A growing civic intolerance and the growth of a politics
of hate and division
"What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists
is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant.
The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what
they say about their opponents." - Robert F. Kennedy
What point of view is driving American public policy? Are
we encouraging or discouraging innovation?
I love the robust sense of experimentation, irreverence,
play, stubbornness, love of fair play and dedication to opportunity
that are America's hallmark. These qualities have fueled American
social and economic promise from the founding of the country.
Despite obstacles of prejudice, exclusion and class, Americans
have progressed steadily along a path where character trumps
pedigree and a good idea opens doors and overcomes lack of
experience.
We have steadily unleashed the ingenuity and the drive
to create in all Americans. This has been the secret of our
prosperity and rich democracy.
Every person has something precious and important to offer
our community and our economy. Great ideas don't respect skin
color, religious preference, sexual orientation or economic
circumstance. If we, as a nation, restrict opportunity and
access to resources to certain people because of some pre-conceived
prejudice, then we risk losing the ideas and creations those
people might generate.
If we demand that everyone look, act and think like us,
then we foreclose on the possibility that some new and unanticipated
insight will blossom into the "killer app" that technology
writers talk about. Most great innovations happen when people
question the usual and the standard ways of thinking.
We don't know where the next Steve Jobs, Jimi Hendrix, Jonas
Salk, Jane Addams or Cesar Chavez will come from. Who will
be the next pioneers and innovators whose work will immeasurably
enrich the national life?
The American creed might be stated as: “We don't
care where you came from, who your parents were, who you sleep
with or what color you are or what you had for breakfast -
we just want to know what's in your head and what's in your
heart. If we like it, we try it – and if we buy
into it, we’ll take it and run with it.”
That is what is so unique about America.
David Halberstam, in the introduction to his 2003 collection
of guest essays, “Defining a Nation – Our America
and the Sources of its Strength,” tells a fabulous story
about Dr. I. I. Rabi, the physicist who won the 1944 Nobel
Prize for his work on the Manhattan Project. “Rabi was
born in the old country, in Austria, and he had come here
as an infant, but his father worked…making women’s
blouses in a sweatshop. But the son was a brilliant student
and went on to college, and became an integral member of the
Manhattan Project…On the occasion of that Award a journalist
[asked] What did Rabi think of this great honor? ‘What
do I think?’ Rabi repeated rhetorically. ‘I
think that in the old country I would have been a tailor.”
That is what makes us great - what is at our core and what
America offers to the rest of the world. The ability to be
the best you can possibly be – to be the best thinker,
doer, questioner, inventor and activist. We all benefit when
every person has an wide open field in front of them.
That's why 35 million people born in other countries are
here right now -- freedom to be and freedom to create. At
the heart of the creative ecology is a person who thinks up
something new and goes about bringing it to life. This creative
act could be a new work of art, a new product, a new way of
organizing socially, a new way of living, a new discovery,
a new vision of society or a new way of looking at the past.
But this openness to the new is under threat.
We can't very well expect new ideas to thrive in a climate
where religious fundamentalists of all stripes are growing
increasingly powerful in the political and civic arenas.
The problem is similar to one faced by societies around
the globe - the increasing power of fundamentalists in public
life. Many writers have noted the stresses between religious
fundamentalists who often express strong nationalist views
and secular modernists who are pictured as champions of American
or western value systems.[1]
These religious conservatives seek to apply their own interpretation
of scripture to their nation's civic society. A number of
countries permit a state-sponsored religion and the role of
the cleric in political debates and elections of local and
national leaders is accepted.
In America, we see the enormous influence of a loose confederation
of church-based organizations and civic groups who share a
belief in the absolute truth of the Bible and hold that Scripture
should guide public policy.
But In America we have a basic principle of government,
which is the separation of church and state. "Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the
freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people
peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for
a redress of grievances." So goes the succinct yet unprecedented
text of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,
written by James
Madison, as the lead off to the Bill of Rights that was
ratified on December 15, 1791.
The
Founders were of one mind when it came to mixing religion
with the state - they wanted none of it. The reasons were
many - some felt a government supported religion would persecute
those not in that religion, thus replicating the conditions
that brought so many religious dissenters to America in the
first place. Some were men of science, like Benjamin Franklin,
that simply doubted the revelations of the Bible. Others felt
the clergy were perpetually on the side of the ruling monarchs
and thus aligned with tyranny and suppression of liberty.
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits
it for every noble enterprise"
wrote Madison to William Bradford on April 1, 1774. So
strongly did Madison feel about the subject that he denounced
the presence of chaplains in the Congress and the armed forces.
Any attempt to enforce an orthodoxy results in repression.
Orthodoxy and repression are very bad for the creative ecology.
Therefore, any efforts aimed at pulverizing the barrier between
church and state in America must be seen as hostile to fostering
tolerance and creativity.[2]
It appears that there is a great deal of work to be done
to persuade the American people of the wisdom of this stand.
In a 2003 Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll on the place of religion
and public policy, 54% of the respondents said "Yes"
to the question, "Can government promote the teachings of
a religion without harming the rights of people of other religions."
64% said federal funds should go to Christian organizations
running social programs. Interestingly, only 38% said religious
leaders should try to influence U.S. government policy on
abortion.[3]
A major organizing effort led by Reverend Jerry Falwell
is now underway to increase the political power of the fundamentalist
religious sector.
He's busy reviving the Moral Majority, which he founded some
30 years ago. This is the same Jerry Falwell who said on the
religious television program "The 700 Club,"
following the September 11 attack: "I really believe that
the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the
gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that
an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American
Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point
the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"
Falwell, pastor of the 22,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church,
viewed the attacks as God's judgment on America for "throwing
God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists
have got to bear some burden for this because God will not
be mocked." On
the organization's website, Rev. Falwell announced "Here
I go again! I am today launching a campaign to enlist the
first one million charter members of The Moral Majority Coalition,
a 21st Century Moral Majority."[4]
And the Moral Majority Coalition is just one of dozens
of civic groups who share common goals and who have been
organizing steadily and effectively at the local and state
levels all across the country. I've
been aware of these groups since 1990 when a number of
them launched the so-called Culture Wars. These groups objected
to the National Endowment of the Arts giving grants to a small
group of artists whose work was deemed objectionable. These
groups sent literally hundreds of thousands of letters to
their constituents urging them to contact their state and
federal representatives and demand that public funding for
the arts be strictly curtailed. Those mailings and the resulting
shrill civic exchange were extremely effective in galvanizing
the base of these groups and served to boost recruitment,
fundraising and local leadership development. These groups
have gone on to organize in communities in every state and
working to elect people at all levels of government who share
their beliefs.
Many of these same groups organized and pursued effective
state ballot initiatives to ban same-sex marriage in the 2004
and 2005 elections.
Fundamentalist civic groups have also been busy pushing
evolution out of the classroom in a number of states and insisting
that Creationism or Intelligent Design be offered side by
side with teaching evolution when there is no scientific merit
to those subjects. But these groups place only a modest value
on fact and are moved by their faith as sufficient reason
to push policy and curriculum.[5]
Tolerance dictates that we keep religion out of the classroom,
the laboratory and floor of the legislature - that is, as
guides for policy and behavior. Tolerance is one of the bedrocks
of a robust civil society. But we're actually going to need
more than mere tolerance to make it into the 21st Century.
We're going to have actively seek the inclusion of people
unlike us into our civic and economic affairs. To exclude
and filter out new ways of thinking and being is going against
the American way - it's not just uncool and bad for business,
it's unpatriotic.
"Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue;
it makes it a requirement for survival." - Rene Debos
Do We Honor and Defend the First Amendment?
Remember the
First Amendment?
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right
of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government
for a redress of grievances."
This is the operating system, the foundation, the bedrock
upon which creativity in America rests. Those 45 words make
it possible for me to write these words, for you to read them,
for me to praise or criticize the government for its creativity
track record and for us to get together to discuss what to
do about that record if we're not happy with it.
Noble words and a noble sentiment. But the First Amendment,
which besides freedom of expression; also guarantees freedom
of religious expression, the separation of church and state,
the right to gather and the right to petition the government;
is just a piece of paper that lives in a fortress like case
in Washington, D.C.
If you're a creative professional you have a responsibility
to be aware of First Amendment issues and should be on the
look out for any attempts to circumvent or weaken it.
Your responsibility to the First Amendment is greater than
the average citizen because you get up everyday to paint or
write or teach or invent or create with the understanding
that, marketplace pressures aside, no one will punish you
or imprison you for what you paint, write, teach, invent or
create. That's a big assumption and needs to be checked against
encroachments on freedom of expression from the government
or corporate actions. Remember the true measure of your support
for the First Amendment is your willingness to defend the
speech of someone who you violently disagree with. And the
First Amendment is under stress in contemporary America.
A few of the pressures on the First Amendment include:
- Steady erosion of the barrier between church and state
by religious and civic fundamentalists who would like to use
their version of the Bible as guide for U.S. law and public
policy (see the section above) - Laws passed in the name of
national security, such as the Patriot Act, that grant unprecedented
powers to the Executive to circumvent due process of law and
snoop into citizen's personal affairs, including library and
communications records - Growing intolerance of controversial
speech and art that includes censorship, restricting labeling,
local banning of books and records and a corporate imposed
blandness on broadcasting and publishing as a few massive
conglomerates concentrate their ownership of all forms of
media But America is the home of free speech and free thought,
right? EVERYONE knows this to be our birthright and a beacon
of liberty to people around the planet. Right? Guess again.
The
Civic Mission of Schools Project and the The John S. and
James L. Knight Foundation commissioned a major two-year study,
"The
Future of the First Amendment," which questioned 100,00
high school students and, some 8,000 teachers and more than
500 school administrators. Some of the grim findings: - Nearly
three-fourths of high school students either do not know how
they feel about the First Amendment or admit they take it
for granted. - Seventy-five percent erroneously think flag
burning is illegal. - Half believe the government can censor
the Internet. - More than a third think the First Amendment
goes too far in the rights it guarantees. Clearly we are not
teaching our young people, the future leaders and champions
of American liberty, what the First Amendment is about and
why they should care about it.[6]
Now
in a time of war, there is reason to be especially sensitive
to abuses of the First Amendment.
Geoffrey Stone, former Dean of the University of Chicago
Law School published "Perilous
Times: Free Speech in Wartime From the Sedition Act of 1798
to the War on Terrorism," in 2004. In an interview in
the
January 30, 2005 edition of the Chicago Tribune, Professor
Stone warned against government calls for censorship in times
of conflict. "National leaders cynically exploited public
fears for partisan political gain [and fomented] public hysteria
in an effort to unite the nation in common cause or simply
caved in to public demands for the repression of 'disloyal'
individuals." The interviewer extracts some important lessons
from Professor Stone's research, including this chilling truth,
"those who value civil liberties and free speech cannot always
(or even usually) count on the courts to preserve their constitutional
rights. Judges, Stone reminds us throughout his book, do not
live in an isolated universe cut off from the political passions
and fears of their times. Rather, they share the fears and
prejudices of those in power and often, if not always, defer
in wartime to the executive branch's claims of national danger."
But this probably doesn't have anything to do with you, right?
Here's one of many stories that reveal just how far the
government is going to enforce its view of national security.
Secret Service investigates high-school band from
CBC Arts News - Wed, 17 Nov 2004 BOULDER, COLO. - The Secret
Service investigated a band made up of high-school students
last week after reports of death threats against U.S. President
George W. Bush. The group, from Boulder High, is known as
Coalition of the Willing. George W. Bush (AP file photo) It
was formerly called the Taliband, a reference to the toppled
regime in Afghanistan. Agents for the Secret Service carried
out an investigation after they received reports that the
band had changed the lyrics of the 1963 Bob Dylan song Masters
of War to include a threat against Bush. One line in the song,
which is an attack on arms dealers, goes "And I hope that
you die/And your death'll come soon." The words were reportedly
changed to "George Bush, I hope you die soon." The band was
scheduled to play at a talent show on Nov. 13. Some students
who attended a rehearsal for the show claimed that they heard
the new lyrics, and someone contacted the Secret Service.
Agents then questioned the school's principal, Ron Cabrera,
who disputed the story. "I know that people have made accusations
and allegations about people and kids that are unfounded and
untrue," Cabrera told the Associated Press the day before
the show. "I talked to many people who were [at the practice],
including teachers, students and other faculty and no one
altered the lyrics or expressed any ill will or any reference
to President Bush or anyone dying." The Secret Service did
not speak to the band's members, who range in age from 13
to 17. The agency did, however, talk to a teacher who supervised
an anti-Bush protest at the same school the previous week.
The talent show went ahead without incident. It was sold out.
Archived at
http://www.artistsnetwork.org/news14/news694.html
The American
Civil Liberties Union was founded by Roger Baldwin, Crystal
Eastman, Albert DeSilver and others in 1920. Their website
proclaims, "We are nonprofit and nonpartisan and have grown
from a roomful of civil liberties activists to an organization
of more than 400,000 members and supporters. We handle nearly
6,000 court cases annually from our offices in almost every
state." They are extremely concerned about provisions of the
U.S. Patriot Act and urge their members and other concerned
citizens to organize to have the Act amended.
Their "Reform
the Patriot Act Talking Points" website makes these points,
"The Patriot Act and similar policies are more subtle than
the Japanese
internments and [Senator Joseph] McCarthy's tactics, but no
less dangerous. By law, they give the White House a lot more
power at the expense of Congress and the courts and undermine
the structural checks and balances intended to safeguard our
liberty... It is an American tradition dating back to our
founding to have a healthy skepticism of too much concentrated
or unchecked power in the hands of any person...Two examples
of what we need to fix: Section 213 expands the government's
ability to conduct secret searches of your home or office.
Agents can get a “sneak and peek” warrant, which
allows them to break into your home, search your things, take
DNA swabs, download files from your computer and even seize
property—all without telling you for an indefinite period
of time. • Section
215 allows the government to use secret spy-hunting powers
to seize the hotel, library, medical or other personal records
of ordinary Americans without probable cause or based on a
rubber-stamp court order that the judge cannot deny. If served
with one of these orders, a hotel manager, librarian or doctor
could go to jail if they tell anybody anything about it."
So the First Amendment is under serious stress from the
Patriot Act and that has serious implications for the privacy
of your personal records - your credit card usage, your public
library check-outs, your telephone and personal computer files
and, most ominously, your due process rights. The American
Library Association was founded in 1876 and is the oldest,
largest, and most influential library association in the world.
The Association's membership of more than 64,099 comprises
not only librarians but also library trustees, publishers,
and other interested people from every state and many nations.
The ALA is also alarmed at the sweeping provisions of the
U.S. Patriot Act and
recently re-issued a statement of policy on government
intimidation. "The American Library Association opposes any
use of governmental prerogatives that lead to the intimidation
of individuals or groups and discourages them from exercising
the right of free expression as guaranteed by the First Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution. ALA encourages resistance to such
abuse of governmental power and supports those against whom
such governmental power has been employed." (Adopted February
2, 1973; amended July 1, 1981; June 30, 2004, by the ALA Council)
When America's librarians share the concerns of the America's
civil liberty's experts, it's probably time to sound the First
Amendment fire alarm and get the neighbors up and out to help
put out the fire. If we don't pay attention to the stresses
being placed on the First Amendment by religious activists,
national security officials, outspoken bigots and inadequate
civic education, then we may very well find ourselves in a
country that discourages and even criminalizes creativity.
"Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing
as wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty without freedom
of speech; which is the right of every man...Whosoever would
overthrow the liberty of a nation must first begin by subduing
the freedom of speech, a thing terrible to traitors."
- Benjamin Franklin
