When George W. Bush took office in January 2001, he wanted to concentrate on a domestic agenda for which he vowed to apply conservative solutions in compassionate service to impoverished and other challenged populations often considered more politically responsive to programs of Democratic provenance:
In 2002--- as one of the few programs on the Bush domestic agenda that was not permanently deferred due to the exigencies of the 9-11 attacks--- the president oversaw bipartisan (Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy and Republican Representative John Boehner helped secure support) passage of legislation on which personnel at the United States Department of Education had worked; officially a renewal of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act first issued during the presidency of President Lyndon Johnson, this legislation went by the more specific appellation of No Child Left Behind.
Consistent with President Bush’s “compassionate conservative” agenda, the explanatory comments in the legislative document cautioned against the “soft bigotry of low expectations” and put forward an aggressive program to achieve educational equity by 2014. To attain such a lofty goal, the legislation mandated the construction of tests (assessments) for evaluation of grade level performance at Grades 3-8 and the concomitant generation of instruments for measuring the achievement of high school students in math, reading, and writing.
Very importantly, the data were to be disaggregated to assess achievement of students according to gender, economic level, and ethnicity, and schools were to be held responsible for grade level achievement in all demographic categories. Those schools that were found to be underserving any of the student populations were put on a five-year sequence of warning, hiring of outside tutors, and restructuring for persistent failure. Over the longer term, city, state, or private contractor control of perpetually failing schools and school districts was to be an option.
At first, Republicans were solidly behind the legislation, which conveyed a get-tough approach that made them feel that an old-school return to basics was moving forward. But within a half-decade came the conservative push-back against a federally mandated program: Republicans began repeating a refrain in favor of local control and the effective disassembling of the working framework of No Child Left Behind.
As to Democrats, they were subject to immediate pressure from the education establishment--- especially the National Education Association (NEA)and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and their local school district teacher union affiliates--- that typically contributed heavy cash to the campaigns of Democrats. By the midpoint of the first decade of the new millennium, most Democrats both in Congress and local legislative chambers were working to gut No Child Left Behind.
By the time George Bush left office, No Child Left Behind had been so seriously undermined
as to have lost any potential for raising the performance level of all students. When President Obama took office his staff at the United States Department of Education began a new program called, “Race to the Top,’’ which mandated that states show anew how they were going to address the persistent gap in performance levels between the white and the economically well-off, on the higher performance side, and young people of color and low income, on the lower performance side.
Buying into the rhetoric and prevarication by both Democrats and Republicans, the Obama administration approved waivers from the mandates of No Child Left Behind in states that could construct and articulate the case for an alternative program for achieving educational equity.
Thus it was that one of the few promising items from the George W. Bush domestic agenda was gutted by political forces at left and right--- and how we still wring our hands over persistent demographically indicated performance levels--- having, over the course of about ten years, destroyed the most promising program in American history for addressing the issue of educational equity.
Sep 16, 2015
Sep 4, 2015
A Portion of a Communication to One of My Students, Currently Matriculating at the University Level
As director and teacher in the New Salem Educational Initiative, the relationships that I establish with my students are forever. I follow them through their university years (after having been their teacher as early as Grade K) and beyond.
Here is a portion of a communication that I sent to one of my students currently matriculating at the university level.
The matter that I am addressing is the range of qualities evident in certain professor types--- what mix of heavyweight research, ongoing reading in the field of specialty, and pure pedagogical ability the professor manifests in the classroom particularly and in the university setting more broadly:
>>>>>
Some professors possess more knowledge than others.
In that regard, they tend to fall into three categories:
1) There are some professors who are powerhouse researchers who have done a lot of original research and written many books based on that research.
2) There are others who studied through to the Ph.D., by definition, then, having absorbed an enormous amount of knowledge; but then they tend to coast on that knowledge base without keeping up in their fields.
3) Then there are others who do not do much if any original research (like those in #2), but they do read a lot and keep up with the latest developments in their fields. Their knowledge base can be just as good as the heavyweight researchers; they just do not make as many original contributions to their fields of specialization.
The question then becomes what kinds of teachers these professors are.
Sometimes a university professor is heavy into her or his research and does not care all that much about teaching; but I have known many who both made major contributions to their fields and still were dynamite teachers.
A professor in category #2 or #3 had better be a dynamite teacher, or that professor's value to the institution is slight. If one does not emphasize research that brings the university recognition, then she or he has the very major obligation to do a super job teaching.
I know a bit about the research and publication histories of your professors, but I've never taken their classes, so you'd have to tell me how effectively they communicate what they've designated for you to learn.
So--- how are your teachers? Which one of them is the best communicator? Are they all fairly good? Is there one who is clearly not as good a pure teacher as the others?
I know that when the professor is clear that you will understand. So please ask good questions, make them be as good as they can be, and ask for additional clarification in office hours as necessary:
Sometimes one clarification can open up the breakthrough into understanding necessary to grasp an important concept, which then builds on other concepts toward a unified grasp of the topic of current emphasis.
Aug 31, 2015
A Sixth Snippet from My New Book, >Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education<: Evolution of Native American Cultures (From the American History Chapter)
This article continues a series of postings from my new book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education. Readers may learn of my motivation for writing this book and read the five other snippets by scrolling down a few articles on the blog. The snippet posted in this article is from a section on the evolution of the Native American peoples from my American History chapter.
About 17,000 years ago, with the world at the height of its last Ice Age, an icy bridge across today’s Bering Strait served as the conduit for people following their game herds from Siberia into Alaska. From there, they trekked southward to the Rocky Mountains by about 10,000 years ago and from the Rockies moved eastward to the Atlantic coast. These peoples fashioned bows and arrows, war clubs, and spears from wood and stone; with the wooly mammoth extinct as they were in the midst of their migrations across the plains and prairies of the upper West and Midwest, they hunted small game, deer, moose, and the American bison (buffalo).
By about 1500 B. C. (BCE), some of these hunter-gatherers learned to cultivate crops on land along rivers, settling into small villages and developing distinct cultures.
The Aleut of southwestern Alaska lived in sod houses, going forth to fish and hunt wildlife, including sea mammals; women used an original two-strand twining technique to weave clothes and blankets. The Inuit people spread out from southeastern Alaska to Greenland, hunting whale, seal, and caribou; in response to their Arctic climate, they built ice igloos, constructed the versatile kayak, and wore footwear highly adapted to ice and snow.
The Ottawa people originally lived north of the Great Lakes before moving to an inlet (Georgia Bay) of Lake Huron in southeastern Ontario. The Huron people also lived in Ontario, as did a portion of the Iroquois confederacy (comprised of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca); the Iroquois also settled in today’s Quebec Province and New York State. The Narragansett people constructed their wigwams (domed houses with sapling frames covered with bark and deerskin) in Rhode Island.
Arapaho, Blackfoot, Comanche, Cree, Crow, and Flathead tribes lived and hunted in various areas of the Great Plains; the Cree also lived in the woodlands along and north of today’s Canadian border. To the northwest (today’s Idaho, Oregon, and Washington) lived the Nez Perce, while across the expanses of today’s Midwest lived Cheyenne, Dakota, Kickapoo, Ojibwe, Osage, and Shawnee.
The Cherokee were skillful farmers who lived in the southern Allegheny Mountains of Alabama, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Tennessee. The Delaware built their rectangular, bark-covered houses in the woodlands areas extending from the Atlantic. The Miami also were an Eastern Woodlands people who burned forest land to clear fields and control brush to abet their agricultural economy; they also, though, hunted buffalo (unusual for those living so far east). The Shawnee lived in Kentucky and West Virginia after being pushed southeastward from Ohio.
The eight clans of the Seminole lived in Florida. The Chickasaw hunted panther, deer, bear, beaver, and otter in northern Mississippi; males distinctively shaved both sides of the head, leaving a central crest. In other areas stretching across the American South were Natchez, Choctaw, and Creek, the latter composed of 50 distinct bands.
The Kiowa were a highly mobile people, based in Oklahoma but roaming and raiding far enough to bring back parrots and monkeys from South America. In the American Southwest lived Apache, Hopi, Navaho, and Utes. The Yaqui were ardent warriors dominating northern and northwestern Mexico.
Native American societies responded to their natural environments and local circumstances of life in ways that produced a variety of cultural traits, economic activities, and artistic expressions:
The Iroquois used wampum, belts or strings with knots and beaded designs serving as mnemonic aids for chroniclers of stories and legends; wampum also served as currency and as a unit of measure.
Pueblo tribes crafted items associated with kachina dancers, including masks that the dancers wore and dolls representing the dancers themselves; they also produced turquois and shell jewelry and exquisite pots.
In a fascinating practice comparable to those of Tibetan Buddhists, the Navajo created colorful sand paintings from sand, charcoal, cornmeal, and pollen to depict religious symbols and to create a sense of spiritual reverence--- then, as comment on the evanescence of physical existence and material objects, they scattered the coloring agents back into nature.
Native American groups made logically adaptive decisions in matters of diet, physical security, and economy:
The Inuit (Eskimo) cured and stored meat and fish for the winter. Tribes of the Pacific Northwest fished from 50-foot long dugout canoes that were perfect for seafaring. The Eastern Woodlands people used hoes and digging sticks to work fields productive of maize and tobacco. The Dakota and other Plains people adroitly whipped up a stampede among buffalo and drove these over cliffs.
Many peoples of the American Southwest ground acorns into flour that they made into dough, which they flattened and placed on heated stones for producing wafer-thin bread.
Certain concepts and practices undergirded most Native American belief systems, while others were highly distinctive to particular groups:
Most Native American groups gave high status to a shaman who was perceived to mediate between human beings and the gods, spirits, and souls of the dead. The special powers of the shamans were often associated with a striking physical appearance, including features that we today think of as being those of the handicapped or disfigured. The shaman would typically acquire dramatic insight while suffering a physical ordeal and drifting into a trance. Realization of her or his powers would come with the sensation of leaving the body to soar through the realms of the gods and the dead.
The shaman was many things to her or his people: spirit medium, mystic seer, wise sage, eloquent poet. The shaman was also a physician who could both apply curative herbs and oust an offending spirit. Curing disease by expelling a malevolent spirit would involve an emotional array of activities: swaying, drumming, chanting, sighing, groaning, and laughing hysterically--- with the emotional state deepening and the sound rising as the healing rite moved through successive stages.
Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest told tales of land and sea, bear and salmon, military victories and dramatic historical events. Clan-based totemic societies formed to express the mystic relationship between one’s group and an emblematic figure. The clan’s legends and history would be told by masked dancers or master storytellers among the elders. Totemic societies performed rites venerating the Sun, Moon, Sky Being, and Creator (in the form of a Trickster Raven).
The Cree people venerated spirits associated with the hunt, and they revered an Earth Goddess who gave life and maternal attention to all animals. Generations past, present, and future existed in close association: The souls of the ancestors lingered in close proximity to their living descendants. Legends featuring talking animals and the Four Directions gave testimony to Cree belief in the unity of Nature.
The Inuit (Eskimo) conveyed myths of the whale, the walrus, mysterious ghosts, and fantastic creatures. During long winter months, the Inuit would often sit waiting for caribou, or they would situate themselves by blowholes for hunting fish or seal; such scenarios could animate imaginations productive of wondrous spirits and startling occurrences. Sitting and peering into the winter sky, the Inuit would see family and friends in the aurora borealis (Northern Lights) dancing in a realm beyond Earth, the life to come.
Native Americans on the Great Plains revered the Spirit of the Buffalo and the Earth Mother. Men organized themselves into ritual societies that prepared them and sustained them in the activities of governance, war, and hunting. Frequently under the counsel of a spirit guide, young people would come of age with a Vision Quest in which they would dwell under conditions of fasting and physical seclusion, productive of dream-states giving insights into their future life missions and roles in family and society.
The Iroquois believed in an impressive but remote “All Father” who dwelled in every aspect of Nature. Spirits in the natural world were thought to be more active in daily life and in annual events, controlling the seasons and animating major festivals associated with the agricultural calendar.
Pueblo people sat atop mesas, the rocky tableland of the American Southwest, peering into a world in which visionary beings brought the blessings of life and received love and veneration in return.
Native Americans living in Pueblo communities told tales from a vast assortment of myths conveying the relationship between humankind and the plants and animals of the Natural World.
Among other peoples of the American Southwest, shamans communicated intensely with gods, ancestors, and the spirits of Maize, Rainbow, Sun, and Thunder. Around communal fires, storytellers told of dramatic events associated with the hunt and the experiences of the ancestors. Boys at eleven or twelve years of age typically went on the Vision Quest.
Among those Native Americans dwelling and farming in the American South, the Natchez were notable for belief in a Sacred King. Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws told tales of a Trickster Spirit, a personified Rabbit, and the origins of tobacco and maize.
The Native American peoples were the first inhabitants of what we now call the United States. Their logical rhythms of life, intimate connections to nature and ancestors, and rational economic responses to environmental circumstances were severely disrupted by the arrival of Spaniards, British, and French in the course of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Aug 28, 2015
Evaluating the Personnel at the Minneapolis Public Schools: Are Board and Staff Up to the Responsibility of Delivering an Excellent K-12 Education?
You folks reading about the needed overhaul in K-12 education must remember that the Minneapolis Public Schools are just that: public schools.
Inasmuch as they are public institutions, their staff members are paid from public funds and serve because the public allows them to do so. People tend to be intimidated by people who have their offices in large buildings of bureaucratic institutions, forgetting that those very employees should be intimidated by the public. They should be constantly on edge, ever thinking that if they are not doing their jobs they could be dismissed at a moment’s notice.
This means that current staff members of the Minneapolis Public Schools should be very much on edge, indeed: They have they not done their job for at least 35 years.
The Minneapolis Public Schools as a central school district responsible for properly educating everyone has educated no one very well, and has been absolutely neglectful in educating young people from families of dysfunction and poverty. The time is now, so we must be fast about evaluating those currently responsible for the education of the children and adolescents of Minneapolis.
Perpend:
Interim Superintendent Michael Goar served under recent Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson and should have come in with full momentum to implement the programs pertinent to the Shift, High Priority Schools, and Focused Instruction initiatives. He is 66.6…% successful, which is not enough, especially since he has neglected the most important program.
>>>>> He has done a marvelous job in cutting staff, reducing the former 651-count burden in the central office on West Broadway to 531 (an elimination of 120 positions); this is consistent with the Shift initiative.
>>>>> Limited but reasonably persuasive evidence suggests that progress is being made in lifting the academic performance of the High Priority Schools. A presentation made last spring by Laura Cavender, the district official responsible for superintending the program at those schools, strongly indicates progress--- but with a long way still to go to ensure that the academic performance of students from impoverished circumstances at least matches that of their economically better situated peers.
So Goar can be given credit for overseeing advances in the Shift and High Priority Schools programs.
>>>>> But the best evidence available to me suggests strongly that Interim Superintendent Goar has failed to implement Focused Instruction in a way that fulfills the potential of the program.
Focused Instruction is the initiative begun during the Bernadeia Johnson administration to bring curricular consistency to each grade level and to make the curriculum more knowledge intensive.
Although many teachers have indicated that they have enjoyed the training to deliver such a knowledge-based curriculum, there have been protestations from Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) president Lynn Nordgren and other hard-core teacher union types. These latter strongly manifest the tendency to object to any initiative that takes them out of their comfort zone, into which they have long brought faulty concepts from their abysmal training in departments, schools, and colleges of education.
Goar may very well be accommodating Nordgren, et al, in failing to move the Focused Instruction initiative forward. Or he may be listening to the shallow thinkers in much of the education change community, for whom the search for new, innovative approaches avowedly points the way to better education.
This constitutes what I term the “hail Mary pass” approach, whereby in the absence of any sense of the nature of an excellent K-12 education (achieved via knowledge intensive curriculum, logically implemented in grade by grade sequence; by knowledgeable teachers able to impart this education to all students), these gadflies advocate for charter schools and vouchers. Lacking the conceptual acumen and the energy necessary to induce change at the central school district level, they put their trust in the ability of putative innovators to experiment their way to better education.
This sort of approach is what Goar prevailed upon school board members to take in a unanimous vote last spring for four new pseudo charter schools called Community Partnership Schools. The school board thus abdicated adult responsibility to specify the cultural inheritance of knowledge that we want our students to have as they walk across the stage to claim a diploma after 13 years in the classrooms of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
This is the sort of responsibility that I assume on this blog; in my monthly editions of Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota; and in my new book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.
Goar and his staff are your employees. The public pays them.
And the public elects the members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education.
If any of these people cannot specify the constituent elements of an excellent education, and the qualifications of teachers able to impart an excellent education, they need to go.
We should first prevail upon Goar to do his job. The sad reality is that he may be as good as we can get, given the paltry pool from which we can draw in deciding upon a longer-term superintendent. But if Goar does not seize the opportunity provided by Focused Instruction to provide a knowledge-rich education to our precious young people, the public should send a message that he is not the person to lead the Minneapolis Public Schools.
And the same message should be sent to all central office personnel; and to Tracine Asberry, Carla Bates, Kim Ellison, and Josh Reimnitz. The latter four are Minneapolis school board members who will be up for reelection in 2017. If they have no ability to articulate a definition of an excellent education; or to specify the retraining program that will be necessary to produce teachers capable of imparting a truly excellent education; then they should not be returned to their positions in 2017.
If we are serious about overhauling K-12 education and thus making of our nation the democracy that we imagine ourselves to be, we will take responsibility as adults and apply all necessary pressure on educators to do their jobs.
And if anyone at the central office or school buildings of the Minneapolis Public Schools; or on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education; is not doing her or his job by ensuring educational excellence for young people of all demographic descriptors, that person must go.
The overhaul of K-12 education is the paramount domestic issue of our time. Without doing this, we get nothing else right.
Our efforts are long overdue.
The time is now.
Look in that mirror again.
Inasmuch as they are public institutions, their staff members are paid from public funds and serve because the public allows them to do so. People tend to be intimidated by people who have their offices in large buildings of bureaucratic institutions, forgetting that those very employees should be intimidated by the public. They should be constantly on edge, ever thinking that if they are not doing their jobs they could be dismissed at a moment’s notice.
This means that current staff members of the Minneapolis Public Schools should be very much on edge, indeed: They have they not done their job for at least 35 years.
The Minneapolis Public Schools as a central school district responsible for properly educating everyone has educated no one very well, and has been absolutely neglectful in educating young people from families of dysfunction and poverty. The time is now, so we must be fast about evaluating those currently responsible for the education of the children and adolescents of Minneapolis.
Perpend:
Interim Superintendent Michael Goar served under recent Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson and should have come in with full momentum to implement the programs pertinent to the Shift, High Priority Schools, and Focused Instruction initiatives. He is 66.6…% successful, which is not enough, especially since he has neglected the most important program.
>>>>> He has done a marvelous job in cutting staff, reducing the former 651-count burden in the central office on West Broadway to 531 (an elimination of 120 positions); this is consistent with the Shift initiative.
>>>>> Limited but reasonably persuasive evidence suggests that progress is being made in lifting the academic performance of the High Priority Schools. A presentation made last spring by Laura Cavender, the district official responsible for superintending the program at those schools, strongly indicates progress--- but with a long way still to go to ensure that the academic performance of students from impoverished circumstances at least matches that of their economically better situated peers.
So Goar can be given credit for overseeing advances in the Shift and High Priority Schools programs.
>>>>> But the best evidence available to me suggests strongly that Interim Superintendent Goar has failed to implement Focused Instruction in a way that fulfills the potential of the program.
Focused Instruction is the initiative begun during the Bernadeia Johnson administration to bring curricular consistency to each grade level and to make the curriculum more knowledge intensive.
Although many teachers have indicated that they have enjoyed the training to deliver such a knowledge-based curriculum, there have been protestations from Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) president Lynn Nordgren and other hard-core teacher union types. These latter strongly manifest the tendency to object to any initiative that takes them out of their comfort zone, into which they have long brought faulty concepts from their abysmal training in departments, schools, and colleges of education.
Goar may very well be accommodating Nordgren, et al, in failing to move the Focused Instruction initiative forward. Or he may be listening to the shallow thinkers in much of the education change community, for whom the search for new, innovative approaches avowedly points the way to better education.
This constitutes what I term the “hail Mary pass” approach, whereby in the absence of any sense of the nature of an excellent K-12 education (achieved via knowledge intensive curriculum, logically implemented in grade by grade sequence; by knowledgeable teachers able to impart this education to all students), these gadflies advocate for charter schools and vouchers. Lacking the conceptual acumen and the energy necessary to induce change at the central school district level, they put their trust in the ability of putative innovators to experiment their way to better education.
This sort of approach is what Goar prevailed upon school board members to take in a unanimous vote last spring for four new pseudo charter schools called Community Partnership Schools. The school board thus abdicated adult responsibility to specify the cultural inheritance of knowledge that we want our students to have as they walk across the stage to claim a diploma after 13 years in the classrooms of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
This is the sort of responsibility that I assume on this blog; in my monthly editions of Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota; and in my new book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.
Goar and his staff are your employees. The public pays them.
And the public elects the members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education.
If any of these people cannot specify the constituent elements of an excellent education, and the qualifications of teachers able to impart an excellent education, they need to go.
We should first prevail upon Goar to do his job. The sad reality is that he may be as good as we can get, given the paltry pool from which we can draw in deciding upon a longer-term superintendent. But if Goar does not seize the opportunity provided by Focused Instruction to provide a knowledge-rich education to our precious young people, the public should send a message that he is not the person to lead the Minneapolis Public Schools.
And the same message should be sent to all central office personnel; and to Tracine Asberry, Carla Bates, Kim Ellison, and Josh Reimnitz. The latter four are Minneapolis school board members who will be up for reelection in 2017. If they have no ability to articulate a definition of an excellent education; or to specify the retraining program that will be necessary to produce teachers capable of imparting a truly excellent education; then they should not be returned to their positions in 2017.
If we are serious about overhauling K-12 education and thus making of our nation the democracy that we imagine ourselves to be, we will take responsibility as adults and apply all necessary pressure on educators to do their jobs.
And if anyone at the central office or school buildings of the Minneapolis Public Schools; or on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education; is not doing her or his job by ensuring educational excellence for young people of all demographic descriptors, that person must go.
The overhaul of K-12 education is the paramount domestic issue of our time. Without doing this, we get nothing else right.
Our efforts are long overdue.
The time is now.
Look in that mirror again.
Aug 27, 2015
We Will Get Nothing Right Until We Overhaul K-12 Education
We must overhaul K-12 education before we get anything right, in either domestic or international affairs.
First and most importantly, we will never solve the problems of cyclical poverty, babies having babies, familial dysfunction, drug-infestation, and gang-proliferation at the urban core until we provide the education that we have never come close to providing to African American people and others who came to reside in the nation’s most troubled urban communities.
Actually, we have never provided anyone of any location and any economic status with excellent public school education. But with the rush to the suburbs by white folks and middle class African Americans from the early 1970s, urban school districts were overwhelmed, never adjusted, and educational mediocrity devolved into atrocity.
Only excellent education can give people who have long been denied lives of cultural fulfillment, civic engagement, and professional satisfaction the quality of experience that all human beings deserve in this one earthly sojourn.
Imagine if instead of the vapid educational experience that young people of the central cities now receive, they were to receive the sort of knowledge-rich education that I provide to my students in the New Salem Educational Initiative, now powerfully boosted with our ability to move efficiently through my new book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education (see the snippets that I have posted in the immediately following blog articles). Inasmuch as I also provide ethical and moral guidance (see the article posted on this blog that originates in my compact book, Meditations on the Art of Living), the prospects for young people going forth to a life of highest quality are magnified.
Imagine, indeed.
Imagine if we trained people to understand their history, economy, psychology, government, best nutritional practices, human anatomy and physiology.
Imagine if from their thirteen years in school, young people were alive in the worlds of great literature, visual art, well-crafted music of all genres, and an appreciation for their entire architectural and natural environment.
Imagine if people understood the essential concepts of all world religions and the fundamental underpinnings for cultures across the globe.
Imagine if young people and the adults that they become went forth into the world of this single earthly sojourn imbued with confidence in knowing math through calculus, biology, chemistry, and physics.
Alive in the world of knowledge and ideas, given the sort of training necessary to ascend to university-level professional training of the highest order, people would have the economic wherewithal necessary to end cycles of familial poverty. Generations, stuck over many decades in cycles of desultory and dangerous conditions, would now look to a future filled with hope--- instead of years of incarceration and children born too early, destined to face the same dead-end corners of existence as those who had spilled them forth into the world.
With most people now able to experience lives of cultural enrichment, civic engagement, and professional satisfaction, the frustration that leads to violence, crime, and an array of bad decisions would end. Possessing information on all major topics, people would make better decisions about their health habits. People would spend more time reading, thinking, evaluating the world around them. Time now spent watching the banality that permeates television could be contributed to action capable of solving wretchedly abiding problems of homelessness, hunger, and any remnant poverty.
With such changes of outlook and occurrence, we could eventually tear down most prisons, reduce police forces, decrease expenditure on social services--- because people would be living the kinds of lives that would obviate the necessity of institutions built because we have failed to meet the needs of our fellow human beings.
Women might quit smearing their faces with paint and walking around on mini-stilts that are the contemporary form of foot-binding; they might insist on gender equitable marital surnames that tear at the fabric of patriarchy.
Citizens who understand the historical origins of chronic conflicts and abdominal conditions across the globe would have a better sense of how to address the dilemmas faced by so many people in the world for so long. Well-informed citizens who have internalized high standards of ethical conduct vote more wisely, feel more empathically, and act with more altruistic effectiveness. Under such circumstances, wasteful expenditure of life and material wealth could be transferred form war and degrading activity to endeavors that construct a better world, rather than destroy even the meager hope that most people across the globe now foresee.
With the transformation of K-12 education, our people become culturally enriched, civically engaged, professionally satisfied; they become healthier, physically stronger, morally elevated, joyful in day to day experience, happy over the long term.
The revolutionizing of K-12 education involves the overhaul of curriculum and the thorough retraining of teachers. These are simply stated and definitely achievable but herculean tasks. They will require knowledge of the constituents of an excellent K-12 education, careful planning for the retraining of teachers of necessary intellectual ballast, and generous applications of what my West Texas pappy called “elbow grease.”
So we have a lot of work to do. But the necessary transformation can be achieved.
And understand this: We solve no vexing national or international problem until we get K-12 education right.
First and most importantly, we will never solve the problems of cyclical poverty, babies having babies, familial dysfunction, drug-infestation, and gang-proliferation at the urban core until we provide the education that we have never come close to providing to African American people and others who came to reside in the nation’s most troubled urban communities.
Actually, we have never provided anyone of any location and any economic status with excellent public school education. But with the rush to the suburbs by white folks and middle class African Americans from the early 1970s, urban school districts were overwhelmed, never adjusted, and educational mediocrity devolved into atrocity.
Only excellent education can give people who have long been denied lives of cultural fulfillment, civic engagement, and professional satisfaction the quality of experience that all human beings deserve in this one earthly sojourn.
Imagine if instead of the vapid educational experience that young people of the central cities now receive, they were to receive the sort of knowledge-rich education that I provide to my students in the New Salem Educational Initiative, now powerfully boosted with our ability to move efficiently through my new book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education (see the snippets that I have posted in the immediately following blog articles). Inasmuch as I also provide ethical and moral guidance (see the article posted on this blog that originates in my compact book, Meditations on the Art of Living), the prospects for young people going forth to a life of highest quality are magnified.
Imagine, indeed.
Imagine if we trained people to understand their history, economy, psychology, government, best nutritional practices, human anatomy and physiology.
Imagine if from their thirteen years in school, young people were alive in the worlds of great literature, visual art, well-crafted music of all genres, and an appreciation for their entire architectural and natural environment.
Imagine if people understood the essential concepts of all world religions and the fundamental underpinnings for cultures across the globe.
Imagine if young people and the adults that they become went forth into the world of this single earthly sojourn imbued with confidence in knowing math through calculus, biology, chemistry, and physics.
Alive in the world of knowledge and ideas, given the sort of training necessary to ascend to university-level professional training of the highest order, people would have the economic wherewithal necessary to end cycles of familial poverty. Generations, stuck over many decades in cycles of desultory and dangerous conditions, would now look to a future filled with hope--- instead of years of incarceration and children born too early, destined to face the same dead-end corners of existence as those who had spilled them forth into the world.
With most people now able to experience lives of cultural enrichment, civic engagement, and professional satisfaction, the frustration that leads to violence, crime, and an array of bad decisions would end. Possessing information on all major topics, people would make better decisions about their health habits. People would spend more time reading, thinking, evaluating the world around them. Time now spent watching the banality that permeates television could be contributed to action capable of solving wretchedly abiding problems of homelessness, hunger, and any remnant poverty.
With such changes of outlook and occurrence, we could eventually tear down most prisons, reduce police forces, decrease expenditure on social services--- because people would be living the kinds of lives that would obviate the necessity of institutions built because we have failed to meet the needs of our fellow human beings.
Women might quit smearing their faces with paint and walking around on mini-stilts that are the contemporary form of foot-binding; they might insist on gender equitable marital surnames that tear at the fabric of patriarchy.
Citizens who understand the historical origins of chronic conflicts and abdominal conditions across the globe would have a better sense of how to address the dilemmas faced by so many people in the world for so long. Well-informed citizens who have internalized high standards of ethical conduct vote more wisely, feel more empathically, and act with more altruistic effectiveness. Under such circumstances, wasteful expenditure of life and material wealth could be transferred form war and degrading activity to endeavors that construct a better world, rather than destroy even the meager hope that most people across the globe now foresee.
With the transformation of K-12 education, our people become culturally enriched, civically engaged, professionally satisfied; they become healthier, physically stronger, morally elevated, joyful in day to day experience, happy over the long term.
The revolutionizing of K-12 education involves the overhaul of curriculum and the thorough retraining of teachers. These are simply stated and definitely achievable but herculean tasks. They will require knowledge of the constituents of an excellent K-12 education, careful planning for the retraining of teachers of necessary intellectual ballast, and generous applications of what my West Texas pappy called “elbow grease.”
So we have a lot of work to do. But the necessary transformation can be achieved.
And understand this: We solve no vexing national or international problem until we get K-12 education right.
Aug 26, 2015
Fifth Snippet from My New Book, >Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education<: Islam (Historic Roots and Early Development)
In this article I provide the fifth snippet from my new book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education. This segment is taken from my chapter on World Religions, in which I cover Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Confucianism, Daoism (Taoism), Shinto, traditional Native American religious concepts, traditional African religious concepts, the Graeco-Roman pantheon, and the Norse pantheon.
Thinking that the presentation of my coverage of Islam should be helpful in clearing up misconceptions arising from skewed interpretations of the faith by groups such as Al-Qaeda (worldwide movement originating in Saudi Arabia), Taliban (Afghanistan), and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS; also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIL]); I have decided to make this section on Islam my snippet from the World Religions chapter.
The Life and Revelations of Muhammad
Muhammad was born about 570 A. D. to a humble family of Mecca, a traditional religious center on the Arabian peninsula. As a young man, Muhammad made his living as a caravan driver, caring for and leading camels carrying the mercantile items of Arabian provenance to many outposts in West Asia (Middle East, Near East), places that we associate geographically with the nations of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel. On his journeys, Muhammad met many Christians and (especially) Jews, from whom he learned of the literature and theology based on the Old and New Testaments of the Holy Bible, as well as the Torah and Talmud of the Hebrew tradition.
At about 28 years of age, Muhammad married a wealthy widow by the name of Khadija. His enhanced economic security gave the introspective young man more time to contemplate the religious texts that he had encountered on his travels and to compare these with his own reflections upon the religious ideas and practices common to Arabia. In Mecca, there was a religious elite of priests who conducted rituals in worship of a variety of jinn (deities of nature and commerce) and superintended a number of shrines, including the mysterious Ka’aba, which drew circumambulating worshipers around its cuboid structure.
Muhammad came to have doubts about the moral integrity of the priests and the validity of their objects of worship; he felt spiritually driven toward a monotheistic faith inspired by the God and the ethical precepts of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. At forty years of age Muhammad was inwardly rent by spiritual turmoil, leading him to retreat to a nearby mountain for deep thought and soulful solitude. After a time, he perceived that the angel Jibra’il (Gabriel) spoke to him the very words of God, whom he would call Allah, giving him revelations destined to reshape the religious landscape of the Arabian peninsula, other parts of West Asia, an expanse of North Africa, and eventually the Malay peninsula and islands now known collectively as Indonesia.
Jibra’il commanded Muhammad to “Recite” the words; thus did Muhammad go forth to speak the words of Allah that he soon committed to memory. This process continued over a 22-year period during which Jibra’il continued to impart the words of Allah to Muhammad.
The Words of the Prophet Recorded in the Qur’an
Muhammad was, like Jesus and all but a few people of their times, illiterate. The revelations of Allah (via Jibra’il) to Muhammad would eventually be recorded in the holy book, Qur’an (Koran). Muhammad conveyed his religious revelations orally, transmitting a message promulgating strict monotheism in the Abrahamic tradition; extolling the virtues of the Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and the prophets and apostles of Judaeo- Christianity; and calling people to a staunchly righteousness code of moral behavior.
The Qur’an is composed of 114 suras (chapters) divided into many ayat (verses) containing in all about 78,000 words. The message in the Qur’an exhorts people to believe in the august power of Allah, honoring Him with just and moral actions. The Qur’an conveys instances of punishment meted out to those who disobeyed Allah. It notes signs of God in nature, cites sermons extolling the righteousness of Allah and the need for strict adherence to moral precepts; relates stories demonstrating Qur’anic principles, and provides instructions for adjudication of legal cases. The Qur’an is used by adherents as a sourcebook for how to handle practical matters such as divorce, inheritance, and warfare; along with more purely religious instructions for seasonal fasting and weekly ritual. For all aspects of life, the Qur’an is the complete referent for Muslims, those who adhere to the religion of Islam (“Submission” [to the Will of Allah]).
The Hejira and Return to Mecca
Muhammad stirred the jealousy and moral discomfort in the established jinn priests, who rightly perceived the Prophet as a threat to their own power, prestige, and livelihoods. Such was their nature of their pressure on and admonitions to Muhammad that he felt impelled to leave Mecca one evening in 622 A.D. (CE), an event known to the Islamic faithful as the hegira (hejira, hjra).
This “flight” took him to Medina, some 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Mecca. There Muhammad regrouped, recited the revelations, and prophesied according to the mission that Allah through Jibra’il had given him. Over the course of the next several years, Muhammad attracted a devoted following, trained a skilled army of soldiers for the holy war (jihad) against the religious establishment in Mecca, and planned his return to the holy city.
In 630 A.D. (CE), Muhammad implemented his plan, returning in force to Mecca. His forces soundly defeated the army of the established priesthood and other members of the traditional elite. Muhammad died two years later having set the tone and the context for a vigorous expansion of the new faith, first on the Arabian peninsula, and then far beyond.
The Five Pillars of Islam
Five sustained, lifetime commitments are incumbent upon every devout Muslim. They are known as the “Five Pillars of Islam,” as follows:
1) To repeat with sincere regularity the Muslim Creed: “There is no God (Allah) but God (Allah), and Muhammad is his Prophet.”
2) To give alms to the poor and for religious purposes, in the amount of about one-fortieth of one’s income.
3) To fast at the occasion of the holy month of Ramadan; the required fast occurs daily during that month, wherein no food is eaten from dawn to dusk, with all meals taken during the hours of darkness.
4) To pray facing Mecca five times each day.
5) To make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least one time during the course of the able-bodied life (circumstances such as poverty, chronic illness, and old age ameliorate the duty).
Major Divisions of Islam
When Muhammad died, important figures in the Muslim community of Mecca, taking stock of social standing, closeness to the Prophet, and leadership skill, opted for Abu Bakr as the first of the Caliphs (Khalifa). The next two Caliphs “Successors” chosen were ‘Umar and ‘Uthman. Fourth came ‘Ali, the husband of Muhammad’s daughter, Fatima. The latter selection was none too soon for some of the leaders who had touted 'Ali’s case from the very beginning and harbored ill-feeling at his having been passed over.
Those who had lobbied for Abu Bakr considered themselves to be the followers of custom (Sunnah); those whose campaigned for ‘Ali and failed considered themselves the ”party of Ali”(shi’at ‘Ali). Today these divisions between the first group, Sunni Muslims, and the second group, Shi’ite Muslims, persist.
History shaped the views and the conflict between the two groups. When ‘Ali was assassinated in 660 A.D. (CE), the Shi’ites strongly suspected those who ranged themselves against ‘Ali from the beginning of the post-Muhammad period. There then ensued a dispute as to how the next Caliphs should be chosen. Sunnas wanted them elected, but Shi’ites maintained that they should be descendants of ‘Ali and Fatima. In 680 A.D. (CE), ‘Ali’s brother, Hussayn, led a revolt against the abiding Caliph, Yazi ibn Mu’awiyah. But Hussayn’s supporters dithered, and Hussayn was killed at the Battle of Kerbala (in contemporary Iraq).
To this day Shi’ites remember this event with formal mourning observances, some of the faithful even scourging themselves in an act of atonement for those who failed properly to back Hussayn’s revolt. Today most Shi’ites consider the legitimate and historically important first leaders of Islam to have been ‘Ali and eleven of his successors: the Twelve Imams. Those who identify these successors to Muhammad as prime leaders of the Muslim faith are known as the “Twelve-Imam Shi’ites”; another group, the “Seven-Imam Shi’ites,” do not regard the last five Imams to be in the lineage of major leaders.
There are some minor doctrinal and ritual differences in these two Shi’ite groups; for example, the Twelve-Imam group adds lines to the call to prayer that are absent when the Seven-Imam group gathers, and the two groups have disparate prayers ritualized for funerals. And Shi’ites in general differ in quite a few ways with Sunnis as to religious practice. Shi’ites have a more flexible view of marital unions with regard to permanency, with divorce as a viable option. They believe that God also can and does reverse His decisions on occasion, whereas Sunnis regard the decisions of God as eternally immutable.
But the historical dispute over the succession to Muhammad lies at the heart of the Sunni-Shi’ite division. As the minority group harboring ill-feeling for a perceived injustice, the Shi’ites have frequently been considered the more irascible and militant of the two groups. Events in Iran with the violent overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the taking of American hostages, both in 1979, buttressed that perception.
Recently, though, Sunni--- rather than Shi'ite--- fringe groups have given evidence of a propensity to use violence with the purported goal of spreading their interpretation of the will of Allah throughout the world. Such minority groups agitating for an idealized Islamic state include Al-Qaeda (worldwide movement originating in Saudi Arabia), Taliban (Afghanistan), and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS; also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIL]).
Two Muslim groups that bear mention in a discussion of Islam are the very different Sufis and the adherents of the Nation of Islam:
The development of Sufism is traceable to the life of the Persian poet, Jelaluddin Balkhi (1207-1273 A.D. [CE]), who became known as Rumi. Rumi befriended a dervish (ascetic) by the name of Shams; when the latter disappeared mysteriously, Rumi felt the spirit of Shams guiding him in the generation of profound poetry. Rumi had a sense of spirituality as ecstatic experience, and as such an expression of “dervishes.”
The search for ecstatic union with Allah is the core of Sufi experience but make them suspect Muslims in the view of both Sunnis and Shi’ites, who view Allah as too awe-inspiring a figure to accept union with humanity in this way; the orthodox view holds that opportunity to draw near the majesty of Allah must await ascent to Heaven, only for the ritualistically devout at the end of the earthly sojourn. But Sufis, who do not consider themselves to be a denomination or sect, identifying variously as either Sunni or Shi’ite, insist that their fervent expression for the love of God is the anchor of their Islamic faith and consistent with the will of Allah.
The Nation of Islam was founded as a religious movement by Wallace Dodd Ford, who took the name Fard (“Righteousness”) Muhammad. He identified as Muslim but generated ideas divergent in many ways from orthodox Islam. For example, orthodox Muslims, whether Sunni or Shi’ite, consider Muhammad to be the Prophet of Allah, not in any sense an incarnation of God or messianic in nature; Fard, though, claimed to be the Messiah. His successor, Elijah Poole, introduced additional unorthodoxies, such as the idea that black people, as the first humans created by God, would survive an apocalyptic event at the “end of times”; white people, though, as later creations possessing Satanic propensities, would be destroyed.
In time, Elijah Poole took the name Elijah Muhammad. In the early 1960s, the civil rights campaigner Malcom X (formerly Malcom Little) joined the Nation of Islam and became the most charismatic spokesperson for the movement led by Elijah Muhammad. From the 1960s forward, there was a trend toward more orthodox Muslim beliefs among members of the Nation of Islam. Malcolm X blazed this theological trail when he left the Nation of Islam and founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity in 1964; he paid a heavy and unjust price for this when he was assassinated by a member of the Nation of Islam in 1965.
When Elijah Muhammad died in the 1970s, his son (Warith Deen Muhammad) changed the name of the movement to American Muslim Mission and advocated ideas consistent with Sunni orthodoxy. A group calling itself the Original Nation of Islam continued to espouse the doctrines of Elijah Muhammad. But over the course of the decades thereafter, leaders of the Original Nation of Islam moved closer to Muslim orthodoxy in their expressed beliefs, and in 2000 the two organizations announced an end to their rivalry.
Thinking that the presentation of my coverage of Islam should be helpful in clearing up misconceptions arising from skewed interpretations of the faith by groups such as Al-Qaeda (worldwide movement originating in Saudi Arabia), Taliban (Afghanistan), and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS; also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIL]); I have decided to make this section on Islam my snippet from the World Religions chapter.
The Life and Revelations of Muhammad
Muhammad was born about 570 A. D. to a humble family of Mecca, a traditional religious center on the Arabian peninsula. As a young man, Muhammad made his living as a caravan driver, caring for and leading camels carrying the mercantile items of Arabian provenance to many outposts in West Asia (Middle East, Near East), places that we associate geographically with the nations of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel. On his journeys, Muhammad met many Christians and (especially) Jews, from whom he learned of the literature and theology based on the Old and New Testaments of the Holy Bible, as well as the Torah and Talmud of the Hebrew tradition.
At about 28 years of age, Muhammad married a wealthy widow by the name of Khadija. His enhanced economic security gave the introspective young man more time to contemplate the religious texts that he had encountered on his travels and to compare these with his own reflections upon the religious ideas and practices common to Arabia. In Mecca, there was a religious elite of priests who conducted rituals in worship of a variety of jinn (deities of nature and commerce) and superintended a number of shrines, including the mysterious Ka’aba, which drew circumambulating worshipers around its cuboid structure.
Muhammad came to have doubts about the moral integrity of the priests and the validity of their objects of worship; he felt spiritually driven toward a monotheistic faith inspired by the God and the ethical precepts of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. At forty years of age Muhammad was inwardly rent by spiritual turmoil, leading him to retreat to a nearby mountain for deep thought and soulful solitude. After a time, he perceived that the angel Jibra’il (Gabriel) spoke to him the very words of God, whom he would call Allah, giving him revelations destined to reshape the religious landscape of the Arabian peninsula, other parts of West Asia, an expanse of North Africa, and eventually the Malay peninsula and islands now known collectively as Indonesia.
Jibra’il commanded Muhammad to “Recite” the words; thus did Muhammad go forth to speak the words of Allah that he soon committed to memory. This process continued over a 22-year period during which Jibra’il continued to impart the words of Allah to Muhammad.
The Words of the Prophet Recorded in the Qur’an
Muhammad was, like Jesus and all but a few people of their times, illiterate. The revelations of Allah (via Jibra’il) to Muhammad would eventually be recorded in the holy book, Qur’an (Koran). Muhammad conveyed his religious revelations orally, transmitting a message promulgating strict monotheism in the Abrahamic tradition; extolling the virtues of the Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and the prophets and apostles of Judaeo- Christianity; and calling people to a staunchly righteousness code of moral behavior.
The Qur’an is composed of 114 suras (chapters) divided into many ayat (verses) containing in all about 78,000 words. The message in the Qur’an exhorts people to believe in the august power of Allah, honoring Him with just and moral actions. The Qur’an conveys instances of punishment meted out to those who disobeyed Allah. It notes signs of God in nature, cites sermons extolling the righteousness of Allah and the need for strict adherence to moral precepts; relates stories demonstrating Qur’anic principles, and provides instructions for adjudication of legal cases. The Qur’an is used by adherents as a sourcebook for how to handle practical matters such as divorce, inheritance, and warfare; along with more purely religious instructions for seasonal fasting and weekly ritual. For all aspects of life, the Qur’an is the complete referent for Muslims, those who adhere to the religion of Islam (“Submission” [to the Will of Allah]).
The Hejira and Return to Mecca
Muhammad stirred the jealousy and moral discomfort in the established jinn priests, who rightly perceived the Prophet as a threat to their own power, prestige, and livelihoods. Such was their nature of their pressure on and admonitions to Muhammad that he felt impelled to leave Mecca one evening in 622 A.D. (CE), an event known to the Islamic faithful as the hegira (hejira, hjra).
This “flight” took him to Medina, some 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Mecca. There Muhammad regrouped, recited the revelations, and prophesied according to the mission that Allah through Jibra’il had given him. Over the course of the next several years, Muhammad attracted a devoted following, trained a skilled army of soldiers for the holy war (jihad) against the religious establishment in Mecca, and planned his return to the holy city.
In 630 A.D. (CE), Muhammad implemented his plan, returning in force to Mecca. His forces soundly defeated the army of the established priesthood and other members of the traditional elite. Muhammad died two years later having set the tone and the context for a vigorous expansion of the new faith, first on the Arabian peninsula, and then far beyond.
The Five Pillars of Islam
Five sustained, lifetime commitments are incumbent upon every devout Muslim. They are known as the “Five Pillars of Islam,” as follows:
1) To repeat with sincere regularity the Muslim Creed: “There is no God (Allah) but God (Allah), and Muhammad is his Prophet.”
2) To give alms to the poor and for religious purposes, in the amount of about one-fortieth of one’s income.
3) To fast at the occasion of the holy month of Ramadan; the required fast occurs daily during that month, wherein no food is eaten from dawn to dusk, with all meals taken during the hours of darkness.
4) To pray facing Mecca five times each day.
5) To make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least one time during the course of the able-bodied life (circumstances such as poverty, chronic illness, and old age ameliorate the duty).
Major Divisions of Islam
When Muhammad died, important figures in the Muslim community of Mecca, taking stock of social standing, closeness to the Prophet, and leadership skill, opted for Abu Bakr as the first of the Caliphs (Khalifa). The next two Caliphs “Successors” chosen were ‘Umar and ‘Uthman. Fourth came ‘Ali, the husband of Muhammad’s daughter, Fatima. The latter selection was none too soon for some of the leaders who had touted 'Ali’s case from the very beginning and harbored ill-feeling at his having been passed over.
Those who had lobbied for Abu Bakr considered themselves to be the followers of custom (Sunnah); those whose campaigned for ‘Ali and failed considered themselves the ”party of Ali”(shi’at ‘Ali). Today these divisions between the first group, Sunni Muslims, and the second group, Shi’ite Muslims, persist.
History shaped the views and the conflict between the two groups. When ‘Ali was assassinated in 660 A.D. (CE), the Shi’ites strongly suspected those who ranged themselves against ‘Ali from the beginning of the post-Muhammad period. There then ensued a dispute as to how the next Caliphs should be chosen. Sunnas wanted them elected, but Shi’ites maintained that they should be descendants of ‘Ali and Fatima. In 680 A.D. (CE), ‘Ali’s brother, Hussayn, led a revolt against the abiding Caliph, Yazi ibn Mu’awiyah. But Hussayn’s supporters dithered, and Hussayn was killed at the Battle of Kerbala (in contemporary Iraq).
To this day Shi’ites remember this event with formal mourning observances, some of the faithful even scourging themselves in an act of atonement for those who failed properly to back Hussayn’s revolt. Today most Shi’ites consider the legitimate and historically important first leaders of Islam to have been ‘Ali and eleven of his successors: the Twelve Imams. Those who identify these successors to Muhammad as prime leaders of the Muslim faith are known as the “Twelve-Imam Shi’ites”; another group, the “Seven-Imam Shi’ites,” do not regard the last five Imams to be in the lineage of major leaders.
There are some minor doctrinal and ritual differences in these two Shi’ite groups; for example, the Twelve-Imam group adds lines to the call to prayer that are absent when the Seven-Imam group gathers, and the two groups have disparate prayers ritualized for funerals. And Shi’ites in general differ in quite a few ways with Sunnis as to religious practice. Shi’ites have a more flexible view of marital unions with regard to permanency, with divorce as a viable option. They believe that God also can and does reverse His decisions on occasion, whereas Sunnis regard the decisions of God as eternally immutable.
But the historical dispute over the succession to Muhammad lies at the heart of the Sunni-Shi’ite division. As the minority group harboring ill-feeling for a perceived injustice, the Shi’ites have frequently been considered the more irascible and militant of the two groups. Events in Iran with the violent overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the taking of American hostages, both in 1979, buttressed that perception.
Recently, though, Sunni--- rather than Shi'ite--- fringe groups have given evidence of a propensity to use violence with the purported goal of spreading their interpretation of the will of Allah throughout the world. Such minority groups agitating for an idealized Islamic state include Al-Qaeda (worldwide movement originating in Saudi Arabia), Taliban (Afghanistan), and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS; also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIL]).
Two Muslim groups that bear mention in a discussion of Islam are the very different Sufis and the adherents of the Nation of Islam:
The development of Sufism is traceable to the life of the Persian poet, Jelaluddin Balkhi (1207-1273 A.D. [CE]), who became known as Rumi. Rumi befriended a dervish (ascetic) by the name of Shams; when the latter disappeared mysteriously, Rumi felt the spirit of Shams guiding him in the generation of profound poetry. Rumi had a sense of spirituality as ecstatic experience, and as such an expression of “dervishes.”
The search for ecstatic union with Allah is the core of Sufi experience but make them suspect Muslims in the view of both Sunnis and Shi’ites, who view Allah as too awe-inspiring a figure to accept union with humanity in this way; the orthodox view holds that opportunity to draw near the majesty of Allah must await ascent to Heaven, only for the ritualistically devout at the end of the earthly sojourn. But Sufis, who do not consider themselves to be a denomination or sect, identifying variously as either Sunni or Shi’ite, insist that their fervent expression for the love of God is the anchor of their Islamic faith and consistent with the will of Allah.
The Nation of Islam was founded as a religious movement by Wallace Dodd Ford, who took the name Fard (“Righteousness”) Muhammad. He identified as Muslim but generated ideas divergent in many ways from orthodox Islam. For example, orthodox Muslims, whether Sunni or Shi’ite, consider Muhammad to be the Prophet of Allah, not in any sense an incarnation of God or messianic in nature; Fard, though, claimed to be the Messiah. His successor, Elijah Poole, introduced additional unorthodoxies, such as the idea that black people, as the first humans created by God, would survive an apocalyptic event at the “end of times”; white people, though, as later creations possessing Satanic propensities, would be destroyed.
In time, Elijah Poole took the name Elijah Muhammad. In the early 1960s, the civil rights campaigner Malcom X (formerly Malcom Little) joined the Nation of Islam and became the most charismatic spokesperson for the movement led by Elijah Muhammad. From the 1960s forward, there was a trend toward more orthodox Muslim beliefs among members of the Nation of Islam. Malcolm X blazed this theological trail when he left the Nation of Islam and founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity in 1964; he paid a heavy and unjust price for this when he was assassinated by a member of the Nation of Islam in 1965.
When Elijah Muhammad died in the 1970s, his son (Warith Deen Muhammad) changed the name of the movement to American Muslim Mission and advocated ideas consistent with Sunni orthodoxy. A group calling itself the Original Nation of Islam continued to espouse the doctrines of Elijah Muhammad. But over the course of the decades thereafter, leaders of the Original Nation of Islam moved closer to Muslim orthodoxy in their expressed beliefs, and in 2000 the two organizations announced an end to their rivalry.
Aug 24, 2015
Fourth Snippet from My New Book, >Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education<: Classification of Government Types Associated with the Twentieth Century (And This Early Stage of the Twenty-First Century)
In this article I provide the fourth snippet from my new book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education. Please scroll down the blog for the first three, taken from the chapters on World History, Economics, and Psychology.
The snippet provided here is just a small part of the chapter from Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education on Political Science. In that chapter I cover the great political theories of thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and (Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de) Montesquieu. I also provide the essentials of a course on United States government, with a review of the most important aspects of the United States Constitution and a discussion of how those constitutional principles inform the actual political life of the nation. Necessarily, this involves presentation of the three branches of government, their interrelationship, and the most important current figures in the executive branch, the legislative chambers of the United States Congress, and the United States Supreme Court (including the role of the swing-vote justices on a court with an essential split otherwise into liberals and strict constructionists).
The section given here is focused on the major types of government that emerged in the 20th century and appear at this early juncture in the 21st century:
Classification of Government Types Associated with the Twentieth Century (And This Early Stage of the Twenty-First Century)
A. Absolute Monarchy
By the time (late 17th century into the early 18th century) of Louis XIV of France and the Tudor and Stewart dynasties (vied for control from the 12th into the early 18th centuries) of Great Britain, European monarchs had succeeded in centralizing power, building armies that made use of guns and artillery, and cultivating relationships with successful people from the mercantile class. In doing these things, monarchs diminished the power of feudal lords and increased their own power while also abetting the rise of a middle class (bourgeoisie). The latter consisted of professionals (physicians, lawyers, and theologically well-trained pastors), scholars, and business people whose status depended on their level of education, expertise, and wealth.
In the course of the 19th century, the aristocratic class lost much of its prestige; inherited, landed wealth as found in the feudal domains increasingly could not match the commercial riches generated by the mercantile class. In time, the middle class on whose tax base monarchs depended would induce the development of other governmental styles, but during the 17th and 18th centuries (and the early 19th century) absolute monarchies in Europe dominated the political scene.
Sometimes even claiming a divine right to rule, monarchs exercised great power at the central level of governance. This European style of governance had strong correlates in the central administrations of China, Japan, and Korea; and the form also had parallels in Africa and the Americas. Absolute monarchy featured a single hereditary ruler who held paramount authority over executive, legislative, and judicial aspects of governance.
But as early (1215) as King John’s signing of the Magna Carta, other political actors imposed certain restrictions on the power of the monarch. The Glorious Revolution (1688-1689) in Great Britain culminated in the monarchical duo of William and Mary conceding significant additional power to Parliament. By the 19th century those who sought to check the power of monarchs were drawing upon such precedents to produce a monarchical form in which the king or queen had to rule with much greater attention to the viewpoints and legislative initiative of those who sat in lawmaking bodies such as Parliament.
B. Constitutional Monarchy
From the time of the Glorious Revolution forward, Great Britain had a constitutional monarchy. This is the appellation applied to a political system that maintains a monarch possessing limited or merely ceremonial powers but places most governing authority in citizens and their representative institutions. These institutions--- executive, legislative, and judicial--- function according to overriding principles of constitutional law or legal precedent.
Great Britain, although it is the prototypical constitutional monarchy, actually has no formal constitutional document. Legal precedent (acquired via judgments made over the years that form the basis for agreed-upon legal principles), therefore, acts as a surrogate for the constitutional document. Other political systems, influenced by the limited monarchical system of Great Britain but also guided by legal principles featured in documents inspired by the United States Constitution, are more literally constitutional monarchies.
Today, nations operating as constitutional monarchies include Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway, and Denmark). Such systems model their legislative bodies on the British Parliament, headed by a prime minister. The latter is not elected directly but rather emerges as prime minister by virtue of leading the party that garners the most votes in national elections for Parliament.
In Great Britain, there are upper (House of Lords) and lower (House of Commons) chambers in the Parliament. In the course of the 20th century, the House of Commons emerged as the dominant lawmaking chamber. By tradition a chamber reserved for the aristocracy, the House of Lords today has little power; most legislation passes as a consequence of proposals emanating from and voted on by members of the House of Commons. Most other constitutional monarchies are also dominated by a legislative body similar to the House of Commons, or by that body in conjunction with an upper house of the American Senatorial type.
C. Liberal Democratic Republic
In the same way that the British political system is the exemplar of the constitutional monarchy, the political system of the United States serves as the model for the liberal democratic republic.
At the advent of the establishment of the United States of America, advocates for the republican (non-monarchical) form of government prevailed over those who would have preferred the constitutional monarchical system of Great Britain--- the imperialist, colonial power against which those in the fledgling nation had just successfully rebelled.
The existence of a prestigious if not very powerful king or queen lends a different tone to the political system in constitutional monarchies, but in most ways liberal democratic republics function similarly. Many liberal democratic republics do, though, follow the United States in elevating the position of President to the apex of national government. The president is elected in her or his own person, rather than as the leader of a party that emerges dominant in the parliamentary style.
In the United States, there is a popular vote that determines the presidential winner in each state, each of which has a number of electors in an Electoral College who cast the official votes for president; the number of electors assigned to each state consists of that state’s total number of members in the United States House of Representatives, together with the two members each state has in the United States Senate. Whether direct or indirect, most liberal democratic republics have some such vote of the citizenry for a president who possesses actual governing power.
Liberal democratic republics are strongly associated with capitalist economic institutions. The latter is true, too, of constitutional monarchies. In this sense, the politico-economic institutions prevailing in both constitutional monarchies and liberal democratic republics feature free elections and free enterprise; these in turn define the liberal society, as distinguished, for example, from fascist, communist, radical socialist, or dictatorial(authoritarian) socioeconomic formulations. When one reads, therefore, of “liberal democracy,” the reader should understand that the nomenclature pertains to democratic systems of both the constitutional monarchical and the liberal democratic republican type.
D. Radical Socialism and Communist Dictatorship
As capitalist economic systems in Germany, Great Britain, and the United States became ever more efficient in the production of marketable goods, the German philosopher and economist Karl Marx became convinced that the financial success of these systems lay in the ability of the bourgeoisie (owners and managers) to exploit the labor of the proletariat (factory workers).
In a theory that I explore in a succeeding section of the Political Science chapter from which this snippet is taken, Marx predicted that there would be a proletarian revolution in which the expropriated class (proletariat) overthrew the expropriating class (bourgeoisie) and in so doing reverse the direction of the expropriation. The proletariat would rise to power, with governance being exercised by leaders in a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Such a style of governance is properly labelled, “radical socialism.”
Marx predicted that the dictatorship of the proletariat would eventually wither away as society become ever more cooperative, replacing the competitive spirit that drives capitalism. According to Marxist theory, as the need for a dictatorship of the proletariat waned and the state withered away, a new type of person and an ideal society would appear: An ethically evolved human being possessing a compelling instinct to cooperate with one’s fellows would form a society that operated according to the principle of communal sharing, or “communism.”
Two major efforts were made in the 20th century to establish the radical socialist state as a stage in route to pure communism:
The first such effort culminated in the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union). Vladimir Lenin led the new government into the early 1920s. Josef Stalin outmaneuvered rivals such as Leon Trotsky to emerge as the paramount leader by the 1930s and would rule until his death in 1953. In part inspired by and in part compelled by the USSR to form similar states, most nations of Eastern Europe also became radical socialist states governed by communist parties in the aftermath of World War II.
The second major effort resulted in the 1949 Chinese Communist Revolution and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China with Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) as revolutionary strategist and paramount leader until his death in 1976. The Maoist revolution proved inspirational to some leaders in Africa, and in the course of the 1950s and succeeding decades communist revolutions succeeded in parts of Latin America.
Most famously (though his revolution began as a guerrilla movement not avowedly communist), Fidel Castro eventually established a communist government; although his revolution was propelled by peasant energies reminiscent of the Chinese case, Castro responded eagerly when leaders in the Soviet Union offered economic assistance, and it was the Soviet-Cuban relationship that proved so troubling to the United States between the years 1959-1991.
The communist system came to an end in Russia in 1991, two years after the crumbling of communist regimes in such Eastern European nations as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and East Germany in 1989. Cuba still officially features a communist government, as does China and the Asian nations of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
But all currently existing communist regimes have moved to incorporate features of capitalist economy--- officially at odds with Marxist ideology. Karl Marx identified major incongruities in the capitalist system and promulgated a compelling theory of proletarian revolution. But at least three historical circumstances have thus far forestalled the establishment of an enduring communist regime:
First, the revolutions in Russia and China both took place in countries in which industrial development was nascent and the proletariat was very small; Marx had predicted proletarian, not peasant revolution.
Second, in both major cases of communist dictatorship, the regimes proved far more authoritarian and less benevolent to the masses than Marx had envisioned for the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Third, liberal capitalist democracies borrowed certain features from socialist paradigms, with central government management of the Keynesian sort far exceeding anything that Adam Smith had foreseen; this socialist strain, along with the formation of labor unions, paradoxically forestalled proletarian, radical socialist revolution. Only time will tell if more fully developed industrial and postindustrial economies will produce anything like radical socialist or communist revolutions or institutions. Efforts to do so in the first act on the historical stage are either moribund or on the wane.
E. Democratic Socialism
But socialist institutions may be implemented in contexts that do not describe the Marxist ideal. Leaders and citizens in a number of nations have opted for a political system that takes Keynesian economics beyond the level of application apparent during Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and in the ongoing entitlement programs (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) of the United States. These nations include the Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark; Germany; and Canada.
Western European nations in general--- including France, the Netherlands, and Belgium--- feature governments that provide more generous social welfare programs than is the case in the United States. Democratic socialist nations (also known as the socialist democracies) have elections and political institutions in much the manner of the United States and other Liberal Democratic societies. They also have a large capitalist component to their economies. But democratic socialist systems feature central governments that control and manage programs for inexpensive universal health care, nation-wide transportation services (airlines, railroads, ocean-liners), and daycare; and they tend to maintain ownership and managerial control over key industries such as iron, coal, petroleum, auto-making, shipbuilding, and the like.
Most of these facets of the economy are left to the private sector in the United States, where similar initiatives such as the Affordable Health Care Act (which comes far short of establishing the single-payer health care system common in the socialist democracies) generate great political controversy. In the United States, liberal Democrats favoring such programs must contend with conservative Republicans who, objecting to the higher taxes and government intervention that accompany democratic socialism (and entitlement programs), prefer a more purely free enterprise approach.
Political scientists describe the United States as a center-right nation that leans heavily toward private enterprise as the provider of goods and services; versus the Western European center-left socialist democracies that also function substantially according to private enterprise but manifest considerably more enthusiasm for social welfare programs and socialized industry managed by the central government.
F. Fascist Dictatorship
By the 1920s in Europe, politico-economic conditions in three nations presented an opportunity for leaders seeking to attract public support for a political message that was different from that descriptive of Marxist radical socialism, democratic socialism, or liberal democracy. Following their loss in World War I (1918), the German people felt humiliated, especially in view of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles (1919). This treaty blamed German aggression for the war; assessed heavy reparations (payment for destruction caused); and forced demilitarization (large-scale reduction of personnel and weaponry in the armed services) on Germany.
There was an attempt to establish liberal democracy in the form of the Weimar Republic. But the October 1929 stock market crash in the United States and the succeeding Great Depression of the 1930s caused international economic dislocations that fell hard on an already challenged German economy. The public tended to blame policies of Weimar Republic leaders and to give enthusiastic reception to the fiery oratory of Adolf Hitler.
Hitler castigated the Western democracies for their punitive actions against Germany in the aftermath of World War I. He accused the Jews of selfishly manipulating the German capitalist system for their own purposes, to the disadvantage of the German people. He touted the superiority of the Aryan race, his conception of the majority German population as ideally blonde, blue-eyed, and physically robust, possessing an intellectual acumen that made them destined to rule the world. He advocated greater control of the German economy by his Nazi (National Socialist) Party, not for establishing democratic socialism, and certainly not for instituting Marxist socialism with its emphasis on international proletarian solidarity. Rather, Hitler touted “national socialism,” entailing a particular blend of government control with private capitalism for the advancement of German economic might, military strength, and German power across the globe.
Under the Nazis, German society was subject to a totalitarian system in which secret police (the S. S. guards) conducted raids in the middle of the night, rounding up Jews and others considered offensive by the Nazi leadership; paramilitary S. A.forces (“Brown Shirts”) patrolled the streets in intimidating fashion; propaganda was fiercely disseminated via a variety of media; and every aspect of the lives of the people were monitored.
The regimes of Benito Mussolini (Italy) and Francisco Franco (Spain) did not establish such thoroughgoing totalitarian control, but they shared numerous features of fascism: supra-nationalism, glorifying the state and exalting patriotic fervor; the assertion of a classless society, with all citizens united in support of the state; “state capitalist” economies in which the central government favored those industries and firms deemed most useful to the state; heavy propaganda meant to ensure ideological uniformity; and the use of paramilitary forces highly effective in weeding out opponents.
Many of these features could be seen, too, in the Japanese government and society led by Tojo Hideki during this same period of the 1930s and 1940s in which fascist regimes held power in Europe; thus, the regimes that dominated the Axis coalition (opposed by the Allies) during World War II were all effective in espousing a chauvinist (supra-nationalist) ideology capable of motivating the unified, officially classless masses to seek personal identity in support of expansionist military efforts for glorification of the state--- and, therefore, the self.
The regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo ended with defeat in World War II; Franco, who warily had kept Spain on the fringe of the Axis coalition, held power until his death in the 1970s. Leaders in a number of Latin American and African regimes established rightist governments with fascist characteristics during the decades succeeding World War II; for many decades, governments in Taiwan and in South Korea also maintained institutions and operated from ideologies at the right end of the political continuum, opposite from radical socialism and communism on the far left.
But in the course of the 1990s, rightist regimes tended to meet the same fate as their leftist counterparts, as democracies of variously liberal republican, constitutional monarchical, or democratic socialist types seemed destined to lead most of the world’s population into the 21st century.
The snippet provided here is just a small part of the chapter from Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education on Political Science. In that chapter I cover the great political theories of thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and (Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de) Montesquieu. I also provide the essentials of a course on United States government, with a review of the most important aspects of the United States Constitution and a discussion of how those constitutional principles inform the actual political life of the nation. Necessarily, this involves presentation of the three branches of government, their interrelationship, and the most important current figures in the executive branch, the legislative chambers of the United States Congress, and the United States Supreme Court (including the role of the swing-vote justices on a court with an essential split otherwise into liberals and strict constructionists).
The section given here is focused on the major types of government that emerged in the 20th century and appear at this early juncture in the 21st century:
Classification of Government Types Associated with the Twentieth Century (And This Early Stage of the Twenty-First Century)
A. Absolute Monarchy
By the time (late 17th century into the early 18th century) of Louis XIV of France and the Tudor and Stewart dynasties (vied for control from the 12th into the early 18th centuries) of Great Britain, European monarchs had succeeded in centralizing power, building armies that made use of guns and artillery, and cultivating relationships with successful people from the mercantile class. In doing these things, monarchs diminished the power of feudal lords and increased their own power while also abetting the rise of a middle class (bourgeoisie). The latter consisted of professionals (physicians, lawyers, and theologically well-trained pastors), scholars, and business people whose status depended on their level of education, expertise, and wealth.
In the course of the 19th century, the aristocratic class lost much of its prestige; inherited, landed wealth as found in the feudal domains increasingly could not match the commercial riches generated by the mercantile class. In time, the middle class on whose tax base monarchs depended would induce the development of other governmental styles, but during the 17th and 18th centuries (and the early 19th century) absolute monarchies in Europe dominated the political scene.
Sometimes even claiming a divine right to rule, monarchs exercised great power at the central level of governance. This European style of governance had strong correlates in the central administrations of China, Japan, and Korea; and the form also had parallels in Africa and the Americas. Absolute monarchy featured a single hereditary ruler who held paramount authority over executive, legislative, and judicial aspects of governance.
But as early (1215) as King John’s signing of the Magna Carta, other political actors imposed certain restrictions on the power of the monarch. The Glorious Revolution (1688-1689) in Great Britain culminated in the monarchical duo of William and Mary conceding significant additional power to Parliament. By the 19th century those who sought to check the power of monarchs were drawing upon such precedents to produce a monarchical form in which the king or queen had to rule with much greater attention to the viewpoints and legislative initiative of those who sat in lawmaking bodies such as Parliament.
B. Constitutional Monarchy
From the time of the Glorious Revolution forward, Great Britain had a constitutional monarchy. This is the appellation applied to a political system that maintains a monarch possessing limited or merely ceremonial powers but places most governing authority in citizens and their representative institutions. These institutions--- executive, legislative, and judicial--- function according to overriding principles of constitutional law or legal precedent.
Great Britain, although it is the prototypical constitutional monarchy, actually has no formal constitutional document. Legal precedent (acquired via judgments made over the years that form the basis for agreed-upon legal principles), therefore, acts as a surrogate for the constitutional document. Other political systems, influenced by the limited monarchical system of Great Britain but also guided by legal principles featured in documents inspired by the United States Constitution, are more literally constitutional monarchies.
Today, nations operating as constitutional monarchies include Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway, and Denmark). Such systems model their legislative bodies on the British Parliament, headed by a prime minister. The latter is not elected directly but rather emerges as prime minister by virtue of leading the party that garners the most votes in national elections for Parliament.
In Great Britain, there are upper (House of Lords) and lower (House of Commons) chambers in the Parliament. In the course of the 20th century, the House of Commons emerged as the dominant lawmaking chamber. By tradition a chamber reserved for the aristocracy, the House of Lords today has little power; most legislation passes as a consequence of proposals emanating from and voted on by members of the House of Commons. Most other constitutional monarchies are also dominated by a legislative body similar to the House of Commons, or by that body in conjunction with an upper house of the American Senatorial type.
C. Liberal Democratic Republic
In the same way that the British political system is the exemplar of the constitutional monarchy, the political system of the United States serves as the model for the liberal democratic republic.
At the advent of the establishment of the United States of America, advocates for the republican (non-monarchical) form of government prevailed over those who would have preferred the constitutional monarchical system of Great Britain--- the imperialist, colonial power against which those in the fledgling nation had just successfully rebelled.
The existence of a prestigious if not very powerful king or queen lends a different tone to the political system in constitutional monarchies, but in most ways liberal democratic republics function similarly. Many liberal democratic republics do, though, follow the United States in elevating the position of President to the apex of national government. The president is elected in her or his own person, rather than as the leader of a party that emerges dominant in the parliamentary style.
In the United States, there is a popular vote that determines the presidential winner in each state, each of which has a number of electors in an Electoral College who cast the official votes for president; the number of electors assigned to each state consists of that state’s total number of members in the United States House of Representatives, together with the two members each state has in the United States Senate. Whether direct or indirect, most liberal democratic republics have some such vote of the citizenry for a president who possesses actual governing power.
Liberal democratic republics are strongly associated with capitalist economic institutions. The latter is true, too, of constitutional monarchies. In this sense, the politico-economic institutions prevailing in both constitutional monarchies and liberal democratic republics feature free elections and free enterprise; these in turn define the liberal society, as distinguished, for example, from fascist, communist, radical socialist, or dictatorial(authoritarian) socioeconomic formulations. When one reads, therefore, of “liberal democracy,” the reader should understand that the nomenclature pertains to democratic systems of both the constitutional monarchical and the liberal democratic republican type.
D. Radical Socialism and Communist Dictatorship
As capitalist economic systems in Germany, Great Britain, and the United States became ever more efficient in the production of marketable goods, the German philosopher and economist Karl Marx became convinced that the financial success of these systems lay in the ability of the bourgeoisie (owners and managers) to exploit the labor of the proletariat (factory workers).
In a theory that I explore in a succeeding section of the Political Science chapter from which this snippet is taken, Marx predicted that there would be a proletarian revolution in which the expropriated class (proletariat) overthrew the expropriating class (bourgeoisie) and in so doing reverse the direction of the expropriation. The proletariat would rise to power, with governance being exercised by leaders in a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Such a style of governance is properly labelled, “radical socialism.”
Marx predicted that the dictatorship of the proletariat would eventually wither away as society become ever more cooperative, replacing the competitive spirit that drives capitalism. According to Marxist theory, as the need for a dictatorship of the proletariat waned and the state withered away, a new type of person and an ideal society would appear: An ethically evolved human being possessing a compelling instinct to cooperate with one’s fellows would form a society that operated according to the principle of communal sharing, or “communism.”
Two major efforts were made in the 20th century to establish the radical socialist state as a stage in route to pure communism:
The first such effort culminated in the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union). Vladimir Lenin led the new government into the early 1920s. Josef Stalin outmaneuvered rivals such as Leon Trotsky to emerge as the paramount leader by the 1930s and would rule until his death in 1953. In part inspired by and in part compelled by the USSR to form similar states, most nations of Eastern Europe also became radical socialist states governed by communist parties in the aftermath of World War II.
The second major effort resulted in the 1949 Chinese Communist Revolution and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China with Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) as revolutionary strategist and paramount leader until his death in 1976. The Maoist revolution proved inspirational to some leaders in Africa, and in the course of the 1950s and succeeding decades communist revolutions succeeded in parts of Latin America.
Most famously (though his revolution began as a guerrilla movement not avowedly communist), Fidel Castro eventually established a communist government; although his revolution was propelled by peasant energies reminiscent of the Chinese case, Castro responded eagerly when leaders in the Soviet Union offered economic assistance, and it was the Soviet-Cuban relationship that proved so troubling to the United States between the years 1959-1991.
The communist system came to an end in Russia in 1991, two years after the crumbling of communist regimes in such Eastern European nations as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and East Germany in 1989. Cuba still officially features a communist government, as does China and the Asian nations of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
But all currently existing communist regimes have moved to incorporate features of capitalist economy--- officially at odds with Marxist ideology. Karl Marx identified major incongruities in the capitalist system and promulgated a compelling theory of proletarian revolution. But at least three historical circumstances have thus far forestalled the establishment of an enduring communist regime:
First, the revolutions in Russia and China both took place in countries in which industrial development was nascent and the proletariat was very small; Marx had predicted proletarian, not peasant revolution.
Second, in both major cases of communist dictatorship, the regimes proved far more authoritarian and less benevolent to the masses than Marx had envisioned for the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Third, liberal capitalist democracies borrowed certain features from socialist paradigms, with central government management of the Keynesian sort far exceeding anything that Adam Smith had foreseen; this socialist strain, along with the formation of labor unions, paradoxically forestalled proletarian, radical socialist revolution. Only time will tell if more fully developed industrial and postindustrial economies will produce anything like radical socialist or communist revolutions or institutions. Efforts to do so in the first act on the historical stage are either moribund or on the wane.
E. Democratic Socialism
But socialist institutions may be implemented in contexts that do not describe the Marxist ideal. Leaders and citizens in a number of nations have opted for a political system that takes Keynesian economics beyond the level of application apparent during Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and in the ongoing entitlement programs (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) of the United States. These nations include the Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark; Germany; and Canada.
Western European nations in general--- including France, the Netherlands, and Belgium--- feature governments that provide more generous social welfare programs than is the case in the United States. Democratic socialist nations (also known as the socialist democracies) have elections and political institutions in much the manner of the United States and other Liberal Democratic societies. They also have a large capitalist component to their economies. But democratic socialist systems feature central governments that control and manage programs for inexpensive universal health care, nation-wide transportation services (airlines, railroads, ocean-liners), and daycare; and they tend to maintain ownership and managerial control over key industries such as iron, coal, petroleum, auto-making, shipbuilding, and the like.
Most of these facets of the economy are left to the private sector in the United States, where similar initiatives such as the Affordable Health Care Act (which comes far short of establishing the single-payer health care system common in the socialist democracies) generate great political controversy. In the United States, liberal Democrats favoring such programs must contend with conservative Republicans who, objecting to the higher taxes and government intervention that accompany democratic socialism (and entitlement programs), prefer a more purely free enterprise approach.
Political scientists describe the United States as a center-right nation that leans heavily toward private enterprise as the provider of goods and services; versus the Western European center-left socialist democracies that also function substantially according to private enterprise but manifest considerably more enthusiasm for social welfare programs and socialized industry managed by the central government.
F. Fascist Dictatorship
By the 1920s in Europe, politico-economic conditions in three nations presented an opportunity for leaders seeking to attract public support for a political message that was different from that descriptive of Marxist radical socialism, democratic socialism, or liberal democracy. Following their loss in World War I (1918), the German people felt humiliated, especially in view of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles (1919). This treaty blamed German aggression for the war; assessed heavy reparations (payment for destruction caused); and forced demilitarization (large-scale reduction of personnel and weaponry in the armed services) on Germany.
There was an attempt to establish liberal democracy in the form of the Weimar Republic. But the October 1929 stock market crash in the United States and the succeeding Great Depression of the 1930s caused international economic dislocations that fell hard on an already challenged German economy. The public tended to blame policies of Weimar Republic leaders and to give enthusiastic reception to the fiery oratory of Adolf Hitler.
Hitler castigated the Western democracies for their punitive actions against Germany in the aftermath of World War I. He accused the Jews of selfishly manipulating the German capitalist system for their own purposes, to the disadvantage of the German people. He touted the superiority of the Aryan race, his conception of the majority German population as ideally blonde, blue-eyed, and physically robust, possessing an intellectual acumen that made them destined to rule the world. He advocated greater control of the German economy by his Nazi (National Socialist) Party, not for establishing democratic socialism, and certainly not for instituting Marxist socialism with its emphasis on international proletarian solidarity. Rather, Hitler touted “national socialism,” entailing a particular blend of government control with private capitalism for the advancement of German economic might, military strength, and German power across the globe.
Under the Nazis, German society was subject to a totalitarian system in which secret police (the S. S. guards) conducted raids in the middle of the night, rounding up Jews and others considered offensive by the Nazi leadership; paramilitary S. A.forces (“Brown Shirts”) patrolled the streets in intimidating fashion; propaganda was fiercely disseminated via a variety of media; and every aspect of the lives of the people were monitored.
The regimes of Benito Mussolini (Italy) and Francisco Franco (Spain) did not establish such thoroughgoing totalitarian control, but they shared numerous features of fascism: supra-nationalism, glorifying the state and exalting patriotic fervor; the assertion of a classless society, with all citizens united in support of the state; “state capitalist” economies in which the central government favored those industries and firms deemed most useful to the state; heavy propaganda meant to ensure ideological uniformity; and the use of paramilitary forces highly effective in weeding out opponents.
Many of these features could be seen, too, in the Japanese government and society led by Tojo Hideki during this same period of the 1930s and 1940s in which fascist regimes held power in Europe; thus, the regimes that dominated the Axis coalition (opposed by the Allies) during World War II were all effective in espousing a chauvinist (supra-nationalist) ideology capable of motivating the unified, officially classless masses to seek personal identity in support of expansionist military efforts for glorification of the state--- and, therefore, the self.
The regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo ended with defeat in World War II; Franco, who warily had kept Spain on the fringe of the Axis coalition, held power until his death in the 1970s. Leaders in a number of Latin American and African regimes established rightist governments with fascist characteristics during the decades succeeding World War II; for many decades, governments in Taiwan and in South Korea also maintained institutions and operated from ideologies at the right end of the political continuum, opposite from radical socialism and communism on the far left.
But in the course of the 1990s, rightist regimes tended to meet the same fate as their leftist counterparts, as democracies of variously liberal republican, constitutional monarchical, or democratic socialist types seemed destined to lead most of the world’s population into the 21st century.
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