s Xenonausia

By Mac Johnson

• The emotion surrounding the ports [of Dubai] deal, and illegal immigration, and outsourcing, and homeland security and a dozen other aspects of breakneck international economic integration is no longer simply a quiet misgiving. It is rapidly being formed into a single coherent message from average citizens to those in power—both on the right and on the left- that see it as their job to make sure the "inevitable" rise of a single world economic entity actually happens. People are saying, "Stop!
• They’re saying "OK, we’ve tried it your way and it never seems to end. No amount of globalization, tolerance, equalization, outsourcing, internationalism, interventionism, human smuggling, and security risk is ever enough. There is always a push for more—even before the last round has proven itself wise or foolish. Treaty piles upon treaty, migration upon migration, integration upon integration. Now people want a break and a reassessment. They’re not sure they are against it all. They’re just no longer sure they’re still for it.
• It is not Xenophobia. It is Xenonausea. People are sick of having the whole world shoved down their throats at once and being told it tastes like ice cream. They are sick of every street corner and parking lot being filled with criminal aliens waiting to work off the books and outside the laws that are applied so enthusiastically to actual Americans. They are sick of pressing "1" for English. They are sick of being at war with foreign terrorists and simultaneously being economically and demographically bound more tightly to the nations producing these terrorists. They are sick of being told that the world is global or flat or smaller or at their doorstep or all coming for dinner on Tuesday.
  

So I guess I can say at least I’m in better company being pro immigration than I would being anti-immigration.

I came home at the end of the day to find out that The Supreme Court leap-frogged us back more than a century with today’s split decision on the issue of using race as a factor in school assignment. Brown v. Board of education is, in essence overturned a scant 53 years after its decision. The basic premise of Brown isn’t denied: separate remains inherently unequal: there’s just nothing we can do about it. I’m sure there will be some pious but ultimately hypocritical hand-wringing on the right wing side of the spectrum. Come 2008 we’ll need to make sure that a President is elected who will honor Justice John Marshall Harlan and Justice Earl Warren by appointing Supreme Court Justices to remedy today’s travesty.

Right-Winger Sues Blogger And Wins -- Lee Kaplan writes at David Horowitz's far-right, anti-Muslim FrontPageMag.com. A college student set up the blog Lee Kaplan Watch to expose what the guy is writing. He was sued by Kaplan in small claims court for "business interference," and Kaplan won $7500. because it was small claims court the judge was not required to explain his decision.

The blogger writes,

I hope that sufficient attention is paid to the great danger that what has happened to me poses to all of us. It is by all means a serious issue. My first amendment rights have been subverted with support from the courts, which only shows that everybody is in danger of facing these abusive small claims court defamation suits. My speech has been punished by a ruling with no opinion explaining why or advising me what not to do in the future. My credibility has been tarnished by a trial with incredibly low standards for admissible evidence and a messy, inconsistent court procedure. And, for me, worst of all: I will never know what element of Kaplan's claim, if any, the judge agreed with, though Kaplan will certainly continue to claim that all of them were accepted, though he knows well that this is not the case.

This is a freedom of speech and right-to-blog issue. We must do something to reverse this because it will become a convenient way for right-wingers to harass all of us.

This morning’s Morning Edition featured a puff piece on Mike Huckabee, the title of which on the NPR web page is Huckabee's Appeal Doesn't Help Presidential Bid . The paragraph introducing the story on the web reads:

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is an ordained Baptist minister, former governor of Arkansas, and has conservative credentials. Still, his poll results hover in low single-digit range.

Reading this, one would think perhaps the story was objective, or even mildly critical of Huckabee. Listen to it, and listen to the radio introduction carefully, and you’ll see a very subtle spin. The introductory line, "performs well enough to get air time on cable TV" is omitted.  Huckabee is compared to Bill Clinton, whom nobody thought had a chance, either. Huckabee is given a chance to pump up his own credentials, and to drop references to NASCAR racing. After a visit to a factory in New Hampshire, two locals are asked reactions, and both are favorable. We get 20 seconds on how sincere his handshake is: another 20 seconds on how a person would be convinced to vote for him if he "knew more about him". David Green couldn’t have been nicer to Huckabee if he tried. The whole piece is placed in the context of the negatives each of the "top tier" Republican candidates bear with them. It couldn’t have been written better by Huckabee’s campaign manager.

I really only catch Morning Edition and All Things Considered. My NPR station switches to classical music betwixt and between. But I can’t remember NPR delving into the second tier of the Democratic Candidates. Where’s the equivalent piece on Chris Dodd, or Denis Kucinich, or Joe Biden? I suspect the top tier Democrats are just as happy about this as they could be, but I’m not. Aside from the lack of balance–more reporting on Republican politics than Democratic politics–the impression is given that there is less breadth in the Democratic Party because only the more centrist candidates get any play.

I’ve been a monthly contributor to NPR for 30 years or more. I believe in Public Radio. I don’t believe in what it has morphed into under this administration. Politicization has been a concern from the early years of the Bush administration, and between packing the board and using the threat of cutting of funding as a Sword of Damocles over the head of institution, the swing to the right is palpable. I’m not giving up on Public Radio, not yet. But, perish the thought, if the radical right dominates past the next election cycle, I’m quite sure I can find a better place to park $20.00 a month.

About this time next week I’ll be rubbing shoulders with some of America’s most exciting progressive/liberal spokesmen and activists at the 2007 Take Back America Conference. I know I’ll wish I could clone myself, because there will be simultaneous sessions I’d die to attend. I suspect I’ll dither and make my choices at the last minute, as usual. But I’ve made my Amtrak reservations, booked the bed and breakfast, and now all I have to do is wash and pack. Am I excited? Yup, I am, and if I have as much fun as the last two years it I’ll have spent three days exceeding well.

Nearly all the announced candidates for the democratic nomination are confirmed to attend: Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Denis Kucinich, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson. I don’t know why Chris Dodd isn’t on the list–he may just still appear. But more than candidates, some of the brightest stars of the left are going to be there speaking and leading discussions. The Blogosphere will be well represented. Atrios is going to speak, as is Jane Hamsher, and our own E. J. Graff and Nathan Newman are going to be there as well. Hey, Josh...come on down. You too, MJ, and Maggie Mahar, you come too. I’ll treat to iced tea all around. Grass roots, meet Net roots, and give the bad guys a good swat.

I’m going to listen to what all the candidates have to say, with as open a mind as I can conjure up. What will I be listening for? What will I expect? I think I’ll take my guidance from Cicero (the Roman, not Porky’s nephew) and from John Winthrop.

From Cicero I take two ideas, both of which inform Jefferson’s thinking: The first of these is reason, which Cicero describes this way:

This human animal—prescient, sagacious, complex, acute, full of memory, reason and counsel, which we call man,—is generated by the supreme God in a more transcendent condition than most of his fellow–creatures. For he is the only creature among the earthly races of animated beings endued with superior reason and thought, in which the rest are deficient. And what is there, I do not say in man alone, but in all heaven and earth, more divine than reason, which, when it becomes ripe and perfect, is justly termed wisdom?

What is this reason for? To discover Law...not to invent it. For Cicero, law had two components: equity and discrimination. "According to the Greeks, therefore, the name of law implies an equitable distribution of goods: according to the Romans, an equitable discrimination between good and evil."

The second Ciceronian idea is that of Rhetoric. Cicero understood this broadly: not merely grammar or argument in language, but argument using all the faculties of the human body:

With respect to man this same bountiful nature hath not merely allotted him a subtle and active spirit, but moreover favoured him with physical senses, like so many guardians and messengers. Thus has she improved our understanding in relation to many obscure principles, and laid the foundation of practical knowledge; and in all respects moulded our corporeal faculties to the service of our intellectual genius. For while she has debased the forms of other animals, who live to eat rather than eat to live, she has bestowed on man an erect stature, and an open countenance, and thus prompted him to the contemplation of heaven, the ancient home of his kindred immortals. So exquisitely, too, hath she fashioned the features of the human face, as to make them symbolic of the most recondite thoughts and sentiments. As for our two eloquent eyes (oculi nimis arguti), do they not speak forth every impulse and passion of our souls? And that which we call expression, in which we infinitely excel all the inferior animals, how marvellously it delineates all our speculations and feelings! Of this the Greeks well knew the meaning, though they had no word for it.

I will not enlarge on the wonderful faculties and qualities of the rest of the body, the modulation of the voice, and the power of oratory, which is perhaps the greatest instrument of our influence over human society.

I’m going to be happy to have the chance to see our candidates up close and in person, rather than mediated through television or print. What I see will be based on my faculties for observation and the speakers’ choices: not on sound bites or visual images chosen by third parties.

My responsibility will be to read all that the speaker says: what he or she says with his/her body, voice, gesture, and the like. Cicero likens our ability to do this to possessing both guardians and messengers. I hope to use my guardians to detect B. S. I hope to use my messengers to indicate my judgment of the speakers’ messages.

From John Winthrop’s On Liberty, I will take one caution: not to expect inhuman perfection in any candidate. Winthrop reminded us

I entreat you to consider that, when you choose magistrates, you take them from among yourselves, men subject to like passions as you are. Therefore, when you see infirmities in us, you should reflect upon your own, and that would make you bear the more with us, and not be severe censurers of the failings of your magistrates, when you have continual experience of the like infirmities in yourselves and others. We account him a good servant who breaks not his covenant. The covenant between you and us is the oath you have taken of us, which is to this purpose: that we shall govern you and judge your causes by the rules of God's laws and our own, according to our best skill.

I will, of course, translate this into more secular terms: but I accept the principal that my leaders undergo no magical or mystical transformation by the electoral process. I have a right to hold them to their word, to the fullest effort their strengths allow, to bear with them when things don’t work out exactly as planned, and to allow them to change course when experience demands a new direction.

I’ll see what I discover about these men an women while I’m in their company for three days. I will have the trusty old laptop with me, and I may say hi from down there, if I’m not all politicked out at the end of each day. If anyone else is going, I hope you’ll look around for me. I still look like my picture (the beard is wee bit more orderly), and at 6'7" tall, I’m not easily hidden in a crowd

aMike

Well, actually he doesn’t, but he said some things worth considering, I think. And they came to mind as I read Nathan Newman’s entry, What looks like a Crappy Immigration Deal. I’m going to come to this in my usual oblique manner: hopefully some will zig and zag with me. Again, the Aristotle references are to books three and four of Politics, courtesy of MIT’s Internet Classics Archive. As we debate issues of Citizenship and Amnesty it might be useful to consider what it means to be a Citizen, and I think if Aristotle was not the first to analyze the idea thoroughly, he must have been one of the first:

But a state is composite, like any other whole made up of many parts; these are the citizens, who compose it. It is evident, therefore, that we must begin by asking, Who is the citizen, and what is the meaning of the term? (Book Three, part I.)

I hope that a few will have time to read parts of the offering at MIT, partly because the website is interactive and some interesting comments have been posted there. I’m going to short cut this discussion a little–hard for a windy old guy like me–but if I cherry-pick too much, someone will hold me accountable, I’m sure.

First, cutting through all the possible definitions of "Citizen," Aristotle comes to a simple definition: one who "shares in the administration of justice, and in offices". So far, so good. But it must be amplified just a bit...one who has the potential to share–one who doesn’t labor under any disability keeping him/(her) from sharing. I placed the parentheses around "her" to indicate the importance of the 19^th Amendment and the fight to pass it which took nearly 150 years. Aristotle did not contend that the right to hold every office was the key, but the right to hold any office was. And this included the office, Voter.

As one of the kind respondents to this blog wrote, Aristotle needed to reconcile the idea of merit or a meritocracy with the idea of Democracy–participation by ordinary men. He came at this using a couple of homely metaphors with which I can identify. For example Aristotle must have been a man of healthy appetite (I wonder if he’d be in Weight Watchers today?) He defends a government tending toward Democracy by saying.

Most of these questions may be reserved for another occasion. The principle that the multitude ought to be supreme rather than the few best is one that is maintained, and, though not free from difficulty, yet seems to contain an element of truth. For the many, of whom each individual is but an ordinary person, when they meet together may very likely be better than the few good, if regarded not individually but collectively, just as a feast to which many contribute is better than a dinner provided out of a single purse. (Book 3 part 11)

He proceeds to suggest that one does not need to be a chef to be a judge of good food, or an accomplished musician to appreciate good music. Collectively, the judgment of a group, deciding on a course of action leading to the good life (which is, after all, the purpose of civic life in the first instance) is better, because of the diversity of talents represented.

Back to Nathan Newman and the discussion chain there. I think Aristotle would favor policies which encourage diversity of talents within the body politic, rather than exclusivity. More cooks for a more diverse banquet, if you will. And I think he would discourage policies which create more "aliens" and less "citizens". If he wouldn’t, I do. And I think we’re smart enough to protect the rights of labor here, and abroad, and be a welcoming country simultaneously.

There is little or no difference between Neo-nativism now and the Nativist, Know-Nothing movement of 150 years ago, except the "True Americans" then worked avariciously to exclude the great-great-grandparents of many of our current citizens. The Platform of the Know Nothing Party, in facsimile, is available on the Net. Seeing it, and the perfect copperplate script in which it was written is chilling to me. Wikisource (Bless you, Wikisource) has provided it in an easier form to read. How much of this 1856 Document would need changing to interject it into the discussion about Immigration today? Samuel P. Huntington wouldn’t need to change too much, would he?

1. Repeal of all Naturalization Laws.
2. None but Americans for office.
3. A pure American Common School system.
4. War to the hilt, on political Romanism.
5. Opposition to the formation of Military Companies, composed of Foreigners.
6. The advocacy of a sound, healthy and safe Nationality.
7. Hostility to all Papal influences, when brought to bear against the Republic.
8. American Constitutions & American sentiments.
9. More stringent & effective Emigration Laws.
10. The amplest protection to Protestant Interests.
11. The doctrines of the revered Washington.
12. The sending back of all foreign paupers.
13. Formation of societies to protect American interests.
14. Eternal enmity to all those who attempt to carry out the principles of a foreign Church or State.
15. Our Country, our whole Country, and nothing but our Country.
16. Finally,-American Laws, and American Legislation, and Death to all foreign influences, whether in high places or low

 aMike

I hiked about three or four miles down a bike path converted from an abandoned rail spur this afternoon, with the object of visiting my next door neighbor. I could have visited him by walking the thirty plus feet from my front door to his, but today I wanted him to exercise his professional skills on my head. My neighbor is a barber. Ambling along, I got to thinking about middle class matters once again. Though this time, my inspiration was less Aristotle and more Dagwood.

In my last offering here, I drew attention to ambiguities in the definition of Middle Class, ably outlined in Wikipedia. One of the kind café denizens brought up the fact that Middle Class has as often been used as an epithet as it has an encomium, while another added the observation that Middle Class may have replaced "Working Class" in our vocabularies, at least to some degree. That reminded me of one of the observations in the Wikipedia piece...round and round the brain does go:

It is the nature of their work and lack of influence that leads some to come to the conclusion that most Americans are working class. The majority of workers are not paid to share their thoughts and ideas as much as professionals. They are commonly closely supervised and do not enjoy a great deal of independence in their jobs. They are also not commonly paid to think and their thoughts are not often sought by their employer organizations or clients, which leads to a lack of influence.

I wasn’t entirely happy with this: professionals, after all, work. How would I parse the idea "Working Class?" More particularly, could I parse it in a way which didn’t create a hierarchy? I settled on a division of the working class into two subsets: the articulate working class and the dexterous working class. The first manipulates symbols, the second, objects. Both express ideas through the kinds of manipulation they do. Into the first class would fall persons like myself, a manipulator of words. Into the second, my barber, a manipulator of scissors, clippers, and hair. Aside from suggesting that he take a little off the top, I cannot instruct him in his trade, and anyone who would trust me within clipping distance of his scalp is quite unwise. It is far more likely that I would walk four miles to get a good haircut than he would walk four miles to get a lecture on Emerson. Which of us is the most socially valuable? Depends on how shaggy you are or what you think you might need to know about Emerson, I think.

Perhaps a better example might be my plumber, who is also a former student of mine. I must quickly say that he was a plumber before he was my student, as well as after, and he didn’t become my student to escape the rigors of plumbing. I teach, from time to time, in a Historic Preservation Program, and it takes special skills to retrofit old structures with new utilities. He wanted to be a historic plumber. I asked him what was the difference. "$75.00 an hour", was his reply. My plumber is a dexterous worker. He makes more than I do. I’m articulate, kinda-sorta, and that distinction gives me a social cachet and perhaps a little more influence than his dexterity gives him. <boast> My son the doctor</boast>. <boast> My daughter the lawyer </boast> <boast???>My child the plumber </boast???>. I’m not so sure. We’ve been culturally conditioned to place "articulate" professions over "dexterous" ones for at least 100 years. Nineteenth Century popular art Universally depicted gentlemen and ladies on their suburban or country estates fully attired: the men in hats, coats, ties, and vests. It would never do to be mistaken for one of the hired help.

I go on and on about this because I have a sensitivity to it. I come from dexterous roots. My relatives of my grandparents’ generations were maids, cooks, tailors, and the like. Half my cousins are dexterous...retired now, they worked as farmers and school custodians. A couple of them were really can’t be categorized by this scheme. What would one call someone who took a degree in forestry and spent his working life stocking pheasants in rural Minnesota? I like dextrous people, and I envy them their dexterity. Like Dagwood, putting me near wrenches, saws, or other hand tools is courting disaster. I hang around the custodial staff at the education factory swapping yarns almost as often as I hang around my articulate colleagues. More people marry outside their religious affiliation and race than outside their social class. Class Action seeks to find ways to bridge "classism" and I think this is crucial if a better politics is to spring out of today’s shambles.

My thesis, such as it is, is that articulate workers claim the right to speak for the dexterous workers without speaking to them, first. I see that sort of thing around the café on occasion...especially in situations where issues of unions come up. Some would have it that unions are for the dexterous. The articulate don’t need them. Not too many weeks past, an extended discussion about net roots/ grass roots developed in the context of the work of Saul Alinsky. I don’t know if any persons reading this took part in that one or not.

I wonder how many carpenters, masons, plumbers, health care workers other than doctors, masseurs, chefs, barbers (or hair stylists) hang around the café? Would they feel comfortable here? Would we make them feel at home? Of would those of us among the articulate commandeer the center and give them tables behind the potted palms in the corners? Two of my 19^th century heroes were certainly articulate without patronizing the dexterous. Lots of them were, actually, but this essay has already gone on longer than is good for it. But let me at least point to William Morris, (fair warning, the page linked plays some neo-medieval midi files at you, and they aren’t what I would call high art) who was both dexterous and articulate. The great designer (and not quite so great poet) was a social radical because he felt that the consumption driven machine economy of his day was destroying working men and women. His How I Became a Socialist is worth reading. The American Arts and Crafts Movement sought to restore honor to workers and craftsmanship and personalization and idiosyncrasy to made objects. Not practical, perhaps, but the work of Gustav Stickley and the Roycrofters at least tried to say to the culture that making things was as important as thinking things was.

Let me wrap this up with a little Emerson and a little Morris. The first of this some lines from his Ode to William H. Channing.

Though loth to grieve
The evil time's sole patriot,
I cannot leave
My buried thought
For the priest's cant,
Or statesman's rant.

If I refuse
My study for their politique,
Which at the best is trick,
The angry muse
Puts confusion in my brain.

But who is he that prates
Of the culture of mankind,
Of better arts and life?

***

The horseman serves the horse,
The neat-herd serves the neat,
The merchant serves the purse,
The eater serves his meat;
'Tis the day of the chattel,
Web to weave, and corn to grind,
Things are in the saddle,
And ride mankind.

There are two laws discrete
Not reconciled,
Law for man, and law for thing;
The last builds town and fleet,
But it runs wild,
And doth the man unking.

And, from Morris’ Chants for Socialists,

DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN

Come, comrades, come, your glasses clink;
Up with your hands a health to drink,
The health of all that workers be,
In every land, on every sea.
And he that will this health deny,

Down among the dead men, down among the dead men,
Down, down, down, down,
Down among the dead men let him lie!

Well done! now drink another toast,
And pledge the gath'ring of the host,
The people armed in brain and hand,
To claim their rights in every land.
And he that will this health deny,

Down among the dead men, down among the dead men,
Down, down, down, down,
Down among the dead men let him lie!

What they share is a recognition that societies which elevate the thing made above the maker thereof are degraded societies.

aMike

Want to contribute some thoughts on topics related to democracy and education? Send them to me using the contact on my bio and I'll mount them under your moniker.  :-)

I do O.K. with Aristotle. Modern philosophers, especially the more mathematical ones sometimes give me the heebie-jeebies. I noticed a few years ago that Aristotle has an affinity to Goldilocks. For him, the Virtuous Mean lay between extremes of deficiency and excess. Don’t be a skinflint, but don’t be a spendthrift, either. The same for Goldilocks. "This chair is too big!" "This chair is too little". "This chair is just right," etc., etc., etc. I get away with the etc. because we all know the story. (If you don’t, click the link above. The illustrations are luscious.)

Except I found out a few years ago, that a number of my International students didn’t know the story, and didn’t have an equivalent story in their cultural repertoire. This made me realize how dependent we are upon our classical heritage for our "middleness". One of the kind readers to my previous entry drew attention to this emphasis on the importance of the middle in Euripides’ Suppliants. But Aristotle makes the idea central to his Politics. The sections which I’m drawing upon today are parts three and four from the version available at the MIT Internet Classics Archive.

I think that if Aristotle was a Democrat, he was a reluctant one, perhaps, like Churchill, believing Democracy to be the worst form of government, except for all the rest. He did, however, see the middle class as the salvation of the system. (Why am I not surprised?).

The mean condition of states is clearly best, for no other is free from faction; and where the middle class is large, there are least likely to be factions and dissensions. For a similar reason large states are less liable to faction than small ones, because in them the middle class is large; whereas in small states it is easy to divide all the citizens into two classes who are either rich or poor, and to leave nothing in the middle. And democracies are safer and more permanent than oligarchies, because they have a middle class which is more numerous and has a greater share in the government; for when there is no middle class, and the poor greatly exceed in number, troubles arise, and the state soon comes to an end. A proof of the superiority of the middle class is that the best legislators have been of a middle condition; for example, Solon, as his own verses testify; and Lycurgus, for he was not a king; and Charondas, and almost all legislators.

One won’t find much argument about this around TPM Café. There is a tab devoted to the Middle Class, ably supervised by Elizabeth Warren, and it is a rare day indeed when no one uses the term–usually glorifying it or defending it, or fretting over whether or not it is threatened. I do, too, but I also spend a little time trying to understand what this "middle" means in the American Context. I do a little exercise with my students. The "middle" must have a "floor," below which rests the "lower" and a "ceiling" above which sits the upper. In economic terms, I suppose one could define those in terms of wealth or income, but income figures are easier to come by and understand. So I ask them, what is the household income ceiling for the middle class, and what is the income floor? The range is interesting, and varies a little from semester to semester. The lowest the floor usually goes is about $40,000.00. The highest the ceiling goes is usually in the $200,000.00 range, though one year it went to $375,000.00. When I post the numbers on the board and ask the kids "how many are middle class?", every hand rises.

So we all want to be middle. But if one does a reality check, one finds things a wee bit different. (Bless You, Wikipedia, for providing census data on household income by quintiles, 2000 census figures). If we take the middle three quintiles, we can place the floor of the Middle Class at a household income of $18,500 and the ceiling at $88,030. The New York Times subdivides the middle class in a way Aristotle would approve–lower middle, middle middle, and upper middle. For numbers nuts, here those are:

• Lower Middle,
• $18,500 to $34,738,
• Middle Middle,
• $34,738 to 55,331,
• Upper Middle,
• $55,551 to $88,030

Ooops. I’m upper class. Ugh. Yucky. My reaction mimics my students’ reactions. I ask them why it is important to them to consider themselves part of the middle, and the answer has to do with images associated with being "rich": being stuck-up, high-brow, a snob, etc. The Christian Science Monitor noticed what I noticed, great minds thinking alike:

Clearly the way one thinks about the bounds around the middle has implications for policy. I blame Aristotle and all those other old Greeks for giving us the idea of the virtuous middle. But then I forgive them for giving us Goldilocks.

Wikipedia (again, bless ye, Wikipedia) gives us a full discussion of various ways Americans "vaguely define" the Middle Class. It’s worth a read and it has lots of pretty charts, even. So, I’m wondering if anyone wants to give his/her definition of what constitutes the American Middle, or, if you want, whether the concept still has any use? What do you think? I’d like the to see this discussed sometime or other by the folks in Elizabeth Warren’s Bailiwick.

aMike

Reminder:  anyone wanting to contribute an original post reflectig on democracy and education for it can mail it to me using the contact button on my bio.  I'll cut and paste it in under your name. 

Have the groans subsided yet? One hopes to be forgiven, eventually. The university at which I work requires a core history/political studies course of all freshmen, the faculty for which are provided by the history and political science departments. As one might imagine, the approaches taken vary quite a bit by discipline, but they also vary by faculty member as well. I take the subtitle of the course, The Idea of Democracy quite literally, and teach as best I can the history and evolution of the idea itself. Working with freshmen as I do, I begin by thinking about definitions as intellectual tools; what they are, and how they work to clarify discourse. Definitions establish boundaries. Students get this idea when I use the example of muscle definition. The male students in the best shape have "six packs". Those who have consumed too many six packs have "barrels" instead. I’m working my way down from a barrel to something more defined as I keep shedding pounds to keep my doctor’s nagging to a minimum.

One of the things I try to impress upon my students is that there are legitimately different kinds of definitions, and it becomes important to recognize those differences as one applies the definitions to establish the boundaries between things and determine whether a specific instance "fits" within the general class. For example, some definitions are descriptive. If X looks or acts like this then it belongs to a class of like objects. Others are procedural: If this, that, and the other thing happen, and happen in the proper order, then the object belongs with other objects sharing the same things in the same sequence. Finally, some definitions are causal and achievement/outcomes driven. If X exhibits certain ends, the achievement of those ends justifies inclusion of the object within a named class of objects.

Why Euripides? Because in the play, The Suppliants, he creates a dialog between two men, the subject of which is the nature and value of Democracy. On the one hand, we have the hero, Theseus, and on the other, a Herald (ambassador) from Thebes. Theseus defends Democracy. The Herald attacks it. One of my objectives is to help the students recognize that the two speak from different defining contexts, which means that they talk past each other rather than to each other.

Theseus uses a descriptive process–signposts, which if observed, indicate that the culture is, indeed, a Democracy. Among these...

• This city is not ruled by one man, but is free.
• Our people rule themselves, taking office in succession year after year.
• The wealthy get no preference or special privileges: the poor share in government equally.
• Rich and poor alike have equal justice. If the rich reviles the poor, the poor can respond using the same words, and if the weaker has the better argument on his side he will win over the stronger because he has justice on his side.
• Freedom can be recognized this way: anyone who believes he has good advice can choose to give it, and gain public fame. Anyone who prefers to remain silent can do so.

The Herald responds with a series of criticisms which speak by implication to procedures under which Democracy operates. One has to do a bit of reading between the lines, but the underlying assumptions about the unfitness of the common people to rule themselves points to this.

• My city, Thebes, is ruled by one man only, not by the mob.
• Nobody there has to flatter and fool the citizens with fancy speeches in order to do what he thinks best.
• Nobody has to put a spin on things.
• Nobody manipulates people, twisting them this way and that for his own advantage.
• Our leader doesn’t have to worry about having his failures exposed by whistle blowers, and face punishment by the same crowd who praised him moments before.
• How shall people govern the state if they cannot form true judgments?
• No, it is time for reflecting and intellectual training, not haste, that leads to a better understanding of civic affairs.
• An ordinary working man, even if he had some education, would not have time or energy after working all day to give his mind to politics.
• The better sort of citizen knows that when a worthless man rises to high office by campaign promises to the ordinary people it is no healthy sign of community well being.

Set out this way, one notices that neither really answers the arguments made by the other. The Theban Herald never critiques the outcomes of Democracy as Theseus posits them. Theseus never refutes the arguments about technical qualifications for creating the just society.

What in the world does a play written over 2000 years ago have to tell us today? Lots, I think. If we frame the definition as does Theseus, we look at the contemporary United States and ask, "Is the United States, functioning as a democracy today?" If not, why not, and what do we do about it? If we frame the discussion as the Theban Messenger does, how do we answer his criticisms of the workings of the political system as he describes them? Which are capable of remedy and which are endemic?

Defining Democracy using a combination of descriptive and outcomes/achievement analysis would seem to be important if we’re going to do more good than harm in our interactions with other nations and cultures. Does it make any sense to define Democracy procedurally in terms of Western style Constitutionalism, voting, and institutionalized bureaucracies if a system based upon kinship alliances, family networks, sheiks, and the like already exists? Or does it make sense to see whether or not that system provides the kind of access about which Theseus writes, and then seek to provide argument and incentives to liberalize that system as necessary? MHO, current experience in Iraq would argue for the latter approach.

Here at home, it seems to me that one could argue that the kind of elitism reflected in current Republican thought and in the NeoCon’s theory of the Unitary Executive is simply what Euripides understood by despotism and the Theban Herald’s defense of it. Euripides would understand the David Broders and Sally Quinns and beltway insiders very well. He’d understand the Roves, too. He’d want us to refute the idea that spin is a necessary adjunct of governing, even if Theseus doesn’t do so, and he’s question whether growing inequality in America allows for Democracy to exist, regardless of the whether the country follows the formulaic rules of procedure, conducting elections, relying on expertise, and laws written by and for "the better sort of citizen".

*The text is my own free paraphrase of

the translation by E. P. Coleridge.

aMike

Reminder.  As I indicated in my first post, if someone would like to contribute thoughts on Education and Democracy under their own name or nom de blog, contact me, include the text, and I'll post it under your by-line.

Hamlet like, I’ve tossed this idea back and forth in my mind for some time now. Do I have anything of interest to put before the readers at TPM Café? Am I obsessive enough to keep at it? Is my ego too delicate to stand a buffet or two when I get critical responses, or worse, no responses at all? This first entry indicates that I’ve decided "what the heck–why not give it a try?" (After all, I can always retreat, tail between legs if I have to. If worse comes to worst, I can always put a bag over my head when I leave the house).

I’ve decided two things, reserving the right to change my mind. First, that I’ll make this a topical blog. I want to share thoughts with people about the connection between educational philosophy and a democratic society. Education pops up around here often enough–but the discussions are primarily at the policy level or tangential to the topic at hand; things like No Child Left Behind, or whether Unionization is detrimental to the educational apparatus. Very often, there is an underlying assumption about educational purpose–that it is primarily, if not exclusively, associated with the economic sphere. The solution to globalization? More education! The antidote to downsizing? Retraining!

I’m not silly enough to pose the counter-assertion, that the purpose of education is to make a person unemployable. Some of you may enjoy Garrison Keillor’s riffs on English Majors or Reference Librarians (I love those myself). But since the early days of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, education has been seen as a civic necessity. Thomas Jefferson, pivotal in the development of American democratic institutions, returned to this theme time and time again. As an old man, he said, "No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity," and "A system of general instruction, which shall reach every description of our citizens from the richest to the poorest, as it was the earliest, so will it be the latest of all the public concerns in which I shall permit myself to take an interest." Why? Because "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government;... whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights."

So, what kind of education informs the common good: this idea of Commonwealth in its most literal sense. That’s what I’d like to explore in this blog. What do we mean at the most basic level. What assumptions underlie Democracy: assumptions about human nature, about rationality, about the instrumentalities of creating and preserving Democracy? How do we recognize Democracy when it passes before our eyes?

All that is point one. Wow! If anyone is still awake, I’ll get to point two. I’d like to make this a group blog–something for which there is no direct mechanism, but I think there’s a workaround which will serve. If anyone would like to contribute to this discussion, he or she can send me his or her offering by using the Write To Author link. I’ll cut and paste that offering into the blog itself, attributing it to the person who submits it. I’ll post it as is.

Having taken so much space to explain my intentions, I’m out of space to fulfill any of them. I’ll get to the first "real" entry in a day or so–perhaps even later today if I get tired of doing laundry.

aMike