progressivism, individualism, and the public ... - Telmarc Group

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The Telmarc Group PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL This is highly laudable but she seems to mean that in the context of certain strictures and world views. 3. Cervical Cancer Testing: The authors then discuss a case as to whether an HMO should be made to pay for a patients perform tests on patients for cervical cancer which go beyond the standard Pap test. Here they apply the principles of deliberative democracy to having a free and open discussion, including the HMO, to decide this issue. One may look at this in another manner, namely if the test gives one more comfort, then one may just pay for the test themselves and not demand that the HMO do so. Or better one may choose another plan which may already pay for it. This argument for deliberative democracy is trumped by a simple economic rule: if something has perceived value to me then I can and should pay for it. It is not one where I am owed something and if I just haggle long enough I will get it. Thus this third example is specious at best. It is interesting to see how the process of deliberative democracy did not apply to the recent Health Care debate. At least with Iraq there were confrontational hearings and an across the board vote with a large majority in favor. In Health Care it was near impossible to get the copy of the bill, it was discussed behind closed doors in an exclusionary manner, it was a much less democratic that any other such process and it will have a down the middle party vote. One could not think of a less deliberative democratic process. Yet those opposing it are almost always called traitors by the other side and the attempt is to marginalize them. One may then ask, where are the Gutmanns and Thompsons on this issue, for here is a truly critical issue calling for deliberative democracy. As Young says in her critique of Gutmann and Thompson 186 : "It seems to me that advocates of deliberative democracy who believe that deliberative processes are the best way to conduct policies even under the conditions of structural inequality that characterized democracies today have no satisfactory response to this criticism. Many advocates of deliberative procedures seem to find no problem with structures and institutional constraints that limit policy alternatives in actual democracies, advocating reflective political reasoning within them to counter irrational tendencies to reduce issues to sound bites and decisions to aggregate preferences. In their detailed discussion of the terms of welfare reform in Democracy and Disagreement, for example, Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson appear to accept as given that policy action to respond to the needs of poor people must come in the form of poor support rather than changes in tax policy, the relation of private and public investment, public works employment, and other more structural ways of undermining deprivation and income inequality. James Fishkin's innovative citizens' forum deliberating national issues in connection with the 1996 political campaign, to take 186 Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy Author(s): Iris Marion Young Source: Political Theory, Vol. 29, No. 5 (Oct., 2001), pp. 670-690 Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. Page 184
The Telmarc Group PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL another example, seemed to presume as given all the fiscal, power, and institutional constraints on policy alternatives that the U.S. Congress and mainstream press assumed. T o the extent that such constraints assume existing patterns of class inequality, residential segregation, and gender division of labor as given, the activist's claim is plausible that there is little difference among the alternatives debated, and he suggests that the responsible citizen should not consent to these assumptions but instead agitate for deeper criticism and change" The above provides a reasonable nexus then between deliberative democracy as a back door to social justice and in turn an key corner stone of neo-progressivism. 6.6.2 Distributive Justice and Education We now examine Gutmann's philosophy in the context of contemporary education. The Wall Street had an article on the failure of Science and Math education in the US. As one involved at the latter end of the process I see that I have had not a single US born student in my last five years 187 . They have been mostly Asian. I also once spent a year teaching at Columbia University School of Business and I found that most of the students had at best a 10th grade understanding of math and were generally ignorant of science, other than what the NY Times told them. Thus I was not surprised when I read the Rawlsian head of U Penn state: "AMY GUTMANN: The Sputnik era didn't come because a lot of idealists said we had to be better. It came because there were idealists as there are today who said we're in trouble as a country, we have to compete against the Russians. We have to compete today against the Chinese and Indians who are graduating tens of thousands more very talented science, math and engineering graduates from their colleges. They're not doing better than we are at the college and university level, but they're doing massively better than we are in the numbers. They have hugely greater populations." She uses the term "idealists" to describe the decision makers. As one who participated in the process at the time there was abject terror about the Russians and the delivery of weapons from space. A good factual history is the recent book by Sheehan, A Fiery Peace in a Cold War, which recounts those times fairly accurately. I content that they may not be competing well against American at U Penn, in Arts and the like, but they are beating the heck out of Americans in graduate studies at MIT and Stanford! Here is a Rawlsian educator who in my opinion is defective in basic facts. It is NOT the populations, of China and India it is their competitive spirit. They are more individualistic competitors than most American students. 187 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704754804574491180197671224.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENe xttoWhatsNewsForth Page 185
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