Us Against Them
Have you ever noticed that when members of Congress argue with each other on national television, they do more than just disagree? They invariably seem to describe their opponent’s position using very different language than their opponent uses.
For example, a conservative’s support for pro-growth tax cuts becomes “tax cuts for the rich” to a liberal opponent. A liberal’s case for investing in people becomes “wasteful, big-government spending” to a conservative.
I once viewed these word twists as a mere debater’s ploy. But then I came to realize much more is involved. There are quite a few liberals who actually believe their opponents want nothing more than to cut taxes for the rich. There are more than a few conservatives who really believe that liberals favor wasteful government spending as such.
I’ve done everything I know to try and change your mind.
Psychologists might call this “projection.” Instead of trying to understand what other people are trying to say, the projector imposes his own world view on others — in effect, assuming that everyone else sees the world the same way he does.
I assume something like this goes on in the minds of many sports fans. They act as though they have something in common with the athletes they root for. The home team winning becomes a surrogate for local values, customs and mores triumphing over foreign values, customs and mores. In reality there is no connection at all between the fans and the athletes other than the fact that the home team pays the players’ salaries.
There is a difference between football and politics, however. In football it doesn’t really matter who wins. In politics, it does matter. If you are at all rational, you want good policies to win out over bad ones.
You would think that academics whose professional job is to approach the world as scientists would be immune from the psychological tricks people play on their own minds. But you would be wrong. Academics can be among the worst offenders.
Writing at Health Affairs the other day, Princeton University economist Uwe Reinhardt described the current budget impasse in Washington by declaring that this country has been in:
A long ideological war fought over the distribution of economic privilege in this country, a war that has been raging unabated for over three decades now.
One side in this war believes that the current distribution of income and wealth in this country is fair, as it rewards generously those who contribute commensurately to the economy and properly gives short shrift for those who do not — e.g., unskilled workers…
The opposing faction believes that the current distribution of income and wealth no longer is the product of a genuine meritocracy, and even if it were, that health care, education and legal care are so-called social goods to which rich and poor should have access on roughly equal terms, regardless of their own ability to pay.
Is this your understanding of what the fight is all about? It’s certainly not mine. I’ll save health care for another day and take up education.
There has indeed been a three decade struggle — involving hundreds of millions of dollars spent on referenda, lobbying, court cases and elections. Just about every large city in every state in the country has been in the thick of the battle, including Washington, D.C., the one city that is controlled by Congress.
Hardly anybody in this struggle uses words like “equality” or ‘distribution of privilege,” however. This struggle is all about liberating poor (mainly minority) children from bad teachers and bad schools. The specifics are varied. They involve taxpayer-funded school vouchers, privately-funded vouchers, public school choice, private school choice, tax credits for private schools, charter schools, etc.
In every case, the reformers are pitted against the teacher unions. The issue is always the same: are schools essentially a jobs program, serving the interests of the people who work there? Or is their primary purpose to serve children?
[I realize there are many other reform efforts underway, including massive spending by the Gates Foundation. These efforts generally are not controversial, however, and therefore involve no “struggle.” That’s because they almost never involve firing a bad teacher or closing a bad school. For that reason, noncontroversial reforms may amount to little more than throwing good money after bad.]
The three-decade-old school reform struggle is not partisan. It has attracted many people of good will. Some have been willing to spend millions of dollars of their own money on the effort, including the late Milton Friedman, the Nobel Laureate economist.
However, I would guess that 90% of all people actively involved on the reform side of the struggle are conservative Republicans. The opposing teachers’ unions give almost all their campaign contributions to Democrats. When the Washington, D.C., voucher issue came to a head in Congress, the Obama administration sided with teachers against students, along with almost all the Democrats on Capitol Hill.
I mention these partisan factors only because of Uwe’s very strong implication that the political left in this country supports equal educational opportunity while the political right does not. Not only is that observation wrong, if anything the reality is quite the reverse.
Not only has the political left consistently supported unions against kids, I find no evidence of a belief in equal educational opportunity in their personal lives. Is there any liberal Democrat in Congress who sends his/her children to D.C. public schools? Or do they all send them to the very private schools to which they would deny poor children admission by means of a voucher?
What about liberal professors at Ivy League universities. Where do they send their children to school? Do they select institutions of privilege? Or do they send their children to the same schools ordinary parents do?
Most conservatives in this country do not profess to believe in equal educational opportunity. They’re not hypocrites. But many of them have been willing to give inordinate amounts of time and money in an effort to liberate those at the bottom of the income ladder from poor quality schools.
These days, the folks on the right are not the ones standing in the schoolhouse door, telling poor minority children they cannot come in.
The ones doing that are at the other end of the political spectrum.
Bravo!
More consistently, there have been those who value social solidarity highly who have advocated the abolition of private education altogether, on the theory that forced to send their children to common schools, elites would demand the “investment” necessary to ensure a high quality education (and thus more equal outcomes).
Good post. Uwe is way off base.
Well done. You are right on the mark, John. As usual.
Ditto all the comments above. Hits the nail on the head.
My sister taught in public school for years. She spent her own money on classroom supplies. She observed that the problem wasn’t the quality of education so much as it was disinterested parents and an administration that sided with them instead of with teachers and students. There are so many facets of any issue that never come to light in news media. She told me once she spent more time babysitting than teaching and felt like many parents thought of school as free babysitting and didn’t seem to be raising their own children at all. She finally became so frustrated and discouraged that she quit. My mother had a copy of a diary from the early 20th century that had belonged to an English ancestor. It contained a ledger of what this young man paid out each day to go to school. I see people all around me happily shell out thousands of dollars for that vehicle that makes just the right fashion statement, or that six-figure house that tells everyone that they’ve arrived, but won’t invest either time or money in their own child’s education. Things we think are “free” apparently lack value.
Uwe Reinhardt has presented two opposing views, without “judging their merit on ethical grounds.”
John Goodman has presented one ideological position – “Most conservatives in this country do not profess to believe in equal educational opportunity,” as he blames teachers’ unions and the left for “standing in the schoolhouse door, telling poor minority children they cannot come in.”
Isn’t this a “mere debater’s ploy”? It combines the truth of conservatives’ opposition to equal educational opportunity, while fabricating the position of teachers’ unions and the left.
I think Professor Reinhardt’s comments are spot on.
I side with Dr. Goodman. There is not a shred of evidence that the left in this country cares one whit about equal ediucational opportunity. They have steadfastly opposed every effort to allow poor kids to attand the same schools that the elite families’ kids attend.
Worse, they never send their own children to the schools they want to keep poor kids trapped in.
John,
Liberals want more government spending to deliver all the good things
they envision. They may not want “wasteful government spending”, but that’s
what comes along with big government.
Dan
I actually think that Uwe is close to the mark, John. You and Uwe are closer to agreement with each other than you are with my own, admittedl uneducated, position. For both moral and practical reasons, I believe that education should be left to the parents with no government control or financing.
I’ll spare you a lengthy justification of my position. However, one of the practical benefits of removing education from the political arena is the technological advances that would ensue and the peace harmony and prosperity that would follw. As long as education, or anything else, is under politcal control various factions will strive to gain that political control. This will lead to constant strife and some misrepresenting the positions of others to inflame their side. Some will even attempt to profit from the conflict.
My ideology is very different from Uwe’s but I do not think he has unfairly stated it. I do not think health care, education and legal representation are services that everyone is entitled to at every one else’s expense.
I do commend both John and Uwe for keeping their exchanges about their minor differences on health care policy civil.
John forgets that the ideological spectrum has a center whose members have more complicated — I might even say, pragmatic — visions of the good and fair society.
I think you will find most immigrants in this group. They fit into neither of the two parties and usually don’t belong to one, nor do they sit and the extrema of the ideological spectrum.
I consider myself part of this group.
Thus, I would not be opposed to a voucher program for elementary and secondary education in principle. I would have to see how large the vouchers and whether competing schools would have to take them as payment in full. If not, they would just present a floor — possibly a shabby one — on top of which competing schools would price.
John says, “a conservative’s support for pro-growth tax cuts becomes “tax cuts for the rich” to a liberal opponent. A liberal’s case for investing in people becomes “wasteful, big-government spending” to a conservative.”
John, realizing you are using relativism in an effort to set the stage to make your point, I hesitate to comment on the the above. But I am going to anyway even though your post is not really about labels. With deference to the rule of “apples and oranges” I don’t think it’s a good analogy. In reality a conservative’s support for pro-growth tax cuts is most certainly NOT support to cut taxes for the rich. In fact, the truly rich probably couldn’t care less about additional taxes (see Gates and Buffett). It is the “producing class” who suffers from increased taxes, so the liberal’s take on the subject is completely ill informed.
On the other hand the liberal mantra of “investing in people” (at least their version of it) does necessarily mean inclusion of big government programs. Is anyone still arguing that government programs are economically efficient? It seems that the conservative description of the liberal’s philosophy is pretty much right on. In any case the fact that this philosophy is “wasteful” is not a concern of the liberals because the cost of something they want is irrelevant.
Which by the way is why we are where we are with the national debt at the present time.
What Ewe Reinhardt doesn’t mention is the the ideology is a front, a Potemkin Village, for what is really going on, and that is that the left wants income redistributed to their constituents. They don’t want to empower their constituents. They want to make them more dependent, on Them! That is the way to political power. The school agenda is to make sure students don’t get an education, so they will be easy prey for dishonest politicians, and we will have our “dumbocracy” with “experts” (the self-anointed–I think Sowell should have titled his book not The Vision of the Anointed, but The Vision of the Self-Anointed)–Themselves–controlling everything, including the means of production and labor–it actually goes beyond Marxist theory to Stalinist practice. Progessives/Pragmatist are Stalinists who are willing to take small steps toward their “Experts’ Eutopoia”. Now you may say this is projection of my ideology, but for me this is accurate. And your example only reinforces my perspective and belief. Take the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. The Annenberg Foundation, set up by a more or less conservative philanthropist, gave money to improve schools in inner city Chicago. Obama was hand-picked by Ayers to front the organization for distributing 150 million dollars. The funds were distributed to politically connected Obama supporters for political activity, and the children of inner city Chicago were given the same atrocious educaton they had always received. Obama went on to a stellar (now following the Icarus curve) political career. Chicago school children remain as disenfranchised as ever. And President Obama brought in Arne Duncen, the enforcer of poor education in Chicago, as the federal point man on education. That’s working well, isn’t it. At least Obama has a hoops partner when he wants one, close at hand.
Not just Saul Alinsky, but Richard Rorty and John Rawls explain it all. Poison. Periwinkles, or dealy nightshades, not orchids.
Kent Lyon
Such a rich mine of ideas. They bring up the image of “tribal” behavior–really massive group think. There is a tribe in America of professional victims. Some of this thinking comes out of the old slave and tenant farmer experience–someone other than me controls my life and I want to get more from them. The other tribe is the Enlightenment tribe—they value rationality and take pride in taking care of themselves. You can find this dichotomy explained well in Don Beck’s book about Spiral Dynamics and in The Crucible, which is about applying spiral dynamics in the arparthid transition in South Africa.
Ewe has a European viewpoint about the government’s role in the life of it’s citizens, and leans toward a single payer program in healthcare, because a country this rich should not have people who can’t get a doctor.
The Obama scenario, if played out, will help assure that many people won’t get healthcare, as doctors won’t play at the fixed prices government will determine.
No one should hold their breath for a resolution of the public/private school debate, but look forward instead to the vigorous growth about to happen in on-line schools. Inevitable.
Wanda Jones
Wanda Jones – Bravo
1. Others have tried to articulate the same point,
but no other has said it so well.
2. Keep your great ideas flowing
Albert M. Johnston
Emjoyed your “Us Against Them” column. I believe that both sides of the argument truly do believe that there are great inequalities in the educational system and would like to see the lot of the weakest improved. The difference is that conservatives believe that it is, fundamentally, a matter of personal responsibility that the individuals themselves need to work thru, with the help of any good-hearted soul who chooses to voluntarily use his own resources to help them out. Liberals see the issue as a societal one, and stand ready to confiscate other people’s resources, involuntarily, in an effort to make matters better. The whole controversy revolves around whether the efforts are voluntary or not. For me, that is an easy call. If we allow government to tell us which social issues are important enough to require involuntary submission, then we will always be subject to the subjective, shifting whims of politicians to decide which are the important issues. If we attack these issues with only voluntary eforts, then we will motivate maximize participation of the people who are the direct beneficiaries and add to those efforts the exact amount of outside aid that other individuals in the society truly wish to contribute. Case closed.