Scott Caplan’s blog

This has been a long time (I haven’t measured, but at least several weeks) since railsplayground.com is having difficulties. I can’t seem to even load http://railsplayground.com/cpanel, and that has nothing to do with my account. It simply won’t load. I don’t even have the opportunity to put in a bad password. Arrgggh.

On the bright side, the Yale College Democrats are bringing back the YCD blog.

Note to self: I have to figure out how to put Technorati tags in here more easily.

Stupid people voting as a first step: One idea that I came up with was that voting is a first step. Even if somebody is stupid and is voting for entirely the wrong reasons, their vote is something that brings them further into the process. Now they have a candidate’s name in their mind, and a sense of ownership (I voted for that guy). When they hear something about them in the news, they now react to it, and form increasingly sophisticated political opinions.

Question:  I don’t have an answer. Is voting more or less restrictive than other forms of participation? Felons can hold office, but can’t vote. Poor people can vote, but how feasible is it to say that poor people or those without connections have a very good shot at getting elected to public office.
International implications of the American democratic ideal: Bennett (I hope I spelled his name correctly) brought up the issue of how Zinn treats internationalism, which turned into a discussion slightly surrounding Iraq. I don’t think the philosophical issue needs to go there. In fact, I think it has a real application as concerning immigration policy. The ideal is that “all men are created equal.” So what does it say about how well we uphold that ideal that a Cuban who finds his way to American soil has no worries about American citizenship, but that’s not true for a Haitian, even in the days when Haiti’s regime (which may be today, I’m not too up to date on Haiti) was as evil as Fidel’s?

Secret ballots: The professor’s comments on secret ballots and colored ballots reminded me of Dick Gregory’s Memoirs, A Callus on My Soul, in which he told the story about when he ran for Mayor of Chicago (against Dailey) as a write-in candidate. Apparently, when people went into the booth, and picked up the pencil attached to a string, their hand had to reach below the curtain to get the pencil, so the woman sitting at the desk checking the voters in could check off the fact that that person had voted for Gregory. In the next election, he had his supporters bring their own pencils!

Jury nullification and marijuana: In elaborating on my reaction to Zinn’s tenth criterion (see earlier post), I suggested that one example of civil disobedience could be a jury not convicting somebody of possession of marijuana because they think it unconstitutional to criminalize marijuana. Note that I wrote here unconstitutional. I didn’t clarify this in class. Juries should not serve as legislators. Rather, they should hold a check on legislators in terms of ensuring that legislation is constitutional. This is not a question of substituting moral judgement, but rather a safeguard for the Constitutionality of prosecutions. I could write more on this idea, but I really don’t have the time right now.

Well, I just wrapped up the reading for Voting Rights and Representation, and I have a bit fewer comments about Smith.

First of all, I found that he spent far too much time saying what his focus was or would be and none at all actually justifying it. The only justification for the relevance of citizenship laws in explaining why ascriptive ideals also apply is that citizenship was denied to various parts of the population (nonwhites, nonmales, nonhetersoexuals, in Smith’s words) for 2/3 of the US’s history. He then uses this to launch into a discussion on myths and ideologies that actually form America’s ideologies and myths, and what motivates them.

Besides the fact I just stated, Smith doesn’t cover anything justifying his theories until page 30!

Now, onto textual notes I’ve made (I’m not including all of them, since it was so long compared to previous readings I’ve posted on)

On page 11, Smith writes “US citizens, and people who embrace membership in other political communities, can and should see their citizenships as forms of participation in enormously important collective historical enterprises that in fact do transcend their individual lives in time and space.”

I just wanted to start off with this quote, with which I wholeheartedly agree.

Page 13, the beginning of chapter 1: the term naturalization is interesting. For me and my parents, who are naturalized citizens after the amnesty of 1986, we always thought that they were “naturalized” because, whereas I was a citizen by birth, they were naturalized. It never had anything to do with allegiance being a question of natural law but of political fact. This explanation would still have fit in the time of kings and despots that Smith refers to, so I’m not sure if I accept the premise of the historical explanation of the term naturalization.

Page 15 discusses the requirement that Presidents of the United States be born in the United States. First of all, I will state that I think that rule should be repealed, but I feel that I have a very different from that Smith would have. I feel that the provision has outlived its time. It was necessary in the first 50 years of the republic. Why? Look at the passage it’s contained in: “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the Untied States at the Time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.” Why these requirements? Some would say that it’s to make sure that America doesn’t get a monarchy! Look what happened to Britain. King George is of German origin (as is President Bush, I believe, ironically enough). George I didn’t even speak English, and George III was his grandson. They were still royalty in Germany as well, and the stupidity of this struck British Americans, who when they drafted a Constitution, insured that the son of the President wouldn’t become the President, and that even in the case he did, there were certain restrictions: He could not be less than 35 years old, he could not be born in another country. Now, Smith attributes this to a form of selecting a people based on nonliberal ideology, but I think it’s just decided out of pragmatism. The one argument Smith still has though is that the historical example could be rooted in ascriptive notions of what British identity is (objecting to a German King), but I don’t think this is accurate since the colonists would have been just as upset if the King were ethically British. Lastly, the argument that the provision remains today doesn’t hold water, since that can be chalked up to a combination of inertia, and ignorance of the history. (”Never ascribe to malice what can easily be explained by stupidity,” or that’s how I think the quote goes).

Page 35: The first useful point I think Smith makes from an academic point of view (I like the quote from page 11 more for my agreeance with the philosophy of citizenship that it espouses): Citizenship laws are the result of political and ideological compromise and therefore don’t reflect a pure ideology. Therefore, they have to be pulled apart into their constituent ideologies in order to be analyzed. Given the focus of Smith’s work, it’s clear that he will be focusing less on the liberal influence.

Page 39: “But often the most wrenching clashes have turned on ascriptive ideologies and institutions as when…. and when black nationalists today oppose integration.” How is that turning on ascriptive ideologies, or are they only ascriptive when they support White Protestants? Moreover, the phrase “turn on” is ambiguous, as it could mean oppose or it could mean hinge on, two meanings diametrically opposed.

Speaking of the term ascriptive, I don’t understand it. Why on Earth is that the word we’re using? I’m not even sure what it means.

Lastly, the idea of looking at myths is interesting, and I think the best way to determine myth is to look at what schoolchildren are taught. Under this notion, there is quite a bit of racism in our myths insofar as Paul Revere’s plagiarized engraving of the Boston Massacre depicts Crispus Attucks as a white man, and up until the 1950s when children in the South were taught that racism is encouraged by the Bible. Finally, even today, the notion that this is a “Christian country” pervades in schools (public and private) in an inexcusable manner.

I won’t translate the Yiddish above, but you can imagine how I feel. The hypocrite preacher decided today, now that Israel won’t help him build his Christian theme park that will make him millions a year, that now he wishes for Mr. Sharon to make a full recovery. The article points out that Robertson is upset that the media didn’t cover his statement of sympathy the day after Sharon’s injury.

Pardon my French, but fuck Pat Robertson. There was a huge media outrage. People complained. Fellow Christians denounced the statement, including President Bush (for those who consider him a Christian). But Pat Robertson waited for the threat of losing his precious theme park deal before apologizing to Sharon’s son.

Pat Robertson, gei in drerd.

That was incredibly engaging and enjoyable reading (with the one problem of reading the poorly scanned document). Anyway, the link is here. First comment, in reading the introduction, I could not agree more with the following paragraph:

“On the other hand, we could measure our democracy against an ideal (even if admittedly unachievable) standard. I would argue for such an approach, because, in what may seem to some a paradox, the ideal standard is the pragmatic one; it affects what we do. To grade a student on the basis of an improvement over past performance is justifiable if the intention is to encourage someone discouraged about his ability. But if he is rather pompous about his superiority in relation to other students (and I suggest this is frequently true of Americans evaluating American ‘democracy’), and if in addition he is a medical student about to graduate into a world ridden with disease, it would be best to judge him by an ideal standard. That might spur him to an improvement fast enough to save lives.”

That said, I generally agreed with the main idea of the passage (that America is not democratic compared against the ideal (and correct) standard). There were a few points that I would bicker on, but that’s for another time.

Lastly, I found the talk of civil disobedience at the end incredibly thought-provoking. When I saw it in the original list of 10 items, I was rather confused and thought it was a bad idea, but I’m increasingly liking it. Frankly, one start would be to explicitly state that nullification is an option to all juries (as it should be; it is an acceptable form of civil disobedience). I liken this “right” to civil disobedience to the “right” to bear arms. The parallel seems very strong to me, and proper. Note: As of now, I’d say that I support both (provided that the civil disobedience one is phrased properly).

NB: This reading is only 8 pages (as compared to the last one which is 17, and the next one which has no link and is 38 pages), so if you haven’t read the essay by Zinn, I’d suggest checking the link out.

Just finished reading Sidney Verba’s comments on equality of political participation for class (if you’re wondering which one, note the categories). Anyway, I have comments on both the content and the writing in the article:

First, the writing: I felt that Verba posed the question well at the beginning, but framed the question in a way that favored the opposite of his conclusion. Also, I felt that he (I’m assuming that Sidney Verba is a man, but please correct me if I’m wrong by posting a comment) did a lot of listing, but not much evaluating. Thus, when in the conclusion he asserts that the drawbacks to equal participation are more than counterbalanced by the values of equality, I don’t see where he’s drawing the value judgment from. Most of the article just listed consequences, and then the value of those consequences is assigned, added, compared and stated without an explanation.

Second, the content: I think it’s more important to distinguish two questions (I had a hard time telling if Verba did this, my guess is he did, but I don’t remember reading it). The first question is whether participation is at the same level across various groups. This is important to ask, but I don’t feel it’s as important as wondering (the second question) whether various groups have the same box of tools on which they can call to participate (ie, are some groups limited from various forms of participation because they have to work so many hours they can’t attend political meetings, or because they can’t afford to contribute to campaigns, or because they don’t have enough time to volunteer on a campaign, etc.).

Verba comes close to addressing the distinction when he writes on page 4 for point number 4 that “The former situation is a greater violation of democratic values than the latter,” the former referring to a lack of participation due to a lack of resources and the latter refers to the cause’s being a lack of interest.

I’m not clear on whether the latter is even a violation of democratic values. It certainly doesn’t seem one on society’s part. As far as I’m concerned, society’s responsibility is to provide the same toolkit to everybody, to make sure the former sort of non-participation is nonexistent. Moreover, I feel society’s role stops there. If there is a violation of democratic values in the latter case is it is by the citizen who is not politically active, not society.

Soon after (page 6), Verba writes, “The function of political equality among citizens is the fundamental equality of human beings. For some earlier thinkers, this equality rests on ….” WRONG! It doesn’t rest on anything. We hold it to be self-evident!
In the discussion on educated particpators, I felt that Verba was placing too many burdens on citizens. The truth is that any system will follow roughly an 80/20 rule. 20% of a jeweler’s customers will bring him 80% of his business. Maybe the jeweler should (as Seth Godin would suggest) get rid of the other 80% of his clientele so he can focus on getting more work out of the 80, but that only works on a micro scale. Anything that involves a macro scale (such as government) as to allow for different levels of customer activity.

On a fact question, at the very end of page 6, Verba refers to the fact that high school graduates contribute on average $15, those with some college contribute on average $53, and those with a college degree an average of $186. What’s the overall average? What’s the average of CEOs? I’d be interested in seeing how these numbers are derived. They apparently come from Verba 1995, Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Orbis indicates that there are four copies in the library, all renewed or on reserve. I wonder who has them.

I feel that Verba missed a point when he discusses the education issue. Perhaps educated citizens are more focused on more communal or national issues (rather than personal ones), but this ignores a few problems: personal issues are important for government to be aware of, and address. Secondly (and more importantly) political action is not only directed at decision-makers, but also the other people who are politically active. People don’t write letters to the editor just because a legislator reads that paper. They write that letter to persuade the readership of that paper as well.

Lastly, I didn’t understand the business about the CVM process.