I believe that our republic is in danger, that this danger is of historic proportions and that this danger is growing every day. Yet the threat of terrorism, though it has staggeringly multiplied in the last four years, is currently not an eminent danger to this country.
I believe that this country has lost its moral fiber and much of what once made it great, but by this I do not mean to make a general case for the evils of abortion, "the homosexual agenda," sexual or social deviance. I believe that our political, social, cultural and financial institutions are pushing us further into unhealthy patterns, but my target is not excessive consumption, affluenza or capitalism.
The very necessity of distinguishing my own alarmism from these more familiar flavors evidences the extent to which our social discourse, much of what people wish to refer to by "society," has become warped.
One of the major clusters of challenges facing our nation might be circumscribed by the ideas of political equality and virtue, both of which are deeply tied to educational issues. For those of us who share a commitment to political equality, it has become increasingly clear that such an ideal has been increasingly corrupted by the sensitivities of our government and society to escalating inequalities in wealth and income. Indeed, such distortion is presently of such a level and scope that it raises serious issues about the very possibility of insulating a political system from socioeconomic inequalities of present levels.
This is a very strong claim, but the evidence is such that it should not take long to bear out. As regards education, I will take it as a given that some decent minimum level of primary and secondary education is necessary in order to be a good citizen, or even just an effective participant in the political process, and that this minimum is not being achieved in many of our country's school districts.
A solid education is currently the only defense we have to offer against votes being bought and sold by marketing, or even, if we find the former improbable on Levittian grounds, against political machinations in general causing people to vote against their interests. As a result of these deficiencies, the public school system has been effectively privatized, while the quality of the public school system, as measured by standardized tests, has become the single best determinant of housing prices in the suburbs of a given city.
And if political equality is read as equal opportunity to political office for the similarly-abled, then obviously an even stronger commitment to universal education is necessary, one that would extend to post-secondary education. To suggest the extent to which education is currently an out-of-pocket expense, I offer only an anecdotal example: I am a public school graduate who transferred to Tufts after two years of paying less than half of my current Tufts price.
Yet when differential housing costs for my primary and secondary school years, tuition, books and the like are totaled, my BA-level education will have cost over $140,000. For many families bearing the full sticker price of Tufts costs, the total must be more than a quarter-million.
I should also mention in passing that the political evils resulting from economic inequality are not confined to this indirect type. As the widening outlines of the Jack Abramoff affair earlier this year (should have) made clear, legislation itself can also be bought and sold.
Even those of us who do not subscribe to a fundamental commitment to political equality should have reasons for concern. As Tony Judt pointed out in the pages of the New York Review of Books and reiterated recently in a public forum, "whatever their attendant virtues and defects, republics appear always to decline in much the same way: their institutions atrophy, their elites become mediocre and corrupt, their citizens lose interest in political freedoms and public debate or are bludgeoned into acquiescence by the specter of war or disorder." This seems like quite an accurate description of what is going on today.
In fact, as accelerating reports of domestic spying, unchecked executive power, rampant corruption, fraud and extortion at the highest levels of government join an economic situation in which productivity growth and real mean family income have been dissociating steadily since the mid-70's, this description looks more and more appropriate every day.
Conventional wisdom, especially in liberal circles, says that there is no public outcry because so many Americans have been hoodwinked, but this seems intuitively false. Poor Americans don't want to establish any kind of equality; they want to make it into the elite echelons of society. And most people all over the country seem pretty convinced that even the best of those who make it to Washington are pretty much scum, but this is a topic for idle minds and idle hands.
Judt's conclusion, by now his mantra, is that America is strong but vulnerable. Mine is that it's failing.
For those of us who share a commitment to political equality, it has become increasingly clear that such an ideal has been increasingly corrupted by the sensitivities of our government and society to escalating inequalities in wealth and income.
Benjamin Rolfe is a senior and philosophy major. He can be reached at brolfe01@trumpeter-store.tufts.edu.
