Introducing TWS "Notes on the News"

This month: Roe v. Wade overturned, the FBI raid of Trump's Mar-a-Lago home, massive teacher shortages this fall, and the uncertain future of American-style democracy.

This is the first article in a new format for The Whole Social called “Notes on the News.” The idea is to give a snapshot of recent headlines from a whole society perspective, to try to help us dig into the deeper causes and larger connections behind isolated news items.

From the start I want to make clear that the views expressed here are my own. They are the very imperfect fruit of my own ongoing struggle to understand society’s evolving nature with the aid of Rudolf Steiner’s profound social insights (often called “social threefolding”). If you have another perspective on the stories I’ve shared, or come across any news items you think I might be interested in, please let me know in the comments below. Thanks for your interest in engaging with a whole society perspective!

And if you’d like to support this work with a one-time or recurring donation, it would be greatly appreciated. You can do so here:

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The end of Roe

A healthy society should constantly strive to educate and uplift its people so they’re able to have as much freedom (and responsibility) as possible. The path of humanity can be seen as the path toward freedom — as Thoreau put it: “The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.” Along that path, we’ve reached the point where it’s necessary for each individual to have freedom and self-determination over their own person — freedom over their own souls (freedom of thought, of belief, of speech) and freedom over their own bodies.

Of course, one person’s freedom can at times infringe upon another’s. For instance, during Covid it was argued that some people should have their right to bodily autonomy taken away (by being forced to take vaccines) in order to protect other people (those at higher risk, especially the elderly). With abortion a similar argument is made, this time that women should have their right to bodily autonomy taken away in order to protect others (in this case, the unborn).

There are emergency situations where temporarily taking away a person’s freedom and autonomy might be necessary, but it should always be the last resort. Anything else that could possibly remedy the situation should be tried first (and if freedoms are taken away, a full account for why it was necessary should be given afterwards). In the case of abortion, we haven’t tried everything — specifically, we haven’t done everything in our power to support childbirth and childrearing, we haven’t fully addressed all the reasons a mother might choose to abort a pregnancy.

But even if we had tried every other remedy, taking away a woman’s right to bodily autonomy isn’t justifiable for the sake of an unborn fetus. Why? Because a fetus is not yet a member of the social community. This happens at the moment of birth, and at that moment the freedom of the mother and the freedom of the child can justifiably be weighed against each other and one person’s freedom might have to suffer because of another’s. But until that point the unborn clearly cannot have the same rights and obligations as those who live together in the body politic.

I think it’s sad when a potential mother chooses to abort (both for her and for the new soul that was beginning to enter the world), but still, it must be her choice. The community should never outlaw such actions unless they’re immediately harmful to other people living in the social-political community. The case of abortion simply does not meet such criteria.

If we disagree with an individual’s personal choices, we should try to change their mind through education and argument, but we should never take away their ability to choose for themselves through passing laws — individual choice shouldn’t be brought into the realm of law at all.

This is fundamental to our Bill of Rights: it strongly separates the realm of the individual from that of government. It recognizes that the individual’s personal domain must be left to the individual. And the body is clearly part of the personal domain. Our sovereignty over it is no different, in essence, than our sovereignty over our own souls (protected by the first amendment) or our sovereignty over our homes (the fourth amendment). It doesn’t matter if the framers enumerated this aspect or not, the principle is clear: that which belongs to the individual — that which is integral to their being — should never be decided by political majority (whether at the federal or state level). It must stand outside the realm of government completely.

[These brief thoughts on abortion have led to some interesting discussions on social media, so I’ve added a few additional thoughts from those discussions in the comments below.]

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Dear media, please stop fueling the fire

Sometimes the media is just plain crazy-making.

On Monday, August 8th, the FBI raided Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home apparently in search of official records it believed the former president took with him when he left office. In their immediate reporting on the story, The Guardian published three articles, one of which (“Republicans dust off familiar playbook to weaponise Mar-a-Lago FBI search”) looked at partisan reactions to the event and lamented the fact that the situation was only further dividing the country:

A bitterly polarized reaction to an FBI search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on Monday threatened to inflame America’s political divisions.

The former president said agents “raided” his Florida resort and broke into his safe, a stunning turn of events apparently linked to a justice department investigation of his removal of official presidential records…

Republicans responded furiously to the development, following Trump’s lead in claiming that the search showed the justice department waging a politically motivated witch-hunt. Their florid rhetoric will do little to assuage fears that a prosecution of Trump could lead to social unrest and even political violence.

This, in fact, was The Guardian’s main critique on the day after the event: the Republicans were exaggerating the situation with their “florid rhetoric,” but of course they were only “following Trump’s lead” — he was the one stirring up the hornet’s nest and painting the whole affair as a “witch hunt.” And how, specifically, was Trump doing this? Over and over again The Guardian focused on his use of the word “raid,” always in quotation marks (“The former president said agents ‘raided’ his Florida resort”).

The title of another one of The Guardian’s articles — a kind of blow-by-blow (“as it happened”) account of the event — stated this even more clearly: “Donald Trump says Mar-a-Lago home ‘raided’ as FBI executes search warrant – as it happened.”

The implication here is that Trump’s use of the word “raid” is in some way unfounded, an exaggeration, because really the FBI was just “executing a search warrant.” It makes Trump the center of the story by insinuating that he is in some way twisting things up and sowing confusion among his followers.

Except, it’s actually The Guardian that’s sowing confusion among its followers. By repeatedly distinguishing “raid” from “executing a search warrant” they’re indicating a difference, but they never say exactly what it is. The reader might very likely infer that “raiding” must describe an illegal activity because “executing a search warrant” is clearly legal and above board. But the word “raid” doesn’t mean breaking down doors without a search warrant, it’s the word that everyone uses — the media, the government, the police — when describing law enforcement suddenly showing up at your home. “Raid” and “executing a search warrant” are exactly the same thing.

For instance, if you google “police raid” you’ll find countless stories of the police raiding the homes of suspected criminals (always with the proper paperwork in hand).

Or, if you go to the FBI’s own website and search for “raid,” you’ll find story after story of them suddenly showing up somewhere and executing a search warrant (i.e., “raiding” a place). Or maybe you’d prefer the Department of Justice’s manual on how to raid (“Raids — A Guide to Planning, Coordinating, and Executing Searches and Arrests”). Or you could always just look up “police raid” on Wikipedia. If you do look into any of these sources you’ll find not one of them describes a raid as anything other than executing a search warrant, so why is The Guardian making Trump’s use of this word the central issue of their reporting?

It’s certainly true that Trump has used exaggerated and inflammatory language at times. And it’s also true that some of the Republicans who responded to the Mar-a-Lago raid used exaggerated and inflammatory language in their responses. Such language isn’t meant to help anyone see the situation more clearly, to understand it for themselves out of their own reasoning power. It’s meant to manipulate them, to stoke their prejudices, to make them hate the other side. And The Guardian is right: such exaggerated language only “inflames America’s political divisions.”

But this is also exactly what The Guardian is doing in this instance. They’re exaggerating and distorting the truth — all in an attempt to manipulate their audience and make the other side look like a bunch of loonies. It’s no different. They’re perpetrating the very evil they’re decrying.

And it’s not just them — we too are responsible. Everyday we do the same thing: misuse language, paint our enemies in a false light, or just mentally shrug and avert our eyes when someone on our own side plays dirty. We so rarely hold our side to account, we so rarely hold ourselves to account. And because of that, it’s we who are tearing this country apart.

[A RESOURCE: One group that’s trying to address the hyper-partisanship in the US is the organization Braver Angels. I haven’t dug too deeply into their work yet, but I’ve been impressed with everything I’ve seen so far. You can find them at https://braverangels.org.]

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[AN UPDATE: After seeing news outlets continue to denounce Trump for misinforming the public, I searched out Trump’s original statement (you can find it here). There I found that he does indeed use the word “lawlessness” (though it’s used to describe how the “establishment” is treating him generally and isn’t specific to the raid), and he does directly compare Mar-a-Lago to Watergate, which was an actual break-in and therefore illegal. In this way he did suggest that there was something illegal to the FBI’s actions, and therefore he did distort the situation, so I don’t know why The Guardian didn’t focus on that comparison instead of his use of the word “raid.” So now I’d say there was some actual cause for The Guardian to claim Trump was exaggerating, but unfortunately they just never made that case.]

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The loss of faith in American-style democracy

An op-ed in the New York Times last week — “Kenya’s Elite Talk About American Power in the Past Tense” — was a pretty blaring description of the need for social threefolding. The article’s author described that, on her latest trip to Kenya, she found the prevailing view of American democracy had changed among the country’s elite. Instead of heralding it as the ideal towards which every country should strive, Kenyans now think “the Chinese system of meritocratic autocracy is a better route to middle income status for countries such as Kenya” (a view echoed in another recent NYT piece describing how Tunisia, the last remaining democracy from the Arab Spring uprising, approved a new constitution that essentially ends its experiment with democracy).

But why are so many countries becoming disillusioned with American-style democracy? — Because it isn’t working. Specifically, the NYT op-ed describes two major failures: political corruption and cultural tribalism.

The sheer cost of running for office in Kenya fuels the perception that elections are a corruption machine. “The more they spend, the more that you know that there will be corruption” later so candidates can pay themselves back, Henry Nyutu, a real estate agent, told me…

Kenyans are acutely aware of how elections in a multiethnic society can lead to violence when politicians stoke ethnic grievances to win. In 2007 and 2008, more than 1,000 people died and hundreds of thousands were displaced after the incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, was hastily sworn into office despite being credibly accused of vote rigging…

“America is being reintroduced to what preliterate or highly ethnically divided societies that have tried to implement the American model have known all along,” he observed. “All politics are tribal and zero-sum. You have created tribes and the tribes aren’t talking to each other anymore.”

Maybe now that Americans are struggling with some of the same challenges as Kenyans, we’ll approach them with more humility…

I think this diagnosis of both Kenya and America’s problems is correct. America, too, has clearly struggled with the influence of money on politics as well as with cultural tensions (especially tensions around racial and ethnic identity) from the very start. It is this struggle for identity and values that still fuels the raging culture wars today.

The diagnosis is correct, but what’s the solution? Unfortunately the author doesn’t have one besides some vague words about “modeling competence” (“those of us who still believe in democracy — as I most certainly do — ought to realize that we’ll win more supporters by modeling competence”). So she seems to be saying that democracy will still save us if we somehow just do it better.

But it won’t. The problem is clearly due to the toxic fusion of economic and cultural factors within our political life. Until we clearly distinguish these three functions of society, and determine their healthy relationship to one another, nothing will change.

When we mix these three together, when we allow government to champion certain forms of cultural expression and meddle with the economy, then we open the door to cultural and economic actors constantly trying to infiltrate the political system in order to seize the reins of power for themselves. We open the door to corruption and tribalism.

With big money allowed to flood through the halls of government, and political parties fighting tooth and nail to impose their value systems on their ideological enemies, is it really any wonder the world is turning its back on democracy?

[I’ve written about these issues in a number of places. You can find articles on the influence of money in politics here, and on the need to separate nation and state — or really culture and state — here and here.]

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School starts soon, but where are all the teachers?

Though there’s no single set of statistics describing the exodus of teachers from US classrooms, the data continues to show that schools are struggling to fill teaching positions across the country (with one recent podcast from This American Life, “School’s Out Forever,” saying that the US school system might be irreparably broken). As teachers quit in record numbers, schools are forced to do whatever they can to meet their children’s needs: they’re doubling class sizes, hiring veterans, college students, and online education companies to teach their students, and also moving school administrators into the classroom.

But in one recent Washington Post article, “‘Never seen it this bad’: America faces catastrophic teacher shortage,” even school administrators admit that all these “solutions” are just temporary band-aids. So what are they doing to turn the tide on this trend in the long term, to actually find and retain teachers? The same thing we usually do: throw money at the problem.

It seems like raising wages is capitalism’s one-size-fits-all solution, but are teachers really just quitting over bad pay?

Why are America’s schools so short-staffed? Experts point to a confluence of factors including pandemic-induced teacher exhaustion, low pay and some educators’ sense that politicians and parents — and sometimes their own school board members — have little respect for their profession amid an escalating educational culture war that has seen many districts and states pass policies and laws restricting what teachers can say about U.S. history, race, racism, gender and sexual orientation, as well as LGBTQ issues.

…When people were beating up on teachers and just being real nasty about what we’re doing and what we’re not doing,” Houston said, “I don’t think they were really thinking, ‘Who will teach my children?’ ”

Yes, poor pay is a part of the problem, but it’s really just a symptom of the larger problem: undervaluing and disrespecting teachers. Education is perhaps the most essential and difficult task in society (we’re talking about guiding the powerfully intense, and extremely delicate, developmental process of children, each of whom has their own individual needs and capacities), yet we treat teachers as inept and deride their profession daily.

So do we just need to start being nicer to teachers? No — we need concrete changes to the educational system that will shift this dynamic and elevate their work to the level of respect it deserves. Specifically, we need to stop micromanaging them.

Teachers know their subjects and their students. It’s time to stop passing policies and laws, curricula and textbooks, that force them to teach in one way or another. It’s time to stop making them teach to the test, follow federal grant guidelines in order to survive, and bow down to the whims of school boards.

First and foremost, politicians just need to get out of classrooms. The politician’s role when it comes to education is to ensure each child has equal access to it; it’s the role of the teacher to teach and the role of the parent to choose the education that best suits their child. We each have our appropriate field of action. When we overstep into another’s, we do violence to them, we disrespect them.

Like any self-respecting adult, teachers need the freedom to do their own work according to their own conscience and creative impulse. It’s time to take the common-sense ideal of academic freedom that already lives in our universities, and bring it down into the rest of our education system.

[If you’re interested in reading more about the need for educational freedom, I’ve written more on it here.]